Parent, Painter, Programmer
Disclaimer: I am biased because…..
I’m a pragmatist! I have taken Honey & Mumford’s learning styles test and had the following score…..
What does this mean? Basically I want results. Idle chit chat and people waxing lyrical bore me. Show me the numbers, the evidence, the proof. I might also add here that I am skeptical of other peoples numbers. I tend to prove things for myself.
I am sure I am not the only one who loves Foyles bookshop. I don’t know what it is or why I prefer it above all others in London but I cannot get enough of it. Anyway, I had reason to write them a letter recently about a book I bought there.
The following is the letter;
Dear Foyles,
Having been lucky enough to find myself in close proximity of you for a number of years I have had the great pleasure to get to know you. It’s been a long and fruitful acquaintance that I have much enjoyed and I believe having relieved me of the best part of a small fortune I would imagine that you yourself have enjoyed the times we have spent together.
Don’t assume I am in any way disagreeable about parting with the money.
Like any worthwhile addiction there is always a price to pay.
You Mathematics department is currently babysitting me through a degree, your computing department has tutored me through four jobs and one major career change and just recently your second hand store has been furnishing my mind with classics like Sophocles, Virgil and the Essays of Charles Lamb.
Unfortunately, like a typical Sophocles play this does not end well!
I recently, (a few months ago, I read a lot of books so to me a few months is recent), was dumb enough to buy an even dumber book. This book was to help me do more of what I like to do best faster than I had ever done it before. No, I do not mean Sex, my wife informs me that I am quite fast enough in that area. Yes, it was a book on speed reading, no, this is not a joke. The offending parchment is as follows:
Contributor(s):
Tony Buzan (author)
Format:
Paperback , 198 x 129mm, 96pp
Publication date:
21 Jul 2006
Publisher:
BBC Active
ISBN-13:
9780563520351
ISBN-10:
0563520353
Having read the first chapter of this scroll I noticed something woefully wrong with it. The first test that is meant to test your reading speed and understanding is complete gibberish. I wondered at this for a while and I decided to test the first and last tests in the book. I tested this using various reading ease scores commonly available on Microsoft Word. The tests confirmed my doubts about the book. The end test is substantially easier than the first test in the book. I can only assume this is to prove that the book has worked wonders on the reader when it has done nothing of the sort. Basically I believe the book to be nothing more than a farce created to make the scribbler of said rubbish some cash by taking advantage of us bookworms.
Having never purchased such expensive toilet paper before. I decided that I should take it back and try and exchange it. Note: I am avoiding puns about used or even partially used toilet paper.
I left it in my drawer and like any avid reader, promptly forgot about it!
Just today 01 July 2008 approximately 14:15 I found the offending papyrus in my drawer and decided that I should try and exchange it for another book. There are several unblemished darlings (books) I have had my eye on that I would love to take on a date and where better to chat them up than at an old friends. So off I went to yours in the hope that I might get lucky and be bringing back a real beauty.
This was not to be!
To cut a long story longish I was met with many woeful looks from you. I was informed that there is a 14 day return policy and that without the receipt there would be no exchange. Like Ajax in a fit of rage I left the offending parchment with one of your brazen cronies ( sounds better than staff, they were actually quite nice ) on the basement floor and exited the building. In such a fit I have never been and I must surely have looked a madman as I dashed across the road like a spurned book lover.
However, unlike Ajax I am not about to throw myself on my sword after a severe bout of self pity. Instead I would like to appeal to an old lover to see sense in this matter.
Kind Regards,
Harry Jackson
I wasnt’t sure what to expect by way of reply so when I got the following letter it amused me no end. I must say that the following reply was much more eloquent than mine.
Dear Mr Jackson,
As is the ultimate fate of all cronies, it has fallen to me to brazenly resolve the troubles of which you so eloquently speak.
Being the very crony who served you yesterday afternoon, I suspect that I am best placed to do so – and am, by the way, thankful to have been left in your mind’s eye with my personality somewhat intact.
I can assure you that there is no-one more generally suspicious and specifically outraged about the content of certain and so called Self-Help texts. Your humble author has in fact ended up offending several eavesdropping customers with irate tirades against the fake and the spurious. Yet, both sadly and happily, in a homage to freedom of expression we continue to sell all books, and allow the discerning to make up their own minds.
No more do I like the prospect of standing on protocol and informing people that “orders are, in fact, orders.” It makes me feel like everyone that celluloid and print have taught me so painstakingly to mistrust.
