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Righteous

Posted by bb on Thursday 7th of June 2007 at 11:20 am.
Filed Under News, Rants

Somethings in life are righteous.

Today – two righteous things happened to me. And boy does it feel good 🙂

1. Old Landlord

Mrs bb and I have purchased our first house together. Naturally that means we have left our rented accomodation and did the whole check the property for damage thing. We all agreed, very nicely, that there was some wear and tear which we would have to pay for.

When the cheque for our deposit arrived – they had taken over Â£350 for a 3m sq piece of lino!

Mrs bb was a little more restrained than I in her reaction. After we had decided that perhaps a thermonuclear strike (my idea) was a touch over-reacting, Mrs bb crafted a kick ass letter and fired it off. It contained lots of things like “legislation xxxx paragraph yyy says that you are in breach of zzzzz by doing this”.

Our landlord was never the sharpest tool in the toolbox. You would actually feel stupider after speaking with im. In fact, the longur you tawked two hymn, the wurz it gott. No way was it his idea to rip us off.

Now Mrs Landlord was another story – anal to the point of OCD. She knew what she was doing when she sent through that phoney quote and everything. What she hadn’t expected was the awesome power of MadWife(tm). Even I don’t mess with that. Chuck Norris doesn’t fuck with MadWife(tm).

Today a cheque for the correct difference arrived in the post. Righteous! And quite lucky for Mrs Landlord else she would have had to face the awesome fury of MadWife(tm). And that is enough to ruin anyone’s day. Badly.

2. Barclays Bank

This is not my first blog about Barclays. But today, my relationship manager phoned up and was surprised to hear I was planning on moving banks and I actually got to explain to her that she is less suited to being a relationship manager than Harold Shipman was to being a GP.

I spend nearly Â£10k a year with Barclays, just on bank charges. I do not have an overdraft, I do not want an overdraft. I have no special account requirements (other than several accounts in different currencies). All I need is that when I make an international same day payment, it is processed quickly, efficiently and I get my MT100 (proof of payment) quickly to give to my suppliers. This is not too much to ask one might imagine.

To highlight exactly how poor the service has been at Barclays, one day recently I was expecting some funds from one of my customers. Normally these funds hit my account by 9am. When they weren’t in by about 11 I asked my relationship manager to see if she could try and track down where the payment may be. I provided MT100, reference numbers and everything.

Her response : “As for the payment it can come into your account at anytime today”.

Right. Fantastic. Thank you for taking the time to check into it. Don’t worry about me – I’ll just sit here with all the proof that the funds should already be here and reflect on the temerity of actually asking you to do your damn job.

I realise that yelling and shouting at people, and generally being offensive, is rather an unappealling trait. But ever since this lump took over running my account she has done nothing, nada, zilch to help. Actually reaching her by email or phone has always ranked as one of my most difficult achievements.

So to actually reach get her on the phone and manage to explain that just ignoring emails and phone calls has not endeared her to me, shoot down her “I never got any emails/calls” with read receipts etc but more importantly to actually get it off my chest was, indeed, RIGHTEOUS!

Dozy fucking cow.

(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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FA Cup Final :)

Posted by bb on Monday 14th of May 2007 at 9:24 am.
Filed Under News

Despite my many years of maintaining that

a) I must have been really really bad in another life or

b) I was some sort of northern hemipshere experiment to see how much stress and misfortune one individual could support (Big John down under being my southern hemisphere counterpart)

it would appear, after all, that rather than being historically responsible for shooting the last dodo or for starting the black plague, I was in fact some sort of saint. Either that or the experiment has finished and I am being rewarded for not going completely postal.

How do I deduce this? Because my mate Vern T (pool and snooker shark extra-ordinaire) has only wangled me a ticket to go with him to the FA Cup Final, at Wembley, this Saturday 😀 And not only that, it is the inaugural final at our new national stadium. AND it is between my team (Man U) and the most hated team in the league (cheating diving moaning big girl’s blouses – aka Chelsea).

It is a good day today. The level of goodness I must have demonstrated to get karma like this must have been on par with the idiocy needed to become a Barclays relationship manager. I think I was Batman or something.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Geek Test

Posted by bb on Thursday 10th of May 2007 at 2:20 pm.
Filed Under Misc

I recently had a discussion with my brother-in-law when I told him about my creating this blog.

His reaction was an L to the forehead ‘Loser!’.

