3 plumbers were asked to quote for work – to replace 2 radiators. Here's a mercifully shortened tale of woe…

Dear Plumbers, how difficult can it be to:

1. Visit when someone asks for a quotation?
2. When a potential customer is visited, to prepare a quotation, estimate, something, in a reasonable time, i.e. not simply disappear?
3. Do a good job when you get the work? And that's the key here; we got a crap 'un…

He changed the radiators, that much is true. The rest though, naah,' twas a bit crap.

• Rescheduled twice, from times that suited us to times that emphatically did not,
• Flexible plastic piping to join up to the rigid copper stuff,
• The cut ends from the copper pipes left by the side of the bed for me to stand on,
• He obviously hadn't doors at home; Ruby dog got out, he'd left the front door open as far as it could possibly go. Twice,
• Left the packaging materials for us to clear away,
• The hall carpet is soaked,
• Black gunk left in the bedroom carpet and outside, he mustn't have put a sheet down – or used the packaging materials,
• Didn't bleed the air out of the system before he left,
• When he returned to get heat into our home he spent more time telling me we had a crap system, that our new boiler wasn't working, that…

The worst bit though, when he told me he was on a course in London today & tomorrow. My wife mentioned afterwards that he'd spoken on his phone (loudspeaker of course) with a woman just around the corner about a job he was doing there today.

During his followup call later, after I'd got rid of him, he let me know that I could ring him today and if we were having problems he could look on Thursday. The thing is, consistency is all in attempting to spread positive feedback about a business. To tell me "I'm not being evasive" when telling me why he couldn't make it today; sorry mate, I'll be looking for tradesman review sites now.

So I spent time bleeding the system until it just worked.

2am.

Today for lunch I went around to the café and bought a spam & egg butty and blueberry muffin, and sat at my desk to eat them.

Feeling much better now.

It snowed in Rochdale today, and Rochdale ground to a near-halt. My drive to work, a journey that normally takes around 20 minutes, took 2 hours!

It happens every winter, every time it snows.

The utterly clueless idiots-behind-their-wheels appear to make my desire for a 4-wheel-drive car a near-irrelevance.

'Near' isn't total; that'll do for me.

February 29 (Wikipedia) is a date that appears only during years divisible by 4 (with an integer remainder!) – apart from those divisible by 100 (but not 400) no, don't stop reading…

There are a lot of interesting notable dates, people and legal facts mentioned on the Wikipedia page, so it's quite a scroll to get to…

In this modern age Bachelor's Day doesn't retain the same importance it once had. But if you're on the edge of popping the question to the subject of your undying love, it's a heck of a day to do it.

Gloves on standby!

During November 2015 I decided to start a daily journal – an activity which soon changed into an almost-daily series of blog posts. During the time since I've noticed a shift in the way I approach social media. I'm not sure I like it.

The blogging exercise quickly morphed into a need to create a test site, added to GitHub.com in parallel to my main 10Centuries blog account. I've also been experimenting with rudimentary self-hosting.

As this has happened I've been neglecting both my blog and those people who comment on the posts. I've not even been keeping up with the shiny new 10Centuries.org after my initial flurry of (hopefully constructive) fault reporting during the early private beta stage.

So it's time for a rethink.

Sure it may be the time of year at fault; I'm not alone in noticing a realignment of priorities away from social media. But this time around I'm analysing in a bit more depth.

So…

Rather than concentrate on 'self' I think it's time I looked at others' blogs. It's only fair.

I've quite a backlog of posts in my RSS feed reader. Time to read, folks.

If you have a blog of your own please let me know, if I have or if I haven't already got it queued up I'll take a look!

Thanks!

A small number of us wear similar sweaters for work – similar in that they're self-coloured and pleasantly form-fitting. Ok, in my case it's because they've shrunk in the wash… (but that's the subject of a previous, uncomfortable-for-me, blog entry here.)

Yesterday a slightly awkward exchange occurred at the coffee machine, one which I felt an urge to follow up by email. I'd had a brilliant idea – a Eureka moment (but without the nudity and attendant spillages.) Here's the brief exchange:

"As an engineer I’m bound by a code of professional conduct to suggest a solution to the jumper hue issue; a daily palette based on the colours of the rainbow. In ascending frequency order, and by day.

Unfortunately though, my purple one today falls outside the rigid boundaries of the, it must be said, unfortunately limited scheme. Your flagrant Thursday jumper today merits a red card I’m afraid, though I’m sure you could carry the visible spectrum off better than I were you to try harder.

I’d better start work on version 2.0.

Baz."

The reply came a little later. I'd honestly not expected one.

"Hi Barrie,

Thank you so much for your email. Well, what can I say? I’m disappointed with myself that I have got off to a bad start on the first day of the week, but I do feel that I need to correct you on something. Your jumper hue is not purple. I do believe it’s a wine/beetroot shade, but definitely not purple.

Whilst I appreciate and do accept the card, I can’t accept a red one. Red is just not my colour. I don’t do red and that’s that. Red is not good for us gingers, I’m afraid and as I am too bound by a professional code of conduct as a ginger, you will simply have to come up with another colour.

I eagerly await your palette…

Have a nice day,"

Me, speechless, though not apoplectically-so:

"*Baz stills sense of outrage, stands sits corrected, starts work on v2.0.1*"

The conciliatory response came an agonising-for-me 50 minutes later:

"I must say that the beetroot/wine colour does suit you though. A warm colour for these Wintery times. I would even go as far to say that it’s perhaps a burgundy. There’s not many who can carry such a shade off."

Awesome. And, with that, order in my universe was restored.

Which was nice.