Best Laid Plans.....

[NooNoo]

So for Christmas I promise my son that I will redecorate his bedroom and buy him a new bed... his old bed was £35 in the sale including mattress. The walls of his room were pink painted woodchip (anaglypta) wallpaper and have been that colour since we moved in. My son has been patient, never asked or moaned that his room wasn't to his liking so he definitely deserves a new bedroom.

In addition, both my children's computers are on their last legs. Both were running 98se and have sub 1gig processor, both their monitors are 8 years old and are dodgy about colours.

So in late October I apply for a new credit card with 18month balance transfer interest free. They turn me down because of my credit rating...WHAT?? My credit rating is good to excellent. There then follows an exchange of letters and bank statements and finally at the end of November I get my money.

I check the lead time for the bed my son wants - it's two weeks - great! That leaves a week and a bit for it to be late in. So I order it.

The following week I get a man in to fix the cracks in the ceiling and refinish it which means I have to clear out his room and put him in the box room which was full of stuff. So a mass sort out weekend ensues...followed by a trip to the carpet shop to choose the carpet and set the delivery date for the 18th December

I found two "new" epox cube barebones systems on ebay, I order one intel and one amd. I order some ram from crucial to go with the intel since it's dual channel. I find a couple of likely processors and bid for them and win. All that stuff turns up without issue. I throw the boxes together quickly to check everything works and it appears to (I don't try and put os'es and such on just yet)
... and that probably was the last thing to go right up until yesterday afternoon.

My son has two days off sick so I can't do the computers and have to leave that till later.

From this point it becomes a list of disasters

The man to do the ceiling didn't know what he was doing. The ceiling looked awful and 3 days later the cracks were back. I had to hire another guy to do the job properly.

On the Friday, two monitors and two hard drives should have turned up. They didn't

My daughter put her knee through a glass door that I thought was tempered glass - apparently it isn't. The door turns out to be a special size and is rotten so has to be replaced instead of repaired.

I called the bed company because I hadn't heard from them and was told that the bed would be delivered in mid January... I pointed out it was nearly 3 weeks now and their lead time was two weeks. They mumbled something about a dropped pallet and said sorry. They did tell me that they would be getting some in on Wednesday evening. I asked if I could pick it up... we eventually split the difference, I would collect from my parents house which is half way to the company that was delivering.

The radiator pipes in my son's bedroom decided to leak overnight, so cooking 50 mince pies for the school fete was an hour late, but I made it. While I was out at the fete on Saturday afternoons the monitors were delivered to a neighbour (they say they don't work Saturdays!) but no sign of the hard drives.

I stripped the old wallpaper off and prepared the walls for new paint... or so I thought. It took 4 coats of paint to cover the light beige colour that was under the wallpaper - two coats more than I had time to do. I discovered that the chap who did the ceiling badly had left a clear film of glue up to 3 mm thick in places where the wallpaper border was to go... another half day wasted trying to get that off.

I decided I would finish the wallpaper after the carpet man has been because wallpaper paste is relatively easy to get out of the carpet. The guy was due at 8am - he finally turned up at 1.30pm... I could have done the wallpapering in that time, but I didn't.

Instead I checked out the monitors... good job I did too - they were the wrong ones! Got an RMA easy enough and the return was booked for the next day, but I then had to order two more monitors and pay for them before I received a refund on the other monitors because of the proximity of Christmas. Needless to say I ordered them from another company and had to pay extra for overnight delivery.

The carpet man left and I tried to hoover the carpet so it looked good when my son got home from school. Something jammed in the hoover and it took the 20 minutes I had to clear the jam.

The man to collect the monitors was supposed to have arrived, but he hadn't. I tried to report non-collection but the website was down and it's internet only communication... I finally got in the site at 7am the following morning.

The new monitors turned up from the other store and I checked them out and they appeared to be perfect. The hard drives finally turned up and they collected the wrong monitors. I got a phone call confirming that the bed would be delivered to my parents house on Thursday. I honestly thought my luck was changing for the better!

Wednesday morning I load the intel box with windows and notice the temps on the cpu... 54C idle... eek! but it is a prescott 3.0 and it is a small case. I try to get the wireless card on the net and it refuses to connect... suddenly it's midday and the kids will be home from school, I hide the computers with 10 seconds to spare.

So Wednesday evening I leave for my parents... 2 hours in the car turns into 5 hours with two bored, hungry kids. Thursday goes OK, the bed is delivered and is stuffed into my car with just enough room for the kids. Shopping is finished off and Friday my mother books an appointment for a foot pampering session for me.... heaven.

Friday afternoon we go home unload the bed and get it into my son's room - even flatpacked into 3 boxes each box is damned heavy.

Saturday morning my kids are supposed to go with their dad... he calls and cancels. I still have a bed to make and 2 pcs to get ready. My daughter decides that I am way too stressy and haven't made any effort to make them feel christmassy... a row ensues and nothing gets done on either the bed or the pcs.

