Spoilt for Choice

"Deux biers, s'il vous plait."

"Oui, d'accord. You prefer the Heineken?"

"Or? ... Ou?"

"Just Heineken."

Public Transport:

If I hear one more comment that begins "Oh my God, you know how many people she slept with..." then I will never use public transport again.

Cordially yours

Grumpy old man.

P.S. For the first time (ever) I have arrived in a foreign country and their trains (á Paris) had longer delays than ours.

P.P.S Google, please note: the fact that I am currently in France does not change the fact that I am writing in English. You know this already because I gave my details as UK, and everything I have ever done is in English! Merci.

Pixel Mania

This week I have received by email (from two different customers):
- a printed and scanned version (as PDF) of a quotation that I produced (as PDF)
- a printed and scanned version (as PDF) of a purchase order generated from a spreadsheet
I wonder if I should print the purchase order out so that I can scan it and reference it from the invoice...

Background noise

With another RapiRun under my belt today, and arriving in the office 20 minutes earlier than usual (7:30am), I felt ready for anything today.

I even replaced a CPU fan in a server that had been getting noisier every day for the last two years.

You eventually get used to background noise, but it really couldn't wait any longer. It was so loud that I had turned it off earlier this week because it was keeping me awake at night.

Consequently a couple of websites are now up again...

I wonder if I'll be able to sleep without the "hum" coming from the server room in the loft.

Gaseous Emissions

According to the BBC, Abu Dhabi is going green, with a 50,000 person city having zero-emissions of carbon dioxide.

How is this achieved? By using Hydrogen as a fuel.

And how do the make the hydrogen you ask? Using solar power? Renewable energy?

"Hydrogen will be manufactured from natural gas by reactions involving steam, producing a mixture of hydrogen and carbon dioxide. "

But it gets worse!

"President Bush's administration is also pumping money into hydrogen. The CO2 can be pumped underground, either simply to store it away permanently or as a way of extracting more oil from existing wells, using the high-pressure gas to force more of the black gold to the surface."

1. Storing your waste gases is not a viable way of reducing long-term emissions.
   
2. How can they justify using the waste CO2 to extract more oil?!
3. Moving the problem somewhere else does not solve it.
4. Do they think that natural gas is in infinite supply?
   

I cannot believe that this was reported in a positive light by the BBC.

In search of buried treasure

Yesterday we we went on a geocache hunt. It was quite a fun day out!

The idea is basically:

• there is a big database showing the coordinates of hidden "treasure" all over the world (treasure means a sandwich box with bits and bobs in it)
  
• you go and find one, using your GPS unit, and have a nice day out walking with a bit of fun
• you exchange a bit for a bob and put the treasure box back again for someone else

It all sounded like a nice excuse for some fresh air so we set off with our cool new TomTom One, 3rd edition GPS through the woods.

We knew that we were looking for a small sandwich box hidden in Wheldrake woods under a pine tree. I had programmed the coordinates in and the TomTom said that it was right next to a track through the woods. It is rated as "difficult level 1 of 5" (very easy). It didn't quite match up to where it looked like it should be according to the OS grid reference, but I figured that the GPS must be more accurate then a 1:50 000 landranger map.

After a short walk, we knew we must be close. On the screen was "us" right on top of the "goal post" icon. The hint said look under a pine tree. As helpful as this was when walking through a pine wood(!) at least we knew had to look down, not up.

We looked and we looked and looked some more. We got caught on brambles, we approached the spot from the other side, we went up and down the road, we searched every pine tree in the area.

We walked home having had a nice day out, but disappointed to have not found buried treasure.

Back at home, after cross-referencing the location on other maps, it turns out that our GPS doesn't really like walking off-road. It "corrects" every destination to the nearest road or track that it can find. So in fact the real treasure (allegedly) was something like 300 metres from where the TomTom had decided to take us.

According to everything I can find on the Internet, this "feature" cannot be turned off. Although someone has developed some (free) off-road walking software for TomTom hardware, the TomTom ONE v3 is not compatible with it.

I wonder if TomTom would like to do a software upgrade. Until they do, it's firmly "Not recommended" unless you want to drive everywhere.

Gone in 10 seconds...for good?

As a followup to Gone in 10 seconds, see you next week, my favourite female recruitment agency rep. called today.

Perhaps I imagined it, but I'm sure I heard the office cheer when I firmly informed her of our lack of interest, was (ever so slightly) less than polite and put the phone down on her mid-sentence.

