i did manage to get all the way through the block in time for my tutorial. I was the only one in the group who had! I tried to do part 1 over the weekend, but failed miserably. A mixture of sheer laziness and lack of inspiration.

Nearly finished block 3, I had hoped to have completely gone through it by the next tutorial. However, as the tutorial is this Saturday i'm not going to meet that. I'm close though. I can't wait for my holiday, so that i can get some good studying in.

I made myself quite a nice curry last night. Onions fried off with chicken, curry powder, a little water and some tinned toms (although next time i don't think I would bother with the water). It was pretty good, and quite healthy with the onions and toms. No cream, or coconut milk.

My clients are going to find out today that i am no longer working for them. It's quite sad for me, as the people were great and I loved working with them. I am having second thoughts, but whats done is done. I am the queen of bad choices and decisions.

Well they have now found out - several of them were congratulating me. I think they thought that I had a promotion or pay rise or something. I wish. Sometimes i think that i am too stupid to progress.

I am a little down, as I really enjoying working with my clients. In fact it was hugs all round, which i think shows what our relationship was like.

Still, in some ways it was time to move on, I am hoping that I can get a promotion here and perhaps look at going into project management.

I don't know whether or not i should buy a replacement ASAP. I've ordered MS Money, as well as a copy of The Secret (for inspiration) and i could load it onto my work pc as a temporary measure. I've got so much downloaded stuff to watch that i don't need to download anything else (and i definately wouldn't do that on my work pc), I can suf the net on my work one at home, and type up my essays on my work one (which is better as it has a more up to date version of word on it, and boy was i glad that this time i did it on my work one and not my home one as i really would have been gutted if i had lost my tma.

ow that tma03 is gone it feels like a massive weight has been lifted. I've got throught he part of the block on the second sophistic, and i hope i won't need to look at it again. The next part is about religion which is much more to my taste. Plus it has Pliny who is favourite read of mine. Having read other authors I find i can now appreciate his clear writing.

I've decided that i am going to try and eat more healthily. I am starting the day with a glass of OJ.

i got a call back from BT saying that they were going to waive the charges. Looking around onthe net it seems that a simillar thing has happened to other people, where BT never really came outright and said that there would be a charge, and also never said how much they charge if there was going to be a charge. And that everyone seems to think that to replace a faceplate that 189 plus vat is too much.

I'm really not impressed with it. Although i am pleased that they waived the charge.

I bought a Tesco finance package to replace Money, but it doesn't really do everything i need. I had rather come to rely on money's forecasting, so i think i may end up buying it anyway. I wonder if i could persuade PC world, if i bought a new pc or laptop if they would throw in a copy of money for free... it's worth a try

Do you remember when i had a fault with my phone line and an engineer came out and changed the face plate? Well i had my quarterly BT phone bill through and they want to charge me 200 pounds for it.

I am frankly astonished at this as a) i was told i woudl only have to pay if the problem was with an extension to my phone line (which i don't have) and b) 200 quid for a 15 min visit is to be blunt ludicrous.

I phoned up, as i originally didn't know what the charge was for (it was not itemised on the bill at all, just noted as payment charges), which i don't think is good. I would at least expect the bill to note that it was an engineer charge. I got through 3 different people, none of whom could do anything. I started getting upset, as quite frankly i can't afford to pay that much in one bill right now. I kept asking and asking to speak to a manager, but was told that the manager could do nothing. Eventually the last but one person i spoke to agreed to put the "disputed" amount on hold, and someone from the department could call me back. Unfortunately this department works shorter hours than I do, so thats know good for me. I was frustrated.

I could have gone with other companies, but decided to stick with BT out of loyalty, however I am thinking against that now. I kept on insisting that i speak to a manager and the agent kept saying that the manager couldn't do anything and why did i want to speak to them. I explained several times that it was just for me, that i wanted to feel as if i had spoken to someone who could take some kind of responsiblity, even if it was only to tell me in person that they couldn't do anything.

I mean, i've worked for too many years in the service industry to know that sometimes the client just wants to speak to someone higher up even if that person higher up can't do anything!

Eventually i did get through to a manager who said that he personally would phone me back on Mionday to let me know the status and agreed that i should just pay the normal service charge (which I am happy to do, and kept saying to the agent that i wanted to pay and that i was a loyal customer who WANTED to pay).

I've looked on the openreach website and according to that their charges are in fact 85 quid call out and 5 quid for parts. Now, 90 quid i could deal with, as that is simillar to a call out charge for a plumber or electrician or the like.n But 200 quid... i am gobsmacked.

I would be willing to pay that amount... but oh i am so tired.

It's not really been a good week for me.

On the other hand I am close to finishing my TMA. I've done the biblio and put in the question titles into the final document.

Tomorrow i'm going to go over part 1 and hopefully finish writing part 2. Well, it's have to be a bit more than hopefully as it is due on Tuesday...

I think i'm going to go and have a Gin now, as I have a headache after getting so upset at BT.

I dropped my PC off at PCworld last night, and i found out this mornign that they did get to look at it last night. My pc is as dead as a very dead thing. So i'm going to be shopping for a new PC this weekend i feel. He couldn't tell me if my harddrive is ok - and i don't have anything i can test it against- although i guess if i do buy a new pc, i can try it as a slave drive, or the guy at pc world suggested an external caddy which is perhaps not a bad idea if my hd is fried.

I'd been umming and arring about a new pc for a while anyway - so i guess now i have to think about do i want a desktop or a laptop as i used it mainly for listening to music and watching films. My gaming is now console based, so being able to upgrade

I was having one of those moments last night, where everything seems really bad, and then as i was flicking through the TV as i was finding it hard to settle down to study "blind young things" came on, and there was this really positive guy called Dan on it - and it just made me see that things were not that bad after all.

I am so glad that I am well ahead with my TMA, as due to having to drop my pc off at pc world tonight, again i'm probably going to be too tired to really do much. What i have been doing is going through some of the "offprints" (Scholarly articles about various subjects to do with AA309) and marking things that i want to quote and comment on. Not getting anything done, but come Saturday when i have all the time in the world to write, i then have things that i can go straight to ad get stuck into. So i guess it's not completely time wasted.