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Turnered Back On

What a nightmare ... that I might have woken up from. BT has finally come through and gotten the broadband back up. And, oddly enough, I think the only reason I'm back up on the net tonight is because I woke up and coughed till I puked this morning.

Nice, eh?

Anyway, called blackberried in sick this morning, crawled back into bed and went back to sleep. Around 1pm this afternoon I heard the doorbell ring and it was a BT technician ... no appointment, no call ahead to say that he was on his way, just showed up. And I'm sure if I hadn't been here, things wouldn't have gotten fixed.

Anyway, he got the land line back up and running (I came home Friday night to find it was off again) and after several more hours of work here and at the exchange, got everything back in order. Winston the BT engineer is my new hero. He called back around 6pm to make sure everything was on and working, saying that he'd been told to pass the job over, but he wanted to make sure it was finished correctly (he'd been arguing with other techs on the phone about what was actually wrong -- mis-mapped circuits) and so he reinstalled the routers himself.

And so, after several letters (and thanks to the BT mole who forwarded them up the food chain), I have broadband again. Now we'll see what kind of compensation they give me for my 3 weeks of hassle. I've asked for a case of vodka and 6-9 months of free service. I'm not holding my breath.

:: :: ::

Still don't feel great after this morning's bug, but have work to do, and I was feeling like I wanted to make something, so there's a ball of dough rising on the kitchen table, which will soon be in the oven transforming into a freshly-baked loaf of homemade bread.

I think I'm looking forward to the smell more than anything else.


The Turner Prize
in on Channel Four, and I'm hoping against hope that Gillian Carnegie walks with the check, even if she decided not to be in the documentary that's being aired prior to the announcement

Saw the 4 hopefuls while Karen was here over Thanksgiving and found Carnegie's paintings to be the best of the lot.

Was totally unimpressed with Simon Starling's deconstruction wordworking project (shed --> boat --> shed). "That's not art, that's carpentry," my sister said.

Jim Lambie's pop art sculpture garden on a whacked-out vinyl tape floor was fun, but whatever. Go buy some junk, throw paint on it and call it an exhibit.

Some of the videos in Darren Almond's homage to his grandma's ballroom dancing in Blackpool were touching, but the windmill and the fountain (time passing, water = life) were all so much visual blather.

Carnegie's paintings were amazing though. Especially the all-black and green forests. Hers was the only exhibit of the four that I didn't walk away and wonder if the artist was just taking a piss.

We'll know soon if the judges agreed with me.

Let's go check on the dough and see if it's ready to be baked.