Naich’s crappy blog

Jimbo will have turned into some sort of terrifying super villain:

Yay!  Go Jimbo!

I feel I should write something but I lack inspiration. The first person to reply with a suggestion gets a blog entry written about it.

Due to the ever increasing costs of hosting my web sites, I’m afraid I am going to have to start charging for the content on naich.net. This is not a decision I have taken lightly, but it is necessary in order to allow the continued production of the high qaulity articles you have come to expect.

So, from May 1st, a week’s subscription will cost £1.00, a month subscription £3.00 and £55.00 for a full year. I think you will agree that this is a small price to pay for my informed comments and unique perspective on the important matters.

Thank you.
Naich.

My phone is a Samsung D900i and sometimes it annoys the fuck out of me.

If I want to change the display background, it pops up an “Are you sure?” box. Why? Oh no! If I get it wrong, I might have to change it again. On the other hand, when composing a text, if I hold down the button used for deleting single characters for 1 second, it wipes out everything I’ve written. No warning box, no “Are you sure?” – just splat and my carefully composed message is gone for ever. This happens to me a lot, usually near the end of a long text that has been difficult to compose, and I’m thinking hard about it and not noticing that I’m holding the button down while deleting the last word of my heart-felt… *pop* there it goes. Start again. Argh.

And then, once I’ve written and re-written my text, if I’m trying to send it from a dodgy reception area it gives me a prompt to try again or cancel.  Fair enough.  If I click cancel, it asks if I want to save it.  The soft button that was “Cancel” then becomes the “No” button for “Save?”.  Because when I can’t send a message due to poor reception I usually want to delete the fucker, rather than save it to send later, don’t I?  That one was easier to remember the 10th time it deleted my message with no fucking warning.

Still, at least it makes sure that I don’t accidentally change my background by mistake because that would be REALLY bad.

Well, it’s been two months since I first sent Carlsberg an email complaining
about their driver, who was delivering to the Revolution bar. He basically
challenged me to a fight when I asked him if he was aware that his lorry was
illegally parked in a dangerous position (email below). A month ago, I sent another
email, asking Carlsberg if their lack of response meant that they condoned
the actions of their driver. A single word in an email would have denied
it. Other than a confirmation that they had received the first email,
there’s been nothing from them to suggest that they don’t approve.

Maybe I should have gone over it?

This morning, going down the same bit of road, there was the large Carlsberg
delivery lorry, parked jauntily on a bit of pavement and completely blocking
the contra-flow cycle lane. While the other cyclists swerved round him,
head on into the oncoming path of the traffic, I stopped to take a picture.
However he was just leaving and went past,  giving me a cheeky grin and a wave, while my phone camera was slowly chugging into operation. At least he didn’t run me over.

So no reply from Carlsberg, and their drivers are still happily breaking the
law and putting people’s lives at risk. The only conclusion I can draw from
this is that at best, Carlsberg don’t care about the behaviour of their
drivers or the people who’s lives they put at risk, or possibly, they
actually like their drivers to be abusive, dangerous and law-breaking.

So next time you are in the Revolution, drinking some Carlsberg carbonated
burping water, raise a glass to the driver who delivered it, a young man who
bravely risks other people’s lives and is quite happy to threaten people
because he can’t be arsed to walk the few extra steps from the loading bay
round the back.

Here’s another picture of the lorry parked in the same place, a while ago.

Or I could dig a tunnel under it

This is the original email I sent:

At 7.50am this morning (16/9/09), I passed a Carlsberg lorry parked in a mandatory contra-flow cycle lane in Downing Street, Cambridge, making a delivery to the Revolution Bar [1]. His parking was not only illegal but dangerous, forcing me or any other cyclist using the cycle lane into the main road and into the path of oncoming cars.

The driver was unloading from the back of the lorry, so I stopped and asked him if he knew he was parked illegally in a cycle lane. His reply was “Yes, I know. What are you going to do about it?”. It was a bit early in the morning for a fight with a delivery driver and I was late for work, so I left it at that.

The follow-up:

Hi. It’s been over a month since I made my initial complaint, and since I have not had a response from you (other than a brief email to say the
complaint had been passed on), can I assume that Carlsberg condones (as implied by your apparent inaction) the aggressive behaviour and the illegal and dangerous parking of their drivers?

If you apply for a job at Cambridge University, you’ll have to fill out a form from their HR department. Which is fine if you don’t mind printing out the PDF and filling it in by hand. To fill it in on a PC is a bit more difficult. The only other options are .doc and .rtf files, which don’t open properly in OpenOffice. In fact they don’t open properly on my copy of MS Office at work either.

