Last week I requested a brochure from a company via a web form. I won’t mention the company by name but I will just say that it starts with ‘M’ and ends with ‘itsubishi’. I’m obviously used to entering data into web forms so it’s not as if it’s my first time at a keyboard. I fill in my house number and postcode and the page magically finds the correct address. I click on the address and it is copied into the correct fields further down the page. All well and good. I fill in the rest of the details and confirm that everything is okay. I select the brochure that I want and the information is sent to a database on a server somewhere. After you’ve clicked ‘Send’ you don’t care about the mechanics you just wonder how long before you receive the goods.

A few days pass and I still haven’t received anything in the post, which, for such a large company, I think is slightly odd.

A full week later there is an envelope in my post box.

My surname is spelt wrong, the address now has a line missing and the town, which on the form was all in capitals, now has two capital letters as if it is part of a Scottish clan.

This is what, I can only surmise, has happened :-

1. The address is copied from a screen at HQ onto a piece of paper using an old fashioned form of data transfer called ‘handwriting’.
2. The paper is then given to a telephone operator who phones the local branch and reads out the name and address.
3. The person at the local branch writes this down.
4. The paper is then handed to a data entry person, or someone with a hangover who is on a youth employment scheme, and they type it into a computer.
5. This computer then prints out the label to stick on the envelope.

No way on earth could my information have been messed up so much without human intervention of one kind or another. Either that or some really shoddy programming.

Macworld UK reports that Microshite® intend to open a retail store in New York. What exactly are they going to sell? Windows XP Pro? It’s 4 years old for gods sake. Anyone who doesn’t already have it by now obviously has no intention of upgrading. Everyone else either has downloaded a copy or has been given it free with a new PC.

You would think that they might have learnt their lesson with the San Francisco store which, the article says, only lasted for 3 years.

I can’t wait to see the queue of people waiting to be the first to go in. The same queues form when a new PC World opens.

Hammy The Hamster

The other great item on GMTV’s news hour was about a school boy who has found a new source of energy.

He has managed to build a generator that will charge a mobile phone using hamster power alone. He said that his hamster, running on it’s wheel for a few minutes, could generate enough electricity to charge his mobile phone. Now, I’ve seen those windup chargers in gadget catalogues and thought that they looked like too much hard work. This could well be the answer. This young man could well be the Sir Clive Sinclair or the James Dyson of the future.

My sister had a few hamsters when she, and I, were younger so I know that a hamster will run on it’s wheel for hours with only a few sunflower seeds for sustenance. Imagine if every household in the land had a few hamsters generating power in this way. As long as unscrupulous corporations don’t put thousands of them to work in great sheds then I can see no problem at all using this as a source of energy.

Maybe now HP will stand for ‘hamster power’ instead of that of the equine variety.

The Wandering Spider

This is the second time that I’ve heard about this kind of problem on GMTV’s news hour.

What they reported this morning was that a woman had bought bananas from a supermarket, took them home, and was bitten by a spider hidden within the bunch. During the brief interview she said that thankfully it was only a baby Brazilian Wandering Spider and not a full grown adult. The ‘toddler’ therefore only had little fangs and injected a tiny dose of venom.

According to the BBC News report she managed to identify the spider by searching on the internet.

However, the spider could not be formally identified because it was not captured.

There could well be a few sleepless nights in that household. I wonder how they would coax it out of hiding?

Which reminds me of the previous time that bananas and spiders were mentioned on GMTV.

A woman was being interviewed in her lounge, with a few of her offspring around her, by the reporter. In the background you could see the doorway which leads into the kitchen. This doorway was more or less completely sealed off using plastic sheeting. What transpires from the interview is that the woman bought bananas from the local supermarket, she was unpacking her groceries and saw a black spider unfurl itself from its hiding place within the bunch and scamper away. Being black with long thin legs the report said that it was a Black Widow spider. I’m not completely sure if this next bit is true or not but I’m pretty certain that the plantation owners were using these spiders to eat a particular pest that was destroying their crops.

The lesson from all this is to shake your bananas thoroughly before you buy them… just in case.

Victoria Beckham

This morning I was watching BBC News 24 and heard the shocking news that Victoria Beckham is not as well read as we have been led to believe.

The admission has been leaked from the forthcoming September issue of high-society magazine Chic.

I haven’t read a book in my life, I haven’t got enough time. I prefer to listen to music, although I do love fashion magazines.Victoria Beckham

The startling admission means Posh, who turned 31 earlier this year, has yet to experience the joys of her husband’s autobiography, David Beckham - My Side.

Of course I only mention this so that I can tell you the joke that was popular in the eighties. Then it’s subject was the fortieth President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

This news just in - there has been a devastating fire in the library at ‘Beckingham Palace’. Reporters on the scene have said that both of Victoria’s books have been destroyed and unfortunately she hasn’t finished colouring one of them in!

Grave of Carl D. Patterson
by K.C. Bolton

I was searching for web images, for a web-site I’m constructing, and I remember reading sometime ago that the Google Images haven’t been updated in sometime. So I decided to test it out by trying to find some of the images that I’ve used on this blog. I don’t actually know how the images are selected, whether it uses the ALT image attribute or whatever, but I wanted to give it a go. So I put carl d patterson into Googles search box. I didn’t find any pictures that are on this site but I did see a lot of images :- school kids, some idiot called Nathan Wohlstein who has tried to fiddle his Google rank, Ms. Rodgers Red Hot Readers and lo and behold a grave bearing the name Carl D. Patterson.

The stone says, “Beloved Husband Dad - Grandpa Carl D. Patterson U. S. Navy - Korea June 6, 1928 - April 26, 1994″ it was photographed by K.C. Bolton on 23/11/2003 and is at Greenlawn Memorial Park, Southwest, Bakersfield, Kern County, CA.

This reminds me of a book I heard about called Are You Dave Gorman? by Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace in which Perrier Award nominee Dave Gorman has a drunken bet with Danny Wallace that there are other Dave Gormans in the world. There are indeed and he spend half a year tracking them down throughout the world. I personally haven’t read it yet but it is now next on my list of books to buy.

Back to the image that I found. I can’t see how the image could have been found by Google. The image simply sits in a directory which seems to list all the grave stones in Greenlawn Memorial Park, Southwest, whose surname starts with p. I always thought that Google, or any web spider for that matter, could only work on links from actual web pages. Then again I suppose that any spider will only do what a browser does and will index the files in a directory listing without any trouble.

After Christmas I bought a book called Who Do You Think You Are? by Dan Waddell after seeing an episode of the BBC Two television programme of the same name. I thought that I could trace my family tree back through the ages as the celebrities did in the series. Of course I haven’t quite got round to reading the book yet as I am still working through the back log of others that I’ve purchased and not read. I also thought that it would be an excellent excuse to purchase an Apple iBook or PowerBook as it would no doubt involve taking copious notes in libraries and so on and I wouldn’t want to have to resort to pen and paper.

Possibly I’ll just have a little dig on the inter-web to see if I can find who this chap was and if there are any others. It’s funny that I could find someone with my name and initial. I did know that someone had the www.carlpatterson.com domain name registered so I’m glad that I registered this domain when I did.

Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.Mark Twain

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.Isaac Asimov

Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.P. J. O’Rourke