Loser

I positted that, in fact, he was a bigger loser than I because of the time that he spends painting his little lead dollies and playing Warhammer. Funnily enough, he thinks that is less loser-esque than having a blog that is named after the debugger interrupt call 3h.

So – this is the result :-

Which is more loser-esque?

edit : changed poll wording as some people were voting for geek == good instead of warhammer==bad 🙂

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Brief Update

Posted by bb on Monday 2nd of April 2007 at 12:37 pm.
Filed Under News, Rants

Hey all,

Just a quick update with where we are at atm.

New Rants:

Barclays :

Took 14 days to change a fax number – a freakin’ fax number. How hard is it – really? Not one, not two, not three … not even SIX different people could solve this monstrous conundrum within a fortnight. In the end the seventh person I spoke to, in a completely unrelated department said “Oh, your fax notification number is wrong then … let me fix that up for you now”.Tappity-tap-tap.

WTF? Seriously. WTFF? 6 other people… including my relationship manager could not manage this. How freakin’ stoopid do you have to be to get a job as a relationship manager at Barclays?

Inability to return calls – check.
Inability to answer any question – check.
Inability to locate correct field on Customer Details form – check.
Inability to walk and chew gum … You’re hired.

Dumbkopfs.

Sky :

Sky Sales : Yes Mr bb … no problem … we can do that for you.
Sky Installer : Not a freakin’ chance pal.

Spot the difference? And if you think I’m phoning you on your national rate line to tell you that my direct debit information is incorrect, you can guess again you idiots. You’ll call me soon enough when the money doesn’t go through.

Mr Half-Screw :

I fear Mr Half-Screw may become a bit of a regular in my blog. For he is the gentleman whose house I bought. For he is the gentleman who thinks that the fact that the number of holes equals the number of screws supplied is a bizarre coincidence. Photos will be uploaded to shame you … I promise. DIY to Mr Half-Screw is a complete mystery – a dark art practiced by those with ties to the Devil himself.

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick – you even managed to put the front door knocker on upside down! And there is a good 10″ of screw hanging out the back. And at NO POINT did this strike you as even slightly odd! I have yet to find one thing with the required number of screws. What were you doing with them? Eating them? Hording them to construct a spaceship? Maybe you were going to construct a large pyre to make a sacrifice to appease the God of DIY? Did you think they were secret spy things that transmitted radio waves that were the voices you heard in your head?

I swear I think you administer the OneTel mail servers.

You’ll be getting your own post soon. And Mrs Half-Screw, the hyperactive lady who seems to think that Mr bb is a cash machine who has moved into their new house. Not content with raping me over the price of the heating oil you left, you have now tried on 3 separate occasions to sell me your tumble drier. For Â£50. Without telling me anything about it. ANYTHING. Just “do you want it then?”. “Ummm … no. Randomise(age, model, type, condition, size) returns NO”. Now stop asking! And switch to decaf or something. Maybe Valium.

And Mr Half-Screw left a freakin’ tag on my line so I am now driving 60miles a day to work since I can’t get broadband at home. Cunswup.

OneTel:

Why bother. Please see other posts. You need to fire Mr Half-Screw, Network Admin extraordinaire and find someone who has a clue. Well at least more of a clue than your current admin. Maybe try asking some Amish – they are already light years ahead of your current admin. Seriously.

British Telecom :

When I call up to ask about purchasing a second business line into the house, perhaps the best way of serving this request is NOT to leave me on hold for 45 minutes and then transfer me to the wrong department. Just guessing though. I’m basing it on the fact that I am now NOT getting that line from BT. But I am just guessing – as I say.
That is that for now – unfortunately blogging on a tiny laptop keyboard is harder than it should be … especially when you are frothing about what you are blogging about 🙂

See you soon.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Thank You Very Much

Posted by bb on Tuesday 20th of March 2007 at 12:27 pm.
Filed Under News

I just wanted to say a big thank you to the people who helped me move.

Mrs bb … without you I couldn’t have done this. I am so lucky to have you in my life and I hope one day to make you as proud of me as I am of you. I cannot say thank you enough. I love you each day more than before.

The Kersh : Thanks for taking time off from work to help out. I owe you big time. Should you ever leave The House of Two Tales, I will be there for you buddy! Of course, to help out the same way, I’ll have to take up smoking, leaning over the porch observing and poking fun at your driving of the Big Truck in High Winds, but I think I’m up to it!

