Philip Norton » fail http://www.norton42.org.uk A web developer in a crazy, crazy world. Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:35:40 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 BT Do It Again http://www.norton42.org.uk/335-bt-do-it-again.html http://www.norton42.org.uk/335-bt-do-it-again.html#comments Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:29:18 +0000 Philip Norton http://www.norton42.org.uk/?p=335 Continue reading →]]> Last year I wrote about BT taking me for a ride, where they plain and simply failed.

Well yesterday Mandy got home and noticed two BT engineers at the top of the telegraph pole outside our house. After going inside they came to the house and said (and I’m not kidding here)

"Are you having a phone line installed?"

You would have thought they would know! Anyway, after Mandy explained that we had already got a phone line installed, and that we certainly didn’t want another one, they insisted that it was our house. Mandy, standing her ground, said that we had one installed a year ago and certainly didn’t want another as that had cost £125 and has probably gone up by now. So they went back to their van, got a bunch of bits of paper together and went into the following conversation with each other.

BT Guy 1 "what number was it again?"
BT Guy 2 (Sifting papers) "where is the sheet with the number on it?"
BT Guy 1 "It’s that sheet there."
BT Guy 2 (Pauses) "Which one?"
BT Guy 1 (Points) "That one."
BT Guy 2 (Sifts papers about) "This one?"
BT Guy 1 (Points) "No, the bottom of that one."
BT Guy 2 (Picks up paper) "Oh…"
BT Guy 1 (Look at paper) "Oh, maybe it’s not this bit…"

This went on for about 5 minutes until they came to the blinding conclusion that it wasn’t our house they wanted, but one down the street!

Is it just coincidence that BT come to our house and try to install a phone line about a year to the day that they did it in the first place? Probably, but it is just another fiasco in a long running multitude of fiascos. Sort yourselves out BT!

]]> http://www.norton42.org.uk/335-bt-do-it-again.html/feed 1 Computer Dies http://www.norton42.org.uk/52-computer-dies.html http://www.norton42.org.uk/52-computer-dies.html#comments Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:00:00 +0000 Philip Norton http://www.norton42.org.uk/?p=52 Continue reading →]]> I was sitting in front of my computer today when it died. It has been acting funny for a few days but tonight I was watching an online video when the hard disc failed. The computer turned itself off, and when I tried to start it again all it could manage was a "critical disc error – can´t boot from system disc!". I can´t get it to do anything. It was a lucky thing that I did a backup the other day otherwise I could have lost the lot. I did manage to get SuSE linux to boot from the DVD which is how I am able to write this. I have managed to install WindowsXP into a small disc, which is sat outside the machine on a smaller pile of books. I needed to use WindowsXP as there is this really cool disc recovery software that I have used before, but is only available on XP. I will do some data recovery activities over the next few days but it looks like I will have to order a new hard drive from Ebuyer.

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