RedWineisinStock

After much prompting, here is my tale of woe about iTunes, and the evil company in a red cloak!

Once upon a time, there was a girl who got home on a Friday night after a long weeks work. She decided to check her email. Strangely enough, she found some receipts from iTunes. What ho, she thought, I haven't purchased anything from iTunes in a while. Never mind, I shall open the receipt and see what the problem is.

Oh no, she cried, as she realised there was £40 pounds of expenditure on iphone apps and oh dear she cried as she realised the receipt was in Chinese!

But how, she wondered, as she attempted to access her iTunes account. Oh hell, she swore (she's a modern fairytale heroine after all) as she noticed all words were now in Chinese.

After weeping at the credit card company, who were very nice and promised to protect her from the evil company in a red cloak, she then attempted to talk to the evil company. No phone numbers were to be found, only email addresses. While waiting for her well written tale of woe to be answered by the evil company in the red cloak, she attempted to get her account back to English.

Ah ah, she cried, an hour later, after finally wrestling the account back. Take that, she said, as she deleted her credit card information - not an easy task at all, as the evil company in the red cloak insisted on having that information.

Hmmmm, she said - as many emails went back and forth from the evil company in the red cloak. How is such a thing possible, she asked, how could my country be changed, but the credit card information stay the same?

Must be you, not sure, hacked, nasty people, here's how to change password, don't blame us, use gift cards, said the very very polite evil company in a red cloak.

So, the moral of this tale is, don't trust the evil company in a red cloak with your credit card, because they will be sod all use when it gets hacked.

The end

I just got an email from TomTom, advertising a valentines gift. Hmm, I thought, this should be amusing.


I quote:- Our unique 'I'd be lost without you' package contains a TomTom Start with a Flaming Red cover, with a matching carry bag, a home charger and a exclusive set of hotel, restaurant and shopping addresses for you to explore further.

I'd be lost without you! seriously. wow. way to be 1970's tomtom. also, matching carry bag? shopping addresses?

I'm assuming that they meant to send this to the male half of the valentine.

I think I shall send this to Gadgettes, as suitable punishment.

OTOH perhaps it's just me. Do men now like matching red carry bags for their sat navs? I'll admit, fashion isn't my thing, I may have missed it. I shall expect to see fashionable men, with their man bags and red satnav carry cases any time now. And then I shall feel embarrassed that mine is still in it's original case.

Is the lack of a mocking or sarcastic mood because that's now the assumed default on LJ?

So, I'm reading meta commentary on the Season 5 Criminal Minds episodes - my latest fascination and there is a link to a fan vid. The fan vid uses a song I've heard before and liked, but has no reference to the song.

Step 1. Lyric search the two words I can remember from the song. Find song
Step 2. Go to spotify, play song, confirm correct song
Step 3. Go to amazon, find song, buy song

Step 4 - song is mine!

Total elapsed time - 10 minutes

Oh internet, you make my life so much better. Just not my bank account.

Note to self. must post more often

So, status update. Am currently working 110 miles away from home at a University. Doing IT consulting that is easy, but interesting, and the team is very happy to have me there. Makes a nice change from being at my actual office, where they mostly ignore me. I have deep suspicions that work has undersold me again, but since they are paying for an apartment, all travel costs, and a nice 'being away from home' fee, I'm making more money, and keeping my job, so I forgive them.

This university turns out to be one of the ones I investigated quite some time ago for a MBA. Since I'm there, I thought I'd go along and check it out. Am so far undecided on if its a good idea or not. It's a lot of work, and while I firmly believe a MBA will get you more interviews, it won't get you a job. Having said that, I give good interview, and give horrific intro letters, so more interviews is a good thing. Also, only 25% women. I feel a need to go be loud, bolshy and female at them.

Of course, if I did a MBA, I'd have to take a leave of absence from the interwebs. Is there a 12 step program for that yet?

