It’s your job ….

I must be having a grumpy old day … perhaps its being away from home that does it …

It has seemed to me, as an internal rant, for some time that I am tired of MPs playing politics rather than doing government …

If I, or any employee of a company, spent the time that they were paid to do their job in doing another self-serving job of their own then they would, I’m sure, soon find themselves unemployed. Yet MPs, paid to take part in the governance of this country and the care of their constituencies, seem to spend an inrodinate amount of time on being political rather than being good at the jobs for which we pay them!

Can it really be the case that everything one party says is really as wrong as the otehr parties make out? Surely, even if only under the rules of chance, it must happen sometimes that when one party says something the others go “actually that’s not a half bad idea, we could go with that” – but do we ever hear them say that? No, its either “too little too late” (what the hell does that mean!), a “u turn” of some sort, a stolen idea of someone elses or “pure madness” … that simply doesn’t make sense …

So I am tired of this behaviour and of the media’s insistence that all political reporting is conflict driven … Get on and do your jobs or get out!

Oh and I may end up voting for the least worst this time – as will a lot of others I suspect .. but those slippery politicians will claim that we support them, indeed they’ll claim that we fully back everything in their (unread) manifestos, even that crazy idea in small print at the bottom of page 146.

Why don’t I believe in politicians? Because they don’t believe in me … I am an adult who pays plenty of tax to support them and votes even when I think it may be futile … yet they treat me like an idiot. I have never stretched my expense claims, in fact I underclaim to avoid any risk of over claiming – not bright but honest.

Perhaps we need a “Fantasy Cabinet” game … mine would contain people of drive, intelligence, practicality and conviction regardless of whether I fully agreed with their ideas. No-one would be excluded because they’d had an affair, were gay or had problems (some of our finest have had alcohol or mental health issues!) …

Ho hum ….

What to do about Toblerone?

It’s a tricky one, because I really love Toblerone, but the Kraft take over of Cadbury really frustrated me and their decision, within 8 days, to close the Somerset Cadbury factory was deeply annoying. I mean, in a take-over this size are we really supposed to believe that they didn’t know how far advanced the Polish factory was when they handed over all that dosh? If they didn’t, perhaps they shouldn’t be allowed to spend that sort of money!

So, the question remains, do I boycott Kraft products including Toblerone to make a point? Do I now boycott Cadbury products? Difficult decision … eek, will Cadbury World become Kraft World? An instant cheese-related theme park?!

Whilst I’m on the rant, I shall be boycotting the Tesco’s being built in Severn Road … we simply do NOT need it there as its directly opposite a perfectly good Co-Op and it will take business away from the local shops – we have already lost so many local shops in that area, gone forever … I shall still use Tesco, any one of the other 3 or so in Weston-super-Mare withing walking distance of each other .. but I will not give them the pleasure of using the new one … not when there’s perfectly good shopping already in place that needs local support.

Flame off …

Feedback to some suppliers

Dear Dell … I see you’re number eight in the Top 15 Hated US Companies … perhaps a little harsh Anyway, you did finally send TNT to collect the modem you delivered after I cancelled it. I got a call the  day afterwards telling me TNT were coming, back in December you told me they were coming and they didn’t. Not quite on the ball.

Lloyds/TSB … I said I’d leave and now I am. I’m leaving because you honoured a cheque I cancelled nearly a year ago and then tried to charge me for being overdrawn. Good joke. The main reason though is that after all the years I have yet to be able to login to your on-line banking … and after three phone calls the ever-promised password reset form has never ever been sent to me.

The Original Gift Company … I wanted a watch, personalised, for a Christmas present. I ordered it on-line on 31st Oct but the website wouldn’t let me enter the personalisation so I emailed them same day – even though it was a Sunday it was apparently too late to stop the unpersonalised watch being delivered – but they said I should just return it as they’d ordered me the right one. Far be it from me to doubt them but the un-personalised one took another three 233ks to get to me so I think they could have stopped it if they’d tried … a tortoise could have overtaken it on the road. Anyway, Christmas approached and still no watch. I was told it had been despatched on 10th Dec and then I was told it was being prepared for despatch on 17th … both can not be true now can they? In the end it didn’t arrive so we had to buy another watch as a present on Christmas Eve. So last week I told them not to bother delivering it, too late they said, already done … just return it when it arrives. Ok. Today they tell me it has been delayed and wont be despatched till 11th Jan! “Allow 21 days for delivery” should perhaps read “Allow 3 months for delivery”! I have lost count how many times this watch has “been despatched” without actually “being despatched”. I am now off their mailing list, I hope.

Customer Care? There isn’t much …

Lycos Woes

I recently got notified about the Lycos shutdown … perhaps I should have known btu I don’t have a Lycos account so why would I … except that some of my domains were registered by a colleague who does!

So, once I realised the importance of the move I found myself with 10 days to move 42 domains from Lycos to “elsewhere” … my chosen destination being 123-reg as I have some hundred domains there already and find them generally reliable and helpful.

On-line I go, unlock each domain, record all domains DNS settings, set-up the trasnfers, respond to SRS for all .eu domains, request IPS-TAG changes for all .co.uk and authority codes for all .com, .info etc. And then it all goes quiet.

I phone Lycos, “oh yes, we will do the IPS TAG changes”, “when?”, “by or on 28th” .. that is the day they turn off their dns service! Great. Thanks guys.

So, I decide to set up temporary dns for the critical domains and kick off, at Lycos, a change of nameservers to my own cluster … 24 hours later they still haven’t actioned my request … 24 hours later  I have 42 pending transfers but nothing actually happening.

Meanwhile I am trying to renew a wildcard multi-server SSL certificate … why, after 5 years of owning this certificate, do they NOW decide to delay me with an owner validation?

I have been managing networked servers since the early 80s when it was just something you did in the background, occasionally … as the world has become more complex (as we have MADE it more complex?) I find that it becomes more of a full-time job …