Phil’s Diary - [Blog @ http://www.philsdiary.net/]
All in all quite a strange day today. It starts out with the most amazing traffic jam I’ve seen in ages. A car that’s broken down just on the approach to a roundabout just near me on the southern by-pass manages to cause gridlock all the way back to Pear Tree Interchange at the North end of Oxford. I’m pretty sure the two who’s car had broken down didn’t quite realise the full extent of the disruption they were causing (not that I blame them in the slightest), and the amazing closeness that Oxford transport is to complete standstill.
So then at work there’s a BT chap arrived to fit an ISDN line. After about half and hour he says he can’t continue as the line is up a telephone pole, which he’s not allowed to climb (fair enough, health and safety and all). And leaves. No problems.
On my way in I pass one of my colleagues parked by the side of the road. Turns out his car has broken down and he’s waiting for the AA.
Then about an hour later, another BT engineer arrives. Unaware that a previous one had been. He then realises the previous one’s mistake, and sets about sorting us out a line. Turns out the telegraph pole was a red-herring (well not really, obviously), and that the lines were subterranean for our building (sort of obvious due to the lack of wires running from the pole to us). It takes him all day to sort out the mess (apparently the “survey” was completely wrong), and get all the bits in place to give us a line.
While this is going on the train delivering out network manager to us does it’s typical and gets itself an hour late.
And then a whole host of other small things go wrong through the day (network cables not working, PCs breaking etc. etc.)
And through all this I just keep my head down and keep working. For some reason none of this seems to affect me, and so I can just keep on working without problems.
Usually the problems suck me in, but for once today I manage to stay out of it and just work my way through the day.
Back home and I do a water change on the fishtank (after removing a whole load of plantlife, that’s been nicely growing away), there’s plenty to grow back, however there’s now also room for the fish to swim as it looks less like the bottom of a swamp.
Posted by Phil on March 11, 2003 08:03 PM | Categories: Work