That's working for me.

Disconnecting VoIP

Decided to disconnect the VoIP service last week, we just don’t use it any more.

 

Go online to their website, nope – you can’t do it from there, although you can *connect* a service.  Why?  Because they don’t want you to get away that easily.

 

Call their service centre.  Nope, that closed 6 minutes ago and is only available during business hours.

 

Call this morning.  There are IVR options for sales, billing and support.  Choose billing, wait in the queue, only to be told they need to transfer me to disconnections.  Why no option?  Because people might pick it.

 

Wait in the queue for disconnections, finally answered via the crappiest VoIP call you have ever heard to what I suspect was the Philippines.

 

 

Call centre droid:  This Ook, what you want?

 

Me:  Me want disconnect account.  You make account go away.

 

Droid:  Why?

 

Me:  Because use mobiles, no further need.

 

Droid:  You customer since 2007, how about 6 months free service?

 

Me:  How about droid listen to customer?  I just said I’m not using the service, it make zero difference whether it free or not.  Make go away now.

 

Droid:  You sure not keep?  Maybe transfer to other family member or friend?

 

Me:  WTF??  Disconnect the fucking service NOW, or I take a record of the time and date of the call, your name and operator number, I lodge a complaint with the company, and I instruct my bank to withdraw your payment privilege.  I’ll also take a recording of my telling you this, and further attempts to bill me for services I have requested be discontinued will be reported to the police as attempted fraud.

 

Droid:  *grunt*  *snort*  OK, Ook disconnect account.

 

 

I swear that there must be some sort of training that customer save staff go through, very similar to salespeople, telemarketers, car salesmen, real estate agents and doorknockers.  That training includes brainwashing so the word “no” just doesn’t even register on their consciousness, along with the ability to completely ignore what the customer wants in favour of their own agenda.  And then these people probably wonder why they are regarded as somewhere between a slime mould and something you wish you hadn’t just found on the sole of your shoe from a respectability point of view.

Temps and banks

It’s 13° room temperature here at the moment, CPU is sitting at 36° with the fan running so low it’s setting off RPM alarms in the hardware monitor.  I’ve seen the ambient higher than that before.

 

I’ve spent the last 2 weeks off and on changing over all of our bank accounts and financial details.  As part of our mortgage, we got a slightly complicated account package:

 

- a Mastercard

- an Amex card, which despite being totally separate, runs off the same credit account as the Mastercard.  (??)

- an offset savings account.

 

This initially made no sense to me, so investigation was in order.  The outcome was that yes, the two credit cards are totally separate, and run by separate companies, but Westpac provides the credit facility that both run off.  It doesn’t matter which piece of plastic you flash, it ends up in the same bucket.  So why the two cards?  Because we get double frequent flyer points on the Amex.  So the shot is to use the Amex if at all possible, unless the retailer wants to slug us an additional merchant fee for doing so.  Quite a few do, as Amex themselves charge about twice what everyone else in the industry does.

 

Anything in the offset savings account counts against the amount of the loan – it’s as good as having made an additional payment.  So the idea is to have everything paid into that account, let the loan payments come out of there, but use credit cards for *everything* and only pay the card off at the last minute.  Think of it like a slush fund meets a very quick redraw facility.

 

Simple enough, right.  Now begins the fun part – changing every single automatic payment detail on file everywhere.  If it was paid via credit card, we’ve got new card numbers.  If it was direct debit – we’ve got a new savings account.  Aargh.  I’ve spent the last two weeks mucking about with this and I think I have finally gotten everything…

 

Oh yeah, one more piece of weirdness.  Both the credit cards are Westpac branded cards, even the Amex.  Both are linked to the offset savings account, so if I want some cash both will work in an ATM.  But the Amex – despite being Westpac branded – is regarded as a “foreign” card and incurs the usual $2-for-nothing-ripoff fee if you use it.  Not going to even try to understand that one.

