Why Play.com are in trouble

Our TV died on Saturday, so I looked for a new one on www.play.com. I found a very natty Sony Bravia 32 inch LCD for £530, with free delivery. Bargain! I ordered it. This morning when I checked my email, I found the following message from the play.com customer service department:

At Play.com, we value your custom and take your online security very
seriously. Accordingly we have an additional security check in place.
To perform this check we ask that you contact our Customer Support Team on 0845 800 1020.

How odd! I've never had this before! I duly phoned them up, and after being held in a queue for 5 minutes, listening to "The Worst of Kenny G", I was put through to a chap who claimed that their 3rd party security system required that I confirm my name, age and address over the telephone before they could process the order. I expressed my surprise at this, but did as he requested, and he apologised again, saying that they would take an extra 24 hours to process the security information.

Not exactly making me feel welcome...

Two hours later, I received another email from play.com, stating that:

We are experiencing difficulty verifying your address details. To proceed with your order we will need to see a copy of documentation which confirms your address and credit/debit card details such as your bank statement. Please fax your documentation to +44 (0)1223 202001 for the attention of Statement Requests.

Hang on... they want me to FAX my BANK STATEMENT to them? What decade are they in? Maybe in 1995 they might be forgiven, firstly for having a fax machine, and secondly for being a bit cautious about online purchases, and whether or not the customers can actually afford the goods in question. But this is 2008, when one-click shopping is a reality, and we (the consumers) don't have to put up with non-sensical, rude and invasive questions and demands from second-rate Internet resellers.

I did what every right-minded person would do - I rang up, cancelled the order, gave them a piece of my mind, and placed the order with Amazon instead.

Play have messed up. I assume they don't sell many televisions. I hope they can put their house in order, before they go bust...

Smooth moves in the kitchen

I've taken the plunge, and bought a smoothie maker, in a bid to consume healthier food during 2008. I bought a Kenwood "Junior", for £23 in Sainsbury's (they're half price at the moment!). What a great gadget! It's really simple to use - just chop things up, throw them in, whisk it up, and pour. I made myself a breakfast smoothie this morning, using these ingredients:

- One banana
- A dozen blueberries
- Two tablespoons of organic yoghurt
- A third of a glass of milk
- A quarter of a cup of ground oats
- Two teaspoons of honey (any type will do, but I prefer Accacia, or Manuka)

You really need a bit of liquid, otherwise the texture is so thick that it'll have trouble getting out of the pouring nozzle. Apple juice is good for non-milk based smoothies. I'll be posting my favourite recipes here, but in the meantime, here's a great article on the wonders of Manuka honey.

Happy New Year to both my readers!

Okay, so Christmas wasn't as bad as my grumpy pre-festive self expected. In fact, I had the best Christmas EVER, courtesy of my brother, and his wife's fantastically lively, lovely family, in their idyllic Roman hideaway. Baby Mimmo had more presents than he could open, so many in fact that we were still opening them on Boxing Day.

The Italians don't go overboard on Christmas. I was able to do my shopping on Christmas Eve, in a large department "store" (I mean "shop", but that word isn't really used any more), which was tastefully decorated, and wasn't overflowing with panic-stricken shoppers hunting for meaningless gumf to inflict on their nearest and dearest. Having said that, I believe they go nuts over January 6th - my Dad's birthday, therefore a highly laudable reason to celebrate.

My favourite present this year was a sea blue Ukulele, and a "teach yourself how to play" book. I've been confidently strumming away at a few chords, pleased that I've managed to remember them, until... this morning, when I discovered that the "teach yourself" book is all set up for the Uke to be tuned to four completely different notes to the ones mine's tuned to. Therefore the chords that I've "learned", while being perfectly in-tune, aren't the chords I thought they were, and I now have to re-learn them! I might just give up and sit back to watch the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain's Barbican gig (here's a clip from it):



Something tells me I'll keep plucking away... I've got tickets to see them in Lewes on February 2nd, so I'll be even more inspired after that.

I'm back at work now, which is fairly busy, and not without its worries, but as the hapless knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail said, "I've had worse".

Wishing you a happy and healthy 2008,

Pete.

Bah, humbug

If I ruled the World, we'd have Christmas every other year. Last year, I was really good about buying presents. I bought things throughout the year, putting real thought, effort, and expense into choosing presents that I hoped would delight the recipients. It really gave me a lot of pleasure to hand over some well-chosen gifts.

This year, we're having Christmas in Italy, so I'm restricted to taking only a handful of small presents. I've had a busy year, and Christmas hasn't really featured on my radar at all. The presents I've bought have been last-minute choices, with little thought, and frankly I'm irritated that the whole gluttonous shebang has come round so quickly. I can't raise much interest to be honest. I'm looking forward to spending Christmas abroad with friends and family - that'll be a novelty - but apart from that, it seems like a soul-less convention, devoid of meaning. Once you're old enough to start receiving socks instead of Scalextric, and sceptical enough to skirt round any religious attachments, conscientious enough to be a vegetarian, and grumpy enough to refuse to watch TV, one has to focus on what's left - spending quality time with people you don't see as often as you'd like. Chuck in a few drinks and hopefully it'll be quite pleasant :)

In our family, those ethical "goat-style" presents were poorly received - I only found out why when I got one recently. There's no sense of attachment to the animal, or the community which benefits from your donation, and if you read the small print on the back, you'll see that your money probably hasn't bought a goat, but has been spent on goat-related accessories, or even more likely, has just been added to a generic slush-fund for the charity. You may as well just make a donation privately, and avoid the whole embarrassment of handing over a card with a picture of a goat on it.