Sorry babe, but we honestly do not need your services.

The Price of Power

In Monopoly, the probability of paying anything to the the electric company (by virtue of landing on it) is about 0.026040 per turn (assuming that you don't own the electric company). If you do have to pay anything then you have to pay 10 times the value of a roll of two dice (assuming that both utilities are owned by the same owner, which nowadays seems pretty likely). The expected value a single payment is £70 and therefore expected value of payments to the electric company is £1.82 per turn.

Not in Monopoly, things are a tad more expensive (£600) and a lot more likely (1).

When we moved into our house, some 18 months ago, we arranged to take over all the utilities (gas/electric/water/phone). However for electricity, we got a nice letter back saying that they were not able to setup our account because the current supplier had objected and that we should find out who the current supplier is using a look-up service and contact them for an explanation.

We discovered that it was British Gas, so I phoned the customer helpline and listened to lots of music dubbed with "Your call is important to us". After 30 minutes, I had to attend to other things (my time not free!). Thoroughly frustrated I tried again another time. After 10 minutes, I gave up.

(I did notice several letters from the supplier addressed to the previous occupant over the next months, these were returned to the sender since we do not have a forwarding address.)

And that was where I left it. We did not receive a single bill for electricity.

Today, someone arrived to disconnect our electricity supply (according to the note through the door). As it happens, the meter is indoors and we were all out.

The caller had left his mobile telephone number, and it turned out that he was a nice man called Ray who helpfully worked out that the arrears was just under £600 and that I could pay half of it now and the rest by direct debit over the next 12 months.

This seemed like a very good option to me. We'd had 18 months of free credit but mostly I was pleased to have an instant fix without wasting any time in a telephone queue.

Next time I have a problem with a service I might just be tempted to stop paying and wait for them to contact me.

Gone in 10 seconds, see you next week

We have all had had telesales/telemarketing calls to our home number. In recent years, my experience has been quite good, with only a few calls getting through. I am of course registered on telephone preference service, which stops all reputable callers. Therefore any telesales calls at home are immediately classified as disreputable and won't get very far.
I have used the famous EGBG counterscript before, it's great.

However, at work a whole new set of rules exist.

It all started a year ago when we advertised a job opening on the Internet and in a relevant publication. We had very specific requirements for the job and had expecting some recruitment agencies to pick up on it, we had written "Strictly no recruitment agencies" on the advert.

Within minutes of the job advert going live, we had a telephone call from a recruitment agency. We politely explained that we didn't want to use a recruitment agency. Minutes later another, and another and another and another. By the end of the day our responses were getting more and more curt. We were getting better at handling them.

In fact, we have something of a standing joke in the office about who could get rid of a recruitment agency the quickest.

Some of them are quite clever at hiding who they are from the outset. "I'm calling about the position advertised on the Internet, could you explain a little more...." before you realised that it was not a genuine applicant. These phone calls could take a minute or so.

Gradually, we got used to the routine and recognised the names of the agencies. The standard response is now only a few seconds. "We have no need for any recruitment agency, thank you for calling. Good bye. (click)"

To the ones that try to prolong the conversation further, I get quite rude.

Unfortunately, there is one agency in particular that I still struggle with. For starters, the sales rep is a woman. I find being overtly rude quite difficult, especially to women, so that puts us on the wrong foot to start with.

I think that I am quite clear when I say to her "We do not, and never will, have any need for any recruitment agency. Please do not call again." But she also has clever questions that you cannot say "no" to. You somehow find yourself being tricked into having agreed to a callback in a month.

She might have won the battle, but she will never win the war. Even if we did need a recruitment agency (which we don't!) the last one on earth that we would ever turn to is one that contrives, tricks and wastes your time every 4 weeks on the phone.

New lamps for old

I had a lovely day yesterday taking Jonathan to York's National Railway Museum. It's free entry and quite a good day out for a toddler! The £7 car park fee is expensive of course, but if you pretend that you're paying for the museum then you don't feel quite so duped!

I realise that I have a some misconceptions about technology when I look at the amazing engineering that was in use 50, 100, 200 years ago. In the days before the transistor, I sometimes imagine that engineering was crude and simple.

In reality, the designs are amazingly complex, the mechanics beyond what I could invent, the mathematics is well thought through, the hand-engineering skills of truly high quality.

