!iPhone
Posted: Fri 9 November, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism 3 Comments »Am I interested in getting the new Apple iPhone now it’s been released over here?
Am I bollocks. In fact, I really don’t want one. If I wanted a new smartphone (and at the moment I really don’t) I’d go for either the new HTC TyTn 2 (itself an upgrade from the K-JAM I used to have) or the Toshiba Portege G900 (which looks very similar to the TyTn)
In general I’m not great at buying into hyper-branded products (Yes, Apple, I’m looking at you) anyway, and while I can see that the iPhone has its uses, they’re not uses that are on my list of requirements for a phone.
So no, I don’t want an iPhone, and I don’t plan to get one. Ever. I can think of much better things to spend the money on, to be honest. Particularly when (as DiamondGeezer points out that cost over the length of the contract works out at £900, (£269 to buy, then £35 for 18 months – on a contract that’s worse than the one I’m already on) yeah, I can think of better things.
Cutting the Wrong Thing
Posted: Wed 24 October, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Weirdness 2 Comments »File under: Bizarre and “Eh?”
A Tyneside father is trying to get a hospital to allow him to cut the umbilical cord when his child is born. Fair enough – although the local NHS trust has a policy that doesn’t allow people to do this, and has done since 1997.
But the bizarre bit is the reason for this policy to have been brought into being. From the news story…
“In 1997 South Tyneside NHS Trust banned relatives from cutting cords after a baby’s toe was accidentally cut off.”
What?!?
Maybe I’m missing something – not having been present at the birth of anyone, for example – but how the fuck can you cut off a toe “by accident” while cutting the umbilical cord? Even on a really small baby, there’s still a fair bit of distance between the two, surely?
Offended/Offending
Posted: Wed 19 September, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism Leave a comment »Charlie Brooker, you are a god.
Spammers
Posted: Thu 16 August, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Weirdness 3 Comments »This morning, I opened up my email to discover over a thousand returned emails to my business domain name. Ah, not good.
Turns out, some darling spammer had decided to use my domain name as the ‘from’ address. It’s not the first time it’s happened (although that one was from the old D4D™ email address) and they’ve all been deleted now – along with a change to the server settings to stop me seeing them again – but there’s very little else I can do about it, unfortunately. It’s just one of those things.
Mind you, the bit that did amuse me was that I also received one of those spam emails to my normal email address.
Indicators
Posted: Tue 14 August, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Cynicism 4 Comments »Recently, a friend of a friend went out and bought a new car – well, new to them, not brand-new. Now, at which of these points would you decide to not buy this vehicle ? (I should point out, one of these is a joke – the rest all happened)
- The vehicle in question is seven years old, and has only 24,000 miles on the clock
- The dealer knocks the car down from £6,500 to £5,000
- The offered warranty on the vehicle is one month.
- The dealer says he was thinking of painting it bright yellow, it was such a damn lemon
- The brakes seize on the car three days after purchase
So – when would you have decided not to buy it?
Amusement
Posted: Fri 10 August, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, BMW Drivers, Cynicism, Driving, Travel 2 Comments »As I’ve said before, if I drive in to work, I have to go on the pox-ridden bit of single-carriageway road on the A11 between Barton Mills and Thetford. If you’ve ever been to the Center Parcs at Elveden Forest, you’ll know the bit of road to which I refer.
Either side of this section is decent fast dual-carriageway road. But this one section is single-carriageway, and slows everything down.
Now, I admit, I do drive fast. In that way I’m totally a “Type A” personality. Couldn’t deny it if I tried. But I only drive fast when I can. If I can’t, then hey ho, I’ll go with whatever speed everything else is going at. And at that level, I’m far more Type B. Go figure. Mr Paradoxical, and all that jazz.
What this means, though, is that when I get to the poxy bit of road, I’ll go with the flow, which normally (well, normal for 6.30/7am on a weekday) amounts to about 40-50mph. Still not bad, so what the hell. However, this enrages the full-on 100% Type A drivers. Yes, you guessed it, I’m talking about BMW drivers. Why are you not surprised?
Today’s example really amused me, though. Mr BMW 5-series had come tanking up behind me, already doing several dodgy overtaking manoeuvres. He then came out and blasted past me, going round a blind curve on the wrong side of the road. Utter, utter tit. (I know, synonymous with “BMW Driver”)
For once, though, the blind curve didn’t knacker him. It was the next overtaking manoeuvre, while he obviously wasn’t being aware of what he was passing. Blasted past four cars, then tried to slam the brakes on in order to get into a gap before the oncoming truck greased the road with BMW oil.
What everyone else saw, though, was that one of those four cars just overtaken was – yes! – a police car, in full regalia. Hi-vis side bars, lights on the top – you know the drill. And so those lights started flashing, the plod pulled out, caught up with Mr BMW, and pulled him in to the next lay-by.
At which point all the other, rather more Type B drivers who’d just accepted that this bit of road is always shit just cruised on past while Mr BMW was sat up, getting a very solid telling off from Mr Plod.
For some reason, my mood is rather good this morning after that. Maybe there’s a connection?
Secure Passwords
Posted: Tue 7 August, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Geeky 2 Comments »At work, our password changes roughly every month. That’s fine, and makes sense. My work-related passwords are nothing to do with the ones I have for anywhere else, but they also tend to be sweary, because when I can’t be arsed to think of a new password, I’ll use some sweary combination – for example, the one before the current one was ‘cock-knocker’ . Hyphen and all. Go on, guess it at random.
This month’s one is also sweary, but in a far ruder way. Again, that’s fine up to a point. It’s not visible when I log in, and it’s not saved in clear text anywhere. So that’s fine.
Except that our illustrious IT department ‘fixed’ another section of the work I do, and I now need to enter my network password as part of the batch file that sends site revisions up to the various websites. And it leaves the password there in plain text for all to see.
So, yeah, bit of an oops. I may have to select a new (non-sweary) password in light of this development. Arses.