F%$# Fones!!!

This is our land line phone we've had since about 2003; it's tiny and cute, but it never really worked well. Around 2001, I think it was, we got broadband, and every two years or so, our phone line has massive problems, namely, every time it rings and I pick it up, it cuts off. But it's not the broadband at fault, we have all the in-between gadgets, too, but an exchange box problem. It's not someone hanging up, but the the line cutting off, and then I have to go through the entire exercise of convincing the entire Call Centre hierarchy that it's not my equipment fault.

So today is another one of those days. But on the third call, I got a very nice young chap who actually wanted to help me without forwarding my calls. And he wanted me to take every line out of my jack and plug in one telephone into the main jack.

Our main jack is behind Ben's desk, above this outlet. I have to lie flat on my back and sometimes unplug it, or do whatever the guys tell me to do so they can test it, which is what I was doing when my cell phone battery went flat.

I waited half an hour to see if this chap would call me back, but he didn't, so I rang the help line, listened to music not of my choice for over 25 minutes, then got a guy who tried to convince me that there was no way he could find out which guy I was talking to. Yeah, right.

And he said "the system" shows there's nothing wrong with my line, and the fault is my equipment. So I said I strongly believe that Telecom's customer service system would require that he can track down which guy I was talking to. It took another 7 minutes, but he found out, so I'm waiting for THAT guy to ring me again.

Phone lines go dead pretty frequently around here. More urgently, they must run out of lines on the exchange, or good positions, or something, and we get swapped around often enough. I feel sorry for the guys that get sent to my house - they are older, saner, and probably grossly underpaid. I can imagine customers getting pretty worked up after dealing with the wait and then the CCBs, and then first thing the tech guys have to check to make sure it's not my equipment fault before they can move on to line faults, just in case. Then they run to the box to give me a better possie.

It's the same exercise every time, a ritual every two or so years. For the last year or so I've not rung them up because I got so sick of spending upwards of three days waiting for the Telecom guys to ring me; even though I've sat on Help Desk jobs, and I used to sympathize, but I've really come to detest and have very little respect for these entitled, right-fighting call centre brats.

I've been wanting to clean up the phone lines in the office for a few years now; Ben thinks it's all tidy because he's never here during the business hours having to deal with Call Centres or the poor guys that have to crawl under his desk. I've been wanting a new phone, but not knowing what the next technical requirements are, I've just given Ben permission to get something he wants, and am still waiting.

Sometimes these things make me so furious I just want to throw everything out the window, but if we got rid of the phone line, I can't get sympathies from all of you, either, can I.

&^%$#@!!!!

Population of New Zealand

Here's the latest. What intrigued me is the blurb that follows:

To update the population clock, please refresh your screen. New Zealand's population is estimated to increase by one person every 23 minutes and 33 seconds.

This is based on the estimated resident population at 31 March 2008 and the following component settings. (Note: these settings are subject to change.)

• one birth every 8 minutes and 51 seconds
• one death every 18 minutes and 36 seconds
• a net migration loss of one New Zealand resident every 59 minutes and 34 seconds.

This may be less rocket than rocket science, but I was impressed. Maybe not you...

I'm Sorry, Rita

In fact, Rita's dog, Doglet, who apparently also went by the name Valentine, died earlier this month, and since I've not read anyone's blog carefully for the last... forever, I find out that she's now looking to buy a house as well. Gee, I must go and read the back issues for the last wee while.

Sorry, Rita, I didn't know Dogles had another name, but I'm sure glad you got another girlfriend!!

Barbie vs Bratz

I can't believe they had the same Daddy, but it seems Daddy has really moved on with his new family, so isn't it time Ex-Mommy forgave and forgot? It's not as if she's hard up for money; this is clearly a revenge suit. I can't wait for Rita to pontificate on this; I've even asked her, but she's a bit busy with a new puppy. I'm still holding my breath.

Twice Baked

When I was a kid in Minnesota, I had two boyfriends (consecutively, not simultaneously) who were very impressed with twice-baked potatoes. The first one kept saying, "twice-baked, Meg, twice-baked", all the time. When biscotti were all the rage, Ben kept reminding me these babies are baked twice. So, I conclude, this twice-baked thing impresses blokes.

I was slicing a loaf of bread I baked yesterday, and meditated on this fact. If I stuck the slices in the oven instead of the toaster, they'd be twice-baked bread. Beat that for an impressive breakfast!

Art Talk

My weaving blog connection lead me to a couple of art critic/gallery blogs last night, and with great difficulty, moving the mouse to point at each word, as a child might use his finger on the page, I read there are conceptual formalist vs conceptual non-formalist, and the latter is not invested in the medium like modernists are, but are more involved with the idea expressed in the painting, so the merit of the painting (skill) is not as important as ... umm... the idea expressed in it, and somewhere in the paragraph were the phrase "great art" several times.

The writer appears to be a good gallerist, genuine in helping artists, etc., so I need to go back and read it several hundred more times, but at first glance it just sounded like a great excuse if you suck at painting but want to show. I can definitely use this.

And I thought wine talk was bad...

Stairway Handrail

We need to replace our wood burner to a more environmentally friendly burner, or gas or electrical setup, effectively by the end of this year. The Nelson City Council had a few schemes and I went to check it out last October or November.

