A dummies guide to replacing a radiator.

A while ago when we upgraded the upstairs of our house, we tried various plumbers in the area. Some didn't appear, some appeared and caused devastation, etc. And so when Squids' office radiator stopped working, we though we had to do something quickly, and so we'd have to do it ourself.

We correctly guessed that the fundamental problem was that the thermostatic valve on the right of the radiator had frozen, and no amount of swearing or beating with a hammer would release it. Okay, I thought, lets get a replacement, and fit it ourselves. After all, how hard could it be?

So off I pop to the local DIY store. Its about 35 miles away, and huge, and I thought mistakenly, would have everything. So we returned with a new value, and various odds and sods to the tune of around £100.

We of course drained the system (3 hours), which involved buckets, towels, lots of manky water on the floor and SWMBO's constant advice and commands. A good time was had by all. Not.

(Most radiator systems have a handy wee 'drain me' tap which dumps the horrible water straight into the waste pipes and out of the house. Guess what my summer project will be next year?)

And when we compared the new value to the old, we suddenly found out that whilst all new radiators have 15mm fittings (that is are geared towards 15mm pipes), the old radiator was seriously old. Perhaps 15 years old, and had old Imperial fittings. Bums.

So back to the DIY store (and another 70 mile drive), to see if we can get alternative values. I found some to the back of an old dusty DIY store, and drove home, another £20 lighter in the pocket.

No. Wrong size.

So lets go and get a new radiator. BACK up to the DIY Store, and guess what - it was a non-standard size. NOTHING was even close, without digging up the floor. Not going to happen.

Rats. So lets just replace the radiator with a nice shiny modern one. 'Next Day Delivery' shouted the website, and £130 worse off, ordered it.

So 10 days later, I finally shout at them, and 14 days later, get the new radiator. Fine. Now. The problem them was finding 8mm microbore to 15mm fittings. Back to the DIY store. And found a very helpful man (a plumber himself) who worked there, and went to his van and gave me two new internal reduction fittings, as the store was out of them.

Great! Back home, drained the system AGAIN, lots of shouting AGAIN, and FINALLY - got the old faulty valve off, and mounted the new radiator. By this time, water was coming out of the old pipe (but not quickly) so I hacksawed off the old valve, fitted the new one and....

Yes. Since I'd shortened the pipe, the radiator had to be moved down the wall. And since more of the lack-of wallpaper was showing, the wall had to be fixed, and a radiator reflector attached, which meant ANOTHER trip to the DIY Store.

But hey, after all that, We got the damn thing up and fitted on Saturday night, and filled the system, and.... it leaked. Again.

AAAAIIIIEEEEEEEE.

So Sunday, BACK TO THE STORE to buy YET MORE dammed FITTINGS, and we find that hacksawing copper pipe isnt good, so you have to get a PIPE CUTTER, and I treated myself to a new big spanner to HIT THE DAMMED THING WITH, and we drained the SYSTEM yet AGAIN

And I got soaked when SWMBO decided to lift her end of a 3m long tray of stinking Eau de Radiator and a wave filled my trousers. Once she'd stopped laughing some 12 hours later, we then CHOPPED the end of the damned pipe, and re-cut it using the pipe cutter, fitted a NEW BLOODY VALVE, and put it all back together again, around 11pm last night.

And went to bed. So at 6am, I crept down the stairs, and inspected the dammed value, and it wasn't leaking.

THANK GOD.

So. At least 10 trips to the DIY store (700 miles), drained the system over 6 times (at 3 hours a time), new parts and radiator (£400) and TWO WHOLE WEEKENDS wasted.

GET ME THE NUMBER OF A BLOODY GOOD PLUMBER!

Postscript. The flash new designer radiator upstairs still doesn't work. I think we'll tackle that in the spring..

After the flood

On friday October 12th, 2012, the North Esk broke its banks.

This is the Gamekeepers/Fishermans hut on the North Esk. Its about 15 feet above the normal level of the river. And what you see there is that the road beside it has been removed by the water - about 3 feet of it.

I usually walk past the hut and admire the chains keeping it down, as well as the wee rock wall beside it, and think 'Naaa. It'll never get this high'.

But it did. Amazing. To give you an idea, this is what it looked like on Friday afternoon. The river was still 2-3 feet above its normal level.

Its a 12 foot drop to the river from where I was standing. And the water made it over the we hillock on the right - another 3 feet up.

Road Trip!

Last Thursday, October 11th October, I was heading from the office, on the train, to Gatwick airport. About 10 miles from the airport - the train stopped, and the driver announced that there had been an incident. All trains in the area were stopped.

This is code for 'there has been a fatality on the line. We need to switch the power off to prevent the poor sods collecting body parts from being electrocuted'. Some poor sod had died, and some more poor sods - our emergency services - had to risk life and limb to seal off the scene, and clear the mess. No-one was moving tonight.

So I sat on the train for a couple of hours in the dark, and hit the internet to see how I could get home. Over time, all flights out of Gatwick, and then all remaining flights out of London filled up. For lots of money, I could get home. So I quietly reserved a hire car and when we got to the airport, confirmed that Easyjet couldn't help. Over 2,000 people descended on the airport at once and caused chaos.

Whilst at the counter, I noted a poor lady next to me, desperately trying to get home to her daughter. So despite my disheveled state (I'd not shaved this week), I offered a lift to Edinburgh. Perhaps unwisely, she accepted.

