Life

Yesterday I received a letter from TalkTalk announcing their equipment had been installed in my local exchange and that I would be connected at the end of March. Which according to some people may be the same time that I lose my internet access and phone line. They say it should only go down for twenty minutes and make big deal out of the fact that BT engineers will be doing the actual changeover. Luckily I have internet access at work so I’ll let you know either way.

Yesterday I was in London meeting a friend. We decided to go to Pizza Hut (the one on Strand near Trafalgar Square. 45 minutes later we left not even having had our order taken.

In hindsight I’m not even sure why we waited so long to be honest. There was a certain level comedy to it, after all once you’ve been waiting for half an hour there is part of you wanting to see just how long it could possibly take. There worst thing was that we weren’t the only ones. At least one of the group left (who hadn’t been waiting as long) and another was still there that arrived about minute after us. We eventually decided to leave after reasoning that considering how much food had been brought through, even if we did order there’d be a ridiculous wait for the food.

So we went down the road to Pizza Express and were served in two minutes.

First, read this blog post.

A law has almost been passed in a the United States (the Military Commissions Act of 2006, passed by Congress on September 27 - just needs signing by Bush) that allows aliens to be detained indefinitely without access to legal counsel and without even having anyone notified of their detention simply by having been declared an enemy combatant. And this declaration in itself doesn’t require any serious evidence and has no serious oversight (meaning in reality it requires no evidence).

So the War on Terror apparently isn’t a fight for freedom…

Interesting, I first read it on XML.com which has more detail.

Steve Irwin, Australian wildlife expert most famous for his TV series Crocodile Hunter has died after being stung by a stingray. Although appearances can be deceiving I would have considered stingrays fairly low down on the list of most deadly animals he’s faced. In fact he’s apparently only the second person to be killed by a stingray in Australia.

Find more info from BBC News.

One of the Mono developers apparently had a problem with Northwest Vanline, a delivery company that managed to delay delivery by about a week, twice. In other circumstances, it would be a very funny story, at least the way the guy phrases the “punchline”.

Anyway, go read his complaint about Northwest Vanline.

After finding a permanent blood donation place near where I work, Julia and I finally got round to giving blood again on Tuesday. And unless you have a very good reason not to, you should too.

There’s more info in my previous post about donating blood.

When I came up with the idea for mini themes it occurred to me that it could be a reasonable possibility for advertising. Reasonable in theory only since my limited traffic would be a problem. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t affiliate stuff up :P

So here’s the first one: a fairly unobtrusive advert for a website of mine offering cheap international calls. I say unobtrusive simply because the layout of the content of the page is identical to before. And if you browse at a low resolution you don’t see the advert at all.

One quick note, you have to view the post specifically to see the theme. I intentionally stopped them from showing on the homepage.

Lloyd’s TSB are current offering “over 150 more days of Interest”. The will you pay you interest from the day money goes in until the day it goes out. Since most banks don’t do this sounds like a good deal, but a lot people won’t gain from this.

It only applies to current accounts you see. The Lloyd’s TSB Classic current account offers 0.1% AER. If you pay in more than £1000 a month you can get the Classic Plus current account which offers 4% AER but that requires you to use online banking. And even then that rate is only on balances up to £5,000 (back to 0.1% after that). If you get an ISA or high interest savings account with an AER of 4%, 4 days interest is more than 150 days interest at 0.1%.

Bottom line, don’t change to Lloyd’s TSB for this reason alone. PS - Banking isn’t exactly common on this blog but I walk past the damn advert every day.

I should have a category for “odd things I’ve found out” perhaps.

To all you non=British people, this post may make little sense.

When is Boxing Day? The popular answer is December 26th. Which is usually true. What most people don’t realise is that Boxing Day is a mobile holiday. Technically it occurs on the first weekday after Christmas Day. Boxing Day could conceivably fall on December 27th or 28th then.

It gets better though. If a bank holiday falls on a non-working day (another holiday or a weekend) the next day becomes a bank holiday. This is why most people don’t realise Boxing Day moves, they think it’s just the bank holiday status that moves. But it also leads to a peculiar situation. If Christmas is on a Saturday or Sunday, the Monday afterwards is Boxing Day and therefore a bank holiday. The Tuesday is then also a bank holiday because of the lost holiday of Christmas Day - after Boxing Day. How strange.

I now have all the parts of my new computer.

Unfortunately all is not well. After waiting two weeks for my video card, I cancelled the order and ordered a different one from someone else. Both arrived today. Other than the loss of postage to return the first one, it’s not a major problem though. But slightly aggravating. It does mean I should be able to post comments on Windows MCE tomorrow.