wendy house

How hot was it today? 

The thermometer says DANG HOT,  no number necessary. 

 The kitties look cool as pie, stetched out in the conservatory hot house rather than in the cool dark back room where I’m making my way through a chocolate eclair accompanied by a sleeve of Old Speckled Hen.

Which of this weeks ‘errors’ do you think should win my error of the week award,  and why?

1. Transient notification of a ‘USB Device Not Recognised’?
2. Network Diagnoistics ‘Windows tried a repair but a problem still exists’?
3. Or the classic old favourite from IE8 ‘Internet Explorer has stopped working’?

After the perpetually  irritating, poorly designed user interface,  web n walk software appeared to completely fail I removed it from Vista. 

The removal process involved webnwalk software telling me to reboot my computer.  As my computer re-started Vista Blue screened,  I scrambled for my camera but sadly missed the moment.  When Vista started it made sure that I knew about this unexpected shutdown.

Words of wisdom from an almost stranger*. in this case Windows Network Diagnostics:

When planning your party make sure you employ communicative DNS servers to hand-out the canopes and if your host is being a bit remote,  just ping him a bit and he’ll deliver cuddles all round.

* past tips provided by Alan the hairdresser.  Lucia the hairdresser, an anonymous manicurist, a Jackson’s sales assistant, a bus stop philanthropist, a mini salesman, a neighbour and Reading Police

At least I get diversity from my regular doses of reactionary software,  it’s like the early 1970’s all over again, retro-chic software on a 3 day week working to rule.  Your guess is as good as mine over what rule it will work to.

At least Windows is acting as an arbitrator, looking for a solution on my behalf,  this is on top of the 169 problems it recently investigated on my behalf.

Dad:  you can make elecronics stop working just by walking into a room
Wendy:  I thought I was being paranoid
Dad: No.  Not Paranoid. You have a talent for disrupting electronics
Wendy: thanks dad, its good to know I’m not paranoid
Neverland:.

Windows Vista provides problem reports and solutions. That  is helpful for people who want to try and fix something now, cheaply.  We don’t have to pay for a service specialist or spend hours fiddling in the depths of the control panel. This is quite nice of them.  Or is it? 

All Neverland’s 169 reported problems are atribbuted to Windows rather than other applications.  Should I be alarmed by Windows?  Or, iIs this because other programs don’t use the Windows problem reporting system or is it because Windows has an infinitely higher problem rate? 

On planet wendy there are no problem reportsbecause the program causing the problem would receive the report, fix it then make me a cup of tea and compliment me on my choice of frock.

Microsoft Visual C + + Runtime Library (MVCRL) kindly burst this little message onto Neverland which left me

SCARED:  an  exclamation mark,  a red circle with white cross and  the word ‘error’.  This looks serious.  Something is broken.

CONFUSED: 

• application?  do I need to rub lanolin on my computer?
• runtime?  do I need to run somewhere and time it?  what does this mean?  Why am I being told it?
• Did it get stuck in the stack overflow?
• Why tell me?

INSTRUCTED:  to contact IE7 and, or, MVCRL support teams for more information looks like I should know more.

UNINFORMED: how do I contact them,  how do I find out how to contact them?

If the Microsoft IE7 team’s program (application?)  is going to make unusual requests to the Microsoft VCRL team’s program (application?) it should do it directly without hassling me to learn technical jargon and find out how to contact them then PAY for the pleasure of talking to them because they can’t be bothered to talk to each other before shipping software that produces errors and causes me emotional distress.

Pooooeeey

I was browsing along minding my own business, or rather minding the business of Schrockthehouse when suddenly,  without warning I was accosted by a stack overflow on line 1. 

What is a girl to do? 

I was totally unprepared for this outpouring of stack,  this flow from line 1.  Do I need help?   Do I need a new stack?  Do I need a stack-removal operation from a highly qualified expensive surgeon?  Should I phone a stack-support line?  I was confused and frightened. 

