Time Flies

When you don't visit your own blog for nigh on two months, things are either:

• Going swimmingly and there just aren't enough hours in the day to fit in everything you want to do - which leads to a few smaller items (i.e. blogs) being neglected
• You're in jail for assaulting a hipster with an overly loud Frappucino

Thankfully I'm pleased to report it's the former, and finding the time to do everything I want in a week isn't viable. What a lovely position to find myself in, and thoroughly enjoying the increased life load.

Less Godwin, More God Lose

I've been following a couple of casual debates online in recent weeks and noticed several contributors have attempted to issue a "and that's final" rebuttal by quoting either text or references from the Bible as if this should be the last word on the subject in question. This is a frustrating way of entering a discussion, be it online or in person and feels like the equivalent of folding one's arms and saying "because I said so". It's an intellectual cop out and holds no greater merit for making the case against than quoting a song lyric back to me as your counter-argument.

This got me thinking about Godwin's Law for the mention of beliefs held by Hitler and whether there was a parallel for discussion where an argument is immediately lost upon quoting a book and passage number from the Bible. In fact I'd accept any acknowledged religious text here, but Christianity is where we start. The number of times in the real world phrases such as "The good book teaches us that" crop up, there should be term for its usage out there already, surely? So far I haven't located one, but I'll continue to rummage in the hope there is one - as there certainly should be ... or we'll create it.

The Rule Of Wheaton

I've had a number of conversations over the past month with friends in regard to my email to Virgin about lack of service, with a general concensus that I was far more pleasant and patient than they would have been under the same circumstances. My approach for this was determined by a comment I heard years ago, that was initially attributed to Wil Wheaton, and is a simple message: don't be a dick.

After hunting to find out where the phrase came from, I discovered the Wikipedia entry for Wheaton's Law which appears to show the origins of how his association to this approach came around. You learn something new every day it seems. The article itself is a good read covers much of the ground I intended to cover initially, but I wanted to expand on a few points and my take on it.

If you start out being nice and polite, it means you have options - whether that be simply becoming more forceful in conversation, shouting or any of the other methods of brute force some feel necessary to make their point, and all the way up to reverting to full on dick. But remember this - you can always be more of a dick, you can never be less of a dick.* So start the bottom end in a polite, yet firm fashion and see where that takes you.

People seem to remember their first interaction with you, as it sets the tone for the future. If their memory is tained by the recollection you were an unpleasant individual, then it will take serious work on your part to get them over that initial impression. From a lazy man's perspective, this seems a better approach as it requires less work to modify opinions of you as a person, and allows you to steer it in the direction you wish things to go. Less dickery too. That can't be a bad thing can it?

Thinking it through a little further, is someone more likely to want to help you if they're asked in:

• a friendly and respectful fashion, or
• WITH CAPS ON AND MUCH SCREAMING

I'm sure stamping your feet can gain you ground with customer services who are eager to please, as that's how a lot of businesses wish to operate now ... but if I can achieve a near identical result by being nice and keeping my blood pressure and sanity, then that seems a better outlook. More importantly it isn't transferring dickery to the other person involved in this transaction and that means they don't feel rubbish for the rest of the day after dealing with you too. So to summarise, by being nice about things we can:

• Get things done how we want
• Retain sanity, blood pressure and keep stress down
• Have a positive knock-on effect to others with our upbeat attitude
• Spend time rescuing kittens from trees

There we are then - reasons not to be a dick ... or at least, not from the outset.

* Perhaps I shouldn't repeatedly use "firm" "nice" and "dick" in paragraphs together. It may be my inner child reponsible for writing, but it still gives me a giggle even in my thirties.

the Day the Earth Stood Still

As part of my ongoing project to watch a movie beginning with every letter of the alphabet, I present you with D

the Day the Earth Stood Still. Other things starting with the letter d include disappointing, depressing and disjointed. This was 2008 version with Keanu Reeves as opposed to the original which sits fondly in memory, but while it shows promise at the outset disappointingly  it turned into something seriously mundane and by the end I wanted my two hours of life back again. I did want to kick Jaden Smith's arse off the planet too. Even the lovely Jennifer Connelly couldn't help me out here and there's not much to recommend. That concludes my ninja review of a mediocre film.

Change As Good As A Rest

One item I didn't put down on my Day Zero list which was always in my head was a change of career. So after some thirteen years with my current employer, the right opportunity has presented itself and I'm moving on.

Not an easy decision to make, as you find yourself into a comfortable routine on a daily basis where you know what will happen, can optimise your day accordingly and get through the experience without stress ... but perhaps you aren't being pushed as hard as you could be or challenging yourself to find new opportunities. There's a dawning realisation you may be able to achieve more than you are right now, maybe this isn't all there is, and you're no longer grinding through the gears at the pace you were a couple of years ago as the desire to change things and push for change is no longer there.

Then you reach a point where the brain simply recognises it needs to do something new and different - and there isn't space within your existing job or organsation to do that. The turn of phrase to describe it recently was, I need a change of scenery before I become the scenery. So out went the CV to a few interesting sounding positions and in came the offers of interview - and next thing you know, someone has been awesome enough to offer me a position in their organisation.

Since handing in my resignation there's been a mixed set of emotions, a combination of melancholy, relief, nervousness excitement and disappointment ... but I feel relaxed and confident the right decision has been made for the right reasons. To the point where if I was any more relaxed, I'd be in line for the world Jenga championships.

