And then there was one

OK, just to keep you updated on the really really boring stuff that you may have been following if you're a chronic insomniac: Cal came through, the watch arrived, and it's lovely. I've one or two issues with the mechanism, but hey, it's fine. Also, I didn't use all my mod points last week before they expired, and I haven't been given any since. Hrmph.

Aaaand, the girls have gone home. My Swedish buddies who complained that I never mentioned them here, so there. They're gone. And I've mentioned them. They'd been here for the last week, until this morning when we said our goodbyes. As I write, they're still in the country and wandering their way toward the airport.

We went to Wicklow at the weekend - I'd a gig on Friday and another on Saturday night, so we couldn't go further afield, alas. Wicklow was lovely! Here's a pic of a view:

...and another of a roadblock:

I have a few more, but because I'm at work now and can't really type it all up, sniff, these'll have to do.

posted by Jeremy Smyth 11:22  |  

Thursday, July 17, 2003

More moderation...

OK, another 5 points. They must like me. Bah. More of my moderations marked as "fair" so that ups my percentage to way above normal. Maybe that's why.

I sent off the watch payment to Malaysia, got a reply from Cal saying it would be out in 5-7 working days. Good. I hope I'm not disappointed. He says I won't be. Also received a delivery from Germany of musical equipment I'd been waiting for. They hadn't sent all of it though. This has been going on for months - they're normally OK when I add stuff to it, but this time they weren't. Ah, well.

Just to add some more international flavour to this entry, a friend is sailing to the Arctic, lunatic. They're trying to set a record, allegedly, something to do with the most northerly visit for their type of boat.

And in other international news, two of my Swedish friends are coming over next week for the week. That will be a good time to post more photos, I think. What's the point in having a camera if I don't use it? I couldn't take any time off work :( so they're going to have to occupy themselves for Mon-Fri 9-5, unfortunately.

And finally (for this rather boring entry) I got a phone call from the guy who crashed into me - he received the quote by post, and asked can he pay in a little while - he's having problems raising the funds immediately. Apparently he doesn't want to involve the insurance companies, which is understandable given that he drives for a living. Sigh. I know it's his fault and all, but I just hate all of the rubbish that goes along with it.

posted by Jeremy Smyth 09:37  |  

Saturday, July 12, 2003

...and again

Woke up today to the gift of five moderator points again on Slashdot. Second time this week. The mind boggles.

Cal replied. Very nicely spoken too. I get the impression he's a private dude, not a company, trying to make an honest living from pseudo-honest replicas. He sent a couple of links to Yahoo auction ratings he's got (assuming it's him - they mention his name). They look kosher - several different IDs, several different writing styles, each of whom has participated in other unrelated auctions over the last 10-12 months or so. Hmm. Decisions... If it bombs out, it's a €100 mistake. If not, I get a nice watch at a good price. So I'm gonna go for it. Wish me luck.

posted by Jeremy Smyth 18:19  |  

Friday, July 11, 2003

Quality in Moderation

Every week for the last five weeks, like clockwork, I've arrived to work only to find I have moderator access in Slashdot. Every week. That gives me more mod points in the last month than the entire previous 5 years put together. And my metamods (other people moderating my moderations) have been fairly good, with only one "unfair moderation" in the 25 I've done. That's like 96%, which is higher than the non-editors' upmod average (95.1%) which in turn is higher than the editors' upmod average (94.7%). The respective downmod averages are even lower than that, and I'm not averse to downmodding either...

I got a spam yesterday from a "High-Quality Replica" watch company, to which I replied saying I was interested in getting one. That's it below, incidentally, or will be until their website gets pulled for spamming. There are generally three ways I'm willing to do business on the internet:

• Credit card on a secure e-commerce site from anywhere in the world(spot the little padlock symbol at the bottom of your browser, much like this one: )


• Phone or fax number so I can send my credit card details securely, even abroad. I've bought things in UK and Australia this way, calling from Ireland.


• An email address that supports PGP or some other public key/private key mechanism (see my essay on privacy for more background)

And what did the bounteous Cal suggest? Money transfer. Cash. Via Western Union. I've a small problem with this. I don't know this company. All I know of them is three web URLs - the one from the spam, the one listed in the reply email from Cal, and the one at the domain the email came from - and three email addresses - Cal replied from a different mail address to the one I sent to originally, which was different to the original spam source.