Happy Christmas anyway - however you're celebrating, I hope you enjoy it.

An Epic saga...

I'm three weeks into my new job at Greenhouse, and all is going well. I've finally got some programming to do, in the form of a small report submissions tool for the DFES. It's good to be doing useful work again, after an initial 6 days of Research & Development into tools and methodologies for Greenhouse, I was starting to feel like I wanted to do something useful! It's been an odd few weeks, after a gentle wind-down at Epic, then a gentle easing-in period at Greenhouse, I really feel like I'm ready to do some hardcore coding.

My R&D work has been useful on a number of counts, because we now have two working SubVersion servers, I've upgraded the RAM in the main development server, the whole team are up to speed with SCRUM, we're evaulating Google Calendar, and we've got a working installation of Liberum (an open-source issue tracking system). We're planning to use SCRUM from next week onwards, and I must remember to buy a large pin-board for our task cards :)

It came as no surprise (to me anyway) to hear that my former employer, Epic, have laid off 12 members of staff, in a cost-cutting exercise. It's been a very poor year for Epic financially, and they've been leaking senior staff at an alarming rate. Surprisingly, the 12 people chosen for the axe, were all senior members of staff - some with over 10 years' service - which suggests the move was as much about reducing the wage bill, as it was about reducing numbers, to make the company a more attractive prospect for potential buyers. With a pay freeze in place for the next year, it's likely that they will continue to lose staff, and will eventually end up with the majority of their staff being under the age of 30 - or even more likely, under the age of 25. Epic are a good company to work for if you're starting a career in I.T. but once you get to a certain level of competence, you're bashing your head against the ceiling. The support structures and incentives simply aren't there to make a long-term career worthwhile, so my advice to any current employees reading this, is to stay for two or three years, then move on to somewhere more forward-thinking and nurturing.
The downside for Epic, of course, is that junior staff will have a long lead-in period, during which the quality of their work generally won't match that of the senior staff who have left. This was already feeding through to clients when I left, with rising numbers of software bugs and client complaints. However, there is a large and well-paid management team at Epic, and it's something for them to 'manage'. I wish them luck :)

Source control with Subversion

After eight years of using the much maligned Microsoft SourceSafe, I've been investigating the allegedly superior open-source "Subversion" alternative. I'd spent many hours wading through the user-unfriendly, *nix-based documentation on the Subversion site, and had got nowhere after downloading several vendor-specific flavours of this supposedly fantastic software.

Massive respect, then, to Chris McGlothen, who has posted this fantastic article on setting up Subversion on Windows 2003. Thanks to Chris's article, I've got a working Subversion server, nicely integrated with my desktop PC courtesy of the Tortoise SVN client. If only all user manuals could be so well written! The only caveat is step 6 - uninstalling the SVN service - I'm really not sure why he put that step in, as you need the service in order to make use of the software!

The Tyranny of "stuff"

I don't know about you, but I'm convinced that life used to be simpler. Right now, I'm pushed for time - I'm getting up early, working at my new job (which is great - Greenhouse really have lived up to expectations), getting home in the dark, going out most evenings (not many all-night raves or lock-ins these days)... repeat til bored. That'll take a while.

The bits in-between this routine, are spent tinkering with the random "stuff" that I've managed to acquire through being alive, and having enough money to pay for them.

What am I talking about? Pretty much anything you can buy in a shop:

- Computers: they're always going wrong. Then they wear out. Then you have to buy or build a new one, and figure out a way of getting all your data and software onto it. Then configure it, go "oooooh" at how fast it is, then spend time thinking about what to use it for.

- Hi-fi: They need cleaning, they need extended warranties, vibration-proof racks, cable tidies, upgrades, gold-plated cables. Didn't it all used to come in one box?

- Mobile phones: ringtones, downloads, upgrades, special offers, battery chargers, carry cases, fiddling around mis-typing text messages, worrying if you're out of range, wondering if you can hear the damn thing ringing in your winter coat.

- Kitchens: extended warranties on the oven, hob, fridge, freezer, toaster, microwave and kettle? Non, merci.

- Cars: time to get it serviced AGAIN? Has that tax disc gone up since last year? The AA are charging WHAT?? Is my fuel consumption okay? Will it start in this cold weather? Which garage is selling petrol for under £1?

- Websites: I'll just check my email. And the other email. And my Gmail. And Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, the forums, the BBC site, my Flickr feed, and some other thing I've forgotten the username and password for.

And finally, there's Christmas: planning for all of the above, only for other people. *Cue evil grin.*
I could go on, but you see what I'm getting at? We're slaves to our material possessions. I'm starting to wish I lived in a cave, with just a fire and a spear for company. But no doubt someone would try to sell me insurance and a 3-year extended warranty.

So, excuse me if I'm a little late in replying to your emails (I had 55 in my inbox yesterday), but I'm busy with *stuff*. I'll let you know when it's all taken care of!

Pete.