Cue the new job. Same type of work but a different aspect of software development which isn't completely alien to me - but different enough for me to know there's work ahead of me to get to grips with everything despite my experience. With it comes a new industry to work in, and with that comes an entire new bag of terminology to familiarise myself with. It's going to be fun, and hard too as there's an awful lot of work needed on my part just to get up to speed and that excites me!

New adventure. New challenges. Brilliant.

Childish Victory

Our daughter is a rambunctious soul and has taken to repeatedly bashing her baby activity gym (don't blame me for the name of the toy) as hard as possible and making all the sounds play and as a result, considerable noise comes out of it when attacked by little paws.

Usually this isn't a problem as when she's using that it's mostly an indicator we're doing something and want her occupied with lights, sound and different textures to keep her interest while we finish something off. But first thing in the morning this is quite a lot for my poor brain to deal with.

As a result, I had the clever idea of moving the frame out the way, and giving her one of the rattles to play with instead. The noise generated is considerably less than the Frame of Pain, it has moving elements and is brightly coloured and retains her attention. So I handed her the rattle and went about the business of breakfast.

I watched in horror as she wiggled her chair back under the Frame of Pain and then proceeded to bash the items on the frame with said rattle, thereby generating the noise of both rattle and the baby gym simultaneously, and taking the plastic cataclysm of noise to new and frightening levels. Coupled with her squeals of delight at having outmaneuvered her dull witted progenitor, it has all been a resounding loss for my dawn attempts at logic.

Father 0, Daughter 1. Well played baby, well played.

Dearest Virgin

It only took three days. Virgin have phoned me back.

Specifically a very pleasant gentleman called Nathan from their complaints support team* has now given me an apology, a refund and a month's compensation. In addition I've now got direct contact details for a complaints manager, and will be holding onto these until the recabling is completed. I also had the opportunity to raise my concerns that no department worth its salt should be notifying customers with around 24 hours notice for something of this scale, when they should know weeks in advance that there's a problem.

Could I have gained more than this through stamping my feet and being angry? Possibly. Could I have argued for greater compensation for loss of service? Probably. What I do have though is a small victory for being rational and polite without winding myself up in the process, and more importantly it means my blood pressure has returned to normal and I have a smile on my chubby little face just in time for the weekend.

* As an aside, I always get a chuckle when I hear the team "complaints department" as it conjures up marvellous images of an entire platoon of personnel devoted purely to the art of whinging at each other. Rather than the reality of a team of people who have to deal with incoming complaints from customers.

Dear Virgin

Summary: Our Virgin supplied cable service has been dead since late January. They arranged today to re-cable. They left a message last night on our answering machine saying it's now going to be start of April. That will be ten weeks without services we've been paying for. I've opened negotiation with a polite and cheerful letter in a style that I'd hope the Consumerist would nod approvingly at, and will wait to see what happens next ...

Hello customer support, I'm hoping you can help us.

My wife and I have enjoyed Virgin Media's services since signing up last year, despite initial hiccups during the installation, as the packages are great and the V+ box is streets ahead of the competition. However, due to a problem with the cable between house and exchange, we have now been without either Internet or TV since around 25th January. After reporting it late January, we had an engineer attend on 1st February and he stated you would need to re-cable to the house, and the same day we were given a date of 8th March for the work to be carried out.

Sadly we returned home last night (7th) to find a message on our answering machine stating the engineers had been over-booked for this date and they now wouldn't be able to attend until 1st April. As you can imagine, this is a massive disappointment to us after the great service we've had until this happened.

We've accepted the cabling date, as it's not something under your control - and if people are overbooked, then it can't be avoided. But, assuming the engineering team are able to reach us on the 1st April, we will have been without our two key services for almost ten weeks :(

To-date we haven't been contacted regarding reimbursement for loss of service, haven't been offered any compensation or even had alternative interim measures (such as a 3G dongle?) offered to us. This was a surprise, as several of our friends also using Virgin services have expressed genuine surprise that this hasn't been handled better, and proffered their own positive experiences with you as an example of how you get it right when they have a problem. So I'm writing this mail to you with the hope you help out and cheer us up!

I look forward to hearing from you.

- Dave

So, there we go. It's polite, contains all the facts and also outlines what I would like to see happen to make us happy. There's no real anger in there, just honest disappointment ... but that's with the benefit of a 12 hour delay between receiving the news and writing a reply, as my word I was flippin' furious last night when listening to the message!

It isn't acceptable to work that way, and genuinely hope this is a proper balls-up and not how the support services at Virgin Media work on a day-to-day basis. Booking off holiday to ensure their engineers will have full access to the house, only to find out 24 hours before they're due that they've double-booked the engineers. How on earth wasn't this spotted when the original booking was made? I'd be soundly beaten for pulling this sort of stunt at our far, far smaller company.

They have five days to respond. Lets say that's actually working days, so it'll be by next Tuesday we hear back. Now we wait and see what comes ...

Durgh

All the recommended reading links on my page were broken and I never realised! Whoops, sorry about that. No idea how I'd managed to pull out the URL for the RSS feed instead of the site itself, but it should now be rectified.

Plus who can pass up the opportunity to use a picture of a gorilla facepalming itself? So there.

Nice, BA

Received a polite email asking me to provide feedback on a recent flight with British Airways. One of the last questions is as follows ...


"What aspect of British Airways' service on this journey were you most satisfied with?"

With a subtext in tiny, tiny font that reads ...

"Please do not post comments that are unlawful, obscene, threatening or offensive."

Exactly what sort of in-flight services have I been missing out on that would prompt me to use obscene language or write unlawful comments? Perhaps this is a range you only see when in the First Class section of the plane. At this point I'm picturing the poledancing on a plane scene from Iron Man.