It's a lovely watch, and relatively cheap, but I'm damned if I'm sending cash to a complete stranger. My reply ran as follows:

Cal,

I would be more comfortable doing business via credit card, due to the fact that I received the original information from you via "spam" (unsolicited email) and there was no indication of your address details or legal identity on the website. Is that possible?

As a businessperson, you can probably understand the trust issue I have with sending money by wire (with absolutely no protection) to someone as anonymous as you are. It is likely that you probably have similar trust issues with international credit card users and I understand completely if you don't want my custom.

So in order to do a money transfer, I will need some guarantee and identity for my own peace of mind! or we could do it via credit card?

Regards,
/jeremy

Perfectly reasonable, I think. Well as of yet, I haven't had a reply. This is either due to timezones - Cal's original reply came within an hour this morning, which makes his timezone GMT or eastwards (as far as perhaps Israel/Turkey), or he's not working normal hours. The lack of reply is either due to him not liking my tone, or because he's gone home, it being several hours later in whatever Eastern European country he does business from.^* We'll see.

Quality customer service. Almost.

^*Added 10 mins later - I did a check of the IP address of the mail. The websites are hosted somewhere in Malaysia, and the mail was send from an IP block in Singapore, with the system time set to GMT +8. I wasn't too far out with my guess!

posted by Jeremy Smyth 16:47  |  

Thursday, July 10, 2003

Quotidienne

Well, not really. Cooked tagliatelle for the first time ever. Usually it's spirals when it's pasta. Something tomato/onion/tagliatelle/chilli/wine/herbs de provence/basil/whatever. Yum. Just what I need along with a beer and a film.

Teaching XP this week, along with trying to learn a bit more J2EE. Fun. I HATE the XP course, it's rubbish. And that's pretty much it, aside from that I want to spend more money on musical equipment, but am not sure what. Boring, eh? And the stuff I mentioned about biorhythms - well I found a skeptic's dictionary discussion on them. Too lazy now to go find the link again. Basically, they're rubbish, but fun rubbish :)

posted by Jeremy Smyth 21:48  |  

Saturday, July 05, 2003

HOW MUCH??

Two.

Two people turned up for my tutorial today. It's midsummer, and this block of the course is probably the easiest, certainly compared to the last two. So of course, people have more important things to do, like soak up the ambience and sun in the Costa del Sol.

A taxi driver drove into my car from behind a few weeks ago. Little damage, he just didn't stop in time on a busy city street, that's all. I got it looked at yesterday and went to pick up a written quote this morning.

€3200.

It's only a little damage! Something similar happened a few years ago, it cost about €1500, for what looked like MORE damage! Wow. 100% inflation.

The funny thing is that my car is probably not even worth that much. It's 5 years old, and is what my brother terms a "blipper" - something cheap, old, and reliable, that everyone bought at one stage and is practically a commodity. So now I have to contact the guy and tell him how much. I can hear it now: "HOW MUCH??". Ah, well.

posted by Jeremy Smyth 13:43  |  

Wednesday, July 02, 2003

Change is as good as a rest

Well the uber-challenging training course has run its, er, course, and my 20-quid bribes paid off well :) Quote: "All participants were very positive regarding the Instructors knowledge & delivery" (from our sales mgr guy) So now it's back to my normal evening's work - back to correcting papers and preparing for meeting the part-time students this weekend. I'm fairly confident that I can get some deadlines out of the way this week, seeing as I'm getting some time off for the immense effort (and quantity of bribe-banknotes) I invested in this course.

Oh, and I'm going to do one of the most egotistical things a guitarist can do: I'm getting custom-made picks! I'm gonna have some logos put on, designed by one of my cool online buddies. Unless they're rubbish, but I'm running out of spare brain power, and as you all know, my graphic design skills are close to nil, so ANYTHING's better than mine. And thankfully, my online buddy happens to be quite good at that graphical stuff. So I'll throw up a pic or two next month when I get them delivered.

Speaking of guitaring, two gigs this weekend. Wait for weeks, then two come at once. Typical. Might be time to spend more money on musical gear ;)

posted by Jeremy Smyth 17:51  |