Splash and Billy : Dudes! Without your extra truck and your experience, this could have all been a bit interesting. No way could I have shifted all that stuff with your help. Cheers. I owe you a drink or 5.

Friend of Mint : Again, with your help at the receiving end we managed to unpack everything we needed to start living, almost by the time the 2nd truck arrived. One bottle of wine awaits as a poor token of my gratitude. And a special thank you from Billy for bending over a lot – he liked that 😉

Mum : Mother’s day was never quite meant to be like that – cleaning and generally getting mucky. You were meant to be being taken out for dinner, wined and dined. Thanks for turning up with cleaning products, vacuum cleaners and tasty treats to keep the workforce moving. I love you too.

Dad : I’m not sure whether to thank you or curse you for the metric tonne of carpet samples you lent us 😛 But for the help on the day, I thank you. Many hands make light work and all that – it made the day much easier. Cheers.

And to my friends, clients and suppliers that have helped me through the last couple of years – my thanks too. Without you all, we wouldn’t be here today. So thanks from Mrs bb too.

Normal ranting will resume shortly 🙂

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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But the lights are green guv!

Posted by bb on Friday 16th of March 2007 at 11:07 am.
Filed Under Rants, Sighs

My very first post to this blog was the random musing that perhaps Onetel used the advanced system of checking its on-line status of sending the teaboy down to the server rack to make sure all the lights were green.

I am starting to think this was not just a random musing after all. Apparently the teaboy last popped down and checked the server rack sometime ago.

Lights are green

Now the lights may well be green Onetel, but the server is definitely NOT active and responding.

How do I know this?

Well – using my Clouseau like investigative powers, my suspicions were first raised when I got this (sadly becoming all too familiar) error message :

Hmmmz0rs

As you will notice, I use AVG as my anti-virus. Being of a naturally suspicious nature I thought that it might be my AVG mail proxy. So lets disable that and connect and collect all my emaily goodness. And a metric shed-load of spam (way to go Onetel, great spam-filtering :S ).

But wait! What is this?

It wasn't AVG

A pox on me for doubting you AVG. It appears it was not the proxy server after all. ‘Zis is most peculiar’, says I in my most convincing Clouseau accent. ‘From where could zis problem be coming. After all, ze zerveur at Onetel is Actif and Responding’.

Most perplexing. Further investigation is warranted.

Righty. I’ve got an idea for you Onetel. Perhaps pinging your servers once every twelve hours is possibly not the best way to determine if they are actually working. I had an x64 box not so long ago, about the only damn thing that would do was respond to pings. It certainly wouldn’t talk to my printer. So maybe you send a test message to teaboy@onetel.com and if it leaves and arrives back within say 10 minutes (?) then you can say it is responding.

If it gets back within one minute then you can say it is active. However since I can send an email from me@onetel.com to me@onetel.com and not once has this ever been achieved in less that 10 this may well be considered running before we can walk.

Perhaps, in an effort not to mislead your customers too much, we could drop the word active as well. As you can see from the definition linked, perhaps “Marked by energetic activity” may give the wrong impression. There is no argument that it qualifies as active under the “capable of functioning” part of the definition, but I fear active may be stretching the point a little.

Why don’t we settle for something more like this :

More accurate description

I suggest the use of recently but in a astronomical kind of way. You know, as in “Recently the sun was formed and pretty shortly after that some planets started orbiting it. Almost immediately afterwards life appeared and hoopla! here were are.”

*sigh*
</rant>

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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bb|AFK

Posted by bb on Thursday 15th of March 2007 at 3:01 pm.
Filed Under News

Just a quick blog update to let everyone know that I will be AFK from this evening until Monday, probably Tuesday the 20th.

The reason – moving house 🙂 Currently I am dismantling everything (well everything I should be dismantling, I think the landlord would take a dim view of me handing the keys back to his pile of rubble) and one of the things that has to be dismantled is the PC.

This weekend, we’ll be sticking everything we own into the back of two trucks and heading out to the country. Time to say goodbye to the big smoke. I will miss some of the fun stuff about being this close to London – ease of access to shops, clubs, pubs, golf courses ( 😀 ) but I won’t miss where we are at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong, the house itself is nice enough. No storage but nice enough. The main problem is we are on a main road (noise++ and dirt++) just down from the fire and ambulance stations (for each %f in (emergency_services) do noise^2) and next door to the youth drop-in centre (noise++ and scrotes++).

