Monthly Archives: August 2006

The anger rumbles on

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I had hoped that my anger at the holiday company would subside some when we got back – it has shown little sign of it. J is scribing the letter to them. They accept email complaints which has a huge great bonus for me – it’s easily bloggable. So once the complaint is sent, and once they refuse to do what we ask and we take them to the Small Claims Court (hopefully) and win (hopefully) I can do a mass libel of as many as I know in the company (this will happen either way). In the meantime I am collecting the addresses of the helpful sites that publish holiday reviews. They’ll get the post too. Usenet can have it. Anyone can have it. The Company Directors will get it. And when the company refuse to pay – which I’m sure they will – we will force them. Win or lose I’ll say my bit – I’m just being a tiny bit more careful right now because … well, it makes sense. I cannot remember being so very very angry at a company before though. Normally J gets the desire to see people burn for making mistakes and I’m the one telling her to relax a bit. This time she wants them to burn and I’m stoking those fires good and high…..

Goal for the end of Friday – actually catch up on work.

S(h)allow

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I was looking for a book to read in the hotel shop. I picked one up to find a recommendation from Kate Moss that the book was a “riveting read”. Quite how a publisher thought that a quote from the girl who thinks shooting up with Pete “I’m a doe-eyed idiot who needs my head slamming against a wall” Doherty is worthy of note is entirely beyond me. I can honestly say that I put that book down and would never touch it again. Mind, in Borders today I caught sight of a book that was being recommended by Katie Price. Maybe it’s part of a “Blonde and can read” campaign…

Returned.

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I’m not mentioning the holiday company yet because the volley of complaints continues later this morning. But I’ll give you a quote:

Yes Mrs *****, we know this hotel is completely unsuitable for you.
Do enjoy your holiday.

150m from the beach it said. Try 800m and 50+ steps. And the entire hotel was totally unsuitable for anyone with any walking difficulties. Nice eh? We complained within hours of arrival and they did nothing.

Anyway, we are back, D has excellent GCSE results and I’ve a serious amount of emails to wade through.

Stay up or Get up?

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Later than I thought to still be online as I forgot to grab some podcasts which I’m now doing. I could have done this in the morning but I’m doing it tonight. I’m undecided as to which could be the more correct decision – stay up and get things done or wake that bit earlier and get it done then.
And hand baggage is allowed… hmm…..
Saw the guy from Ryanair on TV earlier bleating about security. How about that airline gets none next time? But maybe they should all pay? Better still, throw 10p tax on a litre of airline fuel seeing as they pay zero tax on that stuff yet it churns out tonnes of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. Just 10p would see things better. Anyway, podcasts are about in so unless my nephew and niece switch this on and go to all the wrong places it’ll be off for a while. Have fun :)

Losing magnetism

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Acer are taking the laptop and according to the guy they may replace the motherboard and the HD. Not a problem, it’s all backed up. On the way to Comet where the machine will be taken care of I realised that Firefox has some important data so I fired it up, cleared cookies, cleared saved data and reset the home page to the BBC. After shutting down I remembered Thunderbird so I then removed all the email accounts. Now I know all the data is really still there but for the casaul Comet employee who may decide to play it’s pretty well hidden. Then I got to wondering about the HD. Let’s say Acer decide to junk mine and use a new one (which I doubt – it’s only the MBR hangover from when I tried Ubuntu but they may as well fix it) I wonder what their policy is for old HD’s? The BBC have an article today about old bank details and HD’s so it made me wonder a bit. Not that I have anything super-important and maybe they do have a “We take a sledgehammer to your data, then we drop it in acid, then run it through powerful solenoids and lastly encase it in concrete and drop it into the North Sea.” which would be nice but somehow I doubt. Still, so long as it’s fixed.

(I think that is the first time I have written ‘solenoid’ since finishing A level Physics..)

Monday.

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Wake with a blinding headache mitigated only slightly by the news that girls might be able to take their Nintendo DS’s on the plane. Then I ring Acer because the laptop needs to go be mended and being away for 2 weeks is the ideal time. I rand at 12:15 to hear a short recorded message that they are ‘Closed for Lunch’. Now how quaint is that? And how weird that a company that sells products for a switched-on world switches itself off for 60 minutes in the working day.
J has – we hope – sorted a wheelchair for the airports and that also means we get to be at the front of the queue to be boarded (but maybe the last at the other end?). I’m not entirely trusting the result she’s got though, esp at the other end but we have no choice but to wait and see.
Next to the bank to get some funny euro money. And hopefully it stays funny money for many many years to come. No more of that Euro-governed nonsense over here thankyouverymuch.

