Clarity

Well it's nice some people make the effort.

"In a moment of clarity, like a snake it hits.
Its not the fact you're big or strong, they only see fear.
The colour, the shade, your skin.
And the fact its cold, no hair on your bald pate,
in need of that cap or floppy hat.
Is blocked from blinkered eyes.
You are out with only one intent;
to molest, rape, kill!
Their sub/conscious thoughts repositions and tugs.
As a hastened whisper and protective move,
lashes fear across adjudged surfaces!
After all, you only want what is their's!

In a moment of clarity, it strikes and hurts.
As you're walking to work,
meeting a friend - to view the latest release,
making your way to the local shop.
No doubt just to lift the goods,
if security's stare's to be believed.
Buying a book, booking a flight,
chatting with a friend on the phone...

But in a moment of clarity this is all lost."
© 2006 Nacnud

Underworld CSI

Often wondered, since watching CSI (only the Las Vegas one - the others are too painful), whether it has an underworld equivalent; perhaps called ICS?

You know, sultry, depressive and bombshell types that go around watching crime scenes and how they're solved. So now we have criminals running around with different coloured lights making sure their tracks are sufficiently covered with a suitably nifty little vacuum cleaner sucking up any stray passing bits of debris and DNA. If not, then they deserve to get caught.

Suspect device in south London

At 10:00hrs a south London street was cordoned off and the nearby residents asked to evacuate by the police.

The scene occurred on a 109 bus, with the police been in the area coordinating the movement of people away from the potential blast and cordoning off the scene.

Apart from that no further information has been given.

Survival of the fittest

At what stage in our growth, will Darwinistic theory become irrelevant to our survival?

Bleeding foreigners

Every now and then you overhear the strangest of remarks...

"I'm a victim of those damned foreigners coming over here taking our jobs, forcing us native born folk to go out and seek work.

Life living off the dole's just not worth the effort of getting out of bed for in the mornings anymore. Unless of course you're a bloody foreigner coming over here with a bundle of kids, claiming housing, council plus a load of other benefits, whilst working cash in hand and renting out your own home to the same people you're getting the money from in the first place! It just ain't right.

Now, I just got to go check on my new villa been built in Cala Panizo. Make sure those workmen have put the right taps in. If they were your German foreigners, you know they'd do a proper job and you'd be looking at a finished build by now."

Colour

When you see colour, what do you see?

Regurgitating Interwebties.

Apart from the high flying academics, hob-nobs of the Interwebty, the soon to be regurgitatives - this year's graduates. I'm not sure how many of us are able to get our heads around the rapid change in technology occurring all around us and in so many fields.

Perhaps that is why an increasing number are taking solace in the blandness of reality shows, binge drinking or heading off to new less busy pastures to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

How many of us want to spend hours after a long hard day/evening or night in the office, once home, to start digesting information we haven't had to think about since leaving the last term/semester of school, college or university?

Even so, all the current crop of wonderful new gadgets which are wonderful and fantastic, will be paling in comparison to those around the corner and actively in the pipeline. But we'll be understanding less and less about their intricate insides. And the only way of fixing something that goes wrong, will simply mean throwing the item away and buying a new one, until we run out of resources that is!

Overload. Input. BSOD. Super T!

With failing memory cells, sudden memory loss, and having to reboot at regular intervals during the morning, I often wonder why I bother getting out of bed.

Below is an image of my desktop. Fairly icon free, with Google desktop keeping me informed of the: time, temperature, appointments, events, many of the ups and downs occurring in the world, beyond my 23 walls.

To many of my friends, it just comes across as me being sad. "You're just stuck there in front of the computer, all day. No wonder you're getting fat!"

But to me, it's nothing more than a heavenly experience. Within the space of an hour I have digested the news circling the world, chatted with friends (whilst reading) around the world. Read many of the online papers, news stories and settled down to replying to emails; over a relaxing steaming cup of coffee, whilst listening to the plethora of streaming programming hitting my sound card from that doyen of tit-bits, BBC Radio 4. All the while retaining my slowly slipping sanity, by not been part of the rat-race.

I am now far beyond the need to risk life and limb skateboarding off a sky-scrapper or bungy jumping down the grand canyon. Those particular notions bring nothing more promising than a panoptic vista (no, not that one!) of all manner of broken painful lost bones, followed by those many months convalescing in hospital. And all for the sake of a shaky camera shot. No. If I require an adrenaline junkie rush, I'll fly solo in low-sec space of the MMORG game I play, eve-online. That and not getting mugged or shot at, whilst standing in a McDonalds queue are more than enough in the way of excitement, that I wish to experience during this particular moment in my lifeline.

