Posts from January 2006

Yesterday, I had a credit card transaction rejected which is always a little embarrassing. Thankfully, this was over the phone and not in a shop where embarrassed people would quickly avert their gaze, thinking Poor man, hes probably lost his job. Just look at his clothes.

Normally, such rejections happen because the card number or expiry date was incorrectly transcribed and are quickly resolved - 'No I said 6079 at the end'.

However, this wasn't the case on this occasion, so I called the credit card company to check my card hadn't been skimmed and someone was blowing my outrageously high credit limit (that I never asked for or wanted but was given to me by the credit card company, funnily enough) on holidays, fast cars, gambling, online retailers, weekend breaks in Prague and expensive gadgets.

Firstly, we have to dance the security dance where I am asked to confirm my full name, address, postcode, date of birth, my mother's maiden name, the names of all my tropical fish, favourite United player and my best album of all time.

Then I am asked for the fourth and seventh letters of my password 'without divulging the complete password'. For some reason, I find this incredibly difficult. I can type the password in seconds but, to satisfy this request, I always have to write the password out on paper and slowly identify the requested characters (or digits). Then I have to eat the paper which means I am unable to speak properly for 90 seconds.

So, let the straightforward enquiry begin. Hang on - wait a minute. The agent is sensing a cross-sell opportunity.

'Are you interested in transferring your balance to us, interest free for 6 months ?'

'No thanks. I only have one credit card'.

A schoolboy error. The agent has a scripted 'retort' ready for this very weak 'objection'.

'But the 6 months, interest free transfer needn't be from another credit card. You can transfer your ABC balance to your current account, interest free for 6 months'

'No. Thanks. I don't have a current account with ABC. Now about this rejected trans-'

Another fatal error. Again, I have said too much and the agent has another 'retort' ready.

'The current account doesn't have to held with ABC. Any bank account will do'

'No thanks. I do not want to use the 6 months interest free transfer offer for any credit card for any bank account now or at any time in the future.'

Finally. But wait. The agent (script) has something else to add.

'Is is all right to call you Norman today ?'

'Yes.'

Next time, I swear I will reply 'No. I really would prefer it if you called me Janet.'

And so, finally, to the rejected transaction. It transpires that a sophisticated, pattern matching computer program using the latest AI techniques detected that this transaction (Flowers for the wife) contravened the normal pattern of usage (No flowers for the wife. Ever.) and flagged it up as potentially suspect.

Alternatively, "Computer says 'No'."

The credit card company immediately tried to contact me on the phone to verify the validity of the transaction. However, as they were unable to reach me on the phone, they rejected the authorisation and placed a complete block on the credit card. I explained that I was probably on the phone at that time to the merchant desperately trying to explain why the transaction had been rejected.

So, everything was finally resolved, and the agent kindly unblocked the card, I thanked them for their vigilance in the ongoing fight against crime and everything was back to normal.

Well, almost everything. When I got home at night, I received a deeply disturbing telephone phone call from an AI automaton who announced

'This is a call from ABC credit cards about a transaction on your account today (normal female voice). MR NORMAN BRIGHTSIDE (abnormal, very scary, synthesized male robotic voice).

So, I duly input my date of birth in the wrong format twice and then get told off by a robot.

'Sorry - that is incorrect. Please call customer services for assistance'.

Mark Burgess once introduced Here Today with these words.

I just read on The Chameleons message board that Mancunian musician, Bryan Glancy, died at the weekend. I didn't know Bryan Glancy. I never met Bryan Glancy. I just happened to see him supporting The Chameleons in Camden back in November 2002. Just very sad for his friends and family to think of another young person gone before his time.

Elsewhere, four young people are convicted of manslaughter (not murder) for kicking a man to death in a random attack on London's South Bank.

A person isn't safe anywhere these days.

Amazing news - whales have feelings and can understand humans.

How a wave of human compassion will have comforted the whale in his final hours

'He'd have known we're trying to help but it couldn't save him'

But what was really amusing about the bottlenose whale stranded in the River Thames story was that a friend recently returned from a holiday in Canada where he went whale watching. He was unlucky and saw absolutely nothing apart in a whole day apart from the bobbing waves. He then returns home to London to find one sitting on his doorstep.

GreatNews, in fact. I just discovered this RSS reader which is a Windows desktop RSS reader but can synchronise with Bloglines for Web based access.

GreatNews is fast, has a clean logical interface, with an integrated browser, highly configurable (2 or 3 pane display), supports newspaper style for reading groups, drag'n'drop for organising folders, auto feed discovery and perhaps most importantly, displays as much content as possible (no ads), enabling you to quickly focus on what is of interest.

You can't display the feeds into your preferred order but there is a 'Most Visited' view which amounts to the same thing.

So, I have exported all my feeds from Newsgator and will be trying out GreatNews as my RSS reader now.

Tonights Money Programme ( The world according To Google) on BBC2 was about the history, the success and the possible future diversification of the popular search engine, Google.

