Mysterious

Of all the weird things my current employer (for want of a better word) and it’s staff get up to, I’ve decided that I really don’t want to know what stroke of genius made one of the men drop the shell from a hard-boiled egg into the toilet today.

Merry Christmas Indeed

While we’re on the subject of the happy Festering Season™, ScaryDuck mentions the true festive joy that is My Miserable Christmas. Tales of woe and misery from the season, and I’m amazed that there’s only 80-odd additions so far. I’m willing to bet there’s a lot more by the time Santa gets on his sleigh and batters Rudolf with the whip again.

Travel through the Festering Season™

I know that I ranted about this same subject last year, so I’m not going to go off on one too much. But yet again, the fucking cretinous retards who make a housebrick look intelligent planning genii (that’s the plural of genius, I think) of the Rail companies have decided that they should do a shitload of maintenance work. In December. Between the 25th December and the 2nd January.

What a stroke of stunning intelligence. I know – when are most members of the public likely to want to use trains? Between Christmas and New Year, so they can see family, travel to wherever for New Year, all that kind of thing. So let’s replace half the services with fucking buses, while still charging people the same as for travelling on a train. National Express must be pissing themselves with laughter. A bus service instead of train will take the same time as their service, only it’ll cost a shedload more, for fuck-all benefits.

Consider the difference – a sample journey from Manchester to London Victoria, travelling down on the 24th December, coming back on the 28th. I’m looking at prices when booked 24 hours before travelling. National Express – £30.99 Trains – £178.20 In fairness, if I book it further in advance, the train service comes down to &pound53.20 – but that’s still nearly twice as much as the coach service. Madness.

Glastonbury

Yes, Glastonbury will be going ahead in 2004. Great. What still confuses me though is why the people who protest about it every year insist on staying there. It’s been going for nearly 30 years – it’s not like people don’t know it’s there.

So – unless you actually enjoy pissing and moaning – why live in a place where there’s a festival every year?

Third Generation

Two months ago I bought a new phone (the Motorola A920, this time on the Three network. At the time I promised to write a review of it once I’d had it for a while. So here we go.

In general, I’ve been very pleased with both the phone and the network. Yeah, the little franchise shops are utterly shit, and their customer services department lives in India, but the phone service itself has been pretty spot on. When you’re in an area with no 3G service, the phone degrades to the O2 network, so you can still make calls, send email, write/receive text messages, and all the normal gubbins. But it’s when it’s in a 3G-covered area that the phone – unsurprisingly – comes into it’s own.

I’ll freely admit, I probably haven’t even used half the 3G facilities on any form of regular basis. The phone itself has GPS, and you can use this to locate where you are, and then tell you the nearest pubs, restaurants, taxi companies, cinemas, even cash machines – and a whole host of other services. And as time goes on, there’ll be more and more things being added. It’s surprisingly useful, particularly when (as I have been a couple of times since getting the phone) you’re in a place with no idea of local numbers etc.

The downloadable film-clips and music videos aren’t of that much interest to me so far – but I’ve checked weather reports and local/national news a couple of times, and I have to say that the quality is hugely impressive. (On an utterly geeky side, the future for this phone will also include being able to connect up to my TiVo, grab a film or recorded programme from there, store it on the phone and watch it while travelling.) The screen on the phone is big enough that it’s not a struggle to watch, and it’s another useful function.

For me and my uses, the feature of 3G that was of most interest to me was the ability to email and get web-access through the phone. And the email’s good – it’s been very handy a couple of times for sending messages to people without needing to break out the laptop and all the extra gubbins. The web access is – for now – not that good. Three has basically ring-fenced a small area, and that’s the only place you can play. They’ll be opening it up, but initially I think they’ve been trying to get people to use their own content rather than going anywhere else.

It’s not all been perfect – there have been irritations along the way. The connecting between phone and PC was an utter cunt, until I realised I needed to connect the power lead into the data-cable itself, rather than into the charger. That’s something that’s not detailed anywhere, and is a matter of trial and error. Once it was sorted though, the two have happily communicated and backed each other up. One thing I’d wanted in the new phone – and had been told this one had – was Bluetooth. It doesn’t – although allegedly it’ll be available in early 2004, with a firmware fix. I’m not holding my breath.

On occasion, the phone crashes too – and there’s no visible rhyme or reason to it. It’s frustrating, and it’s down to the phone rather than the user – the two other people I know with the same phone have similar problems. However, for a network that’s been in existence for less than a year, I can forgive most of these small problems.

In conclusion, I’d probably give Three about 7.5 out of 10 so far. The stuff they’ve got is pretty impressive – but it needs to be opened up for real-world access. Customer Services are good, if slow – however you look at it, there’s a language barrier when it comes to changing your billing address, for example. The Three shops themselves are – well, in general, shit. But there are some that are helpful, and some even have – gasp! – tills. The phones and battery lives are already improving, and will continue to do so.

Would I give a Three phone as a present this Festering Season? No – probably not. Next year, however – well, we’ll see.

Cleaning Day

Muppet that I am, I recently swapped over from Outlook Express to Outlook for my email. There was a good reason for this – amazing, I know. The Three phone I’ve got connects to the PC, and can back up it’s address book etc. – but only with Outlook, not Outlook Express.

Anyway, while I was at it, I discovered that I’d got a whole shed-load of duplicate addresses, or loads of records for one person, but all with different email addresses. So this evening I’ve sorted it all out, and it makes sense now. I should now get my phone nicked tomorrow…