Friday 9th February 2007

The week started early, I had to head over to Amersham to drop my car off at the dealer for some final bits and pieces of work to be carried out. I was given a 56 plate 1.6 A3 in light blue. Nice. However it had DSG transmission. Now as an geek, that acronym sounds great but in practice the gear box is rubbish. This my first time driving an automatic and I hated every second. I expected the drive to be much better, particularly in A3. However, in drive a computer decides when it will change up through the six gears. You can over rev the engine but it still takes an age to respond. Decision made. I was sold. I was never going to buy an automatic car. I know I flirted with the option of the Fiat Stilo Abarth with Selespeed gearbox back in July 2005 but I perhaps only now have become to appreciate the importance of a manual (6-speed) gear box. Received my documents from the DVLA yesterday. Prompt considering how slow government agencies tend to be. Perhaps because everything is process by my local regional office and then the final documentation sent to Swansea for computer processing. I suppose being the registered owner and keeper of both vehicles helped. Then factor in recent events. However the plates will not be knocked up until next weekend as I have my bumper to be replaced next week. I am sure I will get a ragged out old Corsa as a courtesy car and would wish I was back in the A3. Actually, on second thoughts I will stick with the Corsa. Plus anything will be better than that white Nissan Micra I had for three weeks in December 2002. 2007 is panning out to be an excellent year with a special and strange announcement over on my other log. In other semi related news, Pav has this week handed in his notice having been offered a great web support engineer role over in Oxford. Before doing so, his manager had printed off the following chart for the previous period.

Pav's Support Desk Stats

You have to click on the image and see the large version to truly appreciate the joke. Pav has closed over 2000 calls more than his nearest rival. This happens to be his good friend Jav (who went to the Nürburgring with us last Easter). A shock to the system, when Pav leaves in three weeks time. Almost comparable but my own situation, although I have to admit that Pav’s role is far more technical and day to day is far more busier than I have been (or rather ever was) on the helpdesk. Bespoke software with the helpdesk supporting end users, while his scenario was more server side support for external IT managers or technicians. Try, if you will, to work out which one of us tend to be busy. Friday evening is spent as always surfing the music television channels, to the annoyance of my sister. I was watching the hilarious video to First Date by Blink 182. However, by doing so, I missed something else. As I switched over to Chart Show TV, I heard the closing few frames of Glamorous video. I was disappointed. After Eastenders and my daily piano practice, I jumped on my computer and headed over to You Tube to find the music video. If it was on television, then someone, somewhere would have uploaded. They had. I watched the video and it was much better than I expected. Everything a music video should be. True to the story of the lyrics. After so many fan produced videos had been uploaded to the video sharing service, it was great to see the final product. Perhaps yet another example of a song which reflects how I feel, where I’ve been and where I am going. Without stretching too far back, beyond the pre-blogging days, I recall those weeks on placement, when by this time in a week I would have covered 600 miles and felt exhausted. I will of course try and record a copy once it reaches the play list of TMF and The Hits on FreeView. For the time being, we will have to cope with the embedded flash version.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.