Leaving The Day Job

Archive for the ‘off topic’ Category

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It’s just been announced that the renowned sci-fi author Sir Arthur C Clarke has died at his home in Sri Lanka aged 90.

I have to admit that I’ve never read an Arthur C Clarke novel but there’s no doubting his influence on the sci fi genre and, although slightly less well-known, also on international communications. Sir Arthur is credited with inventing the concept of geostationary satellites which now enable worldwide communications in milliseconds. He came up with the idea that a satellite orbiting the Earth at a height 35786km above the surface would remain over the same point of the planet enabling it to be used to bounce signals from one part of the world to another. That orbit is now known as the Clarke orbit and that region of the Earth’s atmosphere as the Clarke belt. It was geostationary satellites that enabled us to watch live on TV so many of the events that shaped the world’s history in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Whilst best known as an author, Sir Arthur will also be remembered by people of my generation for his TV series Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World in which he investigated psychic phenomena.

I’m writing this sitting in the arts centre bar of my local university. I’m here to meet a friend but, being the geek that I am, I thought I’d get here a bit early and use the spare time to do some research online and a bit of content updating. I’ve got a fancy Macbook laptop and a fancy N95 mobile so it seemed like an easy enough thing to do. Instead, it turns out to be a right royal pain.

For starters, although I’m in great big wireless hotspot I’m unable to use the facilities because I’m not a student. Without the requisite username and password I can’t log on. My BT Openzone subscription which normally lets me roam on pretty much any hotspot service is useless here. With the uni blanketed with free wifi for the students and staff there’s no commercial incentive for any other operator to set up a service. Evidentally, it’s not worth the uni’s time to join the likes of The Cloud to allow us working folk to take advantage of the facility our taxes pay for either.

But never mind, I have a second option. Passing my local 3 store the other day I noticed that they have wireless broadband for £10 a month, available on a pay as you go, no contract basis - you just pay for the usb modem gadget. It looked good so I went in to investigate. Whilst in there I had a flash of inspiration remembering that my N95 could be used as a usb 3G modem. So I forked out all of £1.99 for a pay as you go SIM instead. Another £20 to Vodafone saw my N95 unlocked for use on other networks and I was off. Or I would have been if I could figure out how to top up the 3 account. I tried to use a cash machine to do it and discovered I could top up any mobile except 3. I tried to do it through the phone’s browser but was told I’d have to register my credit card 7 days before I wanted to use it. And then I discovered I didn’t have a signal on 3 anyway. So much for that plan.

I resorted to using my Vodafone sim card in the N95. I plugged the phone into my laptop’s usb port and tried to connect. My Mac informed me that my phone didn’t exist. No amount of shouting “It does exist, I can see it right here connected to you!” was going to make any difference.

Option 4: bluetooth connection, via Vodafone N95 to internet. Woo! I’m online! I’m restricted to the speed of a bluetooth connection, I’ve got to keep a close eye on my bandwidth usage and technically I’m breaching Vodafone’s T&Cs by using a computer on a service intended just for mobile browsers but at least I’m online.

Some how this isn’t the kind of ubiquitous wireless broadband that it always seems in the adverts. The ads show a guy with a laptop happily surfing the net wherever he pleases. In reality it seems I need a laptop, hotspot subscription, a couple of sim cards and mobile accounts in order to find at least one that provides 3G, a usb cable and one or more mobile phones. One day we’ll have something which “just works” until then I think I’m going to start carrying a good paperback around with me too - at least I know that will work anywhere and keep me entertained when waiting around for people.

Dell and Walsh Western’s incompetent, useless and lying customer service drives me close to mental but no closer to my laptop.

On December 5th I ordered a nice new laptop from Dell. They charged me an extortionate £60 for delivery but even so they were still cheaper than comparable laptops elsewhere so I decided to order anyway. They also only deliver to the cardholder’s registered address which is not great when I’m out at work all day but I figured I could arrange a redelivery for a convenient date and take the day off work.

Initially the delivery estimate was December 14th. On December 12th they email to tell me it will now not be until January 3rd. Ho hum. Happens some time. I resign myself to waiting.

Imagine my surprise when I check the Dell order status website just after Christmas to discover that my laptop has been delivered. Delivered when and to whom? According to the tracking website of Walsh Western (Dell’s delivery company) it was delivered on the morning of Christmas Eve and there’s even a signature to prove it. Except, it’s not my signature and I know I was at home Christmas Eve. They also claim to have attempted delivery a few days earlier and left a card - this is a lie.

I discovered all this at the weekend when both Dell and Walsh Western shut down their phone lines. I start worrying that they’ve delivered to the wrong address and some unscrupulous bugger has decided they’ll accept the free laptop and keep it quiet. Or maybe one of my neighbours received it and hasn’t told me yet. I contact something like 25 of my neighbours but none of them have seen it.

I called Walsh Western’s customer service on New Year’s Eve but all I get is an automated system telling me my parcel has been delivered and giving me no option to speak to anyone. I call their head office and get told all I can do is call the customer service number. I say, there’s no human being there. They say, try in the new year.

