I was driving over to Sndy’s place this evening and cme across a truck moving slowly in the other direction with it’s hazards on and moving at 2km an hour. Followed by 20 alpine cows who were being driven home from the meadows for the day. I sat in the car for 5 mons as they all trundled past and thought. I’m trying to do things too fast. Comme un anglais.
So I rented an office and the most important thing it needs is a telephone line for broadband. I started sorting that out on Monday. I rang france telecom’s english speaking service from the office phone, which the previous tenants had somehow left connected.
I spoke to a guy, and it really felt like he could help. Just fax me a copy of your rental contract he said. That will prove that you are the current tenant and we can get the old line disconnected and a new one set up for you. It won’t take long to do - just a day. It was 7 pm. I spend the next two hours trying to fax a couple of pages to the number he gave me from a couple of places in town with no joy. Just an engaged tone and ‘send failed’ confirmations’.
So yesterday Caroline helped out by spending a couple of hours of her day on the phone only to find out that the reason it didn’t go through was that their fax machine was broken. Finally it got sent, and the next step was for the geezer to call me back to arrange the new line. Did he bollocks.
This morning I called the office again to push things along. Here is a rough transcript of the conversation.
me: Could I speak to Mr Blah, please?
cesm: I am sorry, but ‘ee is on ‘oliday today. day off, you know?
me: well, perhaps you could help me. Could you confirm that Mr Blah received my fax and will be calling me back to organise the connection of a new line.
cesm: no. we ‘ave our own faxes you know? I do not know what faxes ‘ee ‘as or ‘as not got. I don’t know what ‘ee would do anyway, This is a business line you want, and we cannot do that, we ‘ave separate offices you know? What is the telephone number that you are trying to connect?
me: I don’t have a number yet - I need to connect one. Can I give you address of the property. Its….. blah blah blah
cesm: No. I am sorry, My computer says that the street does not exist.
me: Right. So you can’t help me?
cesm: No. You should go to your nearest France telecom office and talk to them there
me: Can you tell me where the nearest France telecom shop is?
cesm: No.
me: Right. Goodbye.
So according to the website, the nearest France telecom shop is in Sallanches - about 20km down into the valley. I find the address and it’s some dodgy mobile phone shop & the bloke laughs and tells me there might be a France Telecom shop in Cluses - another 15 km down away. Amazingly I find the place and I’ve got all the paperwork with me - this might still be easy enough?
No. 1 hour later I’ve finally got some dopey woman to ring up whomever needs to be rung up to do whatever it is needs to be done. Then the dizzy bitch freaks out and hands the phone back to me because whomever is on the other line asks a question she didn’t know the answer to. I’m lost - I mean I totally don’t have the slightest scooby what the fuck the person on the phone is asking me. So finally someone faxes some forms to me at the shop for me to fill in and fax back. Forms which I obviously don’t understand. So I do my best, she helps me, and we fax back what might or might not a completed application (complete with all my bank details I might add). We phone for confirmation…. the fucking bastard had gone home for the day. So I have no idea when or if the line will be set up, and the next step is for them to call me on my mobile. If they do (which seems unlikely) I won’t have a clue what they say anyway.
Cheese.Eating.Surrender.Monkeys.
Get rid of mac office. It’s shit. I was getting really annoyed with the slowness of my new computer. It seemed to take ages to flick between applications and open emails etc. As my 30 day trial of mac office was coming to an end I thought I’d ditch it and use mac’s built in software for a bit. What do you know? Everything is now so much faster.
This is what Microsoft reckons - yeh. course.
I’m replacing entourage with Mail and iCal, which are both really good and free. Word is a problem, but I think Pages from apple will do the job. The only thing I haven’t found a solution for is excel on a mac. Does anyone out there know a good free mac application I can replace excel with which will open and edit .xls docs properly?
I know what you’re thinking. How the hell did France make if into the quarter finals? By playing the best match of the tournament thus far. One nil down to a (deserved) penalty. The equalizer just before half time set the tone. Even Zindane managed to poke one in. Maybe he’s not too old after all.