So I re-created it on OpenOffice. Here is the PD17 form in an open format. I tidied up some of the more egregious mistakes from the original, but it’s still a bit grim, formatting-wise. It should be OK for editing and printing though, and at least you can open it in OpenOffice without it crashing down in 100% CPU flames.

Long time no drivel. I’ve been hanging around at Blah Your Branes, which is a site dedicated to taking the piss out of people who post to the BBC’s “Have Your Say” board. It might sound a bit odd, but have a look if you aren’t easily offended.

Now, to business. I received this rather splendid Nigerian 419 Scam this morning. It’s not the normal one though, it’s a kind of meta-scam which I found quite charming, in a fraudulent sort of way. They are obviously running out of victims and are re-visiting existing ones, mopping up those who go beyond merely dumb and greedy, charting new waters into the terminally gullible.

Subject: Compensation Notice

NIGERIAN FOREIGN PAYMENT INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT
ANTI-FRAUD DEPARTMENT

FROM THE OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN
ANTI FRAUD DEPARTMENT
(under the auspices of EFCC)
ABUJA, NIGERIA.

Attn: Scammed Victim,

This notice is to keep you informed that Mr. President/commander in-chief of armed forces federal republic of Nigeria,during the last federal executive council meeting inaugurated both bodies ECONOMIC & FINANCIAL CRIMES COMMISSION (EFCC) in collaboration with the UNITED NATIONS (UN). I was mandated by both bodies to apologize to all those involved in the scam by Nigerians,and those listed for this exercise and of which you are among the list of scammed victims.

Note that money valued USD100, 000.00 has been approved in your favor as compensation following directives of Mr. President and therefore you are advised to forward the following information?s below to enable the apex bank process your fund for payment to you without any form of interference or delay.

Full Names:
Your Complete Home Address:
Your Tel/Mobile Numbers:

We will appreciate your immediate response; hence we have 7 working days to conclude with this exercise.

Best Regards,

Mr. Tom West
For EFCC & UN

Isn’t that lovely? I would almost wish them luck with it, if I didn’t already wish them a fiery and painful death as they roast slowly on a spit.

Adverts for the UK lottery make me want to rant. So I will.

Let’s give it up for the optimists out there. Don’t just dream of being a lucky winner – think big and think positive, as those dreams could come true.

No they won’t. Sorry to be a spoilsport here, but you will not win the lottery. Yes, I know someone has to win it, but it won’t be you. Yes, I can say that for certain. You will not win the lottery.

It’s not that the odds are low, it’s just how mind-bendingly low those odds are. Let’s give it up for the optimists out there. Give what up? Thinking? No, let’s actually have a think for those people who can’t really grasp huge numbers, which is all of us really. I’m not exactly a genius (I know, false modesty…) and I can’t get my head round the numbers either. So let’s try to put things in perspective…

Think about when you and someone toss a coin to decide who does the washing up, changes the nappy etc. Think about how often you win. Well, it’s half the time, isn’t it? Now take this coin and flip it. Got a heads? Excellent. You only need to get the equivalent of 23 more consecutive heads to win the lottery jackpot. If any one of those tosses results in a tails you lose. So that’s

1. Flip-Heads [2:1]
   (It’s worth considering here, that after just one flip and with all those other flips stretching out below, you’ll only get to this point half the time)
2. Flip-Heads [4:1]
   (We are only two flips in and already there is more chance you’ll get cancer than flip 2 heads in a row. Sorry about this, but you are almost 5 million times more likely to get cancer than win the lottery)
   
3. Flip-Heads [8:1]
   
4. Flip-Heads [16:1]
   
5. Flip-Heads [32:1]
   
6. Flip-Heads [64:1]
   
7. Flip-Heads [128:1]
   (It is more probable that your car was stolen this year than to flip 7 heads in a row)
   
8. Flip-Heads [256:1]
9. Flip-Heads [512:1]
   
10. Flip-Heads [1,024:1]
    
11. Flip-Heads [2,048:1]
    
12. Flip-Heads [4,096:1]
    (Half way there, and you are more likely to have died in a car crash than to have got this far)
    
13. Flip-Heads [8,192:1]
    
14. Flip-Heads [16,384:1]
    
15. Flip-Heads [:132,768]
    
16. Flip-Heads [65,536:1]
    
17. Flip-Heads [131,072:1]
    (If you managed to survive the car wreck at flip 12, a bee or snake sting will kill you here)
18. Flip-Heads [262,144:1]
    
19. Flip-Heads [524,288:1]
    
20. Flip-Heads [1,048,576:1]
    At this point, with odds of just 1/730,000, it is now more likely that the supervolcano in Yellowstone Park has erupted and wiped out life on earth as we know it.
    
