News Archives: April 2009

Friday, April 24, 2009

Originally Claire's Idea

When I get a spam phone call, I no longer rant at the person calling, nor do I hang up, nor report them to the TPS. None of these work, and all leave me feeling stressed. Instead, I simply say "oh, could you hold on a moment" and put the phone down, next to the nearest speaker if there's music playing. Then I go back to whatever I was doing when the phone rang. After a couple of minutes I go back, and if they haven't hung up I say "sorry about that, who did you say you were? Uh huh... Uh huh... No! Don't bring that in here! Sorry, back in a minute..." and repeat. Today, I got someone to hold on for over ten minutes. My best yet! Maybe she really likes "Selling England by the Pound", which was today's hold music.

Not only does this technique leave me less stressed, but all the time the person is on hold with me they can't be bothering some other poor sod. A small wave of goodness spreads out from me, making life a little better on average for us all.

(And, yes, I'm on the "do not call" list, for all the difference that makes...)

Posted by graham @ 08:16 pm

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Four Bloody Numbers

I loathe server moves. The company we rent a server from have decided to move to a new data centre. In some ways this makes sense, but it involves two lots of downtime, and changing the IP address. The first phase of the move was this week - changing the IP address. So, yesterdayI got a call asking for the server's root password. Er, no. Instead, I asked them to tell me what they needed changed on the server, and when, and I'd do it. I got the new IP address, and agreed a time to make the change - 9am this morning.

I made my changes (most of which they couldn't have done - they don't run the name servers, for instance) and as soon as I changed the IP address, the server disappeared from the net. I gave it a while for the routers to catch up. No joy. So, phone up. Short argument with a guy who claimed they didn't do that kind of support, before claiming he hadn't understood what I wanted, and passed me to the guy I spoke to yesterday.

Turns out the engineers had decided I was going to do everything - routers, firewall, the lot. How they thought I'd do that without the passwords, I don't know. So the engineers hadn't done anything. Anyway, my contact went off to sort that. He called back, to tell me it was all working. I got him to hold on while I checked. Ping, tracert, ssh, email - all failed. Didn't seem fixed to me. More umming and aahing, and it turned out I'd been given the wrong IP address. And without a working address, no way I could connect to the computer. So, an engineer had to be given the root password and sent to physically change the address. Meanwhile, I was sat watching for the server to reappear, so I could change the password and check the history files. Aargh!

Anyway, we're back online. There may have been the odd email gone astray, though. If you haven't seen a reply from me (or Claire), sending again might be a good idea. I'm kind of hoping tomorrow will be considerably less stressful.

Posted by graham @ 08:16 pm

Friday, April 17, 2009

Piracy

So, owners of the Pirate Bay have been found guilty of, basically, piracy, and sentenced to one year in prison. This seems both predictable and reasonable. There's not many crimes where you'd get as little as a year for deliberately messing with millions of quids worth(*) of other people's property.

But that's not the point I was wanting to make. I'm wondering what the difference between the Pirate Bay and YouTube is? I mean, is it just that one's a couple of Scandinavian punks, while the other is a major American corporation? What about the record companies that "forget" to pay royalties to their artists? How about when Apple "accidentally" uploads music on to itunes? In other words, how much is this about ensuring revenue flow to the creators (which I approve of) and how much about stopping newbies shoving on to the bigboy's turf?

(*) How to value IP? A minimal approach would seem to look at the production costs. TV shows costing $1million per episode are increasingly common, and anything under around $250k is considered cheap. That's why the BBC is so keen on Red Nose Day, etc.

Posted by graham @ 03:55 pm

Sunday, April 12, 2009

And so to bed

What an exhausting weekend. We walked dogs with friends Friday evening and today, and spent most of yesterday at Mum's for a family dinner. It's getting kind of scary how quickly the kids are growing up. I don't feel old enough to have a little sister with a teenage daughter! The dogs are exhausted from all the exercise - Alfie hasn't even got out of bed to have dinner. I'm soft, so he's laid on his bed, with his head in his bowl, chomping away.

I've managed to give the lawn its first cut of the year. Normally as soon as I think of mowing, it rains. Today, I rushed out to cut the lawn as soon as I thought of it, and finished a good 45 minutes before the cloudburst.

I'm now signed up to twitter as buserian. (grahamrobinson was taken.) Partly this is a disillusionment with Facebook as anything more than a tool for playing silly games, partly because some interesting people seem to be using it, and partly it's because twitterfox makes it actually usable. Dunno how much I'll use it - probably depends if anyone seems to be listening to anything I have to say...

Posted by graham @ 10:12 pm

Friday, April 10, 2009

Birthday BBQ

The annual May birthdays BBQ will be held at our house on Saturday 9th May. All welcome. Bring friends, booze, and something to throw on the barbie. We'll probably light the coals about 6pm, though people are welcome to turn up earlier if they wish. Lifts from and to Linlithgow station available all night - last train to Edinburgh at midnight, to Glasgow just before.

Any questions, let me know!

Unfortunately, this year there won't be a bonfire. Someone stole the wood I had stockpiled. Sarah is, of course, devastated.

Posted by graham @ 08:21 pm

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Catching Up

It's been a while since I blogged, so this one's a bullet-pointed catch-up.

• I'm sleeping better, which means I'm acheiving more, and hopefully am a more generally pleasant person to be around. Having said that, Monday morning was hell, thanks to the whole clock change nonsense.


• I now am the proud(?) possessor of Robot Wars - The Board Game, found in a charity shop in Richmond. It had sufficient plastic twiddly bits to make it irresistable to me. Anyone fancy giving it a go?


• Claire bought me some gorgeous monolithic speakers for the sun room. I got 'em wired up last night, and terrified Zak with the bass rumble they're capable of. Dirt cheap too, so I'm thinking of getting another pair for the kitchen, though I'm not quite sure where they'd fit.


• Other people have been mentioning my birthday, so I guess I should make an announcement. The May birthdays BBQ will be at our place on Saturday 9th May. I'll try to remember to put a proper announcement here and on the Watt Gamers list in the next couple of days. I wasn't going to bother with a Facebook announcement - doesn't seem to reach anyone different.


• Speaking of parties, there seems to have been a general lack of them recently. Also, a lack of people visiting. If things don't improve soon, action may need to be taken.


• We're planning to take the dogs lure coursing again this weekend, hopefully with a couple of volunteers to help with dog holding. I may try to get some video of the youngsters in action.


• Barclays went to the high court to stop me (and you!) reading their tax avoidance memos, so of course I went and read 'em. There is something deeply important missing from these people.


• I thoroughly enjoyed this week's Monday night game. I've been struggling with this recently (partly due to the afore-mentioned lack of sleep) but this week hit the spot with believably evil villains, a decentish action sequence (action being one of my weak points) and a threatened NPC that the players actually cared about.


• Tonight I discovered that I'm the sort of person who gets bored by "Brokeback Mountain" but enjoys "My Super Ex Girlfriend".

Anyway, enough about me. How are you?

Posted by graham @ 09:07 pm

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