Friday, 6th April, 2007

An Expensive Day

car offline phone money

It all adds up, doesn't it?

Get the car through its MOT, £250. Tax the car, £75 (including £15 for a new copy of my insurance certificate, because the original is in A Safe Place™). Various types of paint (water-resistant for the bathroom, white emulsion, and special 'cover all the cracks' stuff for the ceiling) for the ongoing struggle to get this house in a state where someone might want to buy it, £50. Pay the phone bill, £90.

Ah. The phone bill

I'm not, I've probably mentioned over and over again, very good with money. I have a huge list of Things To Sort Out™ that I'm gradually wading my way through, one at a time — but it's slow progress. My financial disaster last summer (that I might write about some time, when it's all cleared up) left me with loads of loose ends that needed sorting, and I've been dealing with them on a priority basis.

Ie. sort them out when I have to, rather than as soon as I can.

The only problem with a strategy like that (I realise) is that sometimes, "when I have to" is usually just a little bit later than "when would be sensible and cause less hassle".

I really don't know what was going through my head to be honest. Something along the lines of "well, it seems to be OK at the moment. I'll deal with it when it becomes an issue" — not realising (of course) that the "issue" would be something that would completely disrupt my generally established way of life.

...

I was really chuffed with myself on Tuesday morning. I'd spent the whole of Monday thrashing my way through Final Cut Pro, chopping the captured footage of that build up and rearranging it into something which, while not being my greatest piece of editing, was rather good I thought.

And, of course, I was rather pleased to see that the initial feedback was overwhelming positive. I mean, I've seen a bit of criticism of it since, and I must write something long and wordy explaining the whys and hows in more detail, but hey — I was all set to throw myself into a bit of aggressive self-promotion and self-congratulation...

...when my broadband suddenly died.

My broadband dying isn't something out of the ordinary, unfortunately. I've had a really choppy connection ever since my ISP (or BT) Did Something™ to our exchange a little while ago, and to be perfectly honest, it's been both (a) frustrating, and (b) embarassing. It used to be that text messages would start flying in the minute Erin "went down"¹, but recently little bouts of downtime are (I presume) seen as "the norm", and the little digs in emails mocking my connectivity are starting to touch nerves with me.

"Dammit," I muttered to myself, flipping the router off and on again repeatedly, trying to get it back up. But after a good ten minutes of this, I figured that wasn't going to help, so I popped my jacket on and wandered off into town to do some things, hoping it would be back up when I got home.

Of course, it wasn't.

It's rare that I do things like calling Technical Support — I often see it as a sign of failure on my own part to fix something to call a 'higher authority' (and nine times out of ten, they say "we don't support Macs" and I end up having to fix it myself anyway), but I figured this was something out of my control and that I might be able to find out why the connection had been so crappy recently at the same time.

"Yes, we've had a few reports like this today", the guy said. "I'll get the engineers on it, and we'll have you back up and running by the end of the day."

That evening, still without a connection, I popped round to see some friends, and show them my little film — but they were down too.

...Which gave me a little hope, to be honest. We share the same ISP, and the same exchange, so that meant there was actually A Fault™, and the niggling doubt at the back of my mind — that the reason everything had gone tits-up was because I hadn't paid my phone bill for seven months — seemed unfounded.

I ran technical support again in the morning, and after jumping through the usual "Have you tried turning it off and on again" hoops, they tried to run a check on my line.

"Oh dear."

"That doesn't sound very promising."

"I think I know what the problem is. Have BT done something to your account recently?"

"Um, possibly", I said, wanting to avoid admitting that there was a very good possibility that I'd been cut off.

"It says here that the line is 'ceased'."

I legged it downstairs, and tried my landline. Sure enough, it was totally dead

I dug out the most recent bill from BT from my Pile Of Things To Sort Out™, and saw (with a sinking heart) the dreaded words "...if you want to get reconnected..." mocking me from the page.

No landline == no broadband == no blog == no email == no Second Life == no RSS reading == (for me) almost complete isolation²

...

