Sky Minus/Stagecoach

On Friday the Good Lady Wife and I noticed that that afternoon's Pointless - our new favourite quiz show - hadn't recorded. Not only had it not recorded but it had been marked as FAILED. Mastermind was set to record too but FAILED too. We didn't notice until later on because we were saving it for later (When none of the specialist subjects are of interest we proceed straight to General Knowledge questions and start the weekly routine of 'shouting at the telly'). Then Big Bang Theory FAILED on Saturday and we sussed that something wasn't quite right.

Using the interweb I found that it was a common problem but decided to let Sky sort it out (isn't that what we pay them a small fortune for?) before I took advice from 'the people'. I emailed them: "For the last two days I've been getting FAILED messages against programmes I've tried to record through the Sky+ Planner. When we press for Information it gives us a Technical Fault 11. What is a Technical Fault 11, why are we getting it and how can it be fixed?"

Meanwhile, we switched everything off - we drew the line at unplugging everything - and waited to see what Sunday morning would bring. Voila, it was fine again but it still rankled me that it had happened in the first place.

A reply awaited me when I switched the computer on:

"I am sorry to hear of the problems you have been experiencing with your services. To rectify these problems, please follow the procedure below:

Please note this process will stop all the recordings currently in progress and reboot your box, therefore you may want to do this after a recording has been completed.

1. Using the Sky Remote Control press the services button.
2. Using the up / down arrow buttons highlight System Setup and press select.
3. Press 0, 1 and select to access the Installer Menu.
4. Highlight Sky+ Planner Rebuild and press select.

When the warning on screen message, 'this will take a few minutes to completed' the rebuild will stop all recordings and reboot your Sky+. Press select to confirm or backup to cancel appears press select to continue.

The on screen message, 'Housekeeping please wait' will appear and take up to 2 minutes to clear. Once complete the set top box will switch itself off and then back on automatically and wait in standby mode. Wait for 60 seconds after the red light has appeared before attempting to switch back on your box.

If after following this procedure you are still experiencing problems, you may need to contact our technical team on 08442 41 14 11,direct for further assistance. If you require a service call and your box warranty has expired, the service call will carry a charge of 65.00 (GBP).

I hope this information has helped with your enquiry. If you require any further assistance, you can respond to my email. You can also contact our Customer Services team on 08442 41 41 41, where one of our advisors will be happy to help."

You would've thought I'd have been pleased to hear from them but I wasn't. Why? Well, firstly they want me to use "0" from a system setup screen that only offers a choice form 1 to 8! Secondly, they want ME to phone THEM on an 0844 number (you know our details, call us) and, thirdly, if the equipment isn't working I have to pay THEM £65 for an engineer (or whatever pretentious job title Sky give them) to tell me what I already know! It's all money, money, money*. I'm turning into Jim Royle, only without the bowel/toilet problems and bad clothes.

I replied to the email from "Cynthia" with a simple one-liner: "You say "highlight System setup and press select" Then "press 0" but there is no 0 on our System setup menu! It only goes from 1 to 8".

Cynthia turned into Bruce and responded thus:

"You're quite right there is no 0 on the system setup menu, but that is because you are accessing a hidden menu at that point. If you are on system setup menu, ignore the screen and just press 0,1 and select the installer menu will appear.

It can be easier for us to take you through the procedures on the phone but I do not have any details to be able to access your account. If you email back to us with your viewing card number and password if you have one, we will be happy to contact you back.

Kind regards

Bruce"

Of course. Stupid me, a "hidden menu". Why didn't I think of that? I am such an idiot. I have brought shame upon myself and my family and I must throw myself off the roof immediately.

I find "It can be easier for us" to be rather patronising and somewhat insulting. If I can't work the instructions given to me in writing, some sad sod with no career prospects, halitosis and white socks in the modern electronic equivalent of the sweatshop isn't going to be any more useful.

Thankfully for the Good Lady Wife, but not me, her "Dancing on Ice" has recorded.

* On Saturday morning I had to take the car for a service in Dalgety Bay, a 10-minute drive from home. I dropped the car off and waited for a bus back.

