Three: We love music!

They might love music, but Three certainly do not love customer service.

My other half cancelled her three mobile approximately two years ago. A week ago she got a later stating that she owes them some money (a small sum - probably half a months line rental). Upon trying to complain about the fact that it took two years to ask for this cash - she was put on hold for an hour, with no end in sight.

It wasn't until I phoned up and made some noise including the magic words "OFCom" and "Trading standards" (and incidentally getting the agent on the other end to admit that three had probably made silent calls to our landline during their alleged attempts to contact her), that she finally got some answers.

Bastards.

TestDriven.NET vs Microsoft

Before I start, please let me say that I am a Microsoft Developer and quite often, evangelist. I enjoy working with C# .NET, and find that it is an efficient and economical choice for many projects - not all, obviously.

I also support and strongly recommend Test-Driven-Development and Continuous Integration.

By far and wide the best tool I have found for this is TestDriven.NET. However, Microsoft have some issues with the fact that this plugin can be used with VS2005 Express, and haven't been entirely fair with the developer - they have - rather than explaining what they want him to do - simply released the evil flying monkies. Err. I mean lawyers.

See here for more info (the authors blog). If you don't already use TestDriven.NET, you may want to.

A mystery solved

Yesterday, I had an Upper GI Endoscopy (Gastroscopy).

Despite what you may read and imagine, this doesn't hurt. It isn't the most comfortable thing in the world, but it was an extremely expedient and efficient way to get a diagnosis.

I spent approximately two hours in a nice and clean NHS treatment center (privately run, but available to NHS patients), with friendly helpful staff (stark contrast to the NHS run hospital next door). At the end, the consultant confirmed that I have a small hiatus hernia and non-elusive reflux disorder.

It's just a shame it took >6 weeks to get to see him! At least I can stop worrying now.

The whole experience does make you think that perhaps the hardest job in the world might be "Sword Swallower", though..

Maybe.. this week?

Well. What I thought was an appointment for an Endoscopy today was actually a consultation - at which I was pretty much told that I need an Endoscopy. Oddly, having had serious stomach trouble for 5-6 weeks, I knew that already.

Nevermind, appointment is now on Friday (ultrasound on Thursday). Maybe soon I can wrestle a diagnosis and some definitive treatment out of the NHS - and then..?


IM GOING TO HAVE A MASSIVE CHEESEBURGER. Well. As soon as I can.

DG834G: Site to Site VPN

A friend/colleague and I have just set up a Site to Site VPN using a pair of Netgear DG834G routers. Surprisingly easy to accomplish (as long as you have the very latest firmware) - strongly recommended.

As soon as we twigged that one of the ADSL lines was a dynamic IP, and set up the other end accordingly - it all clicked into place.

Of course, it took longer to dismember his mangled DG834GT (from Sky Broadband) and dig out the necessary settings to log in via the G.. but hey. You can't have everything!

It's not always the drivers fault..

Gah. A "quick" trip into a part of town I seldom visit was, yesterday, grossly delayed by the fact that a good sized portion of the city in which I live is now a 20mph zone.

Unnecessarily.

The (primarily) Liberal Demo-prat council have deemed that this will reduce speeding, hence cutting accidents and lowering pedestrian injury rates.

It won't. People who are going to speed will still speed. The 30 zones weren't enforced - nor are the 20s. Pointless.

I stick to the speed limits almost all the time, and yet, have to avoid pedestrians who simply walk out in front of me, without even looking to see if there is any traffic coming, on a daily basis. What happened to the green cross code?

Maybe if Jay-Walking was an offence (and actually enforced), it would have more impact on pedestrian injury rates..

Flips and Flops

In computing, "flop" is often used to mean "[fl]oating point [op]erations". The speed of computing systems can be measured in TeraFlops and so forth.

If this is the case, does that mean then, that we could call [str]ing [op]erations "strops"?

If so, would string operations performed by small children become TerrorStrops?