Coarse phishing

This is probably the worst phishing email I've ever seen.


It's difficult to pick a favourite aspect of this. Not knowing the bank is called Alliance and Leicester is good, as is Aeicester. I think that I'd probably go for the close proximity of the words "veifry" and "verication".

Twitter Grader

This is a bit sad. What's worse is that I look at this and think "How could I get more followers so that I can move up the rankings?" And then I get depressed because I'm less interesting than the Red Funnel Ferry.

No, it's OK, life is not a popularity competition. It doesn't make any difference to my self worth whether 6 or 60 or 600 people choose to be informed about the minutiae of my life. (But if you are reading this and use Twitter, please follow me, please please please)

Thanks to James for the link and helping me realise that the world is, in fact, madder than I suspected.

Flock 2

Image via WikipediaJust upgraded to the Flock 2 beta and immediately lost all my favourites. I know that this is a good argument for using del.icio.us, but I very rarely use other computers, so I always kept my favourites locally. Not a disaster, but definitely a pain.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

openSUSE

I finally have the openSUSE install program running on the Compaq Armada 1750 that I bought before Christmas. It turned out that it was nothing to do with the BIOS, nothing that needed any of the hoops that I've been jumping through. It just needed me to read this, and in particular the bit that says

"Microsoft Windows users
Windows XP can't burn ISO images without third party software."

Maybe this could be a little bit more obvious for first time users? Because lo and behold, as soon as I used the recommended software to burn the image (rather than simply copying it to a disk), it ran the install from the CD with no problem at all.

I would never have thought of that

This article from the BBC discusses how technology may one day be able to replicate the systems that have evolved in geckos to allow them to walk up walls. Apart from reminding me how amazing the world is, it also amused me with the final sentence:

"people would probably suffer from muscle fatigue if they tried to stick to a wall for many hours"

Wow. Incredible. Thank goodness the science department at the BBC is here to tell me these things.

In other news, Katrina and I decided that we could take on slightly increased repayments, and so took the credit card out and bought a couple of new settees and some bits for the PC. I'm sure the settees are a good buy; the suite we've got was Amanda's cast offs when they bought their new suite, and it won't last long enough for us to save up to buy a new one outright. We decided to go for the mid-priced one that will hopefully last us the next five years rather than the really nice one that would have lasted longer but would have stretched the budget to the limit. PC stuff I think was worth getting: a new keyboard because the old one had several keys sticking also has the advantage of being a little quieter so Daniel's frantic typing on MSN won't drive us mad with the constant clacking of keys; the new graphics card looks smoother and when we tried it out on Sims 2 we didn't get the annoying flickering floors that we've had before; hopefully the more powerfully wireless router will mean fewer dropped connections on my N95 when the boys are playing games over the network, but we'll have to see. The only problem at the moment is the Netgear Storage Central which I've plugged in as per instructions but which the bundled software refuses to find. This hopefully isn't insurmountable but it's a pain to have to go through the whole uninstall/reinstall/take it to pieces and check the connections/do it all again with the firewall off/try it on each PC palaver that will take up my time when what I really want to do is just move all the media files that are filling up my hard drives onto one networked drive for everyone to access.

You'd think that even with my fairly limited experience I'd have learned that "Three simple steps" printed on the box actually means "A minimum of three steps if you have exactly the same conditions as we had in our labs; otherwise somewhere between three and forty-eight complicated steps with lots of backtracking". I just want to believe that it's going to be easy. And that humans can hang on walls for hours.

Simplification of wishes

Earlier on today I was in WHSmith looking at a Linux magazine and wondering whether to spend £6.50 to get the new Ubuntu distro that was included with it, and thinking to myself that I really would like to learn how to be proficient in using Linux, when it occured to me that I have a full time job, a wife and five children, an Open University module starting soon and I want to brush up on my Italian before our summer holiday, plus I bought a video camera for Christmas that I don't really know how to use properly and I want to work out what to do with the editing software. I don't really have enough time for all the things I want to do, let alone anything else. So I didn't buy the magazine. And our computers will continue to run on Windows. For the time being...

Life begins at 6.30am

I had a nice day yesterday, played on the computer for a bit (Benjamin bought me Might and Magic IX, but I want to complete the last level of M&M VIII first, so I have a few more monsters to kill and some odd levers and locked doors to try and sort out), had a haircut, had an excellent bacon and brie baguette at the the bakery in Park Gate, did a little light shopping and then came home for birthday tea. Once the younger children had gone to bed we started watching Munich but by about 10.30 we were too tired and turned it off. The only disappointment of the day was that Daniel's laptop came back from Medion with the screen working but with no wireless connection and with a return of the old problem that the battery won't charge from the mains. (I never did get a reply to my complaint.) I went out and bought a new Netgear wireless card which also failed to work. There seems to be a conflict between the Netgear software and the standard Windows wireless networking setup (huge thanks to Alex, who came for birthday cake and then spent ages trying to sort this for me), despite not having a problem with a Netgear wireless PC card elsewhere on my network. In the end I gave up, and we may resort to Daniel checking there's nothing on there he wouldn't want to lose, and then we'll try restoring the factory settings. If that makes the software work, we'll look at the prices of new batteries; if not, we'll have an expensive paperweight.

Anyway, I'm trying to get into the habit of treating each day as a gift from God, a fresh start and chance to do things well. I doubt I'll succeed fully every day, but it's worth a try. And I have my first session with the hypnotherapist today, so it seems like a good time to embrace the possibility of change.

Laptop

Over a month ago I sent Daniel's laptop to Medion for repair or replacement, as it was less than a year old and had gone wrong (for the second time). I had phoned their customer service line several times - they never ever phoned me despite promising someone would call me back - and run up phone bills listening to their choice of queuing music, as well as repeatedly emailing them a scan of the receipt (which at first they denied receiving - they don't reply to emails either) to prove that the laptop was less than a year old. Eventually they conceded that the screen being completely white wasn't something they could sort out over the phone and Parcelforce took it away. I called again two weeks ago to find out what was happening and was told that they had replaced the keyboard (why?) but it had failed testing because the screen was white, so they'd ordered a new screen. I called again this morning and was told that two weeks ago they'd replaced the main board (aha - so not the keyboard then) but it had failed testing because the screen was white and so they'd ordered a new screen. I pointed out that this was two weeks ago, but the lady in their call centre explained there was nothing she could do except email someone to point out that the new screen hadn't arrived. Given Medion's record on emails, I wasn't hopeful, so asked who I called to complain. I was told that complaints have to be in writing - presumably nobody wants to talk to angry customers. She did give me an email address, to which I will send a copy of this blog post, in the hope that I can find out

• why it has taken so long to diagnose the problem with this, given that I gave them a full description over the phone and simply trying to switch on the laptop on the day it was delivered would have given them a clue
• whether in fact the delay is due to the incredibly high number of faulty machines sent back to Medion or to their underinvestment in tech staff
• why it takes a company over two weeks to get a component for one of their own machines
• whether they have any comment to make about never returning phone calls or replying to emails

If I get a reply I'll post it here, but I'm not indulging in any breathholding.

UPDATE: I've just realised that Medion's hotline web page is headed "I have a problem" and continues "is a phrase that we often hear when customers call our telephone hotline." Could it in fact be the phrase "I have a problem with your appalling level of service and apparent total disregard for your customers"?