A comparison of two purchase experiences.

New Item - Purchase one
I needed a new chair for my computer usage. I am 18+ stone and hard on furniture. So when I was working for someone else I would buy what are known as “operator chairs” - chairs that are specifically manufactured for 24/7 use by corpulent computer cowboys.

Now I am at home, it was time to replace my 7 year old “office chair”, so I started looking for suppliers who sell operator chairs. My usual supplier that I had used for many purchases was out of stock and had a backorder notice with a 2 week delay noted on the web site. Not to worry, there were at least three other suppliers on the search page.

I chose 925 Furniture arbitrarily, and proceeded through their fairly pedestrian web-site. It was a bit worrying that there was no indication of stock availability, but I thought “Hey, they must not advertise a product when they are out of stock” ‘cause anything else would be really silly, wouldn’t it?

So I completed the sale. I received two emails, one which said they would be in touch asap about my order and one from SagePay, their third party payments processor. All good so far.

Skip forward to Monday afternoon. I have not heard from 925 Furniture, so I gave them a ring. Their lines were busy. I called back a little later. Chatted to someone who took my details (order ID, name, phone number) and said they would call back with the stock situation.

Two hours go by. I called again. I gave my details (name, phone number) and was told that they were waiting on a call back from the supplier ( I thought they were the supplier, but I guess I got it wrong…). Within 15 minutes I had a gentleman call me back to tell me that they couldn’t release the chair because they had redesigned the arms and they needed me to approve that change. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they probably would have contacted me that day, although by this time it was after 4pm. The gentleman assured me the chair was in stock and would go out asap on their standard delivery (which is buried in the terms and conditions on their web site and is stated as “2 to 3 days”).

Fast forward to Wednesday. I have had no tracking number, no dispatch notification - in fact no communication from 925 Furniture at all. I phoned and got the same person as last time ( I gave the details - again - and was told someone would ring back. Hmm…. ).

Two hours later, I had heard nothing from 925 Furniture. So I rang them again. I got a different person this time who said they couldn’t help me, and he would “take my details”. I am afraid I lost it a bit at this, and gave the guy a controlled blast describing the woeful track record of 925 Furniture with regard to this sale. Give the guy his due, he was professional, said he would make sure something was done and that someone would get back to me - and I had to give my details - again!

Some time later a gentleman did call back to say that the chair was being dispatched that day for delivery the next day, and that they deliver up to 5pm, but if it wasn’t there by 2pm to give him a ring and he would look at the tracking information. When I asked for the tracking number, he didn’t have it to hand, but did offer to get it for me and that he would call me back. Been down that route before, so I said don’t bother, and I was sure it would get here by Friday. ( I needed it by Friday as I had gifted my current chair to someone else and they were picking it up on Friday.)

Long story short, the chair arrived on Thursday - it was covered in fine dust and damaged. The dust I cleaned with a bit of effort, and the damage was to a cosmetic part of the chair that no-one would notice, so I wasn’t going to send it back and go through what I was sure would be “chair hell” for the sake of a broken plastic cover.

New Item - Purchase Two
I have been looking for new two specific lenses for my camera for some time now - a Sigma 10-20mm zoom and a Sigma 70mm macro lens. I have watched the second hand market for a while and these lenses attract quite high prices due to the demand for them (and their reputation!).

So after an orgy of selling on eBay I finally could afford to purchase these brand new. My lens supplier of choice is SRS microsystems I checked their web site on Wednesday and both lenses were showing as “in stock”. I made a phone call to check on the returns policy, and had a chat with Nikki (hope that’s the right spelling!) who cleared up the point, then went into the stock room, found both lenses and offered to hold them for me for the day. As I was going to purchase anyway, I said “Fine”. I duly ordered both lenses from the SRS website. It combined postage so I paid only one lot of postage, took my money and sent me an email detailing what I had ordered, the expected dispatch date and the expected delivery time almost immediately. Time was 12:40pm

At 13:40pm I received an email from SRS to say the order had been dispatched. At 14:05pm Parcel Force sent me an email telling me my purchase from SRS was due to be shipped that day on the Express24 service, the address that it was going to be delivered to and a tracking number. I also received the usual emails from pay-pal detailing the transaction etc.

I didn’t need to call and I didn’t need to worry. I knew exactly where my goods were. Now they are here.

I know that a chair and two camera lenses are not exactly equivalent, but we are looking at the experience of buying here, not what was bought - so I think the comparison is valid.

