The story of my life: October 2004

More work

I've got myself another installation job at RBS on Friday. Hours suck (15:00-midnight), but the pay is the same (£8/hr) and at least it's fairly simple work. Who knows, one of these days I might actually get a job that lasts longer than a single day.

Update: I've managed to secure additional install jobs on Monday and next Friday, which should assure me of some extra cash. In addition to that, I've been put forward for a 1 year contract tech support position at a Birmingham based company at £13/hour - hopefully I should know whether or not they want me for an interview by Monday :)

The Computing World Is Doomed

People just don't care.

I spent most of Friday evening installing and configuring a network in my friend's student house. 5 of them, all with computers, sharing a cable connection via a router.

All the PCs had XP on them. One (my friend's) I built myself - XP Pro w/SP1. Of the other 4, one had SP2, one had SP1 and 2 were totally unpatched. I put firewalls and antivirus on all of them, but the problem is that most of them don't know what they're doing. Actually, that's not the real problem - they want to "contract" me to go round there once a month and keep everything tidy - the real problem are the ones who know enough to think they know it all, but don't seem to care about the spyware, viruses and the like that they keep getting on their PCs.

They're just not interested in finding out about how to avoid/fix the problems, which means that really there's little hope of preventing problems like email worms and spyware problems because no matter how much you educate people, there will always be enough who just aren't interested in listening to you.

[/rant]

Briefness

Burn FM is back on the air and I've got a show again - Sundays 11-12:30. 107.3 FM in the Selly Oak (Birmingham) area or www.burnfm.com for the webcast (once they get it running).

I've been able to make a bit of cash doing favours for friends - no, not those kinds of favours, just fixing computers and setting up networks in newly rented accommodation. Still no sign of an actual job though, fingers still crossed that something will come along in the near future.

That's about all that's happened since the last post so I'll bid you fairwell.

Spad.

Mmmm...pain

Well, I got that job, I went to that job and now I've finished that job.

I got there at 08:30 and we didn't finish until 20:00. The job itself was in the Royal Bank of Scotland offices in Brindley Place - they had an entire empty floor that was being prepared for use and we had to install lovely Dell desktops on every desk, all ~450 of them. To make things worse, there were only 6 of us instead of the expected 10.

Suffice it to say that I was exhausted by the end of it and aching like hell this morning, but I am looking at about £100 for a days work, so it's not all bad. With any luck I might get offered a couple more similar jobs in the near future as they've got another 1500 PCs to go into the office.

On a much lighter note, today is my one month anniversary with April. I say 'with' but of course in reality I'm 4,500 miles away from her, which is getting harder and harder to deal with - I really hope that I manage to find myself some proper work soon so that I can afford to go and see her.

More soon.

Financial Update

After a thorough search of my bedroom, I have managed to locate the princely sum of £6.50 in change. This has to last me until either a) Barclays pull their finger out and realise that me being £1,100 overdrawn does not give me a balance of -£1,600 or b) HSBC pull their finger out and process my closure request.

In other words, I'm a little fucked.

On the plus side I think I've got myself a bit of work on Wednesday doing a computer build job at Brindley Place. I say think because I haven't actually had the confirmation email I was promised, so I'm going to have to call them tomorrow to check.

HSBC - The World's Fucking Useless Bank

At midday today, naíve little Spad went to visit his local branch of HBSC on the university campus in order to transfer some money out of his account.

Upon arriving at said branch, Spad dutifully queued for 15 minutes while many foreign students converted the GDP of a small nation into pounds sterling. When he finally reached the counter, Spad was informed that - as the bank was busy - he couldn't actually carry out any transactions at the counter that didn't involve paying money into HSBC and that he should use "The Phone".

The single phone in the bank had a large queue and no number, so Spad couldn't use his mobile. After queuing for another 15 minutes, Spad managed to locate a well hidden booklet with the HSBC phone banking number on it and rang them. After 5 minutes on hold, Spad was politely informed that he couldn't make any transactions until he had a security number. Said security number was only available by filling out forms, which would be posted to him at his home address and would take "about a week" to arrive.

By this stage Spad was more than a little pissed off with HSBC.

Spad then spent 20 minutes in traffic trying to get to the next nearest branch of HSBC in order to withdraw all of his money and tell them where to stick their account. After finally managing to close the account, Spad was informed that he would have to wait at least 3 days before he would see any of the money that he needed.

Spad is now about to ring the HBSC Customer Relations Helpline and use lots of obscenties to convey his general lack of appreciation for HSBC's high level of customer service.