"Tesco, Dunfermline, please" "£2.75"

"What?" "£2.75"

I handed it over but was so positive that that was wrong I tucked my ticket safely away. I'd never been on this bus before or in the area, except in a car, but it seemed rather steep. I checked the time and wondered if this particular bus took a different route home, maybe via Oslo. After all this was the 80C. Not the original 80, the all-new 80A or the new AND improved 80B with Boswelox, this was the all-singing, all-dancing, let's-do-the-show-right-here 80C.

I alighted at Tesco (who the hell says "alighted" anymore?), a mere eight minutes after I got on. Surviving the pedestrian jungle that is the Tesco car park - does nobody stop at pedestrian crossings anymore? - I walked, still in disbelief. After a couple of hours serious "pottering" the garage called and I headed back out for the bus.

"Dalgety Bay, please" "£1.40"

"£1.40? I was charged £2.75 not two hours ago for the same trip in reverse"

After a discussion with the driver,who was as much use as a cat flap on a submarine, I took a seat. I used the nine minutes constructively (the 80B goes a different route and I had to walk some of the way hence the extra minute) and fired off an e-mail to the Operations Manager, who is also a near neighbour.

Just to rub salt into the wound I had to stump up £270 at the garage (service and something to do with the brakes) and they couldn't fix the radio display without a code, which was on a card, which we didn't have.

It never rains but it pours.

Edit This Crap

Saturday 12 September 2009

This morning I dropped the girls off at ballet and drove to Comet in Dunfermline to get a new 4GB flash drive. During last week's radio show I'd put the flash drive in the PC under the desk, only to kick it at some point during the show. When I saved my show and pulled out the drive, the plastic casing had been smashed to pieces by my clumsy feet. It does still work but rather than risk it I got a new one. Having seen a SanDisk product on the Gadget Show do so well against more well-known opposition, including Apple, I plumped for their inexpensive 4GB drive. The Integral one I had before would've been £21 to replace and this one was only £8.99.

After the amazing night on Thursday, I enjoyed a long lie-in on Friday, although it was somewhat enforced on me by a sore back ("the pleasure with the pain"). I had prepared a long To-Do list and raced through it. I popped into Dunfermline to get my haircut. The girl cutting my hair (4 on the top, 2 round the back and sides) enquired, as they are want to do, what I was up to that day. I told her I was recovering from last night's wondrous gig. Naturally, she hadn't heard of Edwyn Collins until I "sang" the chorus of "A Girl Like You". She tried to convince me that it couldn't have been a better gig than an "amazing" Red Hot Chilli Peppers gig she been to. She's young, she knows not what she says. Haircut, £5, £1 tip, check.

Next stop was the Alhambra, Dunfermline's newest venue, which is gradually beginning to attract some bigger names to Fife. My mate Martin had sent me a text saying that The Charlatans would be playing on Saturday 19th December. Now I like The Charlatans but I don't know if would even travel to Edinburgh to see them but I suggested to the good lady wife that as they would be on our doorstep we could use the gig to have our Christmas night out. Fine, she says. I had e-mailed the venue on Thursday to find out when tickets went on sale and how much they would be. No reply.

I walked the 100 yards from the barber's to the venue. Unusually the Box Office, which according to their website is open from 9 until 4 between Monday and Friday, appears to be up a stair at the side of the venue. I'm only surmising this because I had to press a buzzer first to get in. I also noticed a sign saying "Cash Only". Surely not, in this day and age. Anyway, I pressed the buzzer and enquired how much the tickets were and when they'd be on sale. I was told they would be £22.50 but the venue wouldn't get their allocation until Monday because Ticketmaster would be selling them first. I couldn't believe it. Another venue had soul its soul to Ticketbastard. I don't like Ticketmaster, as regular readers will know, with their spurious fees for anything and everything. I decided there and then we wouldn't be going to see The Charlatans after all. You can say what you like about the Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline but at least they don't charge you for nothing. I went to see Davie Scott and Norman Blake, supported by The Vaselines. The advertised cost was £10 each. How much did we pay in total? £10 each. That's the way it should be. We're going to spend the money at Kushis instead.

After the disappointment of the Alhambra I headed off to Tesco to get the week's "big" shop. K had prepared a list. I'm usually quite strict and never veer "off list" but a 5CD box set of "100 Hits - Northern Soul" just happened to fall into the trolley. It was only £6 and while I had many of the tracks already there were enough new ones to make the £6 purchase a worthwhile one. Today I uploaded the tracks onto Windows Media Player and while I doing so I noticed a strange message in to the "Album Artist" column. It says, beside every track, "edit this crap"!! I checked the other CDs and it's the same for each of them. Maybe I'll e-mail Demon and see what they have to say for themselves.

