Luke Sheldrick’s Blog

So I am meeting a friend for coffee and lunch today, unfortunately she’s running a bit late, so decided to grab a frappacino and be one of those geeks in Starbucks with their laptop/netbooks out.

I’m in the process of swapping out the wireless card in my netbook (for osx86) so don’t have any drivers or modules setup in the OS’s at the moment.

Luckily though, I do have a vodafone data sim, and the 4213 has an inbuilt 3G modem.

Here comes the fun part, the data tariff is on Vodafone business, so you would think they’d be slightly reliable… erm nope.

Every month, without fail, they mess up the billing. Apparently my Direct Debit fails, it doesn’t. A few ways I know, is it’s gone through a couple of times, so we know that it’s got the correct details. The other being when a DD does bounce, my Bank arse rape me on charges. Third being, there is always funds to cover all my DD’s.

Now vodafail, are funny people, because you know how I said it’s a data card, well how do they try to contact you… by txt message. That’s a big clever idea.

I can sort of see the idea, in that their app for windows, does have a sms function, but I would at least have thought an email may be a better option? or even both. However, I don’t use windows, instead my netbook is running Fedora 10, and NetworkManager doesn’t support sms… FAIL

The best one is when I do look at the missed call txt’s, from their sales drones. WTF? do they talk binary? no, well don’t call a datacard then!

Bah, alas, I phone them up, and go through the usual crap of, could we take your mobile number (No, I don’t know it, I never have, and have no intention of, it’s a datacard.) Can I have the account number, it’s on your bill (No, it’s a datacard, I use it when I am out and about, I don’t carry a copy of all my bills with me)… so we eventually get there, and they say to switch my PHONE off and on… FAIL.

Alas I am mobile again, thanks to the friendly folk at vodafail.

Hmm, the contract runs out next month, who should I move to?

I was horrified when driving home the other night, to see that spec’s cameras had been put up on the A127. The A127 being one of the core roads to and from Southend, in Essex.

For anyone that doesn’t know, spec’s cameras, are average speed cameras, so they take a photo of your number plate when you join the road zone, throughout the zone, and a final camera when you leave or the zone, then they work out your average speed. A few pics below (taken from the link at the bottom).

This are, a double edged sword really, as they are very effective at stopping speeding, which is the idea, but then you can’t cheat by just slowing down at the cameras.

The problem with them putting these up, are people are idiots. The A127, is a dual carriage way, with traffic devided by a central reservation, with National Speed limits. So the speed limit is 70mph. However the idiots, see these camera’s and hit the breaks down to about 40mph or sometimes 50mph. This is by far more dangerious than going 75mph or something terrible like that.

If these idiots, had bothered to check [1] The highway code, they’d know it’s 70mph [2] The road signs, i.e. there aren’t any saying the camera’s are live [3] Google to see if they are live [4] a lot more sites, including the council’s.

Further reading & pictures: http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/a127-specs-speed-cameras.php

I am starting to think, a big box of money under my bed may be a better idea than using Bank’s. Now I used to work at a Bank for a number of years, and saw my fair share of fu-bars, but some other Bank’s just take the piss.

I’ve always been a fan of not keeping all your eggs in one basket, so I have my emergency account & savings with a different bank to my usual current account. The emergency account happens to be IF or Intelligent Finance. Opening the account was a nightmare, but that was largely due to muppets at Halifax. All that set aside they’re not too terrible.

Apart from their online service, which is the only way you can manage your account. I must say I only ever check ever couple of months, and I need to at the moment, so I log on, and because I rarely use it, I have all the details recorded. What a supprise:

It seems everytime I log on, I’ve been locked out. No doubt due to one of those nice chinese hacker folk. So I duely phone up the number provided, and get an IVR, pop in my details, then get connected to an operator, who I have to go through all this again… the joy. The chump then informs me that, the only way I can unlock my account is to be sent an unlock code, which is sent by second class post. Being Friday, it’ll be quite a few days then.

I asked why it had been locked out, and due to excessive log on attempts, which backs up what their site says. No I know it’s not me who has tried to log in, baring this once, so there isn’t really much I can do here.

So there we have it, everytime I want to check my IF account, I’ll have a weekish delay.

Just catching up on my mountain of RSS, saw this on the reg http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/30/faraday_train_windows. It would seem the train operator that runs my daily commute train is embrasing the 21st century by blocking wifi / mobile transmissions, by coating the windows with reflective film.

This is in an attempt to make the quiet zones, quiet. One word…. FAIL. The noise in these carriages is usually a screaming 6month old, or some 13 year old chav, playing eminem, out of their tinny Nokia music player… I hardly thing cutting the business world off from their crackberrys is going to do much.

Also interestingly they don’t mention that they will cut off their ‘in-train wi-fi’ which is run by t-mobile, using their ‘cloud’.

The story with Barclays continues. You know how I had written back in Janurary, about how the saga of them cocking up my account, was a bit of a joke, but they had promised to fix their mistakes. Well they’re still on going, the latest being that they had setup a £200 payment from my current account, every month. Well the ‘Account Manager’ that set it up, set it up for 2 days after the due date, so immediately this was classed as a late payment, with all the natural charges and interest attached.

I thought enough is enough, so tried writing to the Chief Exec, usually you get a better class of monkey typewritter operator. On this occasion, I thought I had, got a letter back a few weeks later, stating that they were sorry… blah fee’s refunded…etc I thought, at last hopefully it’s setup correctly.

Nope, wrong! I checked my current account this morning, and what’s this, seems a bit lighter than I had thought it would be. FUCKWITS, they’re now taking the payment as this regular £200 jobby, and now a DD as well.

So it would seem, even the Chief Exec’s team, can’t even manage a simple task. Barclays, you suck.