The Sturdy Soapbox

Losing my grasp

There are some things to do with computers, which can be quite difficult to explain and there again, there are some things that are as easy as ABC.

When it comes to e mail, POP settings are either correct or incorrect.  They are also pretty simple things to deal with, provided you have the right ones to begin with.

When it comes to my new Post Office broadband account, I thought I had things sorted, but I found that I couldn't send e mail which I had originated and wanted to bear my personal domain name as the sending address.

There could have been one thing preventing me sending such an e mail, which is called outgoing e mail authentication.  To put this in laymans terms, imagine you have an e mail address mick@rollingtones.com but you are connected to the server belonging to beatles.co.uk.

If you want to send e mail out through their "channel", as long as you know their outgoing POP setting which could well be smtp.beatles.co.uk you could well send your Rolling Stones mail via the Beatles server.

Unfortunately, because of the vast amount of spam that's being generated these days, a lot of servers require what's called outgoing server authentication.  What that does is allow you to send an e mail with the sender mick@rollingtones.com and as it passes through the beatles mail server, the authentication identifies you as a bona fide account and lets the e mail through.

This morning, two seperate "spacialists" on the Post Office tech desk failed to understand these fundamentals.  The first one sent me on a wild goose chase to find the tool on their web site which allows you to set up any e mail address you like.  She was talking bollocks.

The second person had me typing in web addresses for obscure German websites and categorically denied at the beginning of our conversation that their system requires outgoing server authentication, yet twenty minutes later changed his story completely to say that their server does require this authentication.

This was almost as laughable as the Indian techie who had me plugged in to my BT Home hub via ethernet cable and after some arsing about, announced that both my laptop and home PC were faulty.

I dismissed her advice as a load of balls, put my Netgear router back on the system rather than the useless home hub and d'ya know, both computers mysteriously "got better".

Unfortunately, on neither occasion was I laughing.

It does make you wonder where these guys are getting their training from.

Got a bag of meat

Been up to see Bob the Butcher and Pedro, who were sparring off each other as usual, they really should be on the telly.  I missed the worst of the rain, but it was still bloody cold out. 

Yesterday should have been something of a red letter day, the day I finally shrug off all connection with BT.  I called the Post Office people who said I wasn't due to be switched over to them til after 5pm.  When I went to bed last night, I was still with BT and I was still with them when I got up this morning.

When I got home from my meat buying expedition, I couldn't send e mail, which means I was no longer connected to the BT server yippee.  Had to arse about getting the router to recognise the new connection and I can only send out on the e mail that the Post Office gave me, because their portal is down.

Just teething problems I hope.  Nothing can be worse than what I experienced with BT and recently Vodafone.  What gets me about these big outfits, is how they bang on so loudly about customers coming first, yet in reality nothing could be farther from the truth.  I got  to such an impasse with the girl at Vodafone on Monday, I had to put the phone down on her (having told her I was going to do so).  I am rarely rude to people, especially these call centre operators, because for what they get paid, they don't deserve to be chewed out by the general public who in the main are oiks.  I've done jobs facing the great unwashed and know just what it is like.

Anyhow, the good thing about leaving BT behind and getting into bed with the Post Office, is I will be about fifteen pounds a month better off, as my service includes my telephone line rental.  Just think, I'll be able to afford the Asda Smart Price foix gras.  The luxury.

Sunny Saturday morning, but it's still cold

I'm pleased to say that I was up early this morning.  For some time now, I've not been getting up til around 9 and that really isn't me.  I don't like lying around in bed during the day and so was not proud of the fact I'd been doing so since around Christmas.

I was going to go down into town to Tesco Metro for milk and stuff, but as I now have to go into town on Monday to post 2 parcels of E Bay stuff, I got milk from the newsagents downstairs (I didn't know they did it).

I can kill 2 dogs with one bone on Monday.  I don't like going in to town.  Too many nutters.

When I went on Thursday, there were what I guess were drunks (at 10am) shouting in the street.  The post office was not a nice place to be, the person in front of me smelled like a hot dog stand.  The bus coming home wasn't much better.

