Pocket Rocky

Pocket Rocky

from the eye-of-the-tiger dept

I'm completely hooked on Rocky Balboa for the PSP. I've completed all the "Historic Fights" and now I'm working my way through the "Fast Lane" fights...

Loss of earnings

Loss of earnings

from the out-of-pocket dept

Last Thursday, my train got stuck between my home station and the next one. For 4 hours. With no heating. Eventually they got us back to the station I started from. There was no replacement bus service, because, like the trains, they had got caught up in the "adverse weather conditions" (or, an inch of snow, as most people call it).

All this is annoying enough in itself, but since I am still in my probation period for my new job, I don't have a holiday entitlement. Thus this day has to be taken as unpaid leave, meaning I am now 1 day's pay out of pocket. The train operators terms and conditions state that they are no liable for consequential losses (i.e., ones indirectly caused by their ineptitude).

Annoyed is no longer strong enough a word to describe my feelings on this one now.

Upgrades and downgrades

Upgrades and downgrades

from the some-you-win dept

I upgraded my desktop and laptop machines to the new (preview) version of Ubuntu, codenamed "Feisty Fawn". This was mainly cos I wanted newer versions of Mono stuff and had broken my exiting installation by mixing and matching libraries and getting embroiled in dependency hell. So far its proving to be better with the new release, although it seems slower.

BloGTK is broken for me now, ever since Blogger changed to using Google accounts for authentication. I now get a "UserMigratedException" when trying to connect. Will have to try to work around this one, but for now, I'm having to post via the standard Blogger web interface, which I'm not a big fan of.

Battling for logic

Battling for logic

from the defending-common-sense dept

I've been trying to buy some software from Sun Microsystems. Unfortunately, they use Digital River as their payment handler for e-commerce.

I say unfortunately, because although their payment page supports Switch/Solo/Maestro cards, they've not implemented it properly. They rightly state that if you card doesn't have an issue number (mine doesn't), you should provide a Start Date. However, the values they've used to populate the drop-down for the start year are the same they've used to populate the dropdown for the card expiry date.

What this means is that my card start date is in 2006, but I can only choose from dates between 2007 and 2017. I've been battling with their seemingly non-technical customer services by email ever since. Needless to say, the initial online form to contact their customer services is equally as badly implemented, as you can only put information into preset categories, none of which my question falls into.

The product I'm trying to order is only £3.52, but its the principal now. If they want to market themselves as a major e-commerce player then they need to fix this.

How the other half live

How the other half live

from the money-money-money dept.

Eddie Jordan's £10.9m yacht, The Snapper, is currently moored right outside my office window. Very nice it is too...

What's happening?

What's happening?

from the news-in-brief dept.

Ok, time for some updates as to what is going on with me...

Started a new job on Monday. After nearly 6 years in my previous job, I'm still hoping that I've done the right thing. Less pay, less benefits, longer hours and further to travel...but what I think could be better prospects. For a start, the development platform they are using isn't 8 years old but almost bang up to date. Additionally, they're market is in the financial sector, which opens up whole realms of possibilities in the future. I'm only one week into the new job, so its a bit early to tell what lays ahead yet...

In other news, Alison and I have got our wedding booked up - we've rolled our wedding and honeymoon together into two wonderful weeks away. I can't wait