Sunday the kids go to their dad's for christmas eve german style with his mother. A friend turns up to help me with the bed. We attack the intel pc first since the instructions on the bed say 3.5 hours for two people. HAH! We start the bed at 4pm having not been able to solve the heat issue with the intel box, temps rocket to over 70C just loading java! We underclock the CPU to 1.5ghz 266fsb. It mostly stays under 70C (and therefore shutdown temp). Box it up and pray - we have 5 hours to put the bed together.

Open the book, there are 50 steps. 5 hours later, we have got to step 19. The predrilled holes line up but there are a load of angle brackets which do not have predrilled holes... all have to be measured and screwed. None of the pieces are marked and are sorted according to size and depth, so identifying once piece from another means an accurate tape measure. The kids are due back and we decide that the instructions need to be amended to read it will take you 3.5 hours between two of you once you have already built 100 of these as a rehearsal and you have two sets of tools.

I tell my son he won't be sleeping in his new bed tonight as promised. He goes to bed and I get out his computer to bung windows on it in a hurry. I boot the thing with the windows cd and it just sits there... does nothing. Pull the hard drive, it posts fine and setup runs... hard drive is fine, I check it in another machine. Change out the ide cable, and get screwy symbols in the bios. Same if I try it on the optical drive port. I swap ports and drives and cables and come to the conclusion the hard drive port is bad. It's now 3.30am Christmas Morning. I wrap it up and decide to explain to him that neither of his presents are ready for him.

They love their santa presents in their rooms and entertain themselves till 8am when I get up. We decide to open the presents that have appeared under the tree overnight at 10am. They are absolutely thrilled with the monitors and computers despite the fact that they don't work - they know I'll fix them.

I turn on the oven, shove in the Turkey joint and go for a bath with my new bath stuff from my daughter. I relax, read a book and enjoy. I get out of the bath and get dressed and check on the Turkey... the oven had gone out and had not relighted itself as it is supposed to. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I sat down on the kitchen floor and cried. I couldn't even get Christmas lunch to cook. I pulled myself together and Christmas lunch became Christmas very late lunch.

I set up the tape recorder to record the Dr Who concert 4 times... 1st time it quit for no apparent reason, second time my son changed channel on the video, 3rd time the tape ran out because I thought it was a 4 hour tape but it was a 3 hour tape, 4th time I got it right.

The next morning my neighbour needed brakeshoes ordering from the parts shop next to the cinema, we are going so I say I will get them. Turns out the only way to tell which ones you need is to remove the rear wheel and measure the diameter of the drum and then remove the front wheel to see if Bendix or Lucas is stamped on the front disk. So much for helping her out....

But, in the cinema queue a woman taps me on the shoulder and asks if we're going to see Happy Feet, I say yes and she gives me an adult ticket to the next show and leaves. I am gobsmacked... I only have to buy a child ticket!

Has my luck changed?

[geoscomp]

Damn, NooNoo!..I'm still stuck back on the 50 mince pies! Here's hoping that your luck HAS changed..and have a great New Year

[Garak]

damn... you need a rest

[Mags]

I just read it all and am off to bed soon. Oh dear, Noo Noo.

I started a thread in two other groups I'm in, on 'What did you do for Christmas?' outlining what I'd done ... and asking what others had done. I don't think I'd better start same thread here !

Hope everything improves.

And yes, those build yourself kits .. I wrote a poem called 'Phoo to New' did I post it here, can't remember, reminds me of that.

Night...

[CCT]

Sounds like you have 2 wonderful kids and a roof over your head and a job and friends and food so, what the hell, 'Smile, Be Happy!'.

[Platypus]

Strewth! I sure hope things settle down for you Noo, and you can enjoy a pleasant New Year.

[xpuser357]

Sounds like you have been busy,

[jitBob]

You fooled me! From the title of this thread I thought Noo was gonna get some!

[El_Squid]

Great Googly Moogly! Bless your heart! Quick, go buy a lottery ticket! 'Cause after all that, you have built up an awesome amount of good karma.

[Stalemate]

I think this all redefines the term "suckage".


Wishing you the best for 2007 Noo.

[street1]

That is totally INEXCUSEABLE! A late Christmas dinner? You did a great job Noo Noo.

It takes a great mum to do it all. Thank goodness you didn't have a husband there
to make things even worse.

[NooNoo]

You will be pleased to hear that both the kids computers are now running, not quite properly but well enough for them to play Rayman and the like My son's bed has now been built and he slept in it last night and is thrilled with it... I just wish I used a tape measure before I bought the damn thing! It is somewhat taller than I thought it was....

[Pinnacle]

I finally got back to this thread. WOW! Someday, you will look back at this and laugh. I hope your life gets less stressful soon.

[Mags]

Great, it all got done !

[asm]

Merry Christmas NooNoo and have a very Happy New Year!