fornax.net

Effing Tradesmen

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:28:29 +0100

Took the day off as leave, as I have two sets of tradesmen booked in for 8am this morning. Got up early this morning to finish making sure the house was prepared for them to do their thing (all furniture moved out of the way, coats and shoes out of the hallway, etc.), and....

Nothing. No one has turned up, and I can't get either on the phone, despite having been calling them both for an over hour now.

Grand. Just. Grand.

Update: Just heard from one of them, fortunately, so the loft should still get insulated today, at least!

Update: The loft is mostly insulated. I'm now off to the hardware store to buy things, so that I can finish the job properly. Shame the company is dodgy, and it turns out the surveyor will happily say "yes" to whatever you want, and when the guy comes to do the work, he says "You're kidding, right? We don't do that..."

ring ring ring ring

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 11:21:47 +0000

"Hello?"

"Good morning! This is *mumble mumble* from British Gas here. Could I please speak to the person responsible for the gas and electricity payments?"

"Speaking."

"Well sir, I'm phoning you today to let you know that we have some great offers for households that used to be with British Gas, if they would like to switch back to us again. Could I please ask who currently provides your gas and electricity?"

"Certainly, it's British Gas."

"What? Oh, ummm. Our records show that your household isn't with British Gas. Maybe they are not correct. Could I please have your full address and postcode please?"

"Yeah, I don't think so. You phone up claiming to be from British Gas, but you don't know that you already supply us? Why don't you tell me the address and postcode of the property you *think* you are phoning, and I'll tell you if you're right?"

"I'm sorry sir, but the Data Protection Act prevents me from doing that."

"Right. So the Data Protection Act prevents you from talking to me about what is supposedly *my* data."

"Yes."

"Well, either you're not really from British Gas, or that's just daft. Have a nice day." *click*

Jake, I'm Thinking Of You...

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:54:34 +0000

Mark Pilgrim:

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll quote Jamie Zawinski." Now they have two problems.

Today's Snowy Weather

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:07:19 +0000

Andrew's Snow Watch

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:19:53 +0000

Is it snowing?

Yes, it is.

Master Bedroom

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:03:07 +0000

Done! (Well, as always, there's still work left - the guy we got in to do the wallpaper has managed to get a couple of bubbles in it, so we will have to see if anything can be done about those, and we still have to get someone to do the skirting board replacement at some stage, but it's certainly done to the point where it's liveable, and much more so than before!)

Master Bedroom Day 5

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:47:00 +0000

Painting of the walls completed, some minor painting of woodwork remaining. 3 of the 4 lights back in place, one has some minor patching remaining. Radiator back in place, and hot water system re-pressurised. New blind and curtains in place. Almost there! (Yes, there's one wall that's not been painted...)

Master Bedroom Day 4

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:39:27 +0000

Ceiling completed with a coat of magic pink paint! (Hopefully, it will dry white as advertised...)

Most of the walls painted - just a few places where the patching of cracks etc. is still ongoing (the cold weather is extending the drying time).

Master Bedroom Day 3

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:56:31 +0000

Crack-filling base coat in place and dry, window frame undercoat and gloss top coat completed.

Master Bedroom Day 2

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:07:50 +0000

Lights patched.

Removed the radiator for painting.

Patching the walls almost completed.

Master Bedroom Day 1

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Patching the lights.

Removing two layers of old skirting board to get down to the original skirting.

Patching the walls.

Outages

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:57:38 +0000

Signal vs. Noise nail what makes a bad outage notification:

"One of the worst stock dummies that even I have resorted to in a moment of weakness is this terrible non-apology: 'We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused'. Oh please."

This puts me in mind of Joel Spolsky's take on what makes a good one:

"... we set up a blog where we would document every outage in real time, provide complete post-mortems, ask the five whys, get to the root cause, and tell our customers what we're doing to prevent that problem in the future."

I want every site I use as a service to do this. Not one of the systems I've experienced which were supposed to tell me about outages have ever done the job properly.

On Quality

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:32:40 +0000

From the Agile in Action blog:

"Quality goes down and technical debt increases with every corner cut. When prioritized against the next feature promising to deliver business value, debt never gets repaid."
"[Business decision makers] understand the cost of goods returned, the cost of rework, and the loss of customers but they choose to remain ignorant of the fact that these are typically the consequences of not valuing quality."

How very true!

Terrible!

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:34:12 +0100

Worst. Joke. Ever.

Shame, Jake, shame!

Experimentation

andrew@fornax.net (Andrew Hill) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:47:21 +0100

I'm certainly not opposed to experimentation on the general public - in fact, I think it's a good idea.

But this is just crazy.