Spoke to Mr. Chalk and he'd caught the bus home at optimum zoo time yesterday, school brats playing up a treat, I didn't envy him.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I would renew my membership to the library.  I used to borrow classical CD's and vastly improved my knowledge, just by listening to new stuff and deciding if I liked it or not.

There are several pieces I was looking for.  Faure's requiem, St Saens and Vivaldi's concerto for mandolin, hardly rare pieces by any stretch of the imagination.

Firstly, I couldn't find the "record" library.  A Librarian led me to a corner and what looked like a collection of CDs smaller than mine.  As for the classical section.  Nigel Kennedy, Vanessa Mae, Lesley Garrett and a scattering of operetta.

If this had been a library in a village or small town, it would have been poor, but in a town the size of ours, it is discraceful.  I left empty handed and disgruntled.

Don't get me wrong.  Classical doesn't have to be highbrow, but neither does it belong on X Factor performed by some twat dressed as a chicken, later to be found in the racks of the local library bearing a sticker which reads As seen on TV and what's more, Nessun Dorma was not written as a "football anthem" !

Inappropriate use of the technology

I put in an application this evening for a job online, as usual via an agency.

As usual, I received the usual acknowledgement, but a few moments ago, I received an auto responder message from some techno bint named Lisa  "I will be out of the office from 5pm on Friday 25th January and will not return until 9am Monday 28th".

So what you're saying Lisa, is you won't be in the office over the weekend, like most office workers ?

Talk about stating the bloody obvious.  I bet she's a team leader with a certificate in IT and everything.

A bit of a plug for Hollywood Residential

Some time ago, I posted about a hilarious and cleverly made piece "The old Negro space program".  It was one of those internet gems, a little like Mr. Wong or Queer Duck, that only the lack of frontiers allowed by this medium, sees aired.

I've corresponded with Andy Bobrow about his very funny NASSA film, which I highly recommend: http://negrospaceprogram.com/blog/nsp-movie

Now, it appears Andy through his hard work and originality, has hit the big time with a proper comedy show on proper telly. 

Hollywood Residential features hapless presenter Tony King (who's basically a bumbling oaf) and his "fox" of a co-presenter Lila Mann (who appears in just bra and panties in episode 1 possibly setting the scene for the series).

There are parallels to be drawn and my first one wasn't Home Improvement, though it's fair to say where Tony's character is the bumbling guy who thinks he's the lead,  Lila is the one who everyone's really watching, so it's a bit like Tim and Al.

I see more Curb Your Enthusiasm.  Tony King may be a buffoon, but he's a likeable buffoon and so the pair work well.  Annoyingly between scenes we get the bit of jazzy music and some pointless shots of a street sign, too formula by half, but that's American television for you.

Moving more into my territory, I have to take my hat off to the web designers over at Starz.  The site for the show is fun, loads quickly and I was able to watch the whole first espisode without a lock up. 

So I am told, Starz is a pay cable channel in the US, so there's the chance Hollywood Residential could disappear without trace or, it could become cult viewing prior to becoming huge, something like Little Britain did a few years ago.

As for my appearance on telly (BBC 4 the posh often cult channel), I was told it was going to be on BBC2 and it never happened.  It didn't even go straight to video.

Here's the link for Hollywood Residential and Starz: http://www.starz.com/appmanager/seg/s?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=template&template_dir=/features/hollywoodresidential/&template_file=content.html&src=starz_mktg&med=embed&content=funstuff&cmp=hollywoodresidential

Darlo Sue will be hyperventilating over Tony's bare bum on the strip tease section, she's a sucker for a man in a tool belt.  Plenty of fun on the website to give you a taste for the show.

Take the cannibal quiz

44%

Free dc Personals

Would you eat your friends if you were hungry and cold in a blizzard etc...  Take this daft internet quiz and find out your percentage probability of feasting on Fred's fingers or nibbing on Nobby's nuts.  My score is shown, but personally I think they scored me a little low chomp chomp.  Click the picture.

Would you give a kid an electronic toy but no batteries ?

Just imagine the disappointment if you bought a kid (or me) a radio controlled Dalek for their birthday which is soon, but you didn't buy the batteries for it.  The kid rips off the paper all excited, breaks open the box and the Dalek just sits there. 