So Super Tuesday is nearing an end, when we'll have more of an idea about who the next leader of the free world might be. And they do need change, badly!

After so many years of participating in the formulation of things like Outsourcing, Hedge Funds, burning the planet into oblivion etc., etc. It's time for a change in thinking. To come away from the 'me, me, me' culture that has been perversely corrosive over the past few decades. To think of all the species and planet as a symbiotic whole, and not just a hole for plundering and landfill.

Ghosts in the shell

Sometimes as we meander our way through life, with some experiencing a harder time of it than others. We come across and meet up with people that stop us in our tracks. Who actually make us sit up, and actively think!

They have a selfless abundance of goodness that is remarkable for its sheer pugnacious disregard for reciprocation. A wealth of untrammelled energy which is utterly astounding.

Then on the flip-side you have the Stalin's, Pol Pot's, Mugabe's, Bush, Bin Laden's and now the one from Kenya, whose entire existence appears to be that of making everyone else's hell.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as humanist-atheistic leaning as the next sensible person. But with the number of atrocities jumping by the day and, of course, impending (again) global calamities around the corner, perhaps there is something more than just electrons whizzing through grey spongy soup which makes those few people, special.

Deliverance

Received call at 08:08hrs, after been up since 06:30hrs again.

Finally, at 08:50hrs, the bell chimed and my new box arrived; with two delivery boys carrying it in from a parked up transit outside.

According to the sheet, this was the first delivery!

Will I do Argos again?

Where's my raspberries...

Climate change. Official!

So the American Geophysical Union or AGU, have finally revised and re-affirmed most of the globes belief that the majority effects of the increase in melting, warming, flooding... is, with a more than 50% probability, down to human intervention.

"The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system—including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons—are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century. Global average surface temperatures increased on average by about 0.6°C over the period 1956–2006. As of 2006, eleven of the previous twelve years were warmer than any others since 1850." AGU

But many people have already accepted the scenario that it has been happening, for years. And started making small changes in their lifestyles to match. But how many actually recycle, how much in the way of goods are actually wasted, ending up in landfills or incinerated, all produced from energy fossil fuels.

A deep-vein coal mine has closed down in Wales today, lasting 15 years longer than anticipated. But it has come to an end, other mines will no doubt be in a similar position. Many mines in the UK have or had been in operation for centuries; before the Thatcher & Scargill fiasco.

There is no great probability of developing nations ditching their dash to luxurious modernity, by cutting back on their need for energy! Just as there won't be any real passion in developed nations to cut back on the luxuries and disposables they enjoy.

In the meantime, we know (well according to the science) that a CO2 reduction of at least 60% is in order, and that's just to get us back to where we were a decade ago! If a single digit reduction's managed, that would be a major surprise.

So what's to do?

Solar power, wind, turbine, nuclear, all with problems of their own. How many places have 12 hours of sun beating down from a cloudless sky, with at least 2 hectares given over to energy exchange? Or continual wind? Turbines sound more feasible if the motion - electricity conversion could be made more efficient. Nuclear? Current costs, possibility of meltdowns (with Three Mile and Chernobyl as benchmarks), terrorism and the dumping of burning waste for thousands of years - unless a safer means is found to secure and dispose of it.

Which brings me back. So what to do?

Fusion doesn't seem to be anywhere in the running! Could there be something peering out of the backwater?

Artists drawing of the ITER project

Delivery revisited: II

With so much happening out there in the ever wide expanding universe; rolling 24 hour news, reality TV - are these more real than actual real life news events? Radio, blogs, disasters, killings, starvation, cabals, fundamentalist's, some bloke spending a few billions in an investment bank unwisely! Murders and general mayhem. It seems rather churlish of me to just pander on, about my little ongoing delivery problem.

But I shall.

As mentioned at the end of Delivery Revisited, I expected the resplendent top today. Between 07:00hrs and 12:00hrs. Its delivery was faithfully guaranteed. Although in hindsight I should have gotten a couple of drops of blood, made them swear their first and second born to perpetual servitude whilst getting those short chains ready, to put to some good use!

To ensure that I would be ready and awake with plenty of time to spare, the night before I did the sensible thing went around setting all the alarms for 06:30hrs. All of them, at around 02:45hrs!