Goddammit

I have just glued myself to my fletching jig.  Nfh.  Currently soaking hand in acetone hoping the glue debonds before my epidermis does.

OK, true respect due.

Shot 1 @ 1000 yards: headshot.

Shot 2: GTFO??

Shot 3: Three headshots at 1000 yards. 5" group. And he's never seen the rifle before, or shot with a spotter.

It's a state of mind. These people are special. You're a sniper... or you're a target.

TGIF

SWMBO quite surprised me today by suggesting we disconnect our VoIP service.  Suits me fine, I've been pushing it for about a year now.  With two $400 cap mobiles in the house I don't see the point any more, so why pay the monthly tariff?

Interesting day at work today... brains trust tier 3 team and our vendor locked themselves out of a rather significant piece of kit 700km away from anywhere convenient.  :)  Idiots.  And firewall problems currently mean the disaster recovery solution is a no go.  My solution:  SSH to a small alarm collector box in the site, which I know is hardwired to the out-of-band management interface on the isolated device.  Set up the port to simulate a console session, then bind a TCP port to the physical serial interface.  Now spawn a telnet session in loopback against the TCP port, so the session is aimed out across the physical link to the network element.  Bewdy, login prompt!  Dig through a log from a couple of months ago for the encrypted CLI auth details, and now I have root on the box.  :)  From there it's a simple command to enable SSH cut-through from the EMS and tier 3's bacon is saved.

Go tier 2!!!!  The look on the tier 3 manager's face was priceless.

24/7 roster starts Monday, how did I end up with Monday as an SDO??  Can I live with the strain?  (Who wrote the bloody roster...)  Frankly the best part is we're all no longed in the same place at the same time, so a lot of the management bullshit will die away naturally, and we should have some peace and quiet to get on with it.  Got a lot to learn, and I need to get the hangers-on out of the road so I can get some quality hands-on time going.

Must put a brew down tomorrow, I am down to about 30 litres of hooch.  This is unsatisfactory.

Welcome back AEST

And so, for another year, the idiocy of daylight savings time has retreated back to its lair of confusion to question the reason for its own being.  Thank dog for that, what a bloody stupid idea.  They’re called seasons, people – they happen.  Deal with it.

 

Anyone else ever get irritated by the annoyance of batteries?  In the morning I pull my mobile out of the dock where it spends the night charging.  I notice the remote control panel for the heating is yet again whinging about low batteries. Go to reset the clock in the PVR back to AEST – nope, batteries are too low for the remote to work.  Did out some NiMH rechargeables which are supposed to hold some semblance of a shelf charge – nope, they’re flat, get out yet another appliance and stick them on charge.  I’ll need a drill in a while so it’s time get out yet another charger and stick the battery into it, or you can absolutely guarantee the bastard of the thing will go flat halfway through the job.  I need to do some work on the laptop, hmm – will I manage to get it done on battery, or am I going to have to deal with the fourth charger of the morning – and I’ve only been up half an hour.  Calley heads off to a local garden expo, no problem with the camera – I charged that last week.

 

The whole freaking world runs on batteries and it pisses me off.  The only small compensations I have seen for some years now have been:

 

The development of lithium cells, which at least are reasonably light and have no memory, at the expense of crap amperages, being horrifically expensive and the fact that they die at about the same rate on the shelf as they do in active good.  So good luck getting a replacement battery for that two year old mobile, the replacement is two year old stock so it’s just as dead as the one you just tossed.  Oh yeah, and don’t puncture them.  If you do, I suggest removing yourself to a safe distance until it’s all over.

 

The development of consumer grade NiMH cells in usable sizes (AAA, AA, sub C and 9v), with decent capacities (3Ah AAs anyone?) and affordable desktop chargers.  They still don’t hold a shelf charge worth a damn, but they’re a bloody sight lighter than NiCd and don’t develop anything like the memory.  Current capacity is reasonable too.