Frustrations

Damn, this is so frustrating.

I meant to blog sometime during the week about how I'm settling and
feeling more at home in my new flat, but never got around to it. And
just to illustrate that someone's more likely to complain than say
nice things, this is another complaining post.

I _am_ settling in, and making it my house - I bought a bunch of stuff
(and then went to ikea today, and bought even more stuff), and it's
starting to feel more mine. But I'm having a problem with my
TV/Freeview. Before I get into that, though, I need to complain about
the floor in the lounge: there's a noticeable slope towards the
window! My laptop fan gets a bit finicky about being perfectly level,
and when it's on the table in the lounge it starts making its
help-I'm-skew noise. In some places, you actually feel like you're
leaning sideways (I'm sure I'm not, but probably there are almost
subliminal visual cues that amplify the effect). I want to get a
spirit level and actually test it. Not that it's anything that anyone
can do anything about, but I can see it becoming highly annoying. And
the floor creaks; and it shakes/reverberates slightly when big trucks
come past! It's a bit worrying... I still think that landlords should
have to live in a property first, before they rent it out - then they
would be aware of all the structural defects.

So, to the TV. The flat didn't come with one, which I thought was odd
because I regard a TV as essential, but it seems that it's quite
normal. So I ordered one from Argos, along with a freeview box (and a
microwave, and some other stuff). Since some of us have to work, I
could only have it delivered today, which means a whole week without
any TV (which, when you're living by yourself and don't have broadband
yet - and more on that later - can be a bit lonely). But it arrived
today, yay! except that the aerial cable in the flat doesn't fit the
connector on the TV. So I speak to the guy at Currys, speak to my
dad, and eventually decide that half the connector on the cable is
missing, so the best thing to do is actually cut it off and put a new
connector on. Which I've never done before, but I do my best. Plug
it into the TV, and yay! it sees that there's an aerial, and does a
program scan. Not so yay, it only finds one channel and that one's
really snowy. Plug the aerial cable into the freeview box, and plug
that into the TV (using the cables that I had to go out and buy, since
they aren't included), and the freeview box acts like there's no
aerial. At least, I think that's the reason - it's supposed to show a
welcome and setup screen, which it doesn't. And it behaves the same
if I unplug the aerial cable completely. So I still can't watch TV,
and don't know where the problem is. It could be:
- I didn't put the new connector on properly
- the flat aerial is screwed
- the freebox/tv is screwed
I'm going to try to check the connector, maybe do it over since now
I've done it once before, whereas last time I did it I had no
experience, but I have no idea if that will fix it. Probably not. I
could go out tomorrow (yet more time) and buy a stand-alone aerial
(yet more money) and I don't know if that will fix it either. I am in
a freeview area, but maybe the signal's just crap in this particular
spot. But I can't not have TV. I refuse.

And speaking of things I refuse to not have, I did get hold of BT, and
they have to send an engineer out to do something to the line. I
don't know what, since there is a line, it's not like they have to
install it, but apparently either they can do it at the local exchange
or they might have to come into the premises. Which means I have to
be here. Which means I have to take more time off work. And the
soonest appointment is only on the 22nd (although they did say that
they'd fit me in if there were any cancellations). Which means
another week and a bit (over 2, in total) with no phone line. And
then, apparently, it can take another 2 weeks to get broadband
enabled. So that's a month without broadband! I've kinda made peace
with it, a bit, otherwise I'd have gone insane, but I'm not very happy
about it. Luckily I have gprs on my mobile, so I'm not totally cut
off from the rest of the world, but it's really not good.

It's been hard, doing this all by myself - sure, I've been in London a
couple of months, but still I don't know all the right things to do
when moving. I've got it all sorted, and I've managed, but it's been
stressful and difficult doing it all by myself without anyone to help.

I'm almost done, and it's just so frustrating to still be struggling
without broadband and without TV. And if I had broadband, I could
look up things and see, why is my freeview box not giving me a welcome
screen - maybe I could rule out the freeview box being screwed. But
that kind of surfing is very difficult to do on a mobile. My parents
have been helpful - they scanned a page out of a DIY manual and
emailed it to me, but even there I had to download it on my phone,
save it to my phone, then sync it to my pc so that I could view it.
It works, and at least there is a way to do it, but it's frustrating.
And like, now I have a bunch of boxes and packaging that I need to
throw out - but it won't fit in the bins, and the garbage guys
apparently won't take anything that isn't in a bin. So what do I do?
How do I get rid of these boxes?

But not everything's bad. I guess. The flat's not so sweltering hot
now, which is good. And I love Wimbledon itself, it's a great place
to live. And the walls are thick enough so that I don't hear noise
from the neighbours, which is great. But in the mornings the
birds/squirrels/foxes/whatever sound like they're having a party on my
roof, which isn't great.

And ikea is great. I went to the one in Croydon today, and apart from
the fact that they have really cool stuff and mostly at very good
prices, they're really well organised. If I bought a new house, I'd
go there to redecorate, it's such fun. And they have such a range of
space-saving stuff, I wish that whoever built my flat had used their
cupboards and drawers and wardrobes and stuff. But the store itself
is cool - they have maps of the shop all over the place, and it's
designed so that there's one trail through all the sections so you
don't miss anything and can't get lost (and there are shortcuts, if
you want to particularly skip out a section). Since I did my thesis
on navigation, I've become very aware of this sort of thing, and ikea
does it really well. (Of course, it's to their benefit if you go
through every section - you're more likely to pick up something that
you wouldn't have thought of buying if you hadn't seen it - and this
worked very well on me today!). And they have little shoppings lists,
and pencils for you to use, and even paper measuring tapes! That is
just so organised, and so customer-friendly, it's amazing.
Unfortunately, it somewhat falls apart at the checkout - the queues
were incredibly long, even though a lot of tills were closed. Same
with the restaurant - good deals, looked like great food, but very
tables that were all taken. Still a cool shop though, and I think if
I go again I either have to be prepared that I'm going to come home
with bags of stuff that wasn't on my list, or leave my debit card at
home and go with a limited amount of cash ;-)

Okay, time to sync this with my phone so that I can then email it off
to blogger. Again, sorry for the gumph at the bottom, I'll try to
clean it up sometime. Oh, and did I mention that I can only sync
once? If I want to sync again, I need to reboot both my phone and
laptop. That is so ridiculous, and yet entirely typical right now.