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I’m HOME! YAY!
But first I need to subject you to my Cornwall holiday pics.
Saint Mawes. A nice little costal town, and where I happened to be staying. Along with it’s calf killing 1 in 3 hills there was this strangly inviting door…
I really wanted to know what was on the other side of it, but held off in case it was not as good as to what my imagination was conjuring up.
Truro was a good giggle. A big town that also had an unusuall shop that had this array of rabbits. I’ve no idear what the hell they are for…
Falmouth has the National Maritime Museum. Very cool and well worth a visit. Here’s the indoor model boat sailing thingy…
They’ve got all sorts of boats hanging from the roof.
Mored up outside what this 55 meter monster of a pleasure curser – Steel.
But this is more my sort of budget…
Truth be told, I was more excited as this was the same kind of car that I first owned. This anoyed the member of staff working there, who felt I should be more excited about the little boat.
It’s safe to say that there were a lot of boats there.
There was even a bit on light houses. I played with the fog horn a lot 
And I found a hat to try on…
In Fowey, some one missunderstood the concept of letter boxes…
Some of the entrances to the cottages were nicely unusual…
Or in some cases painted and decortated to a nautical theam…
No matter how old you are, if you go to the sea side, you need to go on the beach…
As well as leaving your mark for the sea to wash away
All in all a great holiday. The only thing that felt was a little weird was that in some areas the locals will welcome you with open arms. But in others there was outward contempt and resentment. Pitty really.
Strewth! I’ve been tired. Saturday and Sunday saw a lot of mileage. Thankfully Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday weren’t too bad. So today was nice as it didn’t involve an alarm clock. Just a nice lie in. A trip in to town to get a hair cut as i was beginning to look a little woolly. Got Dad a birthday present. And resupplied the fridge. As is traditional, i discovered that i had missed some items off the list. Why does that always seem to happen?
So it’s just about time to go on holiday. Hora! Just got to squeeze a quick trip over to Bedford, then it’s off to Cornwall for a 5 day break. Really looking forward to it.
Yesterday I drove 160 miles to get to my first site. It took me 5 and half hours to get there. This includes the hour for lunch and the numerous times I had to stop and pull over to triage various calls. When I got to the site at New Quay I was told thus. The till had been working since the day before, the manageress had called the help desk to cancel the call. The help desk said that they would still send out the engineer “Just in case”.
I remained professional in front of the customer, returned to the car with as much control as I could muster. I then had what could probably be described as a sense of humor failure. Needless to say, the call planners also shared my displeasure. And in fact passed on the discord to the help desk.
So by the time I had totally failed to fix another call in Swansea, it was no surprise that I got home for 10 at night. Sunday will more than likely follow the same trail. The first site has 4 calls logged against it. So a little drive over to Pembroke Docks. Joy! Only 152 miles to the site. Considering one of the calls was logged with an impossible error, this should be a worth while and fulfilling day. Roll on Thursday.
So it’s time for the UK general election. So with the polling stations opening so early it was easy to cast my vote before heading off to the parts depot to drop of yesterdays kit. Then over to Cardiff to to replace a failing hard drive on a retail site. Or I would have if the part had turned up. So after an hour of waiting to find out if there was going top be a part Iwent on to the next call. A doddle of a job. The staff had already swapped over the part, so all i had to do was take away the old one and fill in the paper work. Unfortunately I picked up a puncture on one of the tyres. So after some ringing around I eventually made my way to a Kwik Fit to get the tyre repaired. Lunch was a brief affair, with me heading back in to Cardiff to plug in a customer display unit. I love these easy jobs. With that ut the way it was back up the valley to try and fix a PC that wouldn’t turn on. No luck on that job, defiant going to need a part for that. So get one ordered and then head home. A simple and straight forward day.
The ballence has been addressed. If it’s been quiet on the work front, then today saw a return to form. So first gig was go and get the parts from the local depot and collect a power supply. From there it was off to a retail site near Abbergaveny to go and fix the PC there. Turning up with a big smile on your face can really confuse people. I really do think that I’m supposed to be turning up at these places miserable, because it seems to be what the customer is expecting. Never mind. I swapped over the power supply and was chuffed to see that the PC booted up ok. So what ever it was that had killed the PSU hadn’t fried the rest of the PC.