I hope to be able to post some pictures of the new place when we get it in order (and assuming that My God of CSS helps me with some more of my new plugins 😉 ) and hopefully, next week I’ll be able to post my poll as well.

In short, posting will be sporadic until the broadband and everything is set up. In the meantime, I strongly suggest you pop over to wish Merlijn good luck for his 1st Dan exam.

Have a good weekend all 🙂

(No Ratings Yet)

Proprietary formats

Posted by bb on Monday 12th of March 2007 at 12:31 pm.
Filed Under Rants

As you will see from this post I use the bittorent network from time to time. Never for copyrighted material obviously, just for stuff that is in the public domain. Using it for copyrighted materials would be a very very bad thing and if we all did that, you never know, ThePowersThatBe might have to start producing some quality material that we are prepared to pay for. Like this maybe.

But that would really just not do now would it? They might have to fire some of their lawyers and get some creative people in instead. Blasphemy of the highest order! Anyone who thought it was a good idea should hang their head in shame!

Anyways, back to bittorrent. If you were looking for a cd image, you might resonably expect it to be in one of several formats – ISO or RAR being the most popular. It takes a certain degree of cunswuppery to release files onto a sharing network in proprietary formats. See if you can spot the flaw in this otherwise amazing bit of logic :

Share file with 1000’s of other people
Release in format that only 1% of the 1000’s of people will be able to read
????
Profit

Flawless – bloody flawless. No … idiots, bloody idiots.

Sometimes I think cunswup may just lack that killer bite to describe some people … but these sort of people probably couldn’t find out what cunswup meant if they tried 🙂

(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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Hot Fuzz

Posted by bb on Monday 12th of March 2007 at 12:30 pm.
Filed Under Reviews

My better half and I went to see Hot Fuzz the other day and I can honestly say I have not seen anything so funny since this episode of South Park .

Funny from start to finish and no let off. Just laugh after laugh after laugh. We seriously considered buying a ticket to go back and see it again. When it comes out on DVD, I will make an effort to go and buy it to support the effort that was put into it.

If you get a chance to go and see it – please do. It really is worth it 😀

And I hope you feel as bad as I did for laughing out loud when Nick takes out the shotgun wielding granny. You’ll know what I mean when you see it … priceless!

(No Ratings Yet)

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x64 is Dead! Long live XP

Posted by bb on Monday 12th of March 2007 at 11:38 am.
Filed Under News

Especially the nice shiny new XP I have now … check out the new desktop

Click for full scale shiny goodness 🙂

100% speed of XP, 90% functionality of Vista. Everyone’s a winner! w00t as they say on IRC 🙂

Check out some of the lovely features – the sidebar with nice Aero style icons, the preview of the firefox page (looks like someone is browsing the best blog ;)), natty new icons and the improved information bar at the bottom of each window. All of this for $0, 0â‚¬ and Â£0! How can you go wrong guv’nor?

It’s a deal, it’s a steal, it’s the sale of the freakin’ century!

So what about those gadgets on the sidebar? From top to bottom we have a nice month at a glance calender, a torrent search engine, WMP and a new recycle bin. You can also pin the preview of the page to the desktop so you don’t have to alt-tab to it each time to see what is happening.

You’ll also notice the nice shadows on the windows, and if you see the outlook bar at the top of the picture, it’s reduced to its title bar by a simple right click. I’m loving it. pah dah da da da!

That’s not to say it is without fault but this stuff is still in its infancy. The sidebar is not 100%, it is still a little glitchy, but 1.8 will be out soon (I’m running 1.7.8) and hopefully some of those problems will be fixed. The toolbar also likes to be only 1 bar high, change it to 2 and some windows don’t line up correctly. Auto-hiding the taskbar seems to fix this albeit a temporary fix.

Apart from that, it just looks nicer. I don’t know whether it is because you get bored after looking at XP for so long but I find it quite pleasant to sit in-front of for extended periods of time. The new sounds, the new look and feel, nice new icons and toolbar customisation – all together add up to a really nice user experience. I don’t know if I would have gone to Vista before SP2 (though I’m bloody sure it wouldn’t have been Vista x64) but I know now I won’t be. What for?

<obGeek> Oh – and the little graph … well, those who know, know 😉 </obGeek>

(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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