Sick, Post Office complaint, Windows 8 and a hot bath

Today was a sick day. Sick as in unwell. As such it meant no working for me. I am hoping that it's just a quick thing that I can shake off by tomorrow.

I did manage to catch up with American Horror Story and Cockneys V Zombies and enjoy some of Toni's gorgeous curried parsnip soup while curled up on the sofa feeling sorry for myself.

This afternoon I had the pleasure of making a "fairly annoyed" phone call with the Post Office on behalf of Sam. He posted a package on the 7th January. It was Guaranteed Next Day By 1PM. Track and trace on the 8th showed that it still hadn't arrived. Sam called them on the 11th and they advised him to make a compensation claim which he sent off the same day. On the 16th the package suddenly started moving with the status changing to: "We have received your item and expect to deliver it before the guaranteed time on 17/01/13. If you have purchased Saturday guarantee, your delivery will be guaranteed on Saturday."

On the 17th it said the package was delivered. As of today Sam had received no contact from the recipient so he called them up and they said that nothing had been received. Once we called up the Post Office and they had taken various details and suchlike the confirmed that the package had been received and signed for..... at a postcode that was nowhere near the intended address. Unbelievable! Not only did the package go missing in action for 9 days but it then ended up going to the wrong place. Incompetent much! He has provided all the necessary receipts and such like so hopefully they will at least process his claim quickly and give him the money that he is due. Watch this space!

Having hated the pre-release version of Windows 8 (a product that I removed from my laptop within an hour of installing it) I decided to give it another go tonight. Have to say that the retail version is much better. There are still little bits that I am not too keen on but it seems to be a lot neater than the pre-release was. The Metro (Start) page isn't as annoying as I feared it might be but I suspect little time will be spent there anyway as it's very easy to get to the normal desktop. It's easy enough to stick things on there if required but there is little point as I don't have a touch screen interface anyway.

All my common stuff just gets pinned to the task bar, always has done. It was a painless upgrade from Windows 7 as I had no hardware compatibility issues and only two programs needed to be installed and that was quick and easy to do. I still think it's a little too much change for most people (queue screams of "Where the hell is the Start button") and without a touch screen the Metro interface is kind of pointless so I think it will be slow to take off especially in the business/office environment.

Despite my hopes at the start of this blog I have now resorted to having a hot bubble bath as I still feel like crap. Fingers crossed things settle down and I am good for work tomorrow!