Is it just me or are there times when you're at the checkout in a supermarket you feel the checkout girl (it's always a girl) tries to make you look slow at packing, just because you're a man. Sometimes I think females checkout assistants scan your purchases as fast as they can so that they pile up and you don't have enough time to put them in your bag. This is a veiled attempt to make the male shopper look really stupid. This annoys me because I'm no slouch when it comes to packing a shopping bag. I'm certainly more organised than most. Would they do it to an older person or another woman? I doubt it.

As I unpacked the hastily-packing shopping when I got home I put on the radio, which lives in the kitchen. It's a DAB I won in a competition on Forth One. It was still on BBC 6Music from when I tuned into Andrew Collins on Wednesday who was subbing for a Mercury Music-ligging Steve Lamacq. Anyway, as I unpacked the messages (Scottish word for shopping) I heard this dreadful whining noise coming out of the DAB. It was George Lamb. Come the Judgement Day award ceremony the nominees for Bastardisation of the English Language will be Paul Merson, Jamie Redknapp and George Lamb. Thankfully he was finishing in 10 minutes. File under "Loves the Sound of His Own Voice and Isn't As Funny As He Thinks". See also Jonathan Ross.

During a spot of lunch, I watched a couple of programmes from Sky+. Monday's The Gadget Show and Derren Brown's lottery prediction show. I really like the Gadget Show and not just because Suzi Perry was wearing high boots and a short skirt! Their weekly competition prizes are amazing and this week's includes a car that they'd "pimped" to include a PSP 3 and a projector screen under the bonnet! Ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me. It's the only text competition I do.

There's no rest for the wicked and I took advantage of the weather to cut the grass on the front and back lawns. The back lawn had been left uncut for so long that there were Japanese soldiers in there thinking the war was still on. Both jobs were completed just in time to collect Flick from the After School Club. I hadn't even had time for a shower. K had caught an earlier bus home so she did some weeding, I tried pathetically to repair some scratches in the car (check me Mr Pleasant Valley Sunday) and Felicity cycled up and down. At one point she told everyone what our car was but that her favourite cars were Kias and BMWs. She informed the other kids that she was saving for the latter!

Also picked some bad news late yesterday afternoon that our childminders had ceased trading! The Scottish Care Commission had initially informed them that the number of children they were looking after wouldn't include their own kids (there are two childminders) but now the Commission has changed their mind. With K and I having changed our working hours and fitted in around Flick's school times, we're now left without a childminder. Apparently the Scottish Care Commission informed the childminders that a weekend was more than enough time for the parents to organise alternative child care!! Unbelievable! As soon as I finish this blog entry I shall be giving them a piece of my mind. Just when you think everything's sorted...

NO WONDER I'M DePRESSED

As regular readers will be aware I’ve been short listed for the Best Newcomer award at the National Hospital Radio Awards. I’m rightly proud of my achievement thus far and why shouldn’t I be? I worked hard for it and I always say that if you don’t blow your own trumpet, no one else will.

The radio station I’m on doesn’t seem to have a policy when it comes to issuing press releases to publicise events and achievements so, with the chairman’s permission, I put one together myself. The small but perfectly-formed press release, in which I actually gave top billing to my colleague John who is nominated in one of the more prestigious categories (Male Presenter of the Year, which he has won twice), was e-mailed to the local free papers, as well as the Fife Free Press and the Dunfermline Press. The radio station is based in Kirkcaldy but I sent the information to the Dunfermline Press because I figured that they might just be interested in a story of a local resident doing good.

I had hoped that making the final 10 of a national competition might be deemed newsworthy but, no, they weren’t interested. (I don’t know if it was in any of the free papers because the one week in which I wanted to read them they never appeared!) Anyway, imagine my surprise when I saw THIS STORY from this week’s Dunfermline Press.

Now why do you suppose that my story didn’t make it and this one did? We’re both in the running to win a UK-wide competition and yet the tall, leggy, big-breasted father-of-one is ignored in favour of a 23-year-old phlebotomist*.

Maybe if I offered to lie down in my vest and pants they’d print my story too.