So, the question I pose to you is: “Which company will I use again?”

Give yourself a score of one if you said SRSMicrosystems, and a “Seriously, dude!?” if you said 925 Furniture.

P.S. 925 Furniture were asked to comment on this blog post a full 24 hours before I posted it. They didn’t respond.

Pontifications from a Practising Procrastinator

It is easy to do good work that matters to you.

All you have to do is exceed the expectations of the person(s) that you are working for in those tasks for which you have taken ownership - those tasks that matter to you.

The difficulty in that for me involves starting work.

I can find so many things to do before I start to do anything productive that nothing productive gets done.

I have email coming in with pundits relating the next big thing, I have news feeds that have to be checked, I have RSS feeds for a gazillion sites guaranteeing that something will change each day. I have ebay stuff to do, I have pictures to plan and take, I have forums to check and contribute to, and I have housework to do too. On top of that I am now watching about 8 series on TV so I have to watch those when the wife is out (Sci-fi is not her thing!).

All of which is a great load of excuses for not doing anything that matters to me.

Deciding what matters to you when you are your own master is hard for me - I have always defined myself in terms of my employment - now I am not employed, I am a little bit undecided as to what I should turn my attention.

Which brings me to the point of all this navel-gazing.

"End Malaria" (Kindle link - non-affiliate) may be a strange title for a business book, but it contains some musings by some gifted people that are all about working smarter and happier. And a portion of each sale goes towards mosquito nets for Africa to help end malaria. That's a win-win.

Reading it may simply be another way of not starting something that matters, but it got me writing this blog post....

A Community Project

Each year, around the middle of August, the town of Irvine in Ayrshire, Scotland holds a festival known as Marymass.

The Marymass Queen and The Four Marys for 2011 (The Sunday Church Service Procession)


The festival is claimed to have been around since the 12th century, and today it is intimately linked with the Irvin Carters Society which has been around as long as there were incorporated trades in the town.

This year a call was put out for local photographers to document the festival in a project called "Marymass Through the Lens".

I was one of the photographers who responded, and I decided to document as many of the "peripheral" events as well as to try and get some shots of the main parade.

You can see some of the pictures I am submitting for the final project here.

If you would like to see the program for this years events (all finished now) it is here.

This was a fun project, and I enjoyed doing it - hopefully it will continue in the following years as a record of one of Scotlands oldest festivals.

Events that I took pictures at:

Marymass Special Highland Games
Marymass Lawn Bowls Championship
Senior Citizens Folk Concert
The Shows (Fairground rides etc.)
Horse Judging and Parade
Open Chess Tournament (1 of 2 left in Scotland, so I am told!)
The Sunday Church Service Procession
The 10K run (and no, I was not participating!)
The Flower Show

I thoroughly enjoyed donating my time to this worthwhile project, and I will update this blog post as soon as an outcome of all the photographers work is known.

How long!?

Wow! Coming up on two months since I wrote anything in this blog.

I'll bet no-one missed me ;-)

Lots of changes have been happening in my personal life - since I had a month off from work in January, to be precise.

During that month (off on sick leave for a very bad leg condition) I spent much more time with my wife than at any other time in our 33 years of marriage - either I was working or she was working, and we never spent this much time together - ever.
My wife is not currently employed ( I will not say "doesn't work" because keeping a house is hard work!) and suffers from arthritis. How badly, I only just appreciated in that month off.
Long story short, my working hours are soon to be drastically reduced. While this will mean a dramatic reduction in income, I am hoping it will lead to a better quality of life for my wife (and me!).

So in about a month or so, you might see an increase in activity in this site, and perhaps the Project 52 and Project 12 can be resurrected from the deep, deep, deep hibernation they are in - for which you (the one subscriber I had) have my apologies.
Some times "real life" just gets in the way....

Where are we now?

It's been two months since I wrote anything in this blog.

So what's been happening to slow me down?

Well, work got busy with some more politicking about who controls what. I won't even mention the disgusting antics of the Senior Management .
Personally, I got busy with some consultation work for an overseas venture that looks really interesting.
And something had to give. My photography went on the back boiler. As did this blog.
Apologies if you were looking for anything here or in Project 52 or Project 12.

I anticipate a change in circumstances for me over the next 3 months or so, so hopefully the posts will be more frequent.