And I can’t wait til we get back already – there’s a little job I’ve found which really does need doing, I’m sure I can do it and it may bear some fruit too ;)

Overhead lockers

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Why has no-one trumpeted the big bonus of no carry-on luggage? No more idiots trying to squeeze huge bags into small spaces. No waiting for ages in the aisle as someone decides they want something from their bag and when their partner gets it they say “No.. the other one!”, no more draining waits after landing as the bags are got, dropped, and strapped to shoulders then bounced on the still sitting heads. Isn’t this a Good Thing? Add in the fact that there will be no crinkly sweet wrappers, no people singing along “silently” to their ipods … the bonuses far far outweigh any sort of inconvenience for me. In fact it has the potential to be a pleasure flying this time :)

1am typing

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It’s 01:11 as I start this and yet again I find myself in the wrong timezone. Not that it matters hugely, but I;ll be tired Tuesday when I have to get up so early to leave for the plane. Did I say my trainers were x-rayed twice in when boarding the flight back to the UK? I didn’t bleep going through the detector but I knew that one of the guys had his eye on m. I heard the word ‘tattoos’ and was then asked to take off the trainers I have just put back on after they had been examined in the scanner. Not that anything came of it of course. “Tattoos” “Bad guy” – that obviously makes perfect sense. Silly me for thinking they were clueless idiots. Not as bad as the dicks in Immigration though. Now they were dicks. I thought their eyebrows would have jutted out further though…
And onto a plane we go Tuesday. Am I bothered? Why on earth should anyone on a plane not bound for the USA be bothered? If an American is not involved then GWB and his little coterie of hawks don’t give a damn. So no, I don’t care. And even if I did, even if there is someone plotting to down that plane what am I meant to do? Not go out? Whatever.

I’m more bothered about being away from a keyboard for 2 weeks :) I never trust computers abroad for anything more than IRC so there is no blogging, no email, no support – nothing. This is a holiday from all things kb. I wait to see if I get any reaction to wearing the Wordcamp t-shirt though. That would be neat.

I must remember to go a Google Earth map of all the places I went to in SF – from the Burmese arounnd the corner to Alcatraz. It’ll be interesting to do and to put with my photos.

Has the price of drinks gone up on planes? Or can’t they carry their own drinks? Do they frisk for Mentos?

I just noticed that comment#83 on the What makes you happy? post (top right) has the name Noel Edmunds in it. He’s an odd little man. Saw him once at some Mr Blobby thing we took D to when she was really small. His beard is too trim for me. I bet he spends hours grooming himself, aligning those little whiskers, tinting them carefully to match whatever vision he has of himself. Like I said, Odd. And those jumpers. And that tv show with the boxes? wtf is that all about then eh?

Bookmark this: http://www.asofterworld.com

An amazing suspension photograph (NSFW)

Play: Arrow Tag (did I blog this before?)

Bryan is asking for opinions on the Write screen which will be getting some attention. Given that unless you ask you’ll never get, go post. Be positive!

And autosave is now in WordPress core (svn core that is). The little letters just under this box tell me it’s been saved at 1:45:29 – I’m sure I said autosave was a bad thing when it was proposed ages ago on hackers and I have no idea why I said it. It’s unobtrusive though, it’ll no doubt save the odd post. And this sort of thing illustrates perfectly why someone like me should not do any sort of code stuff. Fickle. You want to know who should do code? Nerds :)

Banks.

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Given that banks are run entirely by computers and that there is absolutely no-one working for one who has the ability or desire to use independent thought, why do they have so many employees? Why do they have people? All those people are doing is feeding computers. They are not making decisions because computers do not allow them to. They are not employed for any other reason than being able to copy-type numbers. They are not employed to be anything other than a ‘human face’. Screw that – I’d rather have a machine to swear at because that’s all these people actually are – automatons. Where can the job satisfaction be of all day saying “Computer says No” or “Computer says Yes”? Is that some sort of valued career? Why don’t the theiving banks just stick machines in there and grab even more money for themselves?

Banks. “We screw you because we can.”