Category Archives: Life

Double Dose of Ranting

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EverQuest released a new expansion.  Frankly I’m not really bothered and may not buy it.  However, Grete is kinda interested so I said I’d get it for her account.  This is the first time we’ve not pre-ordered, and enthusiasm is low (Grete’s pretty down at the moment, so her general EQ mojo is low anyway, hopefully she won’t beat me when she reads this), but I said it would be fine to get it for her account.

So I log on to the Sony website, go to the account management page and try and buy the expansion.  I get a dialog which asks me to fill in our post code, select a secret security question and a secret answer.  Never seen the page before, no prompts telling me why it’s showed up.  The drop down list of secret questions is empty (other than the default entry of ‘please select a secret question’).  So I try ignoring it, but it wants me to select something, I try answering a random question but it still wants me to pick a question.

I can’t pick a damn question.

I search, in vain, for some way to update it via the profile, but it’s not there.  So I go to the Sony help site which if anyone’s tried to use it, knows how terrible it is.  I finally opt for Live Chat, and get a form to fill out with 6 questions and a box to describe the problem which I fill with a couple of paragraphs of text, and then click ‘go live chat’, at which point I get a popup telling me live chat is disabled due to maintenance.  Why the hell did it let me fill the form in then, stop me before I put in the effort.

So I finally go to the e-mail help and rant about the problem and the stupid site.  Maybe they’ll fix it, maybe they won’t, but since we were already just on the edge of maybe buying it and maybe not, if they don’t fix it without a lot of hassle they just lost another sale.  This is typical, in my experience, of Sony.  They make everything as hard as they can, so you have to fight to spend your money with them and they still make you feel like it was your fault.

Gahhh.

Second rant.  I e-mailed a shop that sells miniatures and said specifically and clearly ‘are you able to order this particular miniature for us’.  The reply was waffly and didn’t answer the question, but commented on some vague notion of them not getting that mini in the last delivery and ‘maybe being able to sort it out’.  The mini in question can be purchased direct from the supplier in the US, and we said that to the folk in the shop when we were in there at the weekend (before this e-mail), but they said the supplier’s customer service was bad and it can take ages to arrive.  So, I replied to this vague e-mail saying ‘on Saturday you said it would be quicker to order through you’, and the reply to that was ‘it will be if it arrives before the end of the year’.  WTF does that mean?  Why can’t they just answer a basic and simple question.

Q: Can you order this mini for us?

A: Yes, it will take 2-8 weeks or
A: No, we don’t do specific orders, if it arrives as general stock we can let you know or
A: No, but I’m sending a full order in for re-stocking and it’s listed, should be here in 3 weeks

or anything else, other than totally vague randomness.  This is a niche hobby with low turnover and a small market, you’d think they were keen to retain any direct customers they could get.  I was polite, clear, concise.

So I bought it over the web from the US supplier, and they shipped in 24 hours after I placed the order and sent me a nice e-mail to tell me so.  I’ll pay the $16 shipping charge on a $7 purchase to get service from someone who’s clear, concise and polite (I actually bought another two mini’s, to take it up to around $12 worth of mini’s, but that’s not the point).

In this day and age, I get very frustrated when technology gets in the way of simple purchases or when people can’t, don’t or won’t answer a straight question with a straight answer.  It’s my money, they either want it, or they don’t want it, but I’m not going to fight to give it to them.

Good quote

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Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

Ellen Goodman
American journalist (1941 – )

Happy Geek

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Today I am a happy geek.  I’ve ticked all my boxes.

  • Fantasy Miniatures – check
  • Blogging – check
  • Photography – check
  • Using Picasa to manage photo’s – check
  • Using Picasaweb albums – check

Pretty good day.  We popped into the Games Workshop Warhammer World shop to pick up some paints (white and black) that I’m missing (I can cope with other colours missing, but white and black are pretty essential).  The guy behind the counter was as chatty as they always are in Games Workshop shops, and he was asking what I was painting (I said undead), and if I was looking at getting any other miniatures.  I sort of laughed and said no, I had plenty to keep me going.  He asked what I was interested in, and I had to just say, “I’ve been painting for over 20 years, with some breaks, I’m really not into playing, just painting the miniatures”.

It was a number I plucked out of the air (20 years), but it turns out it was pretty accurate.  Started when I was 14ish, which makes it 23 years.  I’ve probably been painting for longer than the shop assistant has been alive.  When I started painting the miniatures were made out of real lead (probably).

So anyway, didn’t manage to get any painting done this evening but I did end up finding a lot of miniatures I’d forgotten about, and did some web geekery, so yeh, pretty happy.

Turns out

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that the paints are in pretty good condition.  A few jars of solid colour that need throwing away, a few jars of sludge that will need a lot of stiring and re-hydrating, lots of jars of perfectly ok paint and a couple that just need a good shake.

I thought I’d play with the camera and see how it works on macro shots, since I’ve not tried any since we got the DMC-FZ8.  The only ones I have of miniatures are taking with the old digital, this one should be a lot better but it’s going to take a long time to get lighting, positioning and zoom right.

Anyway, in summary, I’m going to try painting tonight.

Update: camera looks pretty good, need to work on lighting and get something better to stand the figures on, but here are a few shots.

In November, I’m writing a 50,000 word novel

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I’m telling you this, because the advice from NaNoWriMo is, and I quote,

3) Tell everyone you know that you’re writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who’ve had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.

See you in December, and we’ll see if I look pathetic or elated.

Ireland in ’94

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Two quick photo’s from the Ireland trip in ’94, first a bunch of us on the Ferry and then a gravestone (because at the time, I took a lot of photo’s of gravestones).

Double Quickness

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I have two flatbed scanners (assuming you don’t count the defunct all-in-one printer) and several computers.  I wonder if it would go faster if I used both?

I guess I’d have to do different sets of photo’s because the scanners give slightly different results.

Edit: Yes, this is what Twitter is for, so shoot me.  And I think I won’t double up, it’s sometimes confusing enough with only one scanner on the go.

Random Photo’s

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I’m now scanning random photo’s that never made it into albums and have been sitting in little envelopes or packets for several years.  They’re all mixed up, random people, random places, random times.  We’ve got loads of envelopes/packets like these, and they don’t usually have many photo’s in them.

This is good, since it makes me feel like I’m making a lot of progress.  Scanning an album with 300 photo’s takes so long it’s soul destroying, where-as scanning 20 pictures from an envelope and being able to put it into the ‘done’ box is much more morale boosting.