How was your day dear?: August 2019 Archives

So when I left you on Sunday night I was frustrated at the whole experience I'd had with Qantas that afternoon.  In the end my booking hadn't gone through properly because of a problem with my credit card (I never use it, in fact I don't think I'd used this one since activating it, so wasn't really surprised).  On Monday I tested the credit card worked (it did) so in the afternoon I called Qantas.  Where I got in a queue that said I would be on hold for THREE HOURS.

!!!!!!!

Are you freaking kidding me?  Most companies have different queues for sales and support.  Sales *want* your business and so put on more staff to handle the calls.  Not so Qantas.  So I complained on twitter.  As you do.  There was a bit of back and forth during the afternoon, and they said they'd call to try again with the credit card.  Which they did - while I was in the other room having dinner and watching Brooklyn 99, so didn't hear the phone.  

While I was waiting again, I got onto Emirates' site. I put through the same itinerary, which 1) actually seemed to let me do (I got all the way up to the payment page), 2) had a much better connection to Singapore, giving us a few extra hours there, and 3) was THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS CHEAPER.  I asked Qantas if we could please cancel.  I was too upset/stressed from the whole thing to concentrate on anything much, so I went and cleaned the kitchen.  Of course as soon as I left the room Qantas called again.  Sigh.  But confirmed my wish to cancel the booking and eventually they did.

On Tuesday I put the whole booking through Emirates.  I still had issues with the credit card (the two-factor code wouldn't come through to my phone), so I just used a different card.  And that was that.  Done.  

Although Emirates do price gouge with seat selection - $20-$30 for regular seats, $120 for the little pair of two at the back of the plain, who even knows how much for exit row seats.  There goes that saving...

So Qantas had three lost opportunities to get my money.  If their multi city flights were actually usable I would have booked on the spot, using whichever credit card had worked.  If their booking management system had actually made a provision to "pay now" and let me pay online, I would have.  If they didn't make me wait THREE HOURS in a phone queue I would have done it over the phone.

Qantas really need to lift their game if they want to stay competitive in 2019.

Sigh.

Monday morning I cleared a massive backlogs of tickets due to me being away on Friday for the funeral.  Started to panic at the sheer volume of work facing me for the week.  And I couldn't get anything done on Monday afternoon due to nonstop interruptions.  Every one of them tore my concentration away so the *one thing* I was trying to do I couldn't get done.  In the end I managed to get it done between 5pm and 6pm when everyone else had gone away.

Tuesday not *quite* so busy, but did get stuff done.

Wednesday I was in race condition mode.  That is, too many high priority tasks competing, which meant I actually didn't get anything meaningful done at all in the morning.  Sigh.  So did some stuff for Henrch, and then Shane saved me by pushing back on the people that haven't done their docos :)

Also on Wednesday I had just stood up and was looking out the window and saw a Tarago back into a car in the car park, bumping it so I saw it move.. and then it drove away.  I grabbed my camera and took some pics.  And then went and left a note :)  I did get a call from the police asking for the photos, but no word of thanks or even acknowledgement from the owner of the car that was hit.

Aldi proved themselves once again to be a bunch of scammers.  Neil saw an ad for some scotch that he thought he'd get for the bar.  So we had a look at lunch.  But not only was there none of that scotch to be seen, but there wasn't even an empty spot on the shelf for it.  There was no price tag at all for that scotch.  Which clearly meant they never had it for sale at all.  SCAMMERS!

And then on Friday Dan's tried to charge me $14.99 for a bottle of Henkell.  I knew when I saw the price tag there was going to be trouble, so I took a photo of it, and got it for the cheaper price ;)  

When we got home on Thursday night I was in the family room doing up my hair and talking to the sweetie when I heard something and saw something move out of the corner of my eye.  One of Chrissie's clown loaches was flopping on the top of the book case next to the tank.  It must have been startled when we got home, but it had somehow managed to get out between the loosish lid and the tank wall (might have to weight it down heh).  Grabbed the fish and plonked it back in, and it's been fine ever since.  It was lucky I saw it too, I don't normally linger at that spot for very long, it would have been just as likely for me not to even have noticed til the next day.

I really wanted to have a random day off on Friday but there was just too much work all week.  I think I closed something like 30 tickets which is *huge*.  I did manage to leave at 4pm tho.  Started watching Friends with Benefits until the sweetie got home, then we watched For Your Eyes Only.  I haven't seen most of the early James Bonds in probably twenty years or more - when Dad used to put them on while I was still living at home.  But with the early ones I could still remember bits and pieces and even the odd lines of script and one-liners.  But I have no memories at all of For Your Eyes Only, except for dropping the dude down the chimney at the beginning. 