In any event I was invited to an event a local radio-control yacht club was running yesterday. I had photographed their club events a year or so ago, and they invited me along to the national event they were hosting ( I probably would have been welcome if I hadn't taken my camera, but I took it anyway!).

The weather was a bit of a disappointment - partial cloud cover and very little wind - nice for humans, useless for sailors!

Last years pictures were full of drama with bow waves and churning wakes, this year not so much.

Here is a snap from last year:


And here is yesterdays efforts:


As you can see, no bow waves, no chop, and to my mind, less dramatic.

I'll put up a gallery later on with some more yachting pics from 2009/10 and 2011.

Hope you like them!

Weekend Shoot

Yesterday I went to a local (man-made) pond where the local model boat club sails their creations. Sometimes it's serious racing, and sometimes it is just for fun.
I got there when most were heading for home and only a few die-hards had boats on the water.
Not to be deterred, I smiled, asked permission to shoot (you don't need to, but it's just manners to do so :-) ) and started.
So, we had moving subjects, unpredictable winds, varying light (intermittent cloud cover), swans, a new lens, and the background(s) were not great.
All the ingredients of a fun shoot ;-)

To see some of what I came up with, I put them here:
http://web.me.com/shanek54/ModelBoats/Photos.html

After about half an hour, I started talking to one guy whose boat wasn't in the water. We chatted about the boat and he was saying he made models for fun and he would bring down his air-craft carrier model one Sunday. It is 8+ feet long! I sure hope I am around that Sunday!

All in all, a pleasant Sunday and I got some practice with my new lens.
For the gearheads, I was using my Pentax K200D with a consumer zoom lens, the Pentax smc DA 55-300 f4-5.8.
Most photos are F7.1, ISO 100 - shutter speed varies. Website photos are low-res jpgs.

As I normally do with personal shoots like this, I make the photos available to anybody in that local club that wants them, with the only proviso being that if they use them for their website or for club promotion, then I get a credit ( © Shane Kelly ).
That's fair, no?

More on Photographic Competitions

I have spoken about Photography competitions before - but only about the local "League" ones. Today, I am going to talk about a competition run by a commercial entity here in Scotland.
The Whitelee Windfarm is currently "planting" huge windmills over the Eaglesham moor, about 20 minutes from central Glasgow. They are owned (apparently) by ScottishPower, and are making all the right environmental noises on their web site. I have no issue with this aspect of their operation.
What I do have issue with is the use of a "photographic competition" that is nothing more than a "picture rights grab".
Whitelee (or ScottishPower) have decided that getting amateurs to submit photographs in the hope of winning a £130 point and shoot camera is the best way to get images that they can then use for publicity purposes.

Nothing wrong with that, you say?
And I might have agreed with you if I had not read the "Terms and Conditions" closely.

Number 13 states:
"All entries must be the original work of the entrant and must not infringe the rights of any other party. The entrants must be the sole owner of copyright in all photographs entered and are responsible for obtaining all third party permissions to the taking of the photographs and use of those photographs in accordance with these terms and conditions. In particular, you represent and warrant that consent has been obtained from any clearly identifiable person appearing in any image to the taking of the image and the use of that image in accordance with these terms and conditions. Further, entrants must not have breached any laws when taking their photographs."

So, it needs to be your own work - fair enough. You must have had permission to enter and shoot on the land from which you took the photo, and if there is a recognisable person in the shot, you need a model release. And lastly, the photograph must have been taken lawfully.
Simple for a professional, onerous for an amateur.

Lets look at number 14:
"Entrants must not have offered any of their entries for sale or been paid for any publication of any of their entries. In addition, all images submitted must not have been published elsewhere or have won a prize in any other photographic competition."

So, basically, they are looking for new images that have not been published, even on your own website, or your flickr or facebook page. They want you to go out and get new pictures for them.

Lets see what no 15. says:
"Entrants will retain copyright in the photographs that they submit to the competition. By entering the competition all entrants grant to ScottishPower Renewables a royalty-free worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual right to use, publish, reproduce and exhibit any or all of that entrant's submitted photographs in any media format in any of its publications, websites and/or in any promotional or marketing material and to grant such rights to any third party to do same. This may include, but is not limited to, use of the photographs in accordance with paragraph 12 above. No fees will be payable for any of the above uses or for any of the rights granted by entrants hereunder. Entrants whose photographs are one of the Top Ten also agree to take part in post-competition publicity. While ScottishPower Renewables makes every effort to credit photographers, including in printed reproductions of their work, it cannot guarantee that every use of the photographs will include photographers’ names."


