Monday, September 13, 2010

Revenge of the internet service provider

Having managed to get the T-Mobile content lock successfully removed and post my contribution to the Cinema Viewfinder David Cronenberg blog-a-thon, I found myself disconnected from T-Mobile just hours later and I am now temporarily without telephone and internet access at home.

Long story, and I don’t want to start scraping away on the world’s smallest violin and bore you all with my financial woes, but Paula’s firm recently changed their payroll arrangements. Used to be I got paid on the last day of the month, the mortgage and a couple of other bills went out, we shopped for food, fuelled up the car and that bank balance basically flatlined until Paula got paid on the 10th. Now, though, for reasons best known to themselves, Paula’s workplace are paying their staff on the 25th.

We knew about this a few months in advance and did our best to budget accordingly, including changing the dates of a few direct debits. Nonetheless, something had to give and I was faced with the choice of either not paying my car insurance or not paying T-Mobile. Not paying the car insurance would have been tempting fate, so I called T-Mobile, explained the situation and even managed to scrape enough together to make a small grace payment.

Obviously, it wasn’t enough for them and my account has been suspended. Unless I benefit from a lottery win or unexpected inheritance in the interim, I won’t have internet access at home until at least the 25th.

How much material appears on the blog between now and then depends on the availability of friends’ computers. It might be a bit catch as catch can for the next two weeks.

I’m still busily preparing reviews and I’ve set myself a deadline of 10th October for completing Operation 101010 (ie. 101010 finished on 10.10.10). I’m confident I’ll get the remaining films watched the reviews written by then, but whether they all get posted on The Agitation of the Mind in time is something I wouldn’t put money on … even if I had any right now.

So, this post is just to apologise for the absence of Something For The Weekend yesterday (it would have featured Julie Christie in ‘Darling’) and for the fact that I won’t be able to leave as many comments as I normally would on my favourite blogs. Please bear with me; normal service will resume soon.

2 comments:

Keith said...

Hey there. Good luck. I wish you the best. Thanks for your comment on my last blog post. It was great hearing from you. I hope all is well with you. I'm looking for a new job, plus I'm thinking about going back to college. Take care. Have a wonderful week ahead!

Neil Fulwood said...

Hi, Keith. Thanks for dropping by. Hope things are improving for you. Good idea about going back to college - the more qualifications you've got, the more it helps when you're job-hunting.

Take care and good luck!