I just received some spam email stating a subject of: “CONGRATULATIONS: YOU WON -£500,000.00″
Minus £500,000.00? Does that mean I won a prize that is the privilege to owe half a million quid?
I think I’d rather just mark it as spam and move right along..
Happy New Year!!
So I finally went swimming this afternoon, for the first time in ages! Weekends have kinda been out lately and whenever I’ve made any plans for week nights, well, let’s just say that my new favourite junction, the ironically named “Handy Cross”, and traffic on the M40 have both strongly disagreed with those plans.
Well anyway, so I didn’t notice on the way in, but as I was leaving on my way out, I walked up to one of the wall-mounted hair dryers to dry my hair, only to find a big notice stuck up next it blocking me from seeing in the mirror. Basically, it was a note warning people that thieves have been recently operating in the changing rooms, especially in the locker area, and that customers should not put any valuable items in the lockers because leisureconnection takes no responsibility for any loss.
Ok… so tell me this… what exactly is the point of having those lockers there then?? I mean, isn’t that the whole point of having them… so people actually can put their clothes, wallets, watches, car keys, phones and whatever else in while they go swimming?
So maybe they mean you actually shouldn’t bring your wallets, watches, phones etc with you when you come to the leisure centre, and should walk or jog there so no need to have car keys either. Right.. ok… but I’m pretty sure that everyone will agree when I say that, at this point, people’s clothes and shoes are just as valuable as their watches and phones… especially in this weather! I mean, I don’t think that anyone really fancies jogging home bare foot in nothing but their wet swim shorts. So leisureconnection, what about that.
There’s an Citroen advert on at the moment that’s often being played on the radio, going on about how “different is everything” and how genius is this and genius is that. So apparently “genius tries to shape the world in its own image”… I thought god was supposed to have done that… ok so god is a genius, fair enough, I’ll give em that. However, genius also “reinvents the wheel”… now seriously, that’s not genius at all, that’s just stupid. Ask any computer scientist, why would anyone want to reinvent the wheel? Reusing the wheel in a new and innovative way.. now that would be “genius”
"The biggest secret of them all? You’ll never guess. The secret to gorgeous hair. Head & Shoulders" — From a Head & Shoulders shampoo tv advert 17/05/2007
Now… how exactly would that qualify as being a secret? For the last two decades… ever since I can remember knowing what a tv advert is.. I’ve seen these adverts shouting about how this shampoo is so wonderful and brilliant. …and after all that, it’s "the biggest secret of them all"?
HUMANMETRICS Jung Typology Test defines me as type:
INFJ Introverted Intuitive Feeling Judging Strength of the preferences % 56 12 25 22
and according to the type descriptions that means:
INFJs generally have the following traits:
Possible Career Paths for the INFJ:
You live in a place, or work at a certain location… you’re there day in day out, you get to know the area, and even the surrounding areas, over a period of maybe many many years, eventually finding the various little side roads, and knowing all the sneaky shortcuts… generally getting to know exactly how to get from A to B using any one of multiple possible routes… So why is it then, that when you’re walking down the road, minding your own business, thinking about whatever you’re thinking about… and someone stops you to ask “where is Walton Road”… the road that you literally just passed 30 seconds earlier… for a few moments, your mind just goes completely blank and you have no answer for them?
so just at the end of the BRIT award broadcast when it was time for the news at ten, the voiceover confirmed that "the gaps in the sound were to cover strong language"… yet they claimed it was being broadcast live? they made a whole big deal of it… so what exactly defines "live" then? am I missing something or is this just blatent false advertising?
I love the way they spent so much effort advertising the fact that this year’s BRIT awards are being broadcast "LIVE for the first time in 18 years", and the way they made such a big deal of it in the intro, and how "anything could happen"…… and yet somehow, the last part of the Fratellis’ thank you speech, mid-way through a sentence, managed to get blanked out, presumably due to some sort of audio or mic ‘problem’… I couldn’t see well enough to attempt any lipreading… hmm I wonder… did they say something they weren’t supposed to or was it really a real technical problem?
Well Happy New Year again!!
What can I say eh?… Wordpress is just brilliant… it’s the one thing that’s kept me motivated enough to post entries regularly for three whole years now! I can hardly believe it. I really didn’t think when I set this up that I’d be here, posting entry number 119, three whole years later!
I have to say, Wordpress has really improved immensely since then. It was already very easy to use and maintain in the first place anyway, and yet it just keeps getting even better. Comment spam no longer seems to be a problem. The plugins are really great. And upgrading (even using the latest svn) has not been problematic of late. I’ve been using the KDE KBlogger applet to post stuff lately, which makes it even more convenient.
So anyway, yes, Wordpress is brilliant.
It been interesting to see the way blogging seems to spread. I set mine up mainly because Zaheer set-up his and said it was really easy. After me, Ibz and Jatin both set-up wordpress, and then Alia. Unfortunately some of these don’t seem to exist anymore :-(. But recently, I discovered a new group blogs that seem to have been started up… Elisa & Ettore, Chris, Andy, and Beppe, to name just a few, along with a bunch of others around them too (not all wordpress but still). I wonder how many of them will be posting a similar entry in a couple of years time. What do you reckon guys?
Hard to believe also at work that we’re already into year 3 of our residence in the Malet Place Engineering Building.
Well anyway… Happy New Year once again!