Well, the same sort of thing is happening every day for people who are switching to broadband.  I remember just how excited Wally the Welder was for the ten days or so after signing up, waiting for his MoDown to come and the joy on his little face when it arrived.

It wsn't the same for Charlie Chalk.  They send a shiny MoDown, ADSL filters, Ethernet cables etc, but they never take into account what computer is going to pair with the device.

Let's face it, most people using broadband wirelessly at home, will be doing so with their desk type PC (maybe using a lap top as a second machine).

Let's face it, only the latest PC's will have WiFi built in and not the lower end ones, so you're left with the birthday Dalek situation.  Something new and shiny to play with, but it dosn't do the job (that is until you go out and spend around twenty quid on a dongle).

For what these things cost to manufacture, I don't know why they don't put one in the box, there'd be so many fewer tears before bedtime and a lot less pre broadband stress and tension.

Despite not needing a wireless MoDown, the Post Office whom I've just switched to, insisted on sending me one, which arrived this morning.  For a change, I heard the door buzzer, but when I opened my door, I also found a bleary eyed Pete the Fireman who lives next door, on the landing looking very bemused in his socks and boxer shorts as Mr. Postman had rung all the buzzers to the flats.  This is now the ideal opportunity for OBC to chip in and say "well if the buzzers had the flat numbers by them"...

I will pop down later with a magic marker and do the deed.

Fortunately, I am now armed for any breakdown of my MoDown and I have a replacement dongle from my pre-Christmas gripe to Belkin.  The MoDown's a Netgear too, which of the brands I've used, has proved the best so far.  Pity I already have one.

Talk about a moveable feast

You may recall that my brother gave me the money to get the stuff to do a Chinese meal for us all, which was originally to happen over Christmas.  But the kids were home from respective universities etc and so it was postponed, leaving me with some tempting goodies in the freezer I had to resist (and to date have done so apart from the slices of fillet steak).

Then it was agreed we'd do it on the weekend of my birthday, but then my brother changed all that when he told me I'm being whisked off to the Basmati restaurant instead.  So he suggested this coming weekend, but I can't afford to replace the fillet steak and get the fresh items like mange tout at such short notice...

Still with me ?  So, I suggested the weekend after, seeing how it is close to Chinese New Year (year of the rat), but it's Anita's mum's birthday and then after that, they don't want so many "treats" at once, so we've now postponed until late March which is going some considering this was originally planned as a Christmas meal, is going some.

Gives me a bit of a breathing space to replace the steak (bought for stir fry beef in oyster sauce) and hide it in the frost in the freezer next to the duck spring rolls, Thai fish cakes and big growlin prawns.

It's Vally da Velder

Here's proof that the Germans and indeed the welder have a sense of humour.  http://www.huettengaudi.de/flash.php?dance=15vs53x454zk000i

Provided you can cut it with the German  text, you can upload your own picture resizing etc and mix up your own dance.

Get rich with E Bay ?

For some time now, I've held the opinion that the only way you make money selling on E Bay is if you nicked the item first.

PMG left me a box of stuff including what I thought was a Braun Oral B vibrating toothbrush.  I discovered it to be an almost empty box, but it did have a pack of replacement brushes.  I checked out what was selling on E Bay and put them on at 2 quid.

They sold for £ 3.51.  Paypal took 34p for transferring the buyer's money into my account E Bay took 20p for listing and then another 18p for its final value fee Total 72p which comes to over 20% of the price of the item.

Back in the Socks by Post days, I used to have listings on E Bay using an E Bay shop, which also cost an additional six pounds a month to operate.

After a month or so, I downloaded a spreadsheet of the fees and added my own columns for the Paypal charges and came to the conclusion that I was working for nothing.  PMG told me that a friend of Lind's was making about a hundred pounds a week on E Bay.  Well unless she's acquiring the stock using five finger discount* I doubt that very much.

On the other side of the coin, I think E Bay is a pretty superb place to be as a buyer, especially when you are looking for something that's not the norm.  It's a great place to pick up unusual gifts for people.

So next time you get one of those make millions as an E Bay Powerseller...  Think again, cos it's E Bay you're making millions for.

* Five finger discount = Stealing