Last year I received a call out of the blue from my current cell phone provider (Three UK), with an existing customer only offer of half-price mobile broadband. For £5.00 a month I’d get 1GB inclusive transfer each month, and a free USB modem, for the life of both contracts. Excellent!

What turned out to be not so excellent, was the speed. How they can call this ‘broadband’ and get away with it is beyond me. Since the day I got it, it’s been next to useless. It doesn’t matter where I go, be it with my laptop or plugged into my home computer, it is virtually unusable. So it went in the drawer for 12 months, forgotten about. I’m still paying for it, but it’s next to useless and as I’m tied in for 18 months there was little I could do about it.

I found it again today and wondered – has it improved?

I plugged it in and headed over to SpeedTest.net. 20 minutes later (yes, 20, that isn’t a typo), the website had loaded! I clicked Begin Test, and went and had some lunch. This was going to take a while.

SpeedTest Results

Shocking. And the best part is, I’m in a “Good” mobile broadband coverage area! Oh well, at least my monthly bill has gone down to £4.90 thanks to the VAT cut… Avoid 3 like the plague folks.

I’ve had a Google Mail account since 2005, but it’s only since I set up Google Hosted Apps (using your own domains etc) that I’ve really started using it to the full. My latest addiction is the Calendar. The reminders flexibility is great; you can choose from email, popups, or SMS and have them fired off in any order you like, several weeks in advance or with as little as 1 minutes’ notice.

I’ve spent a little of today plugging my life into it such as birthdays, personal appointments, car document renewal, contract expiry dates and so on. All my reminders are set up to give ample notice of the important things (Your MOT expires next month!) to “You do realise it’s Mum’s birthday tomorrow, right?”. All accessible via any PC with Internet access. It’s on my cell phone thanks to Nokia’s “Mail for Exchange” software, and right in my face thanks to Google’s SMS alert option, and best of all, it’s on my iPod Touch Calendar, too. The moment I add an entry on my web-based calendar, it gets pushed to my iPod and vice versa, and the same for my cell.

Synchronized Goodness

There’s even a Google Labs hack that lets you display todays calendar entries under the ‘Labels’ area of GMail.

Now THAT is Useful, Functional Technology. My good friend Miss Nexus thinks so, too.

Who needs words, with poses like these…

Tiger And Toby

Relaxed Tiger

Tiger The Gymnast II

Tiger The Gymnast

While I was in Cyprus, I got taken for a wander around IKEA. I was an IKEA virgin, so it was a fun experience. I was impressed with the general quality of the items, the vast array of choice, and the sheer brilliance of some of the designs.

When I got back I made a promise to myself to go to our ‘local’ one which is some 45 miles away. I made a day of it, had some lunch there in the cafe, and generally had a good time! I picked up some wonderful organisational stuff such as stackable space-saving storage boxes, scented candles, a really sturdy garlic crusher and lots of other little cheap things that had real ‘use’ value.

Including a pair of slippers. They haven’t worn too well.

IKEA Slippers - Not Too Bad On Top...

But The Soles ?

OK they were only 99p, but I did expect them to last a little longer than 2 months!

I’ve since got a lovely pair of The Simpsons slippers instead:

£7.99 in Tesco!

I must be getting old to be reviewing the relative merits of different slippers…

If you missed the first part of this, you can catch up by clicking here.

So, I’ve been exchanging emails with my new friend in South Africa for about a week now. I’m pleased to say everything is going well and I am guaranteed to receive $500,000 as soon as he receives my payment for the courier service of $550. Sounds like an excellent Return On Investment to me.

Atten:

I wish to inform you that UPS is one  of the courier services from the three listed courier company that I listed for you , in this respect you must make the payment/courier fee of $550 as you have chosen UPS to deliver your bank draft to your given address.

You must make payment of $550 for courier service cost into your address via Western Union Money Transfer and send me a scanned copy of the payment slip and send me the full details.

Make payment with the details below:

Below is our receiving manager’s information which payment will be made on his name.

RECEIVER NAME: CHRISTIAN U. ESIOWU

ADDRESS            :SOUTH AFRICA
TEST QUESTION: WHAT FOR?
TEST ANSWER   : GOOD.

Then you MUST send me the following so that your funds could be claimed successfully:

SENDERS NAMES:
SENDERS ADDRESS:
MTCN (10 DIGITS) CONTROL NUMBER:
SCANNED COPY OF WESTERN UNION SLIP:
AMOUNT SENT:

Waiting to hear from you and God Bless.

 

Regards

 

Mr. Alex Williams

Executive Director:

FNB, SOUTH-AFRICA.