Turns out, the building process we started in 1998 (we redid the bathroom and created a second shower downstairs) not being closed was a big problem. The remodeling was finished in due course, but we had no handrail on our stairway because it's a narrow and twisty stairway and I didn't want to "uglify" our house. Andrew, the guy from the Council who came to check the remodeling, told us to be sure to have handrails when we sell the house, so we noted that in our house files. We never forgot it, and were mildly surprised we didn't have to worry about it until we are ready to move out of this house, but the man from the Council said so, so we thought it was the Kiwi way.

Back to last year, and the woman, with whom I have spoken about something else before and who impressed me with her customer service skills, came down like a ton of bricks for not closing the 1998 thingie, and wasn't going to help me until we got the handrails and got that inspected first. She said we've been effectively living in our house illegally for a decade, because we didn't have handrails.

So, yeah, I'm Dad's daughter; we had a shouting match, and I walked away.

But y'know, I didn't want to have an enemy in the Council's consent department, more importantly, I've always liked her, so an hour later I went and apologized, and she gave me forms to submit to close the old case. In fact, she was, as expected, quite wonderful, and I sense she might have felt a wee bit bad because she figured we weren't the type to knowingly leave a case open, and said something about her being in the position to discover open cases and trying to get people to close them. All good. Just need handrails.

I was going to get a handy man or something, but got busy, so we decided to do this once my sister's family came and went after Christmas. We also read the blurb on the rules about handrails and I asked Ben to do it because he really does a nice job with these... jobs.

Well, dear Ben had insurmountable health problems (i.e. total lack of will to do this) since January, and I pleaded and pleaded and we had the brass fittings and stuff for a while, but recently over three weekends, he finally got to finishing the job. Look. (Our wall is a pinky yellowy cream color, the woodwork is red-browny finish.)

Ben doesn't like that the brass things are not spaced evenly, but he can't help it; they needed to be where the studs are.

So on Friday I went to the Council to say we are now ready to be inspected, AND for me to start investigating the fire/heating issue.

If we go with this one company, that has a limited range of options, they take care of the consent, they come and replace, and the cost of it can be put on top of our rates (residence tax) over 10 years, and they do all the paperwork. Wow, why wouldn't we go with this option?

Well, we have a wetback to start with - our wood burner is connected to the hot water tank and in the winter we get wonderfully soft hot water, and this company won't do wetbacks. As well, a standalone burner is more effective than one embedded in the wall, so we thought of knocking out the wall (beyond the wall is the kitchen, but to the left of this wall is jut a passage, not a door,) putting a stand alone between the living room and the kitchen, and hocking up the stand alone to the water tank. And they do only replacement. Fair enough, if they started accepting "specials" they'll be doing this beyond 2020...

For what we want, it appears I need an electrician to disable the light above the picture, a builder to knock out the wall, a plumber to disconnect the wetback, the builder to remove the chimney and the wood burner, then we go buy the new wood burner and a eco-friendly chimney extension thingie, get the fire guy to install the burner, possibly the plumber to connect the wetback, the electrician to enable the light, I suppose, and a tile guy to tidy the floor. Then we can paint/repaint the new wall and probably the ceiling.

And the fire guy says we need two consents - one to knock out the wall, and another to install the new fire, BUT I have to ask for the consent to put in the stand alone fire BEFORE the consent to knock out the wall, because if the old one is out and the wall gone, the wood burner will be considered a new burner, not a replacement, and the Council no longer approves new burners. All new houses/remodeling jobs must install gas or electrical heating appliances. But how the heck am I going to put in a consent to put a free-standing burner where there is a wall right now?

And my fire/chimney guy for the last 12 years, one of the two tradesmen we stuck with since we came to Nelson, moved to Christchurch without telling us. We always agreed he'd do our fire when it came to replacing it. Besides, he was quite a philosopher and I loved talking to him twice a year when he came to inspect our burner.

At least we got the handrail done. I don't even have the energy to read back this post...

World Cup Lure Compelling to Some

Nelson wants a Rugby World Cup game in 2011 and the City Council is willing to spend $7 Million for it. I'm taking note of which counselors agree and which disagree, because as nice as a game is, there are so many people hard up on making a living just now and the food bank is depleted and SPCA (the pound) is inundated with pets, while rates keep going up by double digit % for the last few years.

Besides, Nelson is not known for rugby. It's known for, without this blogger's prejudice, visual arts, wine and good weather. I'm not saying the park upgrade is bad, but this is probably not the time.

And, ummmm... "The $25,000 council-commissioned report"??? The triumph of the airheads all over again.

Over-Explaning

Boy, I just had a right-old hiding from Dad because I had a question because we disagreed on a number that should have been easy to agree on, and I knew mine was wrong so I asked. It's my mistake that stemmed from copying an old file and not deleting enough of the old info to create a new file, so it's my fault, but Dad's verbal abuse and insults are always out of proportion. I'm 50 but it still reduces me to an emotional fetal position.

Anyhoo, I had to investigate where I made a mistake, and found it, and had to write a fax letter to him explaining where the original mistake happened, and it reads like an instruction manual of some sort. No wonder I'm always over-explaining things. I try to be logical in face of his blasts. I'm always prepared to be jabbed from eight different directions about anything I do. Not a good way to spend your life, folks.

Golly...

And it's really too bad because I was having a bit of a warm and fuzzy feeling towards him, after reading the start of the autobiography of NZ artist Rita Angus and the way her family supported her financially. Dad does that a lot for me.