Grumble 1: When they resurfaced the pavements on our estate they did a very tacky job that means they will need doing again within two years rather than doing the job properly so they would last more like ten.

Grumble 2: No sooner had they finished resurfacing the pavements than the telephone people are digging them up to put in fibre. No idea if that is to give me broad band or for some other provider.

Grumble 2: No sooner had they finished resurfacing the pavements than the telephone people are digging them up to put in fibre. No idea if that is to give me broad band or for some other provider.

If the vans are labelled 'Openreach', then they're a common carrier, and any retail provider can lease the lines and provide the service. The only other major supplier is Virgin, who inherited the Cable TV networks and are repurposing them to provide broadband as well. Everything else is private enterprise - usually for commercial customers only.

12 days from now I'll be without power all day due to the power provider needing to switch from a small transformer to a larger one. Got a letter in, between 7am and 4pm - depending on weather - I won't have power. And then a whole list of things that I cannot do then. Ta!

Grumble 2: No sooner had they finished resurfacing the pavements than the telephone people are digging them up to put in fibre. No idea if that is to give me broad band or for some other provider.

City Broadband. Bringing Gigabit to those who opt for that provider so not open reach and not for me.

I thought there was some government initiative decades ago to make it cheaper or less fines or something for digging up roads one after another instead of working together and doing water and phones at once etc?

There was. Either this lot didn't care or didn't have the resources to do it here before the resurfacing.

Not 100% sure if it applies to pavements or just to the road.

That depends on how the road was defined all those years back, and is currently defined.
Sometimes they were defined as a combination of "pavement" and "roadway", and sometimes the two were separated. All too often the definition is very vague, or has not kept up with changes over the years. Then of course there may have been a bit of forward thinking by the first contractor who knew that in a couple of weeks time someone else was coming along to do some more work so they decided to save a few quid and land the second lot with the costs of having to do the full restitution.

Being able to hot-swap transformers really depends on how the site is configured. In some places it is a very easy process as there is space to have two transformers is available, but in others this is not the case.

Grumble: "Richard Haselgrove" is sending me spam emails again and I can't even forward them to him as his email server does block them as spam. 😭

Grumble: "Richard Haselgrove" is sending me spam emails again and I can't even forward them to him as his email server does block them as spam. 😭

Why on earth would Richard spam you?

I don't. Some third party has set up an email account with their own credentials, but have attached my plain-text name to the spoof account. You would have to question their motivation.

I really can't tolerate idiots.

How do you tolerate that guy in the mirror?

Just had to drive half way across West Yorkshire (well, about two miles, really) to deliver a lecture that I thought I'd retired about 25 years ago.

When you were taught to type in secretarial college, you were trained not to look at the piece of typing in your machine - after all, it's got nothing on it except what you've already typed. Concentrate instead on your shorthand pad, or whatever you're copying - the stuff you're going to type next.

That new machine on your desk isn't a typewriter - it's a computer. Computers are different: what you see on the screen isn't just what you've typed - the computer can send messages back to you as well. Look at the screen - the whole screen - and learn to understand the messages that you see there. It'll make your job much easier in the years to come.

25 years on, it's still true, and still useful.

Just had to drive half way across West Yorkshire (well, about two miles, really) to deliver a lecture that I thought I'd retired about 25 years ago.

When you were taught to type in secretarial college, you were trained not to look at the piece of typing in your machine - after all, it's got nothing on it except what you've already typed. Concentrate instead on your shorthand pad, or whatever you're copying - the stuff you're going to type next.

That new machine on your desk isn't a typewriter - it's a computer. Computers are different: what you see on the screen isn't just what you've typed - the computer can send messages back to you as well. Look at the screen - the whole screen - and learn to understand the messages that you see there. It'll make your job much easier in the years to come.

25 years on, it's still true, and still useful.

Interesting,
I sometimes type while talking to someone. I remember their amazement when I backspaced and corrected something in Word without looking at the screen.