Basically, you give up all rights (except copyright) for any use of the image forever, while ScottishPower go on using it for nothing in any form (even ones not invented yet) - and they can assign the right to use it to third parties (i.e. anyone else they want) - and this not only pertains to the winners, but to all entries. On top of that, the top ten have to help publicise the windfarm, and it is not even guaranteed that you will get a mention!

Let's put this in perspective.
The conditions of this competition would not be accepted by a professional photographer without a substantial fee - the licensing provisions are simply too broad. They negate the use of the image for any other purpose that might earn the professional some income - nobody wants to use an image closely associated with another business.
So Scottish Power have decided it is cheaper (both in terms of publicising their Windfarm, and in getting some images that they can use for any purpose forever) to offer a pitiful "prize" instead of paying out £1000's per image to a professional.

Bottom line? You're legally responsible for everything about the picture - if you are not in the top ten you get nothing, and your pictures could still be used under the conditions stated above. If you are in the Top Ten, but not in the top three, you get a "goodie bag" with unknown contents. What's the bet it contains promotional material for ScottishPower?

If you want to enter the competition under those rules, then go ahead. I think you're crazy, but that's just my opinion.

Why do I care?

I have wanted to "do photography" for many years. I remember being fascinated by the strange numbers on the lenses of the old film cameras that I used to see in my grandmothers garage (they belonged to my dead grandfather). When I got a bit older I got an old box brownie (second hand) but we couldn't afford to get the photos printed. I used to use that camera to pretend to take pictures.
Fast forward to today. I can afford a digital camera and a selection of lenses and other gear, and I am taking more photos than ever before. Sometimes I even think I've got a keeper.

Now, I am not a "joiner" - I don't join clubs unless they have a purpose relevant to what I need ( I was a member of several Chess clubs, when I fancied myself as a decent Chess player - now the goddamn GNU Chess programs beats me all the time!) and I have never joined a sports club or Gym or for more than a few weeks ( all that sweat and effort! ).

But I have joined a photography club.
And I put my pictures in to be judged in the local "League" competition.
And inevitably they get panned - sometimes on technical grounds, but mostly on "artistic grounds".
And that's fair enough, for the technical reasons.

But what most annoys me is the "artistic grounds". We all know that beauty/art/whatever is in the eye of the beholder, and my head tells me that the judge is applying his criteria and his experience to a picture, and that it is nothing personal, but my gut tells me the bastard doesn't know what he is talking about.

And you know what - both reactions are correct!

My head is right - it is not personal - from the judges point of view, and my gut is right - it is very personal to me.

So, the bottom line is, I learn from the technical critique, and I get an insight into what another person thinks of my pictures "artistically" - and if I ever want to improve my pictures "artistically" according to someone elses criteria, then I can. But I won't. It's my "artistic" vision and I will continue to follow it. It might be judged to be crap by the world, but it says something to me ( and about me, for all I know!).
If you are going to "do photography" for your pleasure, then do it the way you want.

Participation

I spend a lot of time on-line. I look at hundreds of blog sites and hundreds of photos each month. I read dozens and dozens of articles on everything under the Sun - from the best way to live in a van to the progress of the Large Hadron Collider. I read tweets (hundreds and hundreds) and occasionally tweet something myself. I email. I surf. I flipbook.
In short, I consume. I consume in vast quantities, and I want more - and more - and more AND I don't want to pay (well, alright, a little bit - but not that much!).

In a second or two when I was not slurping up the products of someones else efforts, I thought:- "What would happen if everybody just produced ONE thing?"

Well, the internet would be a vastly more interesting place, for one. It might take some of the pressure off the inveterate producers of digital goodies, as well. It could help convince those organisations that simply moved their "real world goods" to the Internet (and continued to charge "real world" prices) that they don't own the game anymore. And, if you did it, it might even make you feel as though you were part of something bigger than you had ever been a part of before.

So, i just produced something - a slideshow of my photography set to music and themed with "a calming, tranquil" goal in mind. Each photograph is from Scotland, and while not technically perfect (is anything?), they are some of the ones that "stick in my mind" - for a variety of reasons.