21. Flip-Heads [2,097,152:1]
    
22. Flip-Heads [4,194,304:1]
    (If the cancer, drunk driver or killer bees didn’t kill you earlier, if the Yellowstone supervolcano didn’t wipe out life on earth, this is where you die in a plane crash)
23. Flip-Heads [8,388,608:1]
    
24. Flip-Heads [16,777,216:1]
    (Actually it’s only 14,000,000:1 but what’s a couple of million when the numbers are this big?)

Yay! You won! If you play the lottery weekly, on average it’ll take just 4,500 lifetimes to win. Assuming you get reincarnated a lot.

But never mind. There are other prizes aren’t there? Tell you what – forget about the odds – look at the lottery as an investment. Give me a quid and I’ll give you back 20p. OK, I’m actually being a bit more generous than the lottery is, but I’m nice like that.

Invest your money in me and I’ll give you more back than the lottery does. I’ll take Paypal payments. Go on. Give it up.

A word of advice if you selling something on Ebay to an international buyer using Paypal – don’t. Well, at least read this first before you do and don’t come running to me when Paypal decide that your money is safer with them and they’ll just hang on to it, thank you so very much, you horrible potential thief.

so, as you’ve probably guessed by now, this post isn’t even going to have any attempted humour in it, other than some bitter sarcasm, maybe.

When I sold a certain item on Ebay, it was to a Canadian gentleman. As the item was quite heavy and large I didn’t bother setting things up for an international sale, but this guy was very keen and gave me a good price. So I looked up the carriage on it. It was £71. Holy fuck. Still, he’s paying for it; and he did pay for it, nice and quickly with Paypal. So I packaged it up and decide to transfer the money over to my bank before sending it. I’m not quite destitute yet but a £71 sized hole in my budget isn’t something I’d want for very long.

Paypal says “no, you can’t have your money”. I might be a crook for all they know, so they’ll just look after it for a while. It’s being “Temporarily held” to “help ensure that the transactions go smoothly.” It is released, apparently, “after 21 days without a buyer dispute, claim, chargeback or other action. The hold may be released earlier if buyer leaves positive feedback.” Which isn’t much use to me as it’ll take up to 30 days to get there. So that’s 3 weeks I’ll be out of pocket by £71, which will be lounging around in Paypal’s account, gathering interest for them. That’s a tiny part of Ebay’s $280m profit or, to put it another way, the value of a week’s worth of groceries that I’m lending them for free.

By the way, isn’t it handy that this particular service to the public – helping innocent Ebayans have smooth transactions with potential villains, also lets them earn interest on all the money they are looking after on behalf of their grateful customers? I bet they didn’t even think of this when they set it up – they just have their customer’s interests at heart, after all.

Anyway, I explained the situation to my Canadian buyer and suggested that I refund him the money, as I cannot afford to send it while Paypal are hanging on to the carriage money. Instead he gave me positive feedback to release the funds.

Yes, that’s right. Paypal’s buyer protection policy, designed to squeeze a few more pennies out of it’s customers…, er I mean save innocent buyers from unscrupulous bastards such as me, put him in a position where he had to give positive feedback for an item which hadn’t even been posted to him yet. Nice one Paypal. Good job I’m honest, isn’ t it?

But it gets better. This all happened 5 days ago, so the money was released 5 days ago, right? Nah, Paypal decided that it liked his money so much, it wouldn’t pass it on to me after all. I’ve sent emails to Paypal, the first of which was answered by “Miles” who blamed the computer and said he would get it taken off hold. It wasn’t, so I emailed them again and asked my buyer to email them too, which he did. They sent him a similar message as the one sent to me the first time (except that it contained factually incorrect information about their holding policies, namely that if I marked it as sent it would be taken it off hold) and ignored the email I sent.

So I’ve just given up and refunded him. There was no sign that the money was ever going to be taken off hold.

Based on my experiences, what would my advice be? Well, for one thing, don’t treat Paypal as a bank and don’t keep any money in your account. They are not a bank, are not bound by the rules that govern banks, and can choose to keep your money at any time without warning and there’s nothing you can do about it. Also, if there is any danger that your money will be put on hold, avoid using them for international transactions. This site has plenty more Paypal horror stories.

And finally, as they might still say on the News at Ten (I can’t watch it these days – it’s just too awful), they asked me to complete a questionnaire to see if I was satisfied with their customer service. I decided to be honest.