Some of the places I've been since my broadband disappeared a week ago BestMate's sofa: 45 minutes of proper broadband and I managed to catch up on all sorts of things, including adding the photos and links to Unblogged March which was previously bereft. Bank: I'm always amazed how often the all-encompassing adverts up the Waterloo & City line travelator get changed. At the moment the company desperately trying to get noticed is called beazley (lower case), who do underwriting or something, and I guess if just one corporate bigwig notices and switches their company's services it's all worth it. Bromley-by-Bow: I mentioned last month that the tube station's glass frontage has been seriously damaged for over two years and never been repaired. Now someone's climbed up and graffitied it with red, black and white paint and it looks hugely worse. Get a grip. Burnt Oak: A plaque commemorating "a century of service" has been unveiled in the station ticket hall, five months after the actual centenary. I was unimpressed enough not to bother taking a photo (Ian has one). East Dulwich: I was also here. Feltham: Something that's never happened to me before - the 235 bus was so full that the driver checked its weight on her dashboard and announced there was only leeway for one more person on board. Three Eastern European workmen kindly allowed me to take the last space. Grove Park: I spotted a van putting Superloop roundels on shelters along new route SL4. Half are at stops where you can't catch a special bus because the express section is all behind you. Absolute waste of money. Harrow-on-the-Hill: That's the educational outpost up Grove Hill, not the station. It's really quiet up here when Harrow School's not in session. It turns out they broke up for Easter last Saturday at 11am, a week before most schools, because the more you pay for an education the fewer weeks you get. Heathrow T4: I hadn't ridden a purple train to Heathrow before, mainly because of the cost, but can confirm that the usual £12.80 fare really is zero with a 60+ card. Honeypot Lane: I was also here. Kenley: As promised I went back and added the post I would have written on Sunday had my broadband not vanished. It's about bus route changes, to save some of you from looking. Keston Mark: The traffic lights at this busy crossroads weren't working because they'd been smashed. Peculiarly two of the four poles were bent over at right angles so it couldn't possibly have been a single accident, more likely a deliberate act of vandalism by some self-entitled vigilante who hates cameras. London Loop section 22: I took BestMate to Upminster Bridge and re-walked part of the London Loop (one of the shortest sections, I'd thought, but on closer inspection merely lower quartile). The weather was glorious if windy, and the recent drought meant the "can be muddy here" sections were reassuringly solid underfoot. We met two very nonplussed goats, disturbed a woodpecker, wondered what the crop in the field was, identified the planes stacking over Redbridge, spotted several butterflies, attempted to identify the source of some dung, crossed the Ingrebourne, admired much magnolia, noted with sadness the replacement lampposts, wondered what neighbourly feud had inspired a massive hedge, debated what would become of the tumbledown farm outbuildings, compared the constituent heights of 24-year-old woodland, passed a wooden grasshopper, Instagrammed a pylon, wondered how frogs spawn in a dried-up pond, dissed a statue of King Harold and admired the Parcels entrance to Harold Wood station. It's not the thrillingest bit of Loop but it was much better than I remembered. Marylebone: The staff in the information kiosk wear swooshy capes with 'Bicester Village' on the back, which to the target audience probably looks endearingly Harry-Potter-ish but I suspect the average Brit just giggles. Oval: I was walking around some bikes outside the station when I suddenly tripped, hard, onto the pavement and fuxbolx that hurt! I had to pick my glasses out of the road. Several kind people asked if I was OK and I said I was, then limped to a nearby wall and sat there for five minutes while I undazed. The bruises were impressive. The blood has not yet washed out. I require neither your sympathy nor your medical opinion, thanks, nor am I counting it as my first Senior Moment. But it was a visceral reminder that one day my body won't be capable of standing after a fall like that, so just be careful OK? Putney Bridge/Mortlake: I did this journey by train and bus, I wasn't rowing. South Norwood: I was also here. Sudbury Hill Harrow: The cheapskates at Chiltern Railway have removed all their timetable posters "as part of a commitment towards a more sustainable railway". Instead they've printed a poster directing passengers to their "digital timetable page", henceforth and forever, which is fine if you've got a functioning online connection but a fat lot of good if you turn up phoneless and want to know when the trains go. They do say "ticket office staff can print timetables on your behalf from most of our station booking offices" but what use is that at an unstaffed station like Sudbury Hill Harrow? This is one of London's very least used stations and now you can't even see when its infrequent service runs. The lack of a printed timetable poster isn't saving the planet, merely a minimal saving for shareholders and a self-inflicted inconvenience for passengers. Sundridge Park: I was also here. I'll be back.

The person who holds the world record for basketball free throws shot over 2,000 consecutive baskets in a row. But if you put them in a stadium and a tight score between the teams, they might not have been able to shoot two. The main difference between playing basketball in a rec league and playing […] The post Professionalism and pressure appeared first on Herbert Lui.

After waking up yesterday I checked my router in case my broadband had restarted overnight. Still red, so no. "We wanted you to know that the fault you reported to us is now fixed. Please turn your router off and on, and your service should be fully restored." Ho-bloody-rah. Which was odd because the BT Service Status Checker now thought everything was now fixed. I re-reported the fault and they sent me another text message. "We can see that the line from our network to your home is working so let's take a look at the connection in your home. The good news is that these issues can often be fixed quickly and easily with a few simple checks. You can check find assistance on our website at [link] to guide you through what to look for. Let's see if that fixes the problem." This was their list of things to try. 1. Use the BT Broadband troubleshooter 2. Make a call on your landline 3. Restart your Hub 4. Check the lights on your hub 5. Power cycle your modem 6. Try your test socket I now had no broadband but BT didn't think I had a problem, This was even less ideal. There really was a fault, nothing had been fixed and they didn't know how long it might take to solve. I was back to square one. But I have no idea how long this is going to last - it could be only a few more hours or it could be another fortnight. Also trying to contact BT is easy but speaking to a human is hard. Every path through their customer service telephone portal seems to lead to a text message or a website and them ringing off, thinking their job is done. "We're working on it" is all very well, but by Day Six you really want to know more than that. i) offering up useful advice ii) advising me to do something I'm already doing iii) mitigation I have no intention of pursuing iv) a suggestion someone else has already suggested v) explaining how best to complain vi) recounting how it all went wrong for you vii) telling me I'm foolish for not having done something viii) detailing a separate problem you have ix) claiming BT are the spawn of the devil x) frenetic spleen Generally the nearer to the top of that classification the more useful, and the nearer to the bottom the more I roll my eyes. Aim high, ladies and gentlemen. Commentswise I also note that collectively you're far more interested in my broadband woes than say buses through the Silvertown Tunnel, so why struggle to write 1500 words about the suburbs when corporate failure is an easier target? Do please bear with me during this difficult period. Full refunds are available if you don't think you're getting the service you deserve.

This was a lesson one of my bosses shared with me: most people don’t improve consistently every quarter. Instead, progress ebbs and flows.  Sometimes—maybe many times—you might feel like you’re going through a plateau. Many other people would quit. If you remain confident you’re heading in the right direction, then you need to stick with […] The post Progress ebbs and flows appeared first on Herbert Lui.