So up to Hereford. Grab a spot of lunch, then go and replace a chip and pin at a retail site. However the promised part on the pre 10:30 was completly ficticious. So I had a go at cleaning the unit but it was having none of it. So I left site feeling a little silly, with the help desk chasing the courier.
So then a long drive to Bridgend to go and tinker with a retail site over there. The site had two problems, both of them scales related. The first one was a very easy fix. Turn off the scale unit, and then turn it back on. So much for the checks being done. For the other scales, the part had been delivered and all I had to do was replace the unit. Then all that needed to be done was the mass amount of paper work that this particular customer generates.
Only one more job to go, it was a bit odd. The PDA was showing several calls for one site up in Merthyr Tydfil. But one had a part arriving in a couple of hours, and the other call for the site had the part arriving for tomorrow morning. I rang the call planners to make sure I was reading things properly. Apparently I was. I was required to drive to site and swap out a chip and pin on one of the sites till. And then tomorrow drive back to site and swap out the other chip and pin on the other till. There was something in the tone of voice that told me it would be fruitless to do anything as silly as bring logic in to it. So I drove to the site and found that they had already swapped over the unit, so all I had to do was take away the old unit. With the paper work filled in and the emails sent off I drove home.
It was quite late in the evening when I finaly got home. I had a couple of hours to get something to eat and unwind for a couple of hours. So it’s back to normal.
Yes, it’s unofficial Jedi day. So it was up brightand early and off into Gloucester city centre to go and replace a PC on a retail site. The job went straight forward enough. Simply swap the guts of one PC in to another. Everything booted up ok, so the job was declared a success. With that out of the way the next job came in for a receipt printer causing merry hell on a retail site over at Usk. so after parts were sorted out for that I made my way over to the site and swapped over the printer. Again the job went as it should and worked fine. it goes to show that I’m approaching most of these jobs with the air of that they are going to mutate in to some thing more complex. So far so good.
I’ve already got jobs lines up for tomorow, but that’s another day. So time for an early night me thinks.
Bank holiday Mondays. Why do they feel like another Sunday? No one in a hurry to get anywhere. Very few trucks on the road. It’s an odd way to start the working week. Only the one call to deal with. A retail site over at Caldicot. Over the last few months the site has been having an intermittent problem with the magnetic card reader. Various bits and pieces have been checked and replaced. So as the fault hasn’t gone away it’s time for the blunderbuss approach. Replace everything. So that’s what I did. The till, the screen and the magnetic card reader all swapped out. Fingers crossed that it works. Once that job was done and dusted, all that remained was to drop off the bits in Bristol and then head home. The only other job that came in was for a retail site in Gloucester city centre, but it’s not actionable until tomorrow morning. So that’s Tuesday taking shape all ready.
After the Friday night Frag Fest I had every intention of going to bed. Unfortunately I stumbled over the TCM channel on TV and found “Army Of Darkness” playing. So much for an early night.
Saturday was filled with a long lie in and then some domestic stuff. All in all a chilled day.
As for today I just couldn’t get going. I had some how found a comfortable position in bed and just didn’t want to get up. But eventually I did manage to haul my carcass out of bed. So the fish are now happy, now I finally changed the water and cleaned out their tank. So the remains of the day lay before me. And ten days of work lie ahead. Time to do very little and enjoy my time off.
It’s been very quiet. The workload has been light to nearly non-existant. So it early on Friday morning. It’s sunny. It’s pay day. And I’ve got the weekend off. Some times you just have to accept good luck.
Tuesday was quiet. Quite litterally one job. Go to Cheltenham and replace a cash draw on a retail site. Simple. In fact getting to the site was more of a challenge. Some chapps in high vis jackets had conned off large areas of the main route in to Cheltenham, so I spent over an hour crawling through traffic. The annoying thing was I couldn’t see any reason for why then needed to shut down the lanes. But once I got past the health and safety blockage it was a quick job on site.
Ok, technically there was a second job. A retail site over Ross-On-Wye way had a faulty keyboard. But keyboards are considered disposable, so I had a chat with the manageress and arranged for a keyboard to be put in the post to the site.
And that was my working day. Swings and rounderbouts this job.
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