06:30hrs arrived and the klaxons went off. Dazedly I sprang out of bed. Briefly meandered around, waiting for the call and delivery.

12:00hrs arrived and I called them up. To be put on, off, on hold, then 'someone will call you back in 5-10 minutes!'

Fifteen minutes later I get the call. "Very sorry, I don't know what's happened," the voice from the other end said. "They did the paperwork, and sent it through to us, but for some reason they never sent it to themselves!"

"Oh," was all I could muster.

"Will tomorrow morning be okay?" he asks. Sounding very contrite mind.

"Tomorrow morning, like this morning?" I ask, trying to keep the cynicism just below the screaming abuse threshold. "Between 7am and midday?"

"Yes," he replies.

"Well," I feel the buried side of me rearing up. "If it isn't delivered this time, the next time I call it will be for you to collect the whole order, and I will expect a full refund along with compensation for wasting my time."

"Oh," he says. "Okay, it will be with you tomorrow!"

And at this moment, this is all I can recall. As sleep deprivation appears to be sapping my will to live!

Flying trotters

So a politician's finally done the decent thing and resigned.

To clear his name.

After, and only possibly mind - nothing's yet been proven! But been caught with both front trotters, snout, and floppy ears waving around in the crumbs jar. It's more and more, beginning to look like a re-run of the Major years.

Delivery, revisited

The metal thing from Curry's works like a dream. No complaints about it at all. So an excellent thumbs up to the Leisure corp. Whilst throwing a very big, over-ripe raspberry, at Curry's!

And now onto Argos. I suppose having to deal with hordes of people in the retail section is sometimes like dealing with the living dead. But then the very same complaint can be made about those working behind the counters.

My faith, however, in the commonsense ability of the everyday man (or woman) was partially restored by the efficiency of their initial delivery service.

Sadly the shoddy item (made in China), had to have one part returned, and with the only available (apparently) delivery slot, in a week's time; I agreed and patiently waited.

Delivery day arrived and I received a call from the driver, saying they'd be here in five minutes. Ten minutes go by and sitting in the living room, I notice a brightly coloured Argos van go sailing by. Get a call from the driver saying he can't park because it's on a red route. I inform him that if Salisbury's, Tesco's, meal-on-wheels can unload so can he. But no, he's adamant and drives off saying I will have to re-schedule.

I contact customer services to inform them of this turn of events and give them the same information that I have just given the driver.

They contact him. After a few moments I get a call from him saying, he should be here by 14:20hrs, but he will call me five minutes before hand. At 14:10hrs he calls to say he's nearly here, again, and have I removed the cones from the bay? "What cones?" I say, "there is no bay here, it's the road and I will be by the pavement with the packaged item. It should only take a couple of minutes maximum!" After all if Tesco can disgorge £70 worth of shopping in about five minutes, a one metre sheet of non-heavy packed glass, shouldn't take any longer than that.

I go outside, 15 minutes later see the van coming around the corner and I start waving franticly, whilst holding onto the glass. He slows down (in the middle of the road), saying "I'm not going to stop, its a red route."

"You can stop, you're only briefly unloading," I shout to the passing lorry.

So he speeds up and drives off.

I'm flabbergasted. Decide to hang outside for another ten minutes, in case he is turning around somewhere, and coming back. But no!

Go back inside and again contact customer services. In a previous tapping, I might have mentioned the fact that at this stage, all you want to do is scream down the phone. But with large companies the person you usually scream at, is far removed from the actual events occurring outside your door.

Then get a call on the mobile from the delivery side of Argos, and again explain what's been happening.

The next time I have a delivery, will have to make a recording. So when I have contact someone I can just press the play button, which would save so much time and energy.

So the kind lady enquires if I wish to re-arrange delivery. I count to five before saying "yes, any time."

"Is Friday, between 7am and 12am any good?" she asks.

"That's perfect," I reply, wondering what's coming next.

"Well the driver will call you half an hour before. To make sure there's no problems!"

I wanted to say that, having to be up at 6.30am, is indeed a hassle and I shouldn't have to. But just say, "that will be fine."

"He'll deliver it in a transit van, as there shouldn't be any problems with that, for quickness."

I agree.

"Will there be anything else?"

"No, that will be all," I reply.

And with that and another five hours in the future to be wasted, I can feel the urge to send letters out to the Delivery department as well as the Chairman's office, lambasting them about the inefficiency of their set-up!

