So it’s my birthday today, and I’m 30 years old. Didn’t get much for my birthday but then I wasn’t really expecting much anyway:
Reading “Matter” at the moment.
I just got home from passing my Microsoft 70-290 exam! The passing score was 700 and I scored 899.
Our new cooker arrived today, it is a Beko DC 543. It has one of those ceramic hobs that you can wipe off, which is nice as our old cooker has accumulated a great deal of grime on the areas around the hob plates. The new cooker also has a fan assisted oven and transparent doors, neither of which our previous one had. Since Sunday or so, we’ve also been having trouble with our Internet being really slow. I thought it was just some kind of mistake on my ISP’s part, so I emailed their support department, and I got an answer back today saying to do the BT (that’s British Telecom, not Bittorrent) speed test, so I did that and it turns out that BT for some reason have my line’s IP Profile set to 500kbps! So anyway I have emailed the results to my ISP’s support and am hoping they’ll get it sorted today.
A while ago, back when I had an eye test, my optician said he noticed something unusual in my right eye and referred me to the Sunderland Eye Infirmary. I had an examination there a couple of months ago and while they thought it was probably nothing to worry about they scheduled an ultrasound investigation of my eye just in case. The first appointment for that got cancelled, because their scanner broke and they had to send it back to the United States to get repaired. Finally I had my appointment today, which was due to be at 9:30am. I left the house shortly before 8am, intending to get the 8:04 bus to Grangetown and then the number 10 bus to the eye infirmary. I got to the bus stop and a couple of other people were there, and they said there was supposed to have been a bus earlier but it never turned up. 8:04 came and went and the bus never turned up. I waited nearly an hour, and no number 230 buses turned up. Finally at about 8:45 I decided I’d better call the eye infirmary and tell them I was going to be late. I called them and asked if I should still come in today or if I should reschedule, and they said I should still come in, so I got on the next bus to Sunderland, which was an X35, and no sooner had I got on it than the 230 bus that I’d been waiting for went flying past! But of course I’d already bought my ticket and got sat down and the bus I was on was already pulling away. I hadn’t wanted to get the X35 as it takes a more roundabout route than the 230, but I’d assumed it still went through Grangetown, since Grangetown is on the approach to Sunderland. Turns out I was wrong about that and it goes to Sunderland from the other direction. So then I had to try and find out if I could get the number 10 from Sunderland, which I could, but I had to go all the way down to Fawcett Street to catch it. Eventually I got to the eye infirmary, about an hour and 20 minutes late. Fortunately they were very understanding about it, and I had the ultrasound done, which revealed that I have 2 cysts just behind my right iris, but they are benign and no further action is required.
My dad ordered a new computer for my mum, and it turned up today. Case looks pretty no-nonsense, none of this screwless rubbish, and it looks as if the LEDs are green and amber respectively, so no eye-gougingly glare-iffic blue LEDs either. I got my dad to buy a Lite-On DVD writer along with it, since the machine only comes with a CD-ROM, and since it doesn’t have an OS on it, I get to install Windows and do all the Windows Updates and so on later on today, after I get back from the Jobcentre.
Well I went to be interviewed for the post of Library Technician at Durham University today. First part went pretty well, I am sure that I aced the written test, but then they tossed me a curve ball in the actual interview and asked me how to deploy Office 2003 on selected workstations over a network. It isn’t something that’s been covered in the course I’m taking, so I said I didn’t know exactly and then made a guess. When I got home I looked it up on the internets and it seems my guess was dead wrong. Also about 10 minutes ago I just got an email saying I was not the successful applicant. Oh well, back to the old grindstone eh.
I got a job interview at Durham University Library on Thursday 6th March for a Library Technician position. Had a haircut yesterday and will be shaving my whiskers off tomorrow.
I don’t have these very often any more, but I just had another AMV idea: “Don’t Mess With My Man” by Booty Luv set to clips of Setsuna F. Seiei and Nena Trinity from Gundam 00. Just wish I had the actual artistic ability to make something of these ideas.
I didn’t blog about this at the time, but on the 21st of January I got a phone call from Paypal saying they’d detected fraudulent activity on my Paypal account and would I like to file an unauthorised activity claim? I said yes, of course, and then afterwards I called my bank and informed them about it. They said there hadn’t been a transaction yet but they would monitor my account. Fast-forward to today, Paypal still haven’t done squat, and I checked my online banking and the transaction had gone through, so I called my bank again and they said to go in to my local branch. I did so, and was able to get it sorted out without any trouble… the lady I spoke to (who I believe was the bank manager, not really sure but she was certainly a senior member of staff since the woman at the counter said that she didn’t have the authorisation to process it) knew what I was talking about when I mentioned Paypal, even if their fraud reporting procedure didn’t seem to be set up to report Internet fraud. Net result, my card is cancelled and I will receive a new one within 7 working days, the money has been refunded, and the final score is Chinese money-stealers 0, Paypal 0, my bank 1.
So, yeah, I haven’t posted in a while… things are looking up here. I managed to get myself onto a Microsoft course - it’s modules 70-290 and 70-291, relating to Windows Server 2003, and if I pass I’ll get Microsoft Certified Professional status which should be my ticket off the dole. The course runs until about July, it’s every Friday from 9am till about 2pm, and it’s at the City of Sunderland College Shiney Row campus.