I think I might have just inadvertently spammed everyone on my MSN contacts list courtesy of spaces.live.com. I was just checking out a friend’s blog on Windows Live Spaces, and happened to notice the little "Create your space" button on the main Spaces site with it’s very simple set-up procedure. In a moment of weakness, I thought… eh why not… clicked, and within a matter of seconds, had a space of my very own. But that wasn’t enough. A feeling of loneliness kicked in and I had to add some friends on there. Clicked the add friends link and it presented me with a list of all my MSN contacts. Without thinking about what I was actually doing, I checked the Select All checkbox and clicked add. Next thing I know, I get a message saying the following people <list of people> will be sent an email inviting them to join….. and no Cancel button to prevent it. Not to worry I thought… I just closed the window assuming that by not clicking on the "Done" button, it wouldn’t send anything. Few minutes later, I received a delivery failure notification for one of the contacts in my MSN contact list saying one of the invitations could not be delivered.
Oh well, most of the people on my contact list don’t read this, but sorry anyway!
So I finally managed to set-up ssh-agent and ssh-askpass, and have been using it for a cpla weeks now. It’s kinda weird getting used to trying to login to somewhere and still being ready to type the passwd as soon as the prompt appears, only to suddenly find you’re logged already. I don’t know why I never set it up before but it’s brilliant. What’s even better is the little side-effects… it never occurred to me how much I rely on ssh for various things… sftp:// in konqueror just logs in automatically…. shfsmount just mounts my filesystem automatically…. unison set-up to sync with a remote machine via ssh just starts to sync automatically! Now… what am i gonna do in a few months time when I’ve completely forgotten both my password and the passphrase?
This is a test from the KDE KBlogger Kicker applet
So *finally* I’ve managed to fix a long time issue I’ve had with my firewall rules that allowed my web pages to be seen ok from the outside world, but that shut me out when accessing them from within my own network. Weird issue, long story short, I just find some of these iptables rules a but confusing to understand and configure. But anyway, finally it’s all fixed now… I think… securely… I hope! The pages download and display correctly, with images, themes and all, from both within and outside my network.
Sal Mubarak !
Not as high as certain other people I kno!
I’ve been getting quite jaded lately when I’ve had to make any customer service phone calls recently. It’s just the bureaucracy of the whole process… it’s such a nightmare. And for the companies… do they not realise that having automated answering systems, ones that make you wait for like 5 minutes while it speaks through a whole long list of options, just reflects so unbelievably badly on themselves? ..giving their own customers and anyone who calls the lowest of the lowest of the lowest impression and opinion of them? It’s just too far beyond my understanding why they would quote phone numbers in advertisements or on documentation promoting how you are able to call them for help, only to put up the stupidest most irritating barriers to actually get through and talk to a human being… made instead to go through an endless long list of options…. press 1 for… press 2 for… press 3 for… …… ok so now what do i press for AARRRGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And let’s not get started on call centres where the operators have no clue what-so-ever about you or your query nor do they ever have a hope of being able to work out how to answer your query or help you in any way.
Just getting through to a living, breathing, intelligent (ok I’ll settle for semi-intelligent at this point), human being is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to customer service/support phone helplines. If the product or service I have is in the UK, then please could you just allow me to phone the number and get through to a representative who is actually located in the UK and who knows actually what the UK branch of that company’s policy/procedure is about whatever!!
And for the few times I’ve actually got through to someone, it’s been almost as bad in itself…. Speaking to hurried representatives who give quick, short and usually unclear answers with a tone of voice that makes you feel like you’re an idiot for not understanding straight away and that they’ve spent enough time on your query and want you to get you off the call as soon as possible. I’ve actually felt, on several occasions, that I need to hurry up and ask whatever question I have quickly and clearly, just accept whatever response I get, thank them nicely for their help and say goodbye… because if I don’t then I’d be wasting their time. Well first of all, how would it be wasting their time? And secondly, so what if it does?! After all, I’m the paying customer!!!
Well today was different… Finnair was the company… And I’ve been left feeling really satisfied after speaking with their representatives. I was stressing about some flights that I needed to book mainly because the timing and pricing of the combination of outward and return flights that I wanted was a bit inconvenient and strange. I had a small problem with a browser session timeout while trying to book, and when I went back in, it appeared that the flight combination I was about to book had changed. Ok, annoying, that flight companies do that. Then I realised I could actually get a discount (thanks to Finnair being the “official carrier” of the conference I’ll be attending), so I phoned ‘em up. I must have been on and off the phone with them several times, first to sort out the browser session timeout issue, then to ask about what my options were, pricing and discount, procedure for booking via phone etc etc and then to sort out membership of the Finnair Plus scheme. Sure, each time I did get an automated response at first and then a little message saying please hold as operators were busy, but then, after that, I was put straight through to a real person. And in fact, the only automated response option I had to choose was pressing 1 for English rather than pressing 2 for Finnish… that’s it. And the customer service representatives… wow… they were so unbelievably nice, polite and helpful. I had absolutely no feeling of being rushed to choose whether to book my flight or ask my question. I had a friendly conversation, was given the opportunity to ask any questions I had in a relaxed manner, had all my queries and concerns answered and addressed… politely and with good will. I’ve never flown Finnair, but if such a high standard of service extends across the company and in-flight, then I’m really looking forward to the trip.
It cost them nothing… didn’t hurt them one bit to be nice as they were…. and it left me with a smile!
Blair Force One
hehe.. I like that
hmmm…. oh dear..
My blog is worth $0.00.How much is your blog worth?
well… it has sentimental value for me anyway.
So it’s official… I’m old! I can’t hear this.