There are many roads in the capital that are on red routes. Wardens although quick to ticket, are also not stupid and around here they do understand that in many situations a five minute (usually less) drop-off is necessary.

So after an initial burst offering a beacon of hope; sadly Argos to, gets the big over-ripe, raspberry.

Sunny days

The first day since the new year, where the sun has been beaming down through crisp rarified air, here in London.

That and obviously the influence of the full moon, has combined to produce a strange amount of behaviour in the fair folk of town.

So here's a couple of pictures (courtesy of APA) and it's only just gone mid-day!

Remarkable - it's not always AOL's fault

There's nothing nicer than freshly laid carpets tickling the soles of your feet. Certainly an improvement over draughty floorboards.

But back to AOL. Over the past couple off weeks I have been experiencing intermittent connection problems, with my otherwise perfect AOL service. So, decided to give them a call!

Call centres are a wonderful idea, especially when they help to keep costs down, give big fat bonuses to directors and dividends to shareholders.

But one of the reasons they gave for changing from a free call number to their member services desk to a national charge, was to improve the service. It's one thing hanging on for half an hour, trying to get an issue sorted out with your connection, when the call is free. Quite another when you have to fork out 10p/minute for more than 10 minutes.

I, along with many others, resented that change from a free to a charged call, which on average lasted 30 minutes. Especially when they started outsourcing, root and branch.

I have nothing against outsourcing - I'm sure once the recession hits and markets slump, with millions of unemployees milling around chasing pigeons, companies will be flocking around at the hint of increasing profits from the surplus of cheap willing labour. But when you have to repeat yourself 3 - 4 times to get the nature of the problem across, and go through the whole process again when the person can't deal with it and has to 'upscale'; it's no wonder people get frustrated wishing to bang their head (but more likely the member services representative's head) onto the nearest sharp object. Whilst screaming at the top of their voice out of pure frustration!

On this occasion it took over an hour to get AOL to finally escalate the problem up to the Tech II stage, and to do a line test. Which, after the results popped up are poured over, and reveals that there is indeed a problem with the line.

Having been with AOL now for over five years (yes, the term Mug does spring to mind), missing out on the free Laptop Offer, the free year talk time, upgrading to faster package plan meaning I'm stuck in an 18 month contract - without perks. I was all in mind to claim breach of contract and terminate.

But then I started noticing that the fault mainly occurred when someone was walking around. The DSL and Internet lights would go off for a second then the DSL would flash and both would reconnect again.

Looked at the connections? All fine. But perhaps it was the original cable? Original in the sense that the wires were individually wrapped with cloth and encased in lead. So that was changed. But the problem still persisted. Maybe the filters? Swapped them around. Just had the DSL cable and wireless router connected to the master socket without any thing else, and still the connection would go off and on. Could it be the Wireless Router itself playing up?

But that nagging suspicion about movement wouldn't go away.

So, to cut a long story short - even starting to bore myself! When the carpet was put down, one screw was screwed into a carpet holder, which partially cut one of the wires (but still made a connection), but also cut the cloth of the other wire. But, the two wires didn't touch (and thus short-circuiting the system) until there was movement, which happened? When people were walking on the floorboards around that screw.

So as much as I like to bash AOL, this had nothing at all to do with them. Wasn't their fault in the slightest.

However shall be having firm words with the installer; for causing me two weeks of connection misery.

No shows: Currys dearth

No, nothing here about the writers strike in the USA. But a gripe about the tripe service from Curry's, subsidiary of DSGi.

Before Christmas this particular item was on sale for £299. After Christmas and in the new year sales, it was again on sale for the whopping amount of... £299!

So deciding this particular bit of metal wasn't going to come down in price, anytime soon, the purchase was made. Expecting two weeks delivery, we (flatmate and myself) were very surprised when a slot was available just five days away. So a great big YES was said to that.

Oh and then - not to forget - the extra added value of a £20 delivery charge on top; after the transaction had been put through. And a firm NO, to the extra insurance protection plan!

...

Five days came and went. The morning before anticipated delivery, we called the number on the receipt to find out whether everything was on schedule. This turned out to be deceptively good. An automated service which located the order and the associated special delivery instructions and time. Delivery, 2.15pm to 6.15pm. Very precise. Let's just see if it lives up to the billing!

...

Delivery day arrives and quickly speeds around to 2pm.

6.15pm comes and goes. No delivery!

