Anyone home?

Hi there. I haven't posted to this thing in a while, and I just wanted to apologise to my audience of zero.

I have neither an excuse, nor an interesting story. I shall, however, make up for it in due course ...

The future is not so bright!

So ... I bought a new PDA a month ago. I primarily wanted it to act as my diary, but the fact it could also do email -- and that I had GPRS enabled on my mobile phone -- gave me an idea: Why don't I have my PDA check my email every hour during the working day? That way, even when I'm away from my desk, I'll have email. Sensible idea, if you're a geek like me.

So I did the math, and figured checking the emails every hour of every day for a month would equate to about 4Mb of data. Not much, and therefore not much extra to pay on my phone bill. All the same, I thought I'd trial it this month and see what my phone bill came out at.

Oh dear.

Look at this extract from my Orange mobile phone bill:

Now, as you can see, my estimate of 4MB was a little off ... but not too much. 5.4MB to be exact. Then I notice the next bit. You know, the bit that says I now owe Orange £55

£55??! And that's just for the data ... the phone bill was £102! That can't be right?! I put my highly mathematical brain to work, and figured out that they're charging £10 per MB! For God's sake Orange -- this is the 21st century. Not even AOL charges that much!!

I go to their website and check their tariffs. Nowhere does it state anything close to that amount. In fact, according to their website, the most I could possibly end up paying for that amount of data is £9. Something is wrong here, so I give Orange a call. First time I redirected to another number, then I get disconnected. Second call I get through to a human, then get disconnected as she speaks to her manager. I call back, get through to another operator. I get half way through explaining that I was cut off when the other operator calls me back on the other line. So I have to apologise, disconnect, switch calls, get back to where I started. The operator then helpfully tells me that I've been charged £10/MB. I tell her, "I can see that. I figured that bit out for myself." ...

I won't bore you with the details, but after about 5 minutes on the phone, and several trips to the 'manager', I get a £46 refund. Apparently I hadn't setup 'Pay as you use GPRS' on my account. *I* hadn't set it up. Little me. How silly of me. I asked, "How come if I didn't have 'pay as you use' setup, I've still been charged for the amount I used? Isn't that the same?". Reading between the lines it appears that, as a loyal Talk 120 customer, I had been elevated to a special 'Pay Through The Teeth as you use' service.

The moral of the story? Check your phone bill!

Sister T

Sorry ... I've been spending too much time fiddling with the Starbucks Blog, and have somewhat neglected this one. I tell you what, why don't I post some random photo to keep you all happy?

Introducing Sister T: She's scary, likes orange and has an unhealthy interest in trains.

Starbucks Blog

I've just spent the last hour setting up my second blog. Not content
with just the one, I've created a second 'team' blog for my lunchtime
buddies. Hopefully everyone will join in, but if not it's still a
nice looking site :o)

Starbucks Blog

I've just realised that I've missed half of "Space Race" on BBC 2.
Damn, I was looking forward to it. Anyway, time to settle down and
watch "Lost".

Adios.

Splat!

We think the bird who made this work of art is OK. I don't think it'll be doing that again in a hurry ;o)

IBC, Amsterdam

Just got back from the International Broadcasters Conference, hosted in Amsterdam. My day started at 3.30am, and has just finished at 11.00pm, so I'm exhausted ... but it was worth it.

IBC is hosted each year, and is a huge tradeshow / conference venue for anything broadcast related, including television and the web. Its a great place to see new technology and pick up some freebies :o)

I've not been to Amsterdam for several years, and I'd forgotten about how scary their trains look. Efficient, but still scary.

The day consisted of mainly wandering around the show floor -- getting lost -- finding a map -- finding coffee -- getting lost again -- finding more coffee -- etc.

Just when we thought we couldn't go on any more, J and I found a beach (yes, a beach) in the middle of the complex. It was great to get away for 5 minutes, so we spent about an hour there :o)

One technology that really caught our eye were the LED screens. I knew they'd been improved over the last few years, but to actually see the screens, and what people were doing with them was pretty interesting.

HDTV is big. Very big, and with Sky beginning HD broadcasts next year I expect to see a lot more of it soon. I'm feeling better about buying that new LCD TV now :o)

Mmm. Chocoladehagel Melk :o)

I've not had this stuff since I was a kid. With 2 hours to wait at Amsterdam airport, I couldn't resist buying a box of the stuff :o)

Fuel Panic

I'd normally say 'some people are stupid', but in this case LOTS OF PEOPLE ARE STUPID! We were travelling back from IBC, Amsterdam (See next post) when I took this picture of a queue at a local petrol station:


All caused by news of a protest at some fuel refineries this Wednesday. The protesters are saying 'Don't panic. We're not blocking fuel deliveries. There's no need to panic buy fuel'. I believe them, but the actions of the majority have caused the effect any fuel blockade would have: Petrol stations have run out of fuel, which has lead to further panic.

Crazy.

So then. Blogging...

I suppose it was inevitable. Only a matter of time before I gave into the temptation of downloading the contents of my mind onto a website for complete strangers to read.

So, here goes...