DL: 0027 82353 6895

Fax:0027 8657 223 52

 

So that’s where we stand. But, thanks to the marvels of the internet, I’ve found a blank Western Union receipt, and just filled in the missing parts! Wonderful stuff.

Western Union Receipt

I sent the above image as an attachment with the following email:

Dear Alex,

I am so terribly sorry for my long delay. We have been suffering some awful power failures over the last week that have prevented me from using my computer. I’ve now lost over £200’s worth of frozen food from my freezer and I just do not know what to do anymore.

I thank you for the link of branches you sent to me. I went into the one not far from my daughter’s house while I was visiting, but even they had no power. It has only now come back on so I write this to you as quickly as I can in case it goes off again. I presume the “MTCN” is the Money Transfer Control Number? This field is blank on my form but I assume that was because the shop had no power??

My computer is old (as am I), I hope the scan is legible. I have done all that you asked. Do you know when the courier may arrive now?

SENDERS NAMES: Winston Smith
SENDERS ADDRESS: xx Marsden Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 7DJ

 

 

MTCN (10 DIGITS) CONTROL NUMBER:

SCANNED COPY OF WESTERN UNION SLIP: I hope I did this right. See attached?
AMOUNT SENT: £375 GBP ($550 USD)

Yours Sincerely,

The Other Me I so hope to hear from your good self soon. I am truly in a pit of despair at the moment.

 

Endless hours of fun!

Until I get my Avia (my own house), I’ve been looking into how to grow my own veg and fruit without anywhere to do it. It was then I remembered our council has an allotment scheme! I phoned up yesterday and, sadly, there is a ‘50 person’ waiting list at present. But, I’m number 51!

It’d be nice to grow my own stuff. But I think I may have to wait until next year to make it a reality. Or even longer.

I received an email to one of my hundreds of spam-trap addresses a few days ago, promoting a free trial of the LOVEFiLM service. Ironic, as only a few days ago on this very blog, I was promoting the service myself as I love it so much. “This will be easy”, I thought to myself, and fired off an email to their Customer Service team with full headers and a description as to how the email had arrived.

Good morning,

I was a little perplexed to receive a promotion to try LoveFiLM free for a month as I am already a member! It was only as I woke up a little more, I realised it had been sent to one of my many spam trap email addresses (buried in commented out html for harvesters to pick up).

A little digging reveals the email link redirects to: https://www.lovefilm.com/visitor/sign_up_1.html?promotion_code=REDACTED

I trust you can identify who that is and block any referral payments or benefits. I did NOT sign up to these muppets, and GMail put it in my spam folder. it was only because of the “lovefilm” in the title I initially unspammed it. Full email and headers below.

Regards,

Me

Headers are unadulterated but I would obviously appreciate it if this did NOT get shared with anyone outside of the LoveFiLM group. Thanks

Full email headers followed.

Good deed done for the day, or so I thought, until I received this gem in reply:

Dear Lee,

Thank you for your email.

I would like to apologise for the inconvenience that this matter has caused you.

Will you please let us know what the email address is where you have received these emails in order for us to look into this for you?

We hope to hear from you soon in order for us to look into this for you.

Oh dear. I’ve just supplied you with the full email headers that quite clearly show which address the email was sent to. But, no matter. I fired off a polite email advising which address the spam had been sent to, and thought little more of it. But then I received this:

I can confirm that we do not sell our Customers details on to Third Party Websites – as per our security policy.

It would seem that you have been contacted by an affiliate website.  To unsubcribe from these emails I would advise that you click on the unsubscribe link on the email.

Sigh. Someone isn’t getting it. I emailed back a terse but to the point response, trying to hammer home the point:

The point is this is a spam email sent to an email account that only exists to be scraped up by spammers. It has never been used by a human and therefore cannot subscribe to anything. I take it from your response you condone this behavior?

This I find unacceptable.

I cannot make it any clearer, can I? A few hours later, clearly still not making any headway, I received this:

Thank you for your recent email, I would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.

The only way in which emails will be sent out to you, will be if you have subscribed to an affiliate website of Lovefilm as the email address is not registered on our systems.  We do advise that you unsibscribe from the affiliate website in order for these emails to not be sent anymore.

Please let us know if there is anything else we can assist you with.

I can’t fault them for politeness, but it’s like talking to a brick wall. (Are we getting bored yet?) I replied back with:

Can I suggest you read up on spam and email harvesting. This email address has never been used. It was generated purely to see who sucked it off the website it had been burried on. I can only assume from your evasive handling of this issue that LOVEFiLM condone their ‘affiliates’ spamming for business? I am highly disappointed in this and will be taking the matter further.