Now I use Google a lot and to me it is an excellent, fast, free service. I can hardly ever recall clicking on an ad that was presented alongside a search (even if I am actually looking to buy something).

I use Google Groups for searching for technical information as someone, somewhere at sometime has probably encountered the same problem as me and better, someone, somewhere at sometime has probably, kindly, provided the solution.

I don't particularly care if they track all my searches ever, aggregate them or give them to the UK authorities.

I am quite interested in innovative developments like Google Earth. I have a Google Mail account which I don't currently use but might do in the near future to replace my spam ridden Yahoo! email account.

I can remember when AltaVista was the most powerful, standard choice for a search engine and they were discussing a flotation. I respect Google, being founded by two students, coming from nowhere? to a position of virtual monopoly, immense power and wealth.

I don't care if Google staff are all geeks with 5 million dollar houses and rocket lava lamps in the Google colours scattered everywhere.

What I do care about is people continually discussing 'Google O/S'.

Google have a suite of powerful software applications. Google may have (ambitious plans) for an operating system. Google does have links with other computer companies that develop operating systems (Sun Microsystems).

IBM develop operating systems (AIX). Hewlett-Packard develop operating systems. Microsoft develop operating systems. Linux in all its various flavours is an operating system.

However, the last time I looked, Google does not have an operating system.

The BBC have a program called Pay off your mortgage in 2 years. Tonights episode featured a couple from Cornwall with a mortgage of 90,000 GBP.

The program is moderately interesting for the various ideas people come up with to earn extra income (not for the scrimping, living off baked beans and giving up alcohol).

However, the program is spoiled by some very basic flaws.

Firstly, any extra income seems to be tax-free. If they did raise 45,000 GBP in one year, the Inland Revenue would demand a significant element. It's a shame but it's the law, you see.

The mentor repeatedly refers to his very clever 'accumulator principle' which involves simply multiplying a weekly income of 'X' by 104 to determine the additional income over two years. He (and the participants) seems to view this basic mathematics as some startling revelation.

Secondly, the mentor also dangles the thought of all the mortgage interest payments saved as an incentive to realise a livelong dream.

For example, he told tonight's couple that if (surely when) they eventually do achieve their goal and pay off their mortgage of 90,000 GBP, this would free them from the shackles of 22 years of interest payments totalling 76,000 GBP.

The couple could then use this 'money' to buy a large, light, airy studio for painting and a home office.

The couple looked genuinely astounded and delighted. They did not have the basic common sense to understand that the very intelligent mentor had neglected to point out one important fact; to obtain this dream studio, they will either have to raise a further 76,000 GBP (which might take a while) or take out another mortgage.

Oh, the del.icio.us irony of it all.

You spend 3 months watching your WordPress statistics bumbling along the horizontal axis close to zero.

Some traffic dribbles in. The graph accelerates into 10s of hits daily. You feel better. You will persist with this blogging experiment for a little longer.

At this rate, it may soon be time to consider a proper blog using WordPress.org and Adsense to make the millions that eluded me during the dot com boom.

Then those pesky developers from WordPress.com alter the Y-axis dynamically, on the fly without even asking so the statistics now start at 40 and the graph looks just the same.

Life is cruel.

You can save lots of time and get even more things done by checking in online for your flight at www.britishairways.com.

You can even change your allocated seat (sometimes) which is useful as BA will always allocate an aisle seat if your preference is window and vice-versa. Version 2.0 of the BA site (June 2006) will even include a brief description of your prospective neighbour in order to help you with this difficult choice.

You can also print out your boarding card on your 12 year old dot matrix printer. This means you can skip the short queue at the BA self service kiosks and immediately proceed to the lengthy queue for the curiously misnamed 'Fast Bag Drop'.

However, a word of caution to all you GTD'ers. Wait for the printout to fully emerge and carefully check the output before leaving the BA web site. Secondly, always, always click the 'Click here to print boarding card' icon to avoid potential embarrassment.

Do not be tempted to think that because you work in IT, you know better and it will be far quicker to simply right-click 'Print This Page' to save another 2.4 milliseconds in an effort to get things done.

Trust me. I did it and because I don't know what a 'frame' is, I found myself presenting a rather unusual boarding pass at the British Airways desk that simply said:

"Click the 'Print Boarding Pass' button (you idiot) to print"

I just think everyones out to get me.

Search Term: +Norman Brightside+Blog

Please, please don't let it be the BAA security staff from T4.

Location: Heathrow T4 toilets.

• Durex Featherlite
• Durex Ribbed for Extra Sensitivity
• Durex Extra Safe
• Durex Gossamer
• Durex Lager & Lime
• Durex Chicken Korma
• Nurofen

Obviously two of the above are fictitious but the Nurofen is genuine. A great idea to counter that age old objection - 'Not tonight dear, I have a splitting headache'.

[ This blog is brought to you by Tom Hanks who actually has lived unnoticed in Heathrow Terminal 4 for the past 8 years, sleeping on chairs by night and queuing in various parts of the building by day. ]