Saturday morning was the usual house work type stuff.  Not too much in the afternoon.  Finished watching Friends with Benefits.  Silly and predictable, but hey, New York.  Watched Jackie with the sweetie.  It wasn't bad, but had a very disjointed filming style.

Today was Lego picking, trivia night planning, photo culling, lunch out and food shopping, more of the same in the afternoon.  Watched Parenthood before dinner and finished after. Roasted a stack of veggies for dinner and watched some Veronica Mars.

And blogged.

Monday doctor; Hero Sushi for dinner (it met expectations - it disappointed).

Tuesday continued photo culling.  I managed two days all week.  It's fricken hard work.

Wednesday was KFC for lunch (tradition).  Ate it while listening to an AWS guy deep dive into some stuff, so most of it went over my head, and I was stuck there for two hours which my legs really didn't appreciate.  Then had to deal with people blaming the firewall for blocking stuff.  Sure it's blocking stuff, but only because they upgraded their application, not because we changed the rules.  Went and shared some bubbles with Neil which was nice.

Then to Bella Vista with the sweetie.

Had Assagini for entree - a mixed seafood platter consisting of calamari, scallops, prawns, San Danielle prosciutto and an avaocado and tomato salsa

Stu had Gnocchi with gorgonzola dolce cheese

I had bistecca: wagyu sirloin, creamy mash, prawns, spinach, green beans, pancetta, garlic butter sauce.

All very nice.

Saw this on Thursday.  Driven by quality.

Friday morning I drove myself up to Sydney.  Had lunch with Mum at the village - lamb roast.

Then off to the funeral.  Actually the thanksgiving memorial - the private funeral was in the morning.  It actually went for quite a long time - an hour and a half.  They used a whole heap of photos of Mum's that I'd scanned in recent years and sent them all through to Chrissie to pass on (they didn't have access to the house to get any of their own photos).  Saw quite a few people that I knew from years past, even Kristen from school and Joe W and Michael S so that was nice.  

Chrissie and I completely geeked out and went and stood in the hall of the church where we met thirty years and a couple of weeks ago.

Hung around til almost the end before Joe gave us a lift back to Mum's (we took the train earlier because we figured we'd have to walk about the same distance as if we drove).  Stopped in at South Village to have a look.

Back at Mum's I had a quiet toast to Diana and Graham.

Then we played Rummy Tiles, which Mum and Diana played every Friday night for years.

Saturday morning Mum and I looked at dates and travel options for our trip next year.  Then I headed off.

Met up with Kit in Dapto so she could look at a horse she was interested in buying.  She had a decent long ride and I took a whole heap of video for her to get an idea of whether she wants to buy or not (by today she'd decided not to - the horse was an old pacer so wouldn't canter).  I even had a little ride (my phone went a bit spastic so it was very dark and unsaturated, no idea what that was about, fixed up somewhat but not ideal).

Stu wanted gnocchi bake for dinner, so went to Chris's for supplies and did it.  Then we watched Moonraker.

Today I spent most of the morning trying to catch up housework.  Did some food shopping and finally got to go see takoyaki man!  The guy makes actual takoyaki, although he'd run out of octopus by the time we got there late morning, so we just had pork.  Next time we go earlier!

This afternoon I thought I'd book flights.  Sounds simple.  Four legs, which I put into Qantas' site.  But every time I got to a certain point (confirming passenger details) it gave this friendly error:

WHICH IS COMPLETELY F#$^ING USELESS QANTAS!!

So I got onto their chat line (took about thirty five minutes to talk to someone) and they spent a good twenty minutes trying to reproduce the problem ("I'm also having the same error in the website. Let me check this in our system").  Eventually he says "I have checked and the reason why you're unable to proceed online is that there is no combinable fares for a Multi City trip."  Which really doesn't help me much.  After a few repeats of "I don't understand" it seems that the cities don't actually link up in the middle.  Because it's Europe.  Who goes back to where they came from anyway?  So I wasn't going to be able to book it via the website.  Qantas is completely pathetic.  If this sort of itinerary is going to cause an error, why don't they say that before I move off the very first page?  Why lead me through another couple of pages before throwing up a Generic Error that doesn't actually tell me what's wrong?  Sigh.  So anyway, for an extra $200 he put it through manually, although after all was said and done, I got an email saying there was a problem with payment and I have to call them anyway.  Fricken great.  Maybe tomorrow.