It’s alright because there was a button telling me it was OK. 

Phew.

In some circumstances computer systems can deliberately stop people from making ‘Errors’.  This is an example of a system preventing the people that use it from making ‘errors’ by trying to do rather useful things:  

Wendy:  can I move the car insurance start date back by one week?

Car Insurance Agent (CIA):  No

Wendy:  Oh (signifying complete suprise at this rude treatment of a potential non-customer)

CIA:  you will have to cancel the whole policy and then open a completely new one with a different start date

Wendy:  Computer system makes you do that?  It wont let you just change start dates?

CIA:  Yes

It took us 30 minutes to cancel,  then re-apply for the same car insurance with a different start date.  2 sets of documents are in the post.  

Wendy:  Are you from Hull?

CIA:  Leeds,  its quite near to Hull

Good weather in Leeds.

who me? 

I’m a client of Google services, 

I made an error in my request,  really?  ERROR?! 

I do make mistakes.  The word ‘Error’ is not one that I use to describe my mistakes.  This message is agressively accusatory and not particulalrly helpful.  Google could easily adopt a more user centric tone of voice, less personally offensive, if gramatically flawed,  by saying something like:

 ”Ooops,  Google doesn’t understand what you just did.  Can you check to see if you made a mistake please?‘

I suppose I should be glad that I didn’t have to abort, kill or delete anything though I have occassionaly been caught aborting a kettle,  deleting cat-poop, and killing my laundry.   Shit like that does happen, and not by mistake.

I had the pleasure of paying BT to listen to the Indesit messages below for a full 20 minutes before dropping the receiver with a thunk that ended the call.  A thunk not dissimilar to that made by my washing machine before it too resorted to silence….

…We are encountering an unusually high level of calls to our company, but are working to connect you shortly…

…thankyou for calling,  you call has been placed on hold and you will be attended to as soon as an operator becomes free…

…your call is important to us and we are attempting to connect you to the person or department you require…

…thankyou for your patience, we will connect you shortly…

…Our operators are aware that you are holding and wiull connect you as soon as possible…

…we apologise for the delay…

An email to Indesit support describing my problem resulted in them giving me this link to a list of their error codes.  Hmmmm….

For the luxury of John Lewis’s service I’m tempted to buy a new machine…

Feeling pleased with myself for first discovering how to create a useful survey in Microsoft Office Sharepoint 2003,  then created one,  I finally sent a link out to some colleagues asking for feedback on the survey content. 

Colleague:  Do you want feedback on all the typing, spelling, grammar and spacing errors?

 The words ‘wind’ and ’sails’, (or sales),  with a liberal dose of ‘removed’  colons; semi-colons, commas and apostrophes galloped around my mind as I wondered whether ‘discrete personal editorial coaches’ is a job description gaining momentum in the service industry …

A new, imitiation, old phone arrived to replace the genuine 1930’s BT compliant phone that somehow disappeared during my relocation.  When plugged into my phone socket,  no dial tone,  it didn’t work. The BT support operative was extremely helpful as she talked me through various in-house tests then finally succumbed to a request to send an engineer around.  The engineer was scheduled to arrive sometime between 8am and 1pm.  at 12.58 I recieved a phonecall from him to say he was only streets away.  He turned up and then disappeared again for 2hrs. 

Apparantly he’d tracked my problem to a green box outside Palmers park. 

He explained this was human error

its always human error

the technology works fine

people are stupid. 

Can you see any problems in this reasoning?   

This is the first-post I’ve written using this pretty template.  But the published bit looks different from the preview.  I’ve written to the template author for advice to see if she can help me make it look all pretty. 

 I suspect this ‘Error’ is the guilty culprit….  .do I want to run scripts?   Gosh,  that question probably doesn’t have a simple answer… …I’ll have a beer and contemplate researching it… …later

W style-challenged