Anyway, here it is, in a form suitable for an iPod/iPhone and one for the iPad/Mac/AppleTV and for all you HD fans, here's a 720HD version. The first is around 46M and the second is just under 160M, while the third weighs in at 272M. Large sizes, I know - but to make what I wanted I wasn't going to compromise (and spare a thought for me - I uploaded them from a 448k uplink :-( ). If you are a Windows user then either transcode them to your preferred format or install QuickTime for the PC.

If you like it, leave a comment. If you hate it, leave a comment.

A Day in the Life

For IT Systems Administrators there are no "typical" days. There are "typical" tasks. Log reviews, software patches and updates, data retrieval, data backup, storage management, commission new servers, retire old ones, test new software, server performance checks, network performance checks, power regulation checks on the Uninterruptible Power Supplies, Air Conditioning unit checks, handling user queries and complaints, checking that all services are up and running (and running correctly!) and many many more smaller tasks that fall into the "preventative" category - all form the backbone of the Systems Administrator raison d'être.

Then there are the atypical tasks - like dealing with a flooded server room, moving your entire inventory of servers from one room to another, crawling around under the floor to find a possible cable break, running emergency power cables because someone forgot to tell you that there would be a power interruption that day and a hundred and one other things that can and do happen only occasionally, but that need to be dealt with by "someone".

Then we have the administrative tasks of the position - the documentation of systems, servers, networks and services, the preparation of proposals for new/upgraded servers and services, the preparation of specifications for desktops, servers and laptops so that they will do the job at the most reasonable cost - and then there is the form filling for management - but enough said about that particular endeavour.

And after all that, we have the real reason why we are needed. When a service goes down, we need to get it backup as soon as possible - and that may mean 24 hour shifts, cannibalising other, less important servers/services and basically doing what is needed to ensure that that service is back up in the least amount of downtime possible.

There are many ways that could be used to describe the job of Systems Administrator, but my favourite is this one:

"So, Jock, you say you are the "Official Elephant Hunter and Disposal Person" for the City of Glasgow?"
"That's right"
"But Glasgow has never had a problem with elephants!"
"See what a good job I'm doing!"

You don't know you need me, until you need me.

Clearing the clutter

Many years ago I was made redundant. This was quite a shock to me, as I had always considered myself to be a good worker, giving value for money to my employer, going the "extra mile" when required.

I blamed myself, as I thought it was my fault - but when I saw who was kept and who was fired, I saw that there was no reason (other than the management having a "plan" to reduce costs ) to choose one over another.

So, what to do?

At that time, things were, economically speaking, quite difficult and the prospect of paid employment was quite low. I knew computers, book-keeping, computer games, the meat industry and how to talk to people. I really liked playing computer (and console games) and as I had been in the console games sector, I thought I would see what could be done in that area.
Realizing that retail premises were not an option, I went mobile. I started a market stall selling the console games of the day (Super Nintendo, MegaDrive, Neo-Geo (look it up!) etc. ). The business kept me afloat until the PlayStation and other CD based formats came to the fore. Since they were easily copied, they followed the way of the PC and put many legitimate sellers out of business.
Shame, but that's life.

Fast forward 10+ years.

Our loft is getting added insulation soon, so it had to be cleared out. While in the process of doing so, I came upon the remnants of my console games selling business. I found an Atari Jaguar console (no games, so useless), an American SNES (Super Nintendo) still in its original box (no games, no "universal" adapter), an Amstrad 664 home computer (with disks), several hundred Commodore 64 games on cartridge and tape, and an MSX home computer (circa 1983), many spares for many different consoles and a lot of leads etc that were just plain useless.
I suppose I could have had a good old wallow in the nostalgia evoked by these items, but, you know what? I dumped them. Unceremoniously. Without real thought.
Why?
Because they were useless. Because they brought nothing to my life now. Because they had been sitting in my loft for 10 years, never looked at.

The sum total of what I kept from the loft clear out was my chess board and pieces, and some financial papers that needed shredding.

I am currently in paid employment, with the prospect of being made redundant yet again. As we know, economic times are hard (again). My base skill set hasn't changed much, but the world has.

So, what to do?

Haven't got a clue, really.

But at least my loft is empty.

Money and Value

When I do something, I try to do it as well as I can - probably, so do you, and probably so does everyone else.