I've managed a couple of times to get online in one way or another. I went to Cafe Nero the other day and paid through the nose for a couple of hours so I could check my Uni-email and my RSS feeds, and I leeched the wireless off some friends once or twice.

But I'm finding this all rather frustrating really. It's a bit stunning just how much my life revolves around the internets these days — from reading feeds and emails over my first cup of coffee in the morning, to keeping in touch with people throughout the day, to socialising in virtual spaces (SL or blogs or forums) in the evening — almost everything I do at some point involves being online.

Strangely, this enforced hermitage has had a couple of benefits. For a start, it's removed the distractions I normally have, and let me throw myself into the huge backlog of work that had built up recently. Granted, I can't actually upload the work I've done until I either get back online, or go to work next Wednesday, but still.

And secondly, coupled with the glorious weather that we seem to be having, I've managed to make some good roads into getting this house sorted. The cracks in the bedroom walls and ceiling are all dealt with, and both the bedroom and the bathroom are looking quite stunning (if I do say so myself) with several coats of paint.

...

I'm a little bit torn what to do today though. Having paid bills and reordered both the landline and broadband, I'm sat here without a dial-tone but with the "this number is currently unavailable" voice replaced by ringing³ if you call me. I'd call to chase things up, but (of course) it's Good Friday, and everyone is on holiday until Tuesday.

On the one hand, spurred on by seeing just how good the bedroom and bathroom look, I'm dying to crack on with the house, and maybe get the downstairs sorted (although that will mean moving the sofa, and I'm dreading the inevitable Finding Of Dead Mice™ that that's going to involve) — but having forked out two hundred and fifty quid for the car, and nearly a hundred quid for the phone, I've kinda left myself a bit short for the rest of the month.

On the other hand, I've still got work to do. But it's such a beautiful day out there, it seems a shame to waste it staring at a screen all day.

...

At the risk of rambling, I must just say that I'm finding the whole 'money thing' at the moment very weird.

To be perfectly honest, I've been struggling to make ends meet for the past ten years — if not more. I wasn't on a huge salary before I quit my job in 1997 and went back to Uni, but I coped on it, but apart from a few blips when Large Wads Of Cash™ found their way into my account every once in a while, I've been living around the fringes of a massive overdraft — mostly on the wrong side of it.

But things are different right now. Having clawed my way back to a position where I can cancel my overdraft protection, and getting the extra day and a half at work, I've suddenly found myself with an actual disposable income. And it feels really peculiar.

It used to be that towards the end of each month, I'd be scrabbling around for petrol-money and fag-money (and booze-money — ah, Curran, there's your downfall). But since February, paydays haven't been the monumentous relief that they used to be — they've just been like every other day. I'm no longer counting down the days from the 20th to the 26th, or hoping that the 26th falls on a Sunday so that payday will be a couple of days earlier. Life doesn't go on hold from the third week of the month onwards — it just plods along nicely.

I'm not — of course — minted, it's just that I'm not sitting here panicking about how I'm going to afford things. For example: when I realised I'd have to fork out for the car, it didn't leave me wondering how I was going to eat, or trying to figure out how I could raise the cash — I just thought "Oh well, that means the rest of the month might be a little tighter than last month."

I know, this is probably how most people live their lives. It's just that it's been so long since I was in a position where I wasn't dreading the fall of letters and bills on my doormat each morning, and stuffing them into an increasingly large pile of Things To Deal With™.

That pile, of course, is still there. But it's coming down nicely.

I just wish I'd dealt with the one that had "BT" written on it a little bit sooner...

¹ I keep having to point this out — Erin doesn't go down. She's only crashed once in the past five years, and that was because her hard disk died. It's always either the connection getting dropped, the router having an eppy, or the wireless base-station getting all flustered.

² Faced with the prospect of a few days out of touch with my online social network, I re-engaged with my RL friends — who'd almost all gone away for Easter.

³ Ringing on the line when I call from my mobile, but not ringing in the house. What's up with that?