Author: Mosh

Let’s All Laugh At Sunderland

Roy Keane v Alf-Inge Haaland

A fair bit of this post is ripped from my comment on For Girls Who Can’t Do Football, which is worth a read. The original post dared to compare him to Keegan in that he’s walked out on us a couple of times. Cue rant:

Laughing at the mackems is easy, but doubly so when it also gives one the chance to take the piss out of Roy “cheating thug” Keane.

Frankly I loved the way Keane walked out on his national squad a few years ago… a squad which then got further through the World Cup than at any other competition in living memory. And not just without him, but a man short as he’d gone in his little pathetic sulk too late for them to replace him.

As for walking out on the team, let’s face it – he was either going to get sacked or be asked to leave by his little bum-chum in the boardroom anyway. There’s no comparison with Keegan. At what point did Keane ever have the mackem filth top of the table? In the Champion’s League? Beating ManUre 5-0?

Keegan is a good manager, though I admit not the best in the world. The two times he’s left Newcastle it’s been because of issues with the board, funding and so on – not because the team was in the crap.

Obviously, given that he hasn’t got a clue and seems to manage purely by shouting at people I’m sad to see him go – as the filth will likely only have an improvement in their next manager and that’s the last thing I want.

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Olympus – a credit to customer service

Olympus Corporation オリンパス株式会社

I know I have more than a few posts on here about various companies and how **** they’ve been (I have a doozy coming up if the ******** ever reply), but just for a change I’m going to recommend someone. A business who went that one step above, ignored stupid T’s and C’s and treated a customer very well indeed. That would be me, by the way.

Olympus – manufacturers of cameras and related bits and bobs – please step forwards and take a bow.

I picked up one of their 330 waterproof cameras in Dubai as a replacement for an older model that I lost in a river in Laos. Seriously. Waterproof, but not “dropped in a river somewhere by a drunk loon in a floating tube”-proof.

This particular replacement fit perfectly into the underwater housing I’d purchased for the original camera. Being a diver, this is a great budget way to take photos underwater. The housing cost the same amount as the camera, near as makes no difference, but for a point-and-click I get good results on a budget.

Then, in Indonesia, I had a problem. The housing is rated to 40m depth; the camera to 10m. I was diving around 8m and the housing partially leaked which could have been my fault. Even a tiny hair in the seal can allow water in. Regardless, the camera took one picture… and then shut down never to wake up again. Being under 10m, the camera should have survived even with the failed case.

A couple of weeks later I was back home and went to Jessops to ask about a replacement which would fit into my housing. Problem is, the new model which has superceded the one I had is a different size and the controls are in different places – the upshot being that it won’t fit into my housing. The chap at Jessops pointed out that the camera came with a two year warranty (not a single year as I’d thought) and that he’d heard of Olympus replacing additional components such as the housing if they had to replace a camera through an inherent flaw and said extra kit wasn’t compatible.

I emailed Olympus explaining my problem and they told me to ring their customer service. I did so and they said, “yeah sure”. Send the case and the camera back, don’t worry about the fact that I don’t have any boxes or paperwork or receipts and they’d look at it. The camera model was less than two years old therefore I must have bought it within the guarantee period even though I had nothing to prove this.

So off it popped in the post. Via the web page I could check the progress of the repairs and when the bits were dispatched back to me.

Within a month, a shiny new camera arrived. As did my old housing. Whoops.

I emailed Olympus again and said they’d offered to replace the housing. Again, no problem. They apologised and told me not to worry about returning my older housing as they’d written it off the system anyway. True to their word, a couple of days later a new housing (compatible with the new camera) arrived at my folks’ place.

So to Olympus – thank you. Very few companies seem to take their customers seriously these days. Sure, there was a slight cockup in the return with the wrong housing being sent out, but that itself was dealt with rapidly and politely.

As such, I will certainly be looking at Olympus for my next camera before looking elsewhere. I know if anything happens I’ll be covered and I can trust the people I bought it from.

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Sometime it’s the simple ones…

The box art of Windows 1.0, the first version ...

Working in tech support – or being a “geek on hire” – has its moment. Some problems are a nightmare, or you just get blamed for stuff that’s not your fault because… well, you’re the IT guy and you should be able to fix Windows.

Then you get the occasional easy one. Like this:

*phone rings*

Me: Hey, Vlad. WHat have you broken this time?

Vlad: Nothing. Well. When I boot the PC up it stops and asks me about boot devices and stuff. I get past that and into Windows and try to open a web browser. Everything flickers and flashes. It’s just unusable.