So why do we end up with ISP's who can't deliver what they sell?
Why do we have voting booths that run out of ballot papers?
Why do we have politicians who can't manage to be truthful?
Why do we have Public Servants who neither serve, nor care about the Public?
Why does any work you have done on your house have a 10 year guarantee, but anything that goes wrong isn't covered?
Why do we have insurance companies who will take every penny you've got in premiums, but demand you jump through all sorts of hoops before they fail to give you a penny?
Why do we have banks that are now my best friend, when two years ago they would cheerfully have put me in debt for the rest of my life?

If everybody is trying their best, why does it turn out like this?

My take is simple. Everything is measured in terms of money. We no longer have a value system, we only have a monetary system.

Example: I use the internet. I pay a premium to an ISP for a certain level of service. I value that service beyond the price I pay, because it is of importance to me. If that service slips, and I can no longer do what is of value to me, then I need to re-assess. Having re-assessed, I now pay more for my internet, but I only pay for what I use and I am not locked into a long term contract and I have an internet connection I can carry in my pocket and use almost anywhere in the UK. Overall, the value of the service I now have is more than the old one to me. The cost might be more (could be less depending on what I use) but the value is the important thing.

Example: I research a problem at work and come up with the answer that is best for the users of the system. I make a presentation to the "powers that be" and I am told it is "too expensive". When I ask what is the cost of the performance degradation on the users output when using a "less expensive" solution, I am met with blank stares. The value of the "too expensive" is not the amount we pay for it, but the amount by which the users productivity goes up as opposed to the "less expensive" solution. Simple concept, but totally alien to "the powers that be".

Let's start valuing again, instead of pricing.

The Internetz and me

I started using dial-up many years ago when UUCP was doing the heavy lifting, and Kermit was fighting with X, Y and ZMODEM.
I have used remote access for a long time.

No technology in my life has ever frustrated me more. If I got a good connect, the file transfer failed. If I got lousy speed then the file transfers took forever and still failed. Mostly things just failed - but - every so often it all came together and it just worked, giving a glimpse of what could be possible.

Fast forward to today. We have blistering fast broadband in every house. Everybody is on-line all the time. We can download as much music, video, and other content as we want. It is always there, always on and always available. That's the picture painted by the ISP's, the media and those trying to sell you stuff.

The reality is that some of us have blistering fast broadband speed (cabled areas, those who live on top of the BT exchanges) - the rest of us have todays technology delivered (slowly) by last centuries infrastructure, intermittently.

The ISP's have restricted how much we can download (caps and "fair use" policies), they push ever faster (more expensive) packages, when they know the delivering technology cannot deliver anymore than what you are getting today, they change the fine print, they traffic shape your p2p traffic on the grounds that these services are "illegal", when the reality is that their crappy (rented) networks can't handle the traffic on the bandwidth they are overselling.

You are branded a thief if you download music (even from sites where the music is original and freely distributable), download a video (legally) from anywhere and boy, you better watch it quick, or it will disappear off your computer in 10/20/30 days whatever. Access a web site and chances are you will be asked to participate in a survey/have a pop-up add in your face, have to listen to someones (not your) choice of music, have spyware, crapware, trojans or viruses attacking your computer. And don't get me started on spam and spammers. There has to be a special version of Hell for those bastards!

Last October I changed my package with the same ISP from a fixed rate 2mb package (that was rock steady at 2 and a little bit megabits)to an ADSL+ package capable of upto 8Mb - I knew I would not get any increase in speed (my line is incapable of more), but it was UKP100 (per year) cheaper than the package I had.

Big Mistake.

I now have a rock steady (most days!) internet connection at .5 to .75Mb.
Roughly one quarter to one third the speed I had before.

I have contacted my ISP about this over the last 4 months, and they finally (after many tries and me jumping through all the diagnostic hoops they could conjure up) agree that the line is the problem, and to progress this, a BT engineer should come to the house and inspect my equipment and internal wiring (huh?). Oh, and by the way, they will charge you UKP188 pounds for the privilege - according to them, the charge is levied only if they find a fault in your equipment. They don't charge if they find a fault in their equipment - which is really big of them.

I have been dealing with BT from the days of ISDN data connections, and let me assure you, they *never* admit a fault. Your problem magically disappears some time after BT have been notified of it (usually!), but it was never their fault.

Case in point. I lost my internet connection in 2009 for three days. The ISP was useless, they couldn't do anything - it was a fault at the exchange. Finally, after three days it "just came back on". When I asked for the report from BT, I was given a one sentence report that explained nothing.

So, whats the answer?

