denyerec.co.uk

Well, I have a STACK of photo’s (No, really…) ready to upload.

But I can’t.

Why not? For some reason, unknown to me at this point, my beloved hosts United Hosting have changed SOMETHING on their web servers configuration that has shot my dynamic cropping script in the head. Twice.
Not only that but I think they may well have mutilated the body to boot.

I am fevrishly trying to find out why something I’ve been using fine for 18 months no longer works, when I figure it out, you’ll see new photos.

And no, they have not upgraded to PHP5 and there are no error messages either, which makes the whole thing even crapper.

This is a recorded announcement.

Happy new year and all that, I’m sure it will be just fabulous.

It is not yet 2005 in Jamaica, or other places. Really it’s not “2005” at all, but humans can’t cope without time, so we’ll keep pretending anyway.

Err, hope it’s great and all that.
*click*

End of pre-recorded message.

A word of warning.
Never, ever buy a Seagate Barracuda 7 SATA drive. Ignore the reviews you have read. Ignore their marketting bulldust. This drive sounds like a Van De Graaf when it’s accessing, and has a bloody annoying “Self diagnostic” whine 90% of the time it’s idle.
I don’t care about its performance (Which is behind competitiors), the noise for this supposedly “Silent Drive” is absurd.

I have a Seagate Barracuda 5 now as my main system drive, it never makes a sound. So much for progress, I guess new does not always mean better.

Support ticketting systems are my new hatred. Not quite up there with Chavs but close.
Most of you will have used them in some form or another. The company in question will boast it improves turnaround, making your enquiry procedure more efficient, etc etc. In truth, the only thing is improves is their ability to dismiss your enquiry. Perhaps I’m being too general, some systems, such as the one used by United Hosting are superb. Every single support enquiry I’ve lodged there has been dealt with inside of 5 minutes, regardless of the time of night or complexity of the enquiry. Not only that, but the “ticket” can be dealt with via normal email instead of a crappy website editor and you never, ever get a “Cut and Paste” response.

Enter Ebuyer.

Slow. Evasive. Unhelpful. Frustrating.

You supply all the detail in the world and state clearly “The RAM was tested alone” and 24 hours later they issue a ticket asking “Did you test the RAM on its own?”. You ask them a direct question, you get a standard Cut-and-Paste reply stating that you should “Simply follow the return procedures blah blah blah”.
That’s not what I asked.

So I get frustrated, I send yet another ticket through the hellishly laggy backend interface. What is your phone number? I ask, after explaining the situation. “Please use the ENotes system to…”
Not quite sure what I’m supposed to use the ENotes system for, as rage took over. I think operating a business without a telephone number should be against the law. It’s got to be a violation of human rights to be put through the wringer like this every time you need to return a product or make an enquiry. Ebuyer have great prices and a good range of products but you better pray that nothing goes wrong.

Additional: Another company with truly abysmal support is a hosting company called EasySpace. Servicing their support email perhaps once every 48 hour period, the support worked we dealt with named “Jicko” was as useful as a chocolate kettle. Except we didn’t get to eat Jicko.
We ask….

Dear Easyspace Support,
Could you please tell us which email address must have a domain transfer request sent to, as the transferring registrar cannot complete the transfer without it.

The reply? Something along the lines of…

Dear Customer,
The weather in Spain is delightful and my mother has bought a brand new sombrero to keep the sun off her shoulders. I wish to repaint the caravan, but haven’t the time since our donkey is sick and I must now do all the shopping on foot.
Regards, Easyspace Support

If you hadn’t guessed, never, ever use EasySpace. Why is nothing ever simple?

Behold, people are buying more junkfood! I wonder whether the UK is such a depressing place that it drives people to it, or because junk food, on the whole, is cheaper and easier than eating anything healthy. If healthy base foods were damn cheap and processed crap wasn’t, I’m sure more people would wise up.

As for me? It’s 5p pasta and 35p tuna all the way.

Glad to see Tetley has outstripped PG Tips though, never did like PG Tips…

Right.
My apologies to users of Mail.de but I have had to blacklist you.
Why ?
partypoker2004@mail.de decided to start spamming my site as if there were no tomorrow, literally. To stop the torrent of crappy “Come and play poker great ra love your site have some herbal viagra” emails I had no choice but to blacklist his domain.

If you are trying to comment and it’s blocking you because of this, drop him a line and complain.

As usual I’ve lapsed into a spate of “non updatiness”. I am having a HDD replaced and once it’s back will be restoring my photo archive to active service, as trying to find files on my backup DVD’s is a right pest and doesn’t encourage me to post shots here.

Don’t forget to check out the Photography Forum and send money to my paypal account if you’re feeling generous 😉

We’ve just received a reminder from dear old Powergen and they open like so:

As a customer who normally pays your bills very promptly, it is unusual for us to have not received payment by now.

Do you think they’re honestly keeping track of that? I wonder what the reminder would read like if we never paid on time? It’s not like you get a bonus for paying on time either, there’s no incentive as they blatantly rip you off whether you’re prompt or not. Perhaps it’s time to buy an army of hamsters and couple them up to dynamo running wheels?

Our last electricity bill totallyed 81 UK Pounds for the quarter. That’s 27 pounds a month for the less mathematical people out there. This might not seem surprising, until you consider the following details. We run, in our household, the following electrical things:

• Fridge Freezer
• Washing machine
• Vacuum cleaner
• 2x PC’s
• 6 100w lightbulbs
• PC peripherals occasionally, such as scanner, printer, etc

That’s it.
No TV, no stereo, no ambient lights, no novelty electronic goods, nothing. The heating is gas, the lights aren’t on all the time, we don’t have a power shower, the cooker is gas and we don’t have anyone living in the basement we don’t know about.

So… what the hell is going on ? We’re with Powergen and although they’ve admitted raising prices all across the board (Along with most UK providers) it still feels like we’re being skimmed somehow as we have a tiny amount of electricals compared to some people, yet are paying more on our bill than anyone else I know.

I don’t know how you go about working out how much you should be paying, asking Powergen would be like asking the tax office if you really have to pay that much with, naturally, their answer being “yes” every time. Anyone out there got any ideas?