Tuesday, 5. August 2008, 05:59:25
Carphone Warehouse, Anger Management
Okay, Sony Ericsson w850i - that's it. I've had just about as much as I can stand. It's time...
...to get a new mobile phone! 
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, after nearly two years of faithful service, I cannot continue to ignore the growing list of issues this verdammt hendy has accrued:
- The camera on this phone hasn't worked in about a year. But that was a minor issue considering I have a perfectly good camera (made by Samsung) that goes with me everywhere.
- Inexplicable shutdowns. Would turn itself off for no reason.
- The ability to completely ignore the 1gb memory card. At first I thought the card was broken, but no! The card is fine - it's just the phone hiding it from me!
- Battery life-span of several hours. Almost at the same time as the memory card issues manifested, the phone decided to start chewing battery power like it was going out of fashion. So I bought a new battery...which made only the slightest improvement. Yesterday it got a full charge in the morning and was down to less than half by lunchtime.
Yeah, that's it. As soon as I can find a phone I like (Not easy, I'm very picky) I'm dumping your ass, mobile; goodness knows how I've managed to put up with you as long as I have. Screw you, and screw Sony Ericsson too. This is the second phone of theirs I've had and build quality is generally inferior to that giant watch-tower my brother made out of Lego when we were kids which used to break if you looked at it the wrong way.
But what to get now? I'm thinking Samsung. Or possibly even LG or Motorola (For some reason I'm totally set against Nokia) but by golly the perfect phone doesn't seem to exist yet, and I can't understand why not - haven't the manufacturers had enough time to get it right by now?
My want list:
- Music playback/earphones
- Memory card support (up to around 4gb)
- NOT touchscreen, unless implemented in such a way that you can take calls without hanging up on someone with your ears.
- Not fussed about the camera at all.
- Battery life measured in days.
- Reliable operation.
- Preferably not a slider, but that's not critical. No clam-shells/flip phones/make-up mirrors, though. Bad and wrong.
...is that so much to ask? 
So come on guys, I need you again. What phones do you guys use (with model numbers if you have them)? What can you recommend?
Friday, 25. January 2008, 20:28:34
Carphone Warehouse
Holy shit!
Carphone Warehouse have finally coughed up the money they promised me back in, oooh,
OCTOBER:
The good news is that the £150 I was promised as cashback was actually a big fat lie/error on the part of the sales-bod who sold me the package...but to apologise for being told whoppers the Carphone Warehouse's Loyalty team have generously sent me a cheque for the total amount as an apology. It only took ten minutes to sort out, too, which is always appreciated when dealing with helpdesks and their associated horrors.
Ah, if only I'd known then what I know now. How naive I sound!
I'd better go cash this thing before it evaporates, but perhaps I'd be best waiting until I've fully recovered from the shock...
Saturday, 12. January 2008, 13:07:33
Losing Weight, Carphone Warehouse, Work
Hello all! 
No smutty pics this time around, you'll be glad/sad to see (delete as appropriate). I thought I'd better have a clean post to avoid any further embarrassment. I was at work, you see, innocently writing a comment in my Shoutbox when a colleague passed by from behind me and gleefully told the entire office I was surfing porn sites, an entirely sackable offence. A little bit of thought would have prevented this but as I've had one thousand-and-one distractions this week I don't think I can really be blamed.
I didn't half blush though! 
It's been a funny old week, this my first full week back at work since the festive holidays. Some holidays drag on too long and you do start looking forward to the simple rhythms of a working life again, but I hadn't quite reached that stage yet. Coming back for a full week seemed like cruel and unusual punishment.
This feeling wasn't helped by my needing to clear a backlog of overdue orders and emails, while still having to deal with the dozens of fussy little complaints, alterations and issues reported to me on a daily basis. Monday and Tuesday passed without much excitement, Wednesday was horrible – just nasty. Thursday was amazing thanks to the feeling of making real and significant progress at long last, on a number of fronts, while Friday finished on a bit of a sour note. All part and parcel of the working experience, as I'm sure a great number of you can testify.
On the financial side, the agency I work for managed to screw up my pay - and that of my colleagues – for what seems depressingly like the thousandth time. I'm down about £70 this week. It's not a huge problem, I won't incur any bank charges or anything like that, but it is infuriating that after three years those fucking monkeys I work for still can't get a simple thing like pay right. They're supposed to be sorting it, and we've been promised the deficit paid into our accounts shortly (touch wood) but I remain deeply dissatisfied at not being able to rely on them for such a fundamental part of our contractual relationship. I don't suffer incompetence well, and would give anything at this point to part company from such a shower of total imbeciles.
Staying on the subject of incompetence, The Carphone Warehouse have once more failed to reach the lowest of my expectations. Remember back in October (the 7th) I was promised £150 due to their mis-selling me a phone a few months previous? No, I still haven't received their cheque, despite being told it would take only 28 days both on that date AND when I phoned to chase it on the 23rd November. It's on the way now, allegedly - I made damn sure they knew I'd been promised this twice before and wouldn't be happy if the 3rd time was NOT lucky - but it's going to take...you guessed it...another 28 days. If it fails to arrive this time they'll be cancelling my contract and paying me a lot more than £150 for my inconvenience!
Ok. After all that kvetching I think I should end this post on a much more positive note.
As some of you may know I'm currently rather unhappy with the amount of weight I've put on since entering this sedentary office-based lifestyle 3 years ago. My waist has expanded several inches, I feel tired and heavy all the time, and I'm growing heartily sick of feeling so desperately unfit.
Enter Scottish Slimmers.
After hearing lots of positive word-of-mouth regarding their services locally, and some patient research, I decided to take myself along to a meeting on Thursday night. I had intended to go only to see what I could expect, but ended up joining when an inner voice started screaming at me to stop pissing around and sign up right bloody now (My inner-voice can be quite harsh when it wants to be). Basically, I don't feel I can afford to waste any more time; I have to start losing the weight now, particularly if I want to fit back into my Kilt by my birthday in June. Scottish Slimmers should give me the support I need, and promises an average weight loss of 7 lbs per month (meaning a full stone in two). I aim to lose about two-and-a-half/three stone, so I estimate about 6 months work altogether, depending on my metabolism and other factors beyond my ken, but I'm prepared for a longer haul if needed.
It's a daunting prospect. I'm not good a long term commitments like this but hope the weekly meetings will help keep me on the right path. I need to do this as a long-term platform from which I can launch myself into the next few challenging years of my life. I need to change my habits to a more active mode. I need to learn how to eat properly. There have been lots of little steps over the last 24 months leading up to this, so now is the time to start putting it all together and making the changes that will lead to a happier, more confident, more active me. Hopefully, at long last, I'm going to get this right. 
WIDGETIZE