I phone Dell. I go through something like two million options and wait ten minutes to talk to someone in India. The someone in India says he’s the wrong person and he’ll put me through to someone else. I wait another ten minutes (all this on an 0870 number of course).

Eventually I speak to someone in Ireland who tells me that Walsh Western pass the parcel on to a local delivery company for the actual delivery. The local delivery company have decided they didn’t want to hold my parcel over Christmas so they’ve sent it back to Walsh Western’s depot. That apparently qualifies as a delivery which explains the status and the signature (presumably of the person at the depot who received it back).

The nice Irish lady says she’ll get them to send it again. I ask if I can have it delivered to my work address. She says yes but it will delay things while they find the parcel and change the label. Not a problem. I give her my work address and she schedules delivery for today.

I check Walsh Western’s website the following day and lo and behold the delivery address has been changed. Only now it’s been changed to a strange amalgam of my home address and work address. I hope that it’s just the website that’s screwy but email Dell asking them to check it’s correct. Two days later and they still haven’t acknowledged my email.

And so to today. I hoped I would get the package since the post code was at least correct and I’d given my mobile number so the driver could call me if he got to the right road but didn’t know which office to deliver to. I check the Walsh Western website all day and it shows my parcel out for delivery. Five o’clock rolls around and there’s no parcel. Check the website again and apparently they attempted delivery at 9am, no one was home and they left a card - this is a lie. We have a warehouse where the staff spend all day receiving and despatching parcels. They would have been there from 8.30 am at the latest. There’s no way that they could have attempted delivery and not found somebody to accept it.

So I come home half expecting to find a “while you were out card” after they came to the wrong address but no, nothing. Phone Walsh Western. This time I get an option to speak to someone except their office is closed. No mention of when it might reopen. I call Dell. Five million menu options later I get told that my order has been placed with the business sales department and they close at 4pm. The guy I’m talking to can’t help as he only deals with home customers.

Remember that this is a delivery service I’ve paid sixty quid for. It has now reached the point where it would have been cheaper, easier and quicker for me to book myself on Ryan Air and go and collect it from their factory in Limerick myself.

I’m so angry and frustrated with Dell I’d just cancel the order were it not for that fact that the laptop is (or was supposed to be) a Christmas present and I’ve already told the recipient it’s on its way. I’ve now got to wait until Monday until I can even contact anyone and then God knows how long until they can redeliver. It’s taken a month so far and, of course, they’ve already charged my credit card. If you’re thinking of ordering from Dell, don’t bother. Their uselessness and incompetence is matched only by their ineptitude in choosing a delivery company who can, you know, deliver a parcel.

I’ve never been a great typist. I’m fast but inaccurate. Recently though a weird kind of disconnect between my brain and my fingers has been making my typing life a misery.

I learned to type back in the early 80s as child banging out code on a Sinclair ZX81. After 25 years of practice I ought to be getting better at it. But no. One of my former colleagues told me how much it used to drive her round the bend listening to me clattering away at the keyboard only for it to be followed by repeated pounding on the backspace key as I try to undo all the mistakes I’ve made. Another friend commented on how quickly I could type especially considering I spent half my time deleting.

In the past year or so I’ve developed an even stranger affliction. It’s not down to inaccurate typing it’s that somewhere between my brain and my fingers the words I’m typing change. In that last sentence for example I thought “somewhere” but typed “something”. This is why I think it’s like dyslexia. The words are getting themselves jumbled up. They’re not mistyped, they’re not in the wrong order, they’re just not the word they should be.

It’s really annoying because when I type the wrong word I type it correctly. Spellcheckers don’t pick up on the mistake because it’s correctly spelled. I’ve always been good at spelling and grammar but recently I’ve been misusing “there”, “their” and “they’re”. It’s not that I don’t know the difference. It’s not that I don’t know which is the correct one to use. It’s that my fingers on the keyboard have their own idea of which word I want to use.

I vaguely remember from my university Psychology course that there’s a phenomenon in learning called “chaining”. Basically, as you learn to do tasks your brain stops needing to think about the next step and just initiates a chain of steps. For example, when you start driving you need to think about stepping off the accelerator, engaging the clutch, moving the gear stick, releasing the clutch, pressing down the accelerator. As you get more experienced you don’t think about each step you just do the “change gear” chain of actions.

My theory is that I’ve learned chains of actions to type certain words semi-automatically and for some reason my brain is picking the wrong chain. Or it could be that I’m just mental. The jury’s out.

Any psychology experts or fellow finger-dyslexia sufferers out there?

I’m not having a very productive day so I thought I’d make it even less productive by spending a few minutes pointing you towards my top three funny things that I like to look at online instead of working.

Dilbert

Every geek’s favourite anti-hero. Offers me some relief from the woes of the day job.

Basic Instructions

Currently my absolute favourite online comic. Updated once or twice a week, Basic Instructions provides witty, sarcastic and surreal instructions on how to do all manner of mundane tasks.

I Can Has Cheezburger?

The internet meme of the year. Pictures of cute animals captioned with bizarrely syntaxed comments.

Enjoy. By the way, shouldn’t you be working?