Anyway so dinner was an hour later than I wanted because I spent so long dealing with Qantas.  Watched Brooklyn 99 and Veronica Mars (they keep bringing back characters that I've forgotten about so have to go look them up, and other characters that I *do* remember, like Leo and Vinnie and Weevil :) ).

Crazy week.  And two weeks in a row without a proper weekend.  Really must take another random day off..

Tuesday got the shock news that Aunty Di and Uncle Graham had been murdered, apparently by their son.  I went over to Chrissie's Tuesday night and we shared some wine and just tried to process.

Wednesday night I got off the bus where Tony gets off and we walked up the hill.  I finally had a look inside the little library, which turns out to be in an old dishwasher!  Picked up three James Bond books.  Cooked tacos for dinner, which turned out quite well, but we ended up eating too much.

Thursday and Friday I had training which was pretty intense.

Thursday I was sick of pizza (we had it on Tuesday night at Chrissie's).  We ended up having leftovers.  Hurrah.  I watched You've Got Mail.

Friday had pizza (hey, it was a different sort) at Pizza Artigiana, and did some food shopping.

Saturday morning it snowed.

!!

Then we headed out to the club.  I did jigsaw while the meeting was on, then we had lunch with EffanC at the Lake George Hotel.  We didn't tempt fate (they wouldn't let me) to see if they could get the crackling on the pork belly right this time.  Instead we got a meal each, but could have easily done just two meals and shared.  The servings were huge.  Most of us conceded defeat and I took all the leftovers away in containers.

In the afternoon I measured all the windows for curtains, and did a little photo culling.  Had the fire going which made the cabin all nice and toasty warm.  Talked to the mother type person and the brother type person in the evening and had leftovers from lunch for dinner.

Anyone care to guess what this is?

There was more snow overnight, still visible this morning.

The house was cold when we got home and my feet never warmed up.  At all.  All day.  They are still cold.

Started going through a book Doc gave me a while ago, gathering questions for our next trivia night.  Other than doing some washing, that's all I managed to achieve all day.  Watched The Terminal in the afteroon/evening.  Stu cooked a dal for dinner and we watched a Veronica Mars.

Bit of a crazy intense week.  

Monday we worked through my firewall issue from Friday and figured out it was a bug in their (second) latest code.  Do vendors not *test* their $#!+ anymore???  (this is in addition to our proxy vendors admitting to a bug in *their* latest code this week as well.  Completely hopeless).  In the evening there was a massive white tail spider in the middle of the hall.  And then when I opened the door next to it to see if there were any more, the handle fell off.  I might have actually screamed at that.  My heart couldn't take two shocks like that!

Tuesday we had a lovely dinner at EffanC's - beef stroganoff.  Great to catch up with them after their holiday.

And I finished Candy Crush.

!!

Well, until they released 30 more new levels later in the week.

Wednesday I was going to split up my backups, so brought home the two 2T drives.  But one of them hadn't been used in a while, so there was a lot of copying to do so it took all evening.  Didn't get to do the other disk, but it was done fairly recently.  Now have to rework the schedule.  

Thursday I watched some of Hans Zimmer in Prague which was kinda cool.  Except for the I whip my hair back and forth cellist, she was pretty annoying.  A lot of his soundtracks sound quite similar.  But he actually talked to audience and played multiple instruments and seemed like he was having a great time.  Cool stuff.  Later had a drink with Kit and Pete and lost a game of Kismet.

Friday I got stitched up at 54 Benjamin.  They kindly split our bill, but unfortunately charged me for someone else's lunch (either Dave or Connor's) which meant I paid $5 more than I should have :(  (Connor gave me some money just in case it was him which was nice of him).  Two expensive Friday lunches in a row.  I think I've done my dash there for the time being.

I got home tired and cranky from a crazy exhausting afternoon.  Had leftovers for dinner and watched Sixteen Candles, which I think I saw when I was in high school and not again since.

Saturday I was at work all day doing upgrades.  In the evening we watched the start of the newest season of Veronica Mars (!!!!) and The Spy Who Loved Me.

Today I chugged my way through my todo list, achieving quite a lot.  Also did some food shopping.  And created my first S3 Bucket.  Cooked a carbonara gnocchi from the Women's Weekly Gratins and Bakes book I've had for years but never used.  And made some meringues with the leftover egg whites.  And more Veronica Mars.

A long time ago, we used to be friends..