Random

We've had Vigin Media for so long I've forgotten how long! Every so often (18-24 months) I throw a wobbly and they reduce the price; I dropped the TV option during lockdown and went with several different providers as the broadband is so good these days. We also have O2 phones so get double data on those now (as O2 and VM are under one corporate roof in the UK) and additional VM cable speed. This year they dropped the price by £20/month without asking. Every time I look at justifying dropping VM there is no rationale for doing so.

I've had such poor experiences with Virgin Mobile and Virgn Media over the years that I was greatly relieved last autumn when I finally ditched them totally and now have internet and phone provided by Vodafone. Openreach connected the old BT line back up to the house and in general terms I'm getting a faster connection than VM's alleged "up to 150 Mb/s" (or was it 200?) which rarely exceeded 40 Mb/s

I know a few people who have ditched home broadband entirely and just run everything of a their 5G mobile by switching to an unlimited data contract. If you live in most major towns you can get good enough download speeds for most streaming services.

It's not a route I'd be willing to go down just yet but I can see it coming.

We use mobile 4G albeit with a dedicated hub rather than the phone.
We did have landline broadband but we're so far from the exchange that it was pretty poor. In the early days of lockdown if we both had some meetings at the same time then I'd go into the (empty) office to ensure we could both have a clear connection.

Some sort of fast broadband has been cabled to outside the nearest farm about 3/4 mile away but despite that happening last summer the roll of cable is still wound up and attached to the telegraph pole. It's almost as if they're taunting the folk in those houses!

We have recently moved over to a new fibre broadband and internet-based landline phone with Gigaclear. This is all through new, non-Openreach cables which have been installed around here over the past 12 months.

Other than a 3-day outage near the beginning it seems to be working well, with over 300 mega thingys up and down even on the basic package. Paying less than half of what we were with BT.

Can’t believe this was taken 10 years ago today.

Ran a 10 mile race today and took about a minute and a half off my previous personal best.
The wind was shockingly strong at times.
I was exhausted after it but instead of giving up, I ran the entire thing, despite me wanting to walk near the end.

Slightly bummed that I didn’t run it 12 seconds faster, that would have enabled me to finish in the top 1000 out of almost 5000 registrants (many fewer than that ran the race).
I finished in 1009th place and I’ve another race next month.

In the meantime I’ve a trip to California with work and will be doing a lot of running there as my job will finish at noon everyday.
The nice thing about the trip is I get to catch up with friends and go to eat in places I’ve been missing… Authentic Mexican food and there’s a fantastic bbq place a mate owns where I will be spending large amounts of money to eat dead animals and Mac and cheese.

Anyway, focusing on the food thing now because I’m hungry after burning a load of calories today and am hungry at almost midnight.
It’s also a bank holiday weekend here so no work on Monday.

Fair play Rodge. Wish I could get back into running. Alas my Achilles tendons would rather I didn't. I almost got my 5k time down under 25mins during lockdown.

Rang Virgin to cancel my broadband today.
After a 15 minute wait, I got talking to John.
I informed him I wanted to cancel my account.
He asked me if it was because of the price and I said yes.
He then said they could offer me a better price.
I countered with the new provider giving me twice the speed at half the cost.
He said the other provider always raises their prices in April and I would end up paying more then.
I reminded him that I’m on a set contract for 12 months.
“Oh no, they always put up their prices in April. Last April, they went up 11%”
I replied “well you guys put up your prices 40%”.
Apparently I should have called to get a better offer.
I said they should have offered me a competitive price instead of just putting my bill up 40%.

“Are you sure you don’t want a better deal from us?”
“Well, since I’ve already got the new service installed, I don’t think so”.

Cancellation is proceeding as per my request.

Also, I entered another marathon today. I’ll be running one in Norfolk in April!

Actual conversation in work yesterday between a colleague and I.

We were in the middle of doing something and part of the task was waiting for an item to heat up, so he took out his phone and was looking at it.
He then showed me a picture of a car on one of the websites for used cars.
Nissan Tiida, 2008 model, €1,500.

I looked at it and immediately said “Don’t go near it. Horrible car, a better option is a Corolla as it’ll keep going. “
He replied “it’s got a years mot on it!”
I said “€800 at most, maybe €900 because of the mot.”
Him: “you really think it’ll go for about €800?”
Me: “yes”
Him: “so you think I’m asking too much for it?”
Me: “You’re selling it? Oh I thought you were buying it!”

Other colleague starts laughing and then asks “what did you buy to replace it?”
“A Passat, I paid €700 for it”
Other colleague: “You might as well keep the Nissan, it’ll be useful when the Passat breaks down”

Colleague walks off wondering what happened…

Have had this for a while. 
I’ve developed a like for good whiskey, whisky and bourbon over the past 5 years or so. 
This is going into a hot whiskey to try and remedy the cough/ sore throat I’ve had for the past 2 days, glad I’ve found a use for it 😁

A bloody good game of rugby. Outstanding from England.

£48,652 deposit contribution! 

There is a new Taycan and Audi equivalent on the way with (apparently) much better range and in some models even more performance. Like most tech and white goods the old model becomes nearly worthless when a new model comes out.

I have looked at the e-tron GT as a replacement for the i-Pace but even with large discounts the leasing costs are still high, presumably because they reckon they will only be worth £20K in 3 years time. However they still have hundreds of the old models lying around because people just aren't buying cars at £110K + except for some notable ICE exceptions.