6.30pm Dispatch service is called. And there is nothing on the system that indicates that the delivery has been cancelled suspended, or even running late. Even they are quite surprised, that we haven't heard from the driver.

6.52pm receive a call from the drivers assistant, saying they'll be arriving in 5-10 minutes.

7.03pm get a call from the driver. He has finally parked up (150 metres away) and we'll have to go and collect it!

So as the driver argues with his assistant saying he doesn't want to get a £120 fine by parking on a double red line - which would be taken out of his wages and that was more than he earned in a day - we told him that the bay outside of the flat was a single red line, with a sign specifying 'no parking 7am-7pm'. And since he was already 50 minutes late and it was now 7.06pm, there was no fear of him been ticketed by a warder, unless he was still there at 7am.

But no, he was going to drive away, or drop it off in the street; after we'd been waiting in all day - afternoon - for delivery. Leaving us to carry it - a full sized cooker - 150 meters!

Eventually they take it out of the lorry and wheel it to the pavement by the roadside. Still leaving us to deliver it, the rest of the way in.

So once more, Curry's! First place for Rubbish customer service in store. First place for Rubbish delivery service out of store. The only saving grace at this time, is the appliance doesn't appear to have any dents. Whether it works as expected, we will find out tomorrow. When it gets installed.

House alerts

Caveat emptor indeed!

Yes, that golden rule that you ignore at your peril.

So what are the salient points of getting that housing yoke firmly around your neck?

• Never trust the seller - they are out to make as much money whilst glossing over the true state of the building and other associated undiscovered problems
• Always get at least three but preferably five estate agent valuations - yes even if you are buying
• Always get a full survey done of the property, including electrical's - otherwise you might find at some stage that your fuse box starts smoking and potentially going up in flames. At the very least it could be condemnable
• Never trust the seller
• If you are thinking of living in a vibrant energetic part of town, remember that as lovely as that is, when you want peace and quiet the noise will drive you insane
• Check to see if they have neighbours above, and if it's a conversion whether they have sufficient carpet and underlay down and not wooden flooring
• Never trust the seller
• Check all radiators, fittings, fixtures
• Find out what's hiding underneath that big painting or mirror, and been covered up by that artex* finish or polystyrene tiling - is it damp or will all the plaster work need re-doing?

With financial markets somewhat edgy, best wait a couple of weeks as the rate of repossessions increases and bargains will be out there to be had!

* Care should be exhibited when working with old Artex surfaces as the original formulation of Artex contained white (Chrysotile) asbestos which could release airborne asbestos fibers when worked upon. This practice ended some time around 1980, although reports vary

Sports icons

So, another English (admittedly by affiliation) potential sports icon has suffered the dreaded English malaise of landing on his rear, after been dumped out of the first round of tennis Aussie Open by the number nine, France's Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Clips of which can be seen here, from the BBC website.

What's left? Who is left? Which home grown bit of talent will step up to the mark and bring back a resurgent period of sporting glory, to this once glorious archipelago?

The English Football team? Soon to be managed by an Italian and look as much a winning team, as an old nag winning the Grand National, by ten lengths.

Fencing champion Richard Kruse? Coached by three times Polish foil champion Ziemek Wojiechowski and Britain's national coach for several years currently over in Poland. As for Rugby and Cricket... they might as well not bother leaving the dressing room, except to hand the other team the trophy.

So what is left? Formula-1? let's hope Lewis Hamilton can pull it out this year. Or failing that, there's always the World Singles or World Pairs of the World Tiddly Winks Championships?

Advertising dilemmas

You read about people sticking on various ad-links, urls to their blogs, pages, web-sites, and soon afterwards retiring on the proceeds they've had pouring in from day one.

Naturally I thought what a good idea, and set about setting up my google adsense widget.

I had a bit of a dilemma, wondering whether to have everything from news links to wart remover, scattered all over the page. In the end I decided upon having just the one advert text box, and at the bottom a little strapline with the latest breaking bit of information.

The widgets have now been on for quite a few weeks. Not really sure why I put the widgets on after all, sort of second thoughts especially after finding myself re-viewing and seeing companies that I rank amongst the likes of Pol Pot, Stalin or Idi Amin gracing my pages. Must sit down and work out the exclusions list: banks, lawyers, solicitors, banks!

Although just having fluffy clouds and lily pads gracing the page, is probably defeating the entire purpose!

So how did this budding new advertising mogul's plans pan out?