However, I have a natural aversion to being bereft of a job at certain key points in my life, and as thus refused your request in order to ensure my continued employment.
Happily though, there is nothing more adept at melting the heart of any customer service operative, crony, and manager thereof than a complaint that shimmers gently, winks and promptly turns in to a message of amour.
Therefore, having engaged in a lengthy discussion of over twenty temporal seconds, we have decided to stand upon our own codex and offer you the proposed exchange.
In the language of the relationship, we donate you the ubiquitously mentioned “trousers”, descend upon one knee and weepily inform you that we would like to give the whole thing another try, but that we still do not think it is the right time to move in together.
Those terms accepted, please return to the Natural History desk at your leisure, where the Unmentionable will be awaiting exchange for what will hopefully be a less distressing tome.
Kind regards,
AI,
My favourite line is “but that we still do not think it is the right time to move in together”. That had me on the floor. Needless to say I am more than pleased with the outcome. I am still very much in love with Foyles.
H
If you ever run the set command and get any of the function definitions listed at the bottom of this entry then check your .bashrc file for the following entry.
# enable programmable completion features (you don’t need to enable
# this, if it’s already enabled in /etc/bash.bashrc and /etc/profile
# sources /etc/bash.bashrc).
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
. /etc/bash_completion
fi
If it is not commented out then it is likely that name completion has been activated elsewhere. Comment it out and start a new shell to see if it helps.
_alias _lvresize
_apt_cache _lvs
_apt_get _lvscan
_aptitude _make
_args _man
_aspell _mkisofs
_aspell_dictionary _modules
_available_interfaces _mount
_bzip2 _mplayer
_cancel _mplayer_options_list
_cardctl _nslookup
_cd _ntpdate
_cdrecord _ooexp_
_chgrp _openssl
_chown _openssl_sections
_chsh _perl
_command _perldoc………etc
I just love this sign. Pay particular attention to the two rightmost boxes. I need to get a better resolution one. This one does not do the original much justice. It was taken by Glen Scott. Have a look at a bigger one.
I have been waiting for this.In fact I think the whole world has been waiting for this. I just seen an advert tonight where 
Pierce Brosnan advertised Vitalift. I know we have had adverts for male perfume aftershave for a while now
but I think Pierce doing this is another step towards a truly liberated male fully in touch with their feminine side. Is it little wonder 007 had a way with the ladies, he wears make up, splashes perfume and wrinkles are a topic of conversation.
I wonder who’ll be the first male to advertise lipstick or am I not watching enough TV.
I use First Capital Connect (FCC) to go to work every morning and have started to notice a sickening trend. The trend is: in order to meet their performance targets passengers are being left on the platform. This trend did no start with First Capital Connect but with Thameslink who were the previous operators of the Bedford to Brighton line. The problem I am noticing though is worse now that FCC are running the line. 
First Capital Connect measure their overall performance on the following:
% of planned train service that was less than 5 minutes late at final destination
This sounds like a great way to measure performance but for anyone who has read The Fifth Discipline they will immediately see the problem.
The immediate problem with the above performance measurement is that there is no mention of the customer. Taken to the extreme there is no requirements for passengers to be on the train at all for them to meet their performance targets. I know this sounds daft but think about the people under pressure to meet those targets. When a train pulls into a station 30 seconds late with a normal allocated 60 seconds allowed to get the passengers on the train then cutting the time the train actually stays at the platform by 10 seconds means the passengers have 20 seconds to get on the train. This is not too bad but during rush hour it can be a problem, especially at the likes of St. Albans where the train is particularly full.
The problem I have in Luton is that the problem becomes extreme because the train I catch can come in on any of two platforms. The platform is indicated on the board but if any of the trains are falling behind at all the platform might change.This would be no problem but to get to the other platform you need to go up a flight of stairs and across a walkway and down another set of stairs. I have had to do this three times in the past because the platform number has change three times before the train comes in. Originally I thought it might be the controllers working on the nations obesity problem but since some of them were in as bad a shape as me I decided that could not be it.
