Aquarionics

So, I’m going to rant about people. In this case, I’m going to rant about a company I’m going to enigmatically refer to as “n”, because naming them as “that collection of morons at npower” would be bad for my image.

For the last ten months or so I have had a pleasant relationship with “n”. They gave me gas, I gave them money. We were both happy. My electricity company, however, who I shall likewise refer to by an initial – in this case “p” – have constantly referred to me as “new Powergen customer” even when they were threatening to kill me for maliciously paying my bills on time.

So I got a flyer from “n”, about how wonderful my life would be if I used them for all my energy fuel requirements. I was sceptical, as often I am, until they mentioned that it would save me money – which I am in favour of – and give me free plush toys – which I am also in favour of. So I phoned them up, confirmed the free toys thing, and signed over.

A couple of months later I got two bills. In two envelopes. One was for electricity, and was excessive, and the other was for gas, and was also excessive. By this method I knew I was in 2006. And I paid one, and forgot about the other.

Then, a little while later, I got a reminder from “n”, with “n”’s logo at the top, reminding me to pay “n” the value of the other bill. So I went to my computer, loaded up my bank’s website, and paid the bill.

Today, I got another letter from “n”. “There the wuck” said the letter, which I am paraphrasing, “is our mucking foney? Phone us now on this freephone number, you deadbeat, or we’ll send the boys ‘round with an axe”.

So I telephoned them at 8am on a Monday morning. “Due to an unexpected number of calls, i.e. any, on this bloody horrible time of the week, we reserve the right to pacify you with yet another bloody recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Or, if you like, the wonders of modern technology allow us to continue ignoring your call without you even being here and phone you back when we’re done killing kittens. How’d you like that? Press 1 if you’d like that”

I pressed 1.

The machine played Vivaldi at me.

I waited a little while.

“Due to [...] bloody [...] technology[...] we’re [...] killing kittens. [...] Press 1 if you’d like that”.

I pressed 1.

“Hello person who is on a phone that we are going to phone back, yet who is already on the phone to us, what is your phone number?”

[Phone number]

“And your name?”

[My name]

“Okay. Soon as we’re done, we’ll call you. Kthxbye”

So they waited. And I left for work. And I passed though quiet residental streets, and they waited. And I wandered down silent roads, and they waited. And I crossed a busy roundabout, and they phoned.

“Hello. This is ‘n’, who are you?”

“I’m me. These are my details”

And we had a Conversation. And it came apparent in this Conversation that despite the fact that I am one person, I am – to them – two people. I am the Aquarion who pays twice for gas, and I am the Aquarion who fails to pay for electricity, and there is no possible way the two can ever meet, or give each other money, or interact in any way. In this, it’s a bit like LARP.

So I went over my details a bit, and realised that whilst the bills I had got had said “Gas” and such helpful things, neither letter about non-payment had no such helpful crib notes.

So, I have two remaining questions. One, what is the point of having all my energy needs supplied by one company if I still have to treat them as entirely separate companies without the useful visual reminder of them being two entirely separate companies?

Two, and far more important, why the hell haven’t I got my plush gas flame yet?

Recently this site has been somewhat overrun with spam comments. Not that anyone who doesn’t follow the Recent Comments page or syndication feed will ever have seen them, as they’ve been spread over the last six years of entries. Either way, it’s annoyed me, and so I’ve done something about it.

What I have done is enhanced my existing trust network system so that if it doesn’t see you as a “trusted user” it runs your comment though the all-singing, all-dancing Akismet system.

Now, I’m not entirely sure about this as a system, because the idea of posting all the comments from my site though someone else’s service is not exactly ideal (Esspecially since the authors of it have a not entirely spotless record), but distributed spam systems seem to work better than my old regex system.

It’s on trial until I forget about it and leave it in.

The code for it is in the usual place, I’m using Bret Kuhns’ PHP Class for the difficult bit.

As if you didn’t already know.

(There is an MP3 (and a redesign) attached to this post, RSS and Planet People should visit the (gasp) actual site.)

A simple question:

Where does iTunes store my list of Podcast Subscriptions?

Whilst at LUGRadio Live there was a wireless network in the main area, which I connected to. Unfortunately it was one of those which automatically redirected you straight to a login page for every request you put though it. It did this with 302 headers.

So when iTunes decided to update my podcasts it went up to the network, requested the URL, got a redirect and then decided this redirect was the new URL for the Podcast, so now I’m subscribed to a dozen podcasts at wirescanner.wlv.ac.uk.

I could unsubscribe and then resubscribe to the casts, but that will involve losing my archive, a lot of which aren’t in the feed anymore. The feeds don’t appear to be kept in the iTunes xml file, and I’m currently running a grep -R wirescanner / over my entire hard drive to see where the hell it could be. Google is being no help either.

Since I can see my next answer being “Use Free Software”, I shall start my defense now by saying that I use Banshee at work, and I’ve tried rhythmbox, juk and all of the others. None of them do all I need them to.