Well, for me, I have changed ISPs to a firm that have a reputation of being a little bit more pro-active on their customers behalf, and I have moved onto a month by month contract (I will never get a long term contract again) and I have begun exploring other methods of Internet connection.
Satellite and Mobile Internet are the front runners at the moment.

For you, I don't know what the answer is, - but I can surely say that the model of using an ISP who doesn't own the delivering infrastructure is fatally flawed - you end up as the ball in a three-way ping-pong match between you, your ISP and BT.

Not pretty. Which just about sums up the state of the "Information Superhighway" in my part of the UK.

A little colour in our lives

When I started work in the meat works (aka abattoirs aka slaughterhouse) as a meat inspector, I was 17 years old and wet behind the ears. I had led a very sheltered life in a low income middle class area of Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria.

As you might imagine, the meat works was not a highly sought after place of work, so I was working among many eastern European migrants, and people from the poorer segments of Australian society. Please, don't get me wrong here - I did not think myself superior to any of them - just different - trust me, I was the odd one out.

Like most strange places, your survival depends on shutting up, listening and adapting. And by doing that, I found that many of these people were "characters" - not someones who would be welcomed into polite society, but perfectly at home where they were.

One such guy was Alf McGrotty, whom I had the dubious pleasure of working with at the Anglis meat works in Footscray. The mutton processing chain was a long distance from the main amenities block, so walking back and forward to get a cup of tea or go to the loo was time consuming. So the meat inspectors (of which I was one) had their own amenities close to the mutton chain. Now, remember , I am going back nearly 35 years when I relate these tales, and don't judge us too harshly. Alf was designated "cook" for the meat inspectors, and it was his job to serve up a full meal to the 6 inspectors working on the mutton chains - and I do mean a full meal - roast leg of lamb (or roast beef occasionally) with roast potatoes, pumpkin, peas, mashed potatoes, gravy and mint sauce. Not bad for a week day (every week day!). We all used to contribute a few dollars for the trimmings, but the meat came straight from the processing floor.

So, now you have the background, here a couple of "Alf" tales that show what type of character Alf was...

My first day on the mutton chain they put me on the lamb chain where Alf was supposed to be working (of course he was off preparing the veg for the meal). Now I was keeping up OK and everything was going along fine when Alf arrived at my side. Thankful for the breather, I slowed down a bit. Imagine my surprise when Alf grabs a lamb off the processing line, says "hold that!", giving it to me and then proceeded to cut the leg of the lamb, stuff it under his shirt and make his way rapidly back into the amenity room. There I was, standing with this mutilated lamb carcass, the rest of the lambs whizzing by, and my chin on the floor! I recovered as best I could, and enjoyed the lamb for lunch.

One time when there was a petrol strike on, the meat works allowed meat inspectors to purchase petrol from the on-site pumps at the price they paid for it - this was so they would not lose production if the the meat inspectors could not get in to work. As I had to travel across the city, I was very grateful and was careful to only use the petrol for work. However, one day when I went to fill up I was told that "there would be no more petrol for meat inspectors" - one inspector had been filling up his tank, going home, siphoning it off, and then filling up the next day. Likely this could have gone on for a while, but the stupid bugger started selling it at inflated prices to the rest of the workers in the meat works (who were not privileged enough to have the option to buy it!). Yep, you guessed it - Alf was that man.

Also at the Anglis meat works was a labourer known to me as "Millie" - well that's how everyone addressed him, so I did too. I was working on the beef cradles this particular day when I heard a foreman ask Millie:" Hey, Millie, when did you get your last fuck?". Quick as a flash Millie replied "You've got a short memory!" The foreman disappeared in a hurry to the sound of some very loud laughter...

So here I am, thirty-five years later, and I look around for a "character" or two to help me realise that world is not really deadly dull and grey, it just seems that way. And what do I find? Politicians with the charisma of a dead fish, overtly unfunny people in whom nasty passes for humour, workmates who are so scared of the PC police that they dare not utter anything that may be construed as "not PC", everybody in "head down, arse up" mode with no time for the lighter side of life, no "conspiracy theorists" to feed lines about "them" to, nobody wearing tinfoil hats, just no colour to be seen.

How sad.

So, I have decided that I will speak my mind, I will utter "not PC" thoughts as they occur to me, and not censor everything I think in case I offend someone.

I predict my life will be a little more colourful from now on.....

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Also, I have a couple of permanent pages for Babette and Terry

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