It’s clear that they didn’t, because this morning I woke up to this in reply:

As previously stated Lovefilm or their affiliate websites will only send out emails regarding the service if you have subscribed to the website with the email address.  I will pass the information on that you have provided in order for us to have a look into this matter further.

I have had enough now. This will be my final email reply to them on the subject:

“Lovefilm or their affiliate websites will only send out emails regarding the service if you have subscribed to the website with the email address.”

And I am telling you that isn’t possible, because that email address has never been used by a human being. It is used by a computer, to sit and wait and see who emails it. The only place that email address can be found is by spammers sucking email addresses off of web pages (the particular address in question was buried in a bunch of commented out HTML code on a high-traffic website).

I don’t mean to cause a fuss over this, but most companies seem quite pleased and receptive when I point out their ‘affiliates’ are sending spam email in their name, for their own gain. This exchange will be handed to The Office of the Information Commissioner with a view to examining any potential breaches of The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. Organisations can only send unsolicited marketing by electronic mail, such as email and text message, where the individual has specifically requested it, and as I keep repeatedly pointing out, the circumstances under which the email I am complaining about arrived, it cannot have “specifically requested it”.

I will be talking to the ICO on Monday, and I trust this blog post will be useful to others to see just what LOVEFiLM’s business practices are really like when it comes to spam.

At 42 Sir, you were far too young. Be at peace.

Your family, friends and colleagues will remember you forever.

13th March 1967 ~ 21st May 2009

Into the Church (c) The Argus

A Tiny Portion of Mourners (c) The Argus

Goodbye, Andy.

I had my renewal documents through from my current insurer today for my car. I don’t believe in “loyalty” in terms of insurance, I go with whoever gives me the best quote that year for the maximum amount of cover and ‘little niceties’ such as a lower compulsory excess, or free breakdown cover etc.

Oops

So I went with my present insurer last year because Tesco wanted to charge me £600 to renew with them; A £200 increase. I shopped around for all of 2 minutes and came to the conclusion that The Post Office was my best bet, and went with them instead. They’ve now sent me a renewal proposal for £431! That’s an increase of almost £150 on last years price, and for absolutely no reason at all. Nothing has changed on the car, or the policy in that time.  I’ve just phoned them and told them to shove it up their arse.

So, shop around, try some comparison websites, try a few of the “you won’t find us on comparison websites” ones and loe, the cheapest I can now find is £302 but with quite poor cover options and a brand name that, quite frankly, doesn’t inspire too much confidence (Qwik Fit? For car insurance? Please…).

The best I could come up with was Direct Line.  £372 all in, for the lowest compulsory excess (£0), they’d only accept a maximum voluntary excess of £350 (the others all wanted around £5-600 for a similar price), breakdown cover, guaranteed 21-day replacement like-for-like car, glass cover, protected maximum no claim bonus, legal cover, business use and lots of other bits and pieces.

So it seems that generally, the cost of insurance is on the way up when most people are least likely to be able to afford it. I find that disgusting really. The fine for not having insurance if stopped is only £200… and yes, the thought did eversobriefly cross my mind…

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day; but it can get a little boring. Day in, day out, munching the same old boring cereal or porridge. So how can you liven it up with little effort, make it immensely healthy, and give your tastebuds a treat?

Boring, boring boring

Add some fresh fruit, some fibre, and some flaxseed! A standard serving of muesli with semi-skimmed milk will give you around 300 calories and perhaps 5 or 6 grams of fibre.

Eat in Colour

Let’s spice that up a little by adding 2 tablespoons of wheat bran, a tablespoon of flaxseed and some fresh fruit and oat-based milk. That’ll turn your breakfast into a health-busting powerhouse for little expenditure, a texture and taste explosion, and keep your digestive system happy with 25 grams of fibre and the added bonus of iron and various vitamins from the flaxseed!

Now you're talking!

Used in My Bowl:

• Jordan’s Organic Mueseli (Tesco)
• Jordan’s Wheat Bran (Tesco)
• Organic Milled Flaxseed (Holland & Barratt)
• Organic Strawberries (Tesco)
• Organic Raspberries (Tesco)
• Organic Blueberries (Tesco)
• Organic Blackberries (Tesco)
• Oatly Enriched Oat Milk (Tesco)

Everything Together

This works just as well for porridge, too. For a bit of difference and to do it cheaper, chop up a banana, slice up an apple or add some orange segments. Mix and match your fruit on a daily basis to reap the nutritional and gastronomic rewards.

Porridge, Blackberries and Blueberries

Porridge, Raspberries, Blackberries and Blueberries

Oats are an excellent way of reducing heart-related health risks, and also actively help lower your cholesterol. You can learn more about that specific benefit here, or check out the Wikipedia article for a general overview!