In other far more interesting news, the state of my wine cellar (the wine stacked in the garage) is pitiful. Laithwaites to the rescue. (wine society website so far scares me, I think I shall have to call them instead) 4 1/2 cases on their way, one case put together by their absolutely awesome customer service. For those thinking that is a lot of wine, it's not really. I put down all reds for at least 2 years, so I need to keep at least 100 bottles in the garage at any one time.

And just got my welcome to Amnesty International mail, with big pink letters - "You're annoying" Points for using the apostrophe correctly, and a great way to get my attention. First reaction - Damn, there goes that New Years resolution. Am looking into IT volunteering, where a charity gets the use of my IT skills rather than just time.

Watched the inaguration, but given the speed at which President Obama is moving, that feels like weeks ago. Does that man ever sleep? Needless to say, I'm seriously impressed so far.

There, thats a post and then some. Now onto actually answering other peoples posts!

So, a company I've visted (how's that for specific!) has a Dalek in reception. I'm informed it is real. From the looks of it, probably not current Dr Who, but older (that's definitely a plunger) And when I got there the other day, it had ballons. Pink ballons.

I nearly died laughing, and I was absolutely not leaving without a photo. About the only time I've ever actually used the camera on my phone.

Am back from Tuscany! Had a wonderful relaxing time, (in 33 degrees, there really isn't much else you can do but rest)

The villa was great and unexpectedly came with 10 farm cats. (well, technically 5 kittens, 2 half grown kitagers, and 3 adult cats) The kitagers pegged us immediately as suckers and adopted us for the duration. As they are farm cats, this was alternately fun (watching them try to figure out the mosquito net in front of the door was hilarious ) and not fun (stealing food right from our hands) One of the kitagers was easily one of the more beautiful cats I had ever seen. white, fluffy, beautiful blue eyes. However, she had a miaow like a dying seagull. It sounded like we were killing her! very disconcerting to wake up too. We only saw the 5 kittens once, when they came to play, but they were not terribly domesticated and wanted nothing to do with us ( although they enjoyed the leaves on the trees very much) so cute! the adult cats took a bit longer to come play, but also figured out the sucker potential early on.

The villa itself was lovely, with a very nice pool. The villa was almost at the top of a very deep valley, so we had lovely views. The pool was wonderful and had a wee raised area, just perfect for sitting in the evening with a gin and tonic watching the sun set and righting the problems of the world. (compulsory military service, yes or no?)

However, 33 degrees is hot. Way way too hot to sightsee. We went to San Giamano, and I found myself saying, well, there is clearly an area 50 meters away that has stunning views. however, its in the sun. I'm in the shade. View, shade, view, shade. I'll stay in the shade thanks. I couldn't even shop!

so, dear reader, that tragically meant many days languishing by the pool. oh woe is me. My tan has never looked better. Of course its 17 degrees in the UK, thereby giving me no chance to show it off

I did manage to do a bit of shopping. J and I stumbled on a shop in Arazzo with a wonderful sales assistant who despite her having fairly limited english, and us definitely having limited italian, managed to find a lot of clothes I liked. she just kept bringing stuff out! tragic. (although finding out later that the only UK stockist is Harrods bought a warm glow of bargain!!!!)

Less success in Florence, after chasing down errant husbands, convincing vacillating friends into shopping and really bad coat stores, no joy in a Italian coat. Ah well, will have to suffer my plain English one again. Funny moment, getting strange looks while ranting down the phone at said errant husband. If even the Italian's think you are OTT, then I guess it's time to cool it.

However, as motivation to lose some weight! I have promised myself a shopping trip in Florence if I get to my goal weight and stay there for at least a month.

Photos to follow as soon as i steal them from friends better at taking them than me (not the special ones, M, I promise) Wait, that sounds bad. I meant, not the ones that you spent ages trying to get right, because those should be yours to gloat over alone.

K&J you were missed. Next year south of France anyone?