Me: OK… here’s a theory. Grab the keyboard on each side.

Vlad: Yeeees….

Me: And tug it, gently, towards you. About an inch.

Vlad: Erm. OK. …. …. …. It’s stopped flashing!

Me: The desk you’re on’s really small isn’t it?

Vlad: How did you know?

Me: You had the keyboard crushed under the monitor so it was pressing on the function keys.

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The situation in Thailand

Suvarnabhumi International Airport near Bangko...

I’ve spent some time in Thailand over the last couple of years and really like the country. I like the people, the food, the culture, the hustle, the bustle, the films… but their politics is something else. The current situation as I write exemplifies this.

A couple of years ago, as a result of protests and threatened legal action, the then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra stepped down and ran out of the country. Despite a huge pile of allegations of fraud and other financial misdealings, he was deemed suitable by the English FA to own and run a football club so he bought Manchester City and settled down in the UK.

That situation has now changed and some new reports say that he’s now no longer allowed back into the UK as he was found guilty in absentia in the Thai courts. Regardless, the government that took over in Thailand was voted in and is currently headed by Thaksin’s brother-in-law. Not ideal, given that Thaksin’s wife was also found guilty of corruption.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has caused more civil unrest. The party say they were voted in legally. The challengers say that they bought that vote by bribing many of the poorer people up and down the country – of which there are many tens of thousands. Either way, the solution to the problem appears to be the same as it was only a couple of years ago – storm the capital and bring the country to a grinding halt.

Not long after I left Thailand the first time I received a couple of emails from a guy I met while I was travelling. He’d been watching TV when all the channels went dead, to be replaced by something written in Thai that he couldn’t read. Tanks rolled through the streets of Bangkok and a fairly peaceful coup took place. An interim government was set up and barely 18 months later, we’re back where we were only with more protests.

While I was in Malaysia recently, I wanted to get the train up into Thailand but that was scuppered as most train stations in souther Thailand (along with three provincial airports) had been hit and closed by protesters. Nothing particularly violent, but enough to collapse a huge proportion of the infrastructure. Everything was uncertain as regards when transport would start running again to the point where the otherwise excellent Malaysian train system would happily sell you a ticket north… and then ask you to hop off the train at Butterworth and offer a refund for the remainder of the trip.

But now it seems things have reached a head with the taking of Bangkok’s major Suvarnabhumi Airport. Tourists and other travellers are stranded, food and water supplies are running out, air conditioning has been shut off and all the TVs in the lounges have been retuned to a gardening channel so that nobody knows what’s going on.

One thing makes me wonder – was Thailand ever really going to be better off as a democracy? Their king is still widely revered as a near god-like figure, not just an inherited position and the people do listen to him. Perhaps the people of Bhutan have something to learn from this given that they are a brand new democracy also.

Sometimes you wonder if it would be better to leave things as they once were. I’m not saying democracy is a bad thing – nor any other form of government rule – more that trying to change a whole country’s philosophy and structure. It’s too late now, though.

Hopefully, one day, Thailand will settle down into something resembling stability. It’s a wonderful country, but there’s always someone who’ll try and take advantage of any system. For Thailand’s sake, I hope they get it all resolved sooner rather than later – and not just because I can’t wait for my next visit.

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Coffee ‘n’ sugar

Coffee sugar

I don’t like coffee. I love the smell, will eat coffee cake and – although they’re not my favourite by any stretch – I’ll even eat coffee creams. However, it’s not a drink I enjoy.

To whit, another in my extremely limited series of culinary hints and tips:

How to make a cup of coffee in a shared kitchen

1) Use a ******* dry teaspoon. It only takes a second to wipe it on your trousers or whatever. Anything on it will be dropped in scalding water shortly so don’t worry about bogies you’ve wiped on your thigh. Nobody will catch a cold. But make sure the damn thing is dry.

2) Just to be on the safe side – sugar in the cup first. Note: sugar first. Not coffee.

3) A separate step for this as it seems to be beyond the grasp of most coffee drinkers despite following on so closely from rule 2. Coffee second. That’s “second”. As in after the sugar.

Stir, return to desk, enjoy.

By following these simple steps you’ll eliminate the incredibly annoying problem of dropping dollops of coffee powder into the ******* sugar and therefore stopping them ending up in my ******* cup of ******* tea. You *****.

Failing that, just drink tea and **** coffee.

Yes, I’ve had a bad day and a ******* worse cup of tea.

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