Monday, October 08, 2007

A s***ty day

Apologies for the lack of blogs over the past week or so. There hasn’t been much to tell really.

Still waiting on the death certificate for my Nana Dinah (sorry for being a bit morbid but I need it to confirm her date of birth. Once I have that I can then obtain her full birth certificate …). Also no word from Beamish about the Pit Cottages as the curator is currently on holiday.

Without any actuate information I’ve only been able to do a rough trace of my family tree. If everything is correct then my ancestors on the Thompson side originated from Northumberland and from Yorkshire on the Archer side. I’ve yet to tackle things on my mam’s side.

Anyway about my s***ty day. Newport conference is coming up shortly so things are getting a little busy in the BOGOF household. Last night while the printer was busy churning away, I decided to look on the internet for some hotels in Heathrow as we have to have an overnight halt there when we go on our cruise next year.

I found the hotel we used the last time ‘The Thistle’ but following reviews from previous guests they only gave it 6/10. I did searches on other hotels near the airport but the other hotels were either too far out of Heathrow or were ridiculously expensive.

This morning while I was doing more printing I decided to have another look at the reviews of the Thistle. It turned out that the guests either loved the hotel or really slated it for piffling little things – the hotel didn’t provide toothbrushes or the hospitality tray in the room didn’t have their favourite kind of coffee, etc. So I decided to book it via one of the discount hotel websites.

By then the printer decided it needed a new toner cartridge so I move it forward a couple of inches to open the front and take out the old one. For no apparent reason my computer shut down, then rebooted saying their was an error with the computer. I tried switching it off but nothing happened. I eventually pulled the plug out and restarted it again. Yep, the error message came on again.

Now bearing in mind Newport conference is less than 10 days away having a dead computer isn’t really something I wanted…. Thankfully we have more than one computer in the BOGOF household so I fired up John’s computer to send him a mail asking for help or suggestions on how to bring back to life my computer.

Only one problem, I didn’t know his work email address as he’s only down in my address book as ‘John (work). B**** ! ! !

I know. I’ll fire up my laptop, connect it to the network and send him a mail from that. The network wouldn’t connect….. Double B**** ! ! !

All wasn’t lost as I now had John’s work email address on my laptop so could sent him a mail via his computer using my Yahoo email address.

I finished my email and started typing in ‘John’ in the sender box when it asked me if I wanted to send it to John at work… Triple B**** ! ! !

John came back to say sorry but he couldn’t help at the moment but would have a look at it tonight.

Back to the Thistle booking and I realised that I hadn’t been given a reference number or received an email confirmation to my Yahoo email address. Still on John’s computer I found the website again and rang the number on their website. It was a different discount hotel company…. Quadruple B**** ! ! !

I rechecked the website again and it still only had one number so I rang it again. They still had not record of my booking and suggested I contacted my bank to see if payment had been taken out of my account – I used my switch card as I refused to pay the 2.5% surcharge for using credit cards.

I rang the bank but they said it could take a couple of days for any payment to go through and there was no way it could be stopped. Quintuple B**** ! ! !

The website did have an email address so I sent them a mail asking if they would ring me. As yet no reply or phone call. Sextuple B**** ! ! !

As far as I know the booking could have been made and everything is hunky dory, however I simply don’t know. I’ll wait and see if payment has been taken then ring the hotel to see if we appear on their system. If it was a fraudulent company at least we haven’t lost that much money. Septuple B**** ! ! !

When John arrived home he was greeted with a hormonal woman (time of the month imminent) so ended up with a rather damp shoulder.

So what of my computer. John’s managed to get it up and running in safe mode to enable him to back up all my documents. He’ll then start rebuilding my machine.

After the day I’ve had alcohol and chocolate is a big must ! ! ! ! ! !

Marie

ps As I tried to log in to blogger, the laptop crashed ... Arrrgh

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I can sympathise. Having found a much better car insurance deal online, I tried to buy it, only to be told my sort code was wrong. So I rang them instead. To be told that the type of bank account I have won't allow direct debits. So how come I have 3 set up against it already? One trip to the bank on Monday to kick ass - multiple b*****s!!!