Today, we are not better than the engineers of yore, in fact I think we lack the patience and attention to detail that is clear on the older trains. There is always pressure to create something quickly, and there are tools to make this possible!

But if you know that it will take days to construct a simple iron component by hand, then you first must be really sure what that component should be.

On another topic, I have been writing this blog for a little while now, but I have no idea who might actually be reading it though. According to the web counter, some people are!

So here is a little test.

If you read this then next time you see me, make a sentence using the word "raillery". If you don't see me, then leave a comment instead.

If enough people do this then I will be inspired to continue writing this blog.

Wellington boots

Following the recent wet weather, Elvington main road was flooded again this morning under about 6" of water in places.

I noticed this Evening Press news article: Elvington celebrates as flood defences are finally completed, 3rd January 2008.

I suppose it's a slightly misleading headline. The key part of the flood defenses is a pump to move water from the beck in the village into the river Derwent, which presumably can have a higher water level than the beck. According to the article, the pump will be connected to the electricity supply tomorrow.

As a software engineer, I am used to working with the assumption that connecting something to the electricity is somewhere near the start a project, not the completion! There then follows significant testing, bug-fixing, adjusting, tinkering and redesign.

Back to Elvington: apparently, there is a temporary pump working though. I wonder what's gone wrong.

Today's worry is that last time the road was flooded, the bus home took a detour, turning off the road before the flood. No problem, except that I would normally get off the bus the other side of the flood.

I wasn't awake enough to think about wellies when I left the house at 7:15am.

Out of breath

Our CEO completed the Great North Run last October. Returning full of enthusiam, two days later the company's RapiRun running club began. The aim is so that the whole company could compete in the Great North Run next year.

It was greeted with the sort of universal enthusiasm you might expect. It would not be out of place in a Dilbert cartoon.

Nevertheless, about one third of the staff, including myself, are now regular participants. Although I doubt that I will run the Great North Run next year, I have certainly seized the opportunity to actually do some good, regular exercise.

With two runs before Christmas (10th and 30th October) we didn't exactly get off to a good start though!

Nevertheless, with lots of Christmas pudding inside us and at least one new year's resolution behind us we have done two runs this week. Both of which have proved that I am thoroughly unfit and desperately in need of the club!

The smallest room in the house.

After putting off dealing with the broken tiles and generally bad decor in our bathroom for 2 years since we moved in....it's time to "do" the bathroom.

In our small bathroom, we simply want "bath with shower, toilet, basin, tiles". Nothing elaborate, designer or expensive. We also decided to get someone else to install it, time is in short supply at the moment.

According to the bathroom shop, this will cost "£5,000 to £10,000".

Now, this is a little more than we were hoping to spend. I think we are going to change our plans...it's about time I learned to fit a bathroom. It cannot be that hard, can it?

I suppose the first thing would be to make a shopping list.

Bath £300
Toilet, cistern £180
Sink & vanity unit £250
Shower head £300
Mixer tap 2*£150 = £300
Heated Towel Rail £150
Floor Tiles 3sqm*£30 = £90
Wall Tiles 12sqm*£25= £300
Grout/adhesive £80
Misc (wood/boxing etc) <£100
Pipes. drains etc £200
Furniture (toilet roll holder etc) <£100
New light £150
Shower rail, curtain £80

Total £2580. Hmm, still expensive. That's more than we spent on our kitchen, which is definitely not the smallest room in the house!

I wonder if we can re-use anything already in the bathroom, perhaps we can just fix the cracked bath panel and put some new grout on the tiles.

Snowball on ice

At 7:20am this morning queuing for the bus, the whole world was covered with beautiful white snow. Untouched by mankind.

I felt a youthful flush as I remembered the days of snowmen and snowball fights in the playground. Hardly without a thought, I eagerly scooped a handful of crisp white snow and packed it into a perfect sphere. It was just the right sort of snow.

Looking round for an easy target, I saw another person waiting for the bus glance quickly away. I raised my arm slowly and carefully...

Suddenly glowing hot with embarrassment, I lightly dropped the ball harmlessly into the ground, my body language screaming "I meant to do it".

Double Top

Some time ago we inherited quite a nice pub dartboard and cabinet. After the endless petitions about good aim, I finally agreed to put it up in the house. In the dining room as it happens.

Two "legs" and one hour (!) later, we have a door covered in holes and all proclamations of good aim are thoroughly disputed.

Will we improve our aim or decorate first?