Ok, just a few cat photos then. No one can mind some cat photos right! (or not, because LJ doesn't want to let me, and I so can't be bothered with it right now)

So, in the last week I've signed up for last.fm, emusic.com, snooth and delicious. And twitter a couple of weeks ago. This is getting silly. I was the one saying I was much too old to sign up for this stuff, that web whatever wasn't for me. But so far they have mostly passed the usefullness test. Last.fm has a 50% hit rate for suggesting new artists at me, just based on my itunes collection, which is all over the place. I can only assume it will get better. Twitter is turning out to be fairly compulsive, and useful. Snooth (it's a wine listing and recommendation site ) might be good, too early to tell yet.

What happened to me having a mostly inactive LJ and no interest in this stuff!

Actually I know what happened and I know just who to blame. It's all your fault.

And I found myself having a conversation at work about user generated content sites and how to learn from them in the document management system world. Oh the shame!

Went to a concert last night, courtsey of daisee chain. I would put a link in, but apparently Southbank Centre's web hosting is ruthless about deleting details about past events. Anyway, it was the Budapest Festival Orchestra performing Stravinksy and Dvorak.

I hadn't heard Dvorak before, and I liked it, but it wasn't memorable. The Cello Concerto and the cello soloist were wonderful, and the flautist was equally great.

But the Stravinsky! I'm now firmly convinced that it takes a East European orchestra to do him justice. The first piece was wonderful, the strings did a great job. But the finale was my favourite piece of classical music, the Firebird Suite, and it was beautiful. They got slightly out of time in what is commonly known as 'that fast bit' but recovered nicely and the finale was breathtaking. There were actual tears.

However, they need to work on the triangle. It was incredibly noisy, and frankly, when listening to sweeping strings and mournful wind, having a damn TRIANGLE over the top is just wrong, wrong, wrong. And he never ever got it right, every time it was too loud. The addition of the tuba to the piece, on the other hand, was wonderful, and pairing it with the double basses was a genius move.

And now I want to hear the Russian National Orchestra perform Stravinsky.

So new technology, as promised.

I'm a bit of a purist about technology. I don't want a phone that is a camera and a pda and a mp3 player, because frankly, what that actually means is that it does all of those badly, and mucks up the actual point of the phone, which is for calls and texts. I promised myself a new mp3 player when I got a job. Because I have a mac, and all my music is on the mac, I pretty much have limited choice in player, and have to go for a ipod. While I think the ipods are pretty, they are way way overpriced, and if I could find any reliable proof that a creative player would play nice with my mac, I'd be buying one. But I can't. My other problem is that I have about 10.5 gig of music with about another gig of podcasts. There isn't a ipod in the 12-15 gig range. I had considered getting two nano's, one for the gym and one for the rest of it, but even 8 gig isn't quite enough. I had resigned myself to buying a ipod classic and a nano for the gym. Then the iTouch came out. On recommendations from friends (or anti recommendations, as in don't go play, it's too pretty) I went and played with one. It is very pretty. Boy, is it pretty. But you know, its also pretty much pointless. So, it's wireless. Okay, how often am I near a open wireless connection without my mac. Can't think of a time in the last 6 months. Music, yes, pretty, but really, an ipod would do, and has way more space. Video, right, because I want to watch a movie on a tiny screen. Again, can't think of anything I want to watch badly enough to watch on a iTouch. Surfing the net, great, but I'm pretty sure the next gen iPhone/iTouch, which will probably have both mobile and wireless connections will be better.

So, I'm putting off the decision. When apple release the SDK, if serious PDA people make noises about porting actual business apps across to the iTouch, ones that don't rely on a wireless connection, then I'll buy one. Otherwise, no. But in the mean time, I have a shiny new iPod Nano to play with.

I did wonder if I had brought a iTouch, just how long it would take certain people to arrive at the house wanting to play. I had about 3 hours down as a bet.

I'm not really sure apple has thought about the iTouch's market. Just who is supposed to be buying these things? Or maybe I'm just getting old and not with the new generation. Although, at £300 quid, I'm not sure the new generation can afford an iTouch.

Technology just isn't the way it used to be :-(

Just for comparison. Not sure it means very much, except that the quiz makers have an obsession with jumping!