I then witnessed, one November morning, over sixty passengers changing platform due to a board change. Off they went leaving the platform to get to the other side. I waited on the original platform. I watched as the people got to the other side only to see the board change again. I felt glad I hadn’t changed. They all came back to my platform. I could see the train and I noticed that it did not look like it was coming into my platform but I decided not to go to the other side. Anyway, there was an announcement and the sixty potential passengers trudged off with a lot of swearing about how crap First Capital Connect are. I watched the train pull into the opposite platform and open its doors. I have never seen doors on any train in my four years using Luton station open and close so fast. I would not be surprised if people actually got stuck on the train. Anyway the people who had moved to the platform the train was leaving from arrived to the tune of the beeps indicating the doors were about to close. A couple of people (ie the young and fit) got on the train but the vast majority where left standing like lemons on the platform. Having been in the Navy I was convinced no civilian would ever teach me a new swear word, I was wrong.
This was when I realised just what was going on. In pursuit of the set performance targets First Capital Connect had not thought through the impact on their customers. Or if they had they had decided that performance targets are more important than customer service.
I have no idea what would be worse, late trains or being unable to catch the train you want and I imagine Luton is a particularly bad case because of the way the platforms have been laid out. All I can suggest to people in Luton is don’t trust the board and wait at the top of th stairs until just before the train arrives. This introduces its own problems but I have found it works reasonable well for me.
I had an operation recently for an Inguinal hernia. You can
see on the right the scar.
The scar is between five and six inches long and you can see that there is an opening along the scar. The pale colour in the opening is an infection and it hurts like hell. The area around the scar is numb to the touch. It is an odd sensation to have no sense of feeling when I touch the area with my finger but for it to actually hurt when I move.Not sure if this is because the wound is quite deep or some other reason.
I have been taking Ciprofloxacin to get rid of the infection. It is working because the wound above is a lot better than it was. I am a bit worried that even though I have been on the antibiotics for about a week now the wound has not closed yet.
I was browsing around the net recently and in my travels I came across an estate agent in columbus. I had a look at some of their listings to see what I could get for my money there. 
The house on the right is worth £628,587. It has over 22 acres of land, thats over 70 times more than mine.
It has 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, 4.5 garages, and has a lower level with an office and conference room etc. Madness.
To say I am a little envious is an understatement. I couldn’t afford it anyway but its quite obvious you can get a lot for your money in the states.
I just received a credit card offer from Capital One in the post today. They offered me a credit card with a 34.94% APR. Yes, thats right, 34.94%. Lets put this in perspective.
Lets say on your 18th Birthday your parents give you £100. Being sensible you invest this in a pension scheme which of course saves you tax etc. Over the next 45 years the pension scheme earns 34.94% interest annually. Guess how much you would be worth when you reach 65 years of age.
£670 Million
Lets say mum and dad could afford to give you £5000 pounds and you did the same with this. How much would you be worth at retirement.
£33.5 Billion
For our American cousins thats
You’d be the richest person on the planet by a long margin. Bill Gates would be asking you to dinner.
To say I was dumb struck is an understatement. I had a look on their website and they are offering credit cards for 9.9% APR. So if you take their mail offer up they charging you 3.5 times more than on line customers. What customers are unlikely to check on line? Yes, the elderly and low income.
I don’t know about anyone else but charging 34.94% interest seems morally wrong to me. I recently read the book Super Crunchers and to be honest I am pretty sure that I am just one of a random selection of customers they have sent offers to.
Capital One have been pioneering the use of random statistical tests to see where customer pain points are. It works like this.
100,000 customers get offered credit cards (the numbers following are just examples). The customers are broke up into random segments where
25% get offered the credit cards at 34.94%
25% get offered the credit cards at 24.94%
25% get offered the credit cards at 14.94%
25% get offered the credit cards at 9.94%
They then count how many people in each segment take the offer up. Capital One can then work out where the maximum profit point is. This sort of thing is going on all the time so I shouldn’t be that annoyed about it but I just cannot help feeling it’s wrong.
Note: For these people who scoff at me not including inflation try the calculation where we assume our enterprising little investor saves the same amount each year plus another 10%.
blogbookmarker.com recently added a trackback to an entry supposedly tagged with Insane on my site recently. I don’t mind them doing this but….
It is quite obviously nothing more than cheap advertising for them. I checked there link back to me and guess what, it had a nofollow attribute attached to it.
I have nothing against using nofollow tags but if you want to put a link on my site using a trackback and have the cheek to add a nofollow tag to your link I think you are taking the piss.
I am not a fan of using the nofollow attribute in a blanket fashion. There are cases where it makes sense to use it but I think in their case where they are only really after the PR they can shove it.