The newspaper’s snubbing of me may have something to do with the time I took them to the Press Complaints Commission over their attempt at character assassination. I’ve also written to their letters page about issues that I thought would be of interest to them and local residents only to find my letter doesn’t appear in print and but a story on the same subject appears elsewhere in the paper. No thanks, no acknowledgment, nothing.

I’ve also been known to point out their spelling mistakes and grammatical errors so maybe it’s understandable that they might want to take their “revenge” by ignoring a perfect decent little story. It’s their choice, albeit a rather sad one, if they want to cut off their nose to spite their face.

What is rather ironic is that there’s a possible follow-up story/photo-opportunity because Stagecoach have kindly offered to sponsor us on our trip to Blackpool by loaning us a 7-seater people carrier, complete with a tank of petrol.

The only problem is that the DePress hates Stagecoach more than it hates me!

The Cat
=^..^=

* If Ms McDaid wins she gets £10,000, an appearance on the cover of FHM and a chance to present a music show on KISS TV. My prize, if I’m lucky enough to win, will be a certificate, a mention in On-Air magazine (the official journal of the Hospital Broadcasting Association) and the undying admiration of my family and friends. (There used to be cash prizes but times are hard). Ms McDaid says she’ll buy her mother Botox, while I’ll be lucky if I can afford a stick of rock.

MONSTROUS CARBUNCLES, BATMAN!

And the winner of the most dismal town in Scotland is ... Glenrothes

(Pictured: A rather large erection in Glenrothes)

While I’m not surprised that Glenrothes might win this award (for its obsession with roundabouts alone), I can think of a few more worthy candidates.

Of all the places I’ve ever been to, I’d list the following as more worthy:

1. Clydebank – I’ve never seen so many sick, overweight and miserable people in my life, well not since I was last in Dunfermline town centre. I forget why I was there in the first place, possibly football related, but it’s left an indelible print on my brain nonetheless
2. Airdrie – An inhospitable place. When my football team were playing in the First Division we had to visit such places and it was likely going back to 1975. The everybody-hates-us paranoia of the football team appeared to have spread to the locals. I won’t hurry back, even if my team gets relegated.
3. Dunfermline – I live here (well on the outskirts) but it’s a town that thinks it’s a city but acts like a village. If you like bakeries, hairdressers and charity shops then this is the place for you. The former capital of Scotland (were there no other candidates?) should change its coat of arms to feature prams, cigarettes, leggings and a Stephen’s Steak Bridie; sometimes you see all four just looking at one person!
4. Seton Sands Holiday Park – The Lesotho of East Lothian. Not strictly a town (in any sense of the word) but when Glasgow Trades Fortnight is on it turns into a mini Paisley with West Coasters coming for a bit of cultcha, which is usually a Racey tribute band on Hawaiian Night in the Bobby Davro Lounge.
5. Armadale – The Good Lady and I looked at a house there and after a brief look around the town centre decided the area we lived in in Leith (affectionately known as "Little Beirut") wasn’t so bad after all. A prominent Rangers Supporters Club in the centre didn’t help matters either.
   

I apologise to anyone who reads this that lives in these places but I have nominated my own town too. I feel your pain. Having said that, I don’t miss Edinburgh as much as I used to. The only thing I really miss now is the Cameo Cinema, where my wife and I were members. The annual membership was very reasonable and the ambience of the cinema was great. I miss it, a lot.

I referred recently to the death of my former music teacher and it seems that they've arrested someone for it. Here's the update: Tribe member arrested after ritual killing of ex-Lothian teacher

Censorship is alive and well at the Depress (aka Dunfermline Press). What is the point in asking for comments under every story if you’re going to censor them? I wrote a comment on a story and it has been removed. I've asked for an explanation and I'm still waiting. Here is the story and here is the “offending” comment: "There is no such thing as an "accident". There is always an error on one or more sides; an error that Mr. Little admitted. What happened to his father was tragic but he doesn't appear to have learned from it. To then go moaning to the Press is rather hypercritical. People need to take personal responsibility. It's no use blaming the junction or, in other cases, the camber of the road, road markings etc. Drive more carefully and these incidents can be avoided."

All I’ve done is say something that needs saying. There’s not enough personal responsibility these days. The man in question admits causing a crash yet moans to the Depress that it was the road’s fault. What next? A tree walked out in front of me, officer? Let’s chop it down. I notice that the speed at which the offending people are driving at in these types of articles is never mentioned.