So we headed out through the worst storm this year, 400 miles up the road. And it was horrible. Really horrible. Gridlock during the M25, followed by lots of water, all the way up. My nerves were shredded by the time we made it to Westmorland services on the M6 (around 2/3 of the way to Edinburgh), so we stopped for coffee and hot sarnies. Since she was preparing a presentation the next day, this involved lots of laptop and keynote action, mifi's burning merrily. Thats when we found out that Westmoreland kept their very nice and clean restaurant tables open overnight, and some had handy power sockets. Lifesavers. (No, really, they are the best services in the UK by far)

We got to Edinburgh around 3, and after some faffing around, I finally got home in my car around 6am. At around 9am, the river here burst it's banks - some parts were over 15 feet over its normal level, and two of the roads flooded.

Thank god I got home before the worst of the storm.

Sometimes, this 1,000 mile a week commute can be a real inconvenience. But it wasn't fatal, unlike some poor sod. So sometimes it's good to keep a little perspective.

The Pico Genie A100 Projector

My darling wife - She Who Must Be Obeyed - saved up and bought me a Pico Genie A100 projector for our wedding anniversary. She knows I'm a geek gadget fan, and when I unwrapped this on Friday - the 'Squeeee!' could be heard for miles.

Its an iphone 3/4 'sleeve'/case with a 15 lumens projector and battery pack. So its about 1cm thick, and lighter than the phone itself. It also has a battery pack and will charge the iPhone too, and claims to have 3 hours projection time. Pretty damn good. It only has one switch - one way for charge, and flick the other way for a few seconds to switch the projector on and off. Since the instructions only came in Chinese, we did spend a few minutes figuring it out. 

Tonight, in the pub, I demonstrated it to some mates by projecting some pictures on the roof (white). Randoms were walking up, demanding to know about it. And tonight, when I went to see Judge Dredd, I sat in a near empty cinema (30 minutes early) and projected onto the main screen (they hadnt started using it yet!) from about 20 meters away, and got a very watchable image that must have been 25 feet wide. (Its only a 15 lumen projector, but the Cinema was pretty dark, and they do have good screens).

At this point, you have to actually put it on something as even the steadiest hand will make the projected image bounce around like a jelly on a rollercoaster. Unsurprisingly. 

I then had to fight off the geeks wanting to play with it. Well, it was Judge Dredd after all. Geek central. My Geek ego swelled enormously. 

Impressive. Go get one here.

A quick Lotus Domino Webservices tip

If you have a reasonably complicated web service and you test it in the rather excellent SoapUI, and it never returns, despite completing the LotusScript code within your web service - check that the server can resolve its own network address.

Guess who just spent three hours beating his head against this, to find it was a simple misconfiguration in the server document - wrong IP address. D'oh!

No errors from LotusScript itself - it would just never return XML and you'd get some bizarre timeout effect from the consumer.

Lotus Notes Network Error: Network buffer was too small.

I've recently came across this issue whilst dealing with a very large corporate customer and new Windows 7 roll outs. This has nothing to do with Windows 7 - its a networking issue.

Specifically, the MTU value on the machine is larger than the maximum packet size you can fit through the network itself.

It manifests itself by complex or long-running queries from Notes clients, admin clients or notes designer clients failing with 'Network error: Network buffer was too small'. For instance, refreshing a mail template, or opening the admin client and not seeing all the files on the server, or a long-running agent not being able to scan databases on a server.

So you can check by using the 'ping' command, forcing (-f)  the packet to a specific size )-l), and seeing if it complains. This will check host 'myhost'com' to see if it will accept 1300 byte packets:

     ping -f -l 1300 myhost.com

It'll complain by saying 'Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set' if any part of the intervening network restricts packets of this size. 

This might happen because you have a new machine, or you are running over a VPN that doesnt support larger packet sizes, or by running over an ADSL connection that doesnt support larger packet sizes. Or all three, in my case.

How can we validate the Windows MTU Size? Run 'netsh interface ipv4 show subinterfaces'. And you can fix it by running (in administration mode): 

    netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface 'Local Area Connection' mtu=1250 store=persistent

This sets my MTU on the 'Local Area Connection' interface to an MTU of 1250 bytes, and makes it a persistent change.

You don't even have to restart the machine or notes client.

Team GB: Dont Stop Me Now...

29 Gold medals and counting.

Squarespace v6

I'm really happy - I've migrated most of my web sites to squarespace v6. It really takes the pain out of content rich sites like this. And to prove the point, I'm typing this on my iPad in a meeting..

Go check it out at http://squarespace.com.

Einsten

Einsten came into our lives on the 28th of January 2012, as a little ball of fur. David Clark had just bought Harley - his brother, and put this picture up on facebook

Baby Einstein

SWMBO saw that picture, and it thawed her heart.. So we picked him up from deepest rural shire and took him home. Here he is playing with his brother Harley:

The Red Collie Collective

Training classes followed. Collies are very intelligent - far more intelligent than say project managers or call centre operators - and need to be stretched mentally.

Puppy Classes

Now, he's almost fully grown. The vet claims he wont gain height, but will fill out a little.

Einstein on St Cyrus Beach.

The nice thing about living in the Mearns is of course, lots of really good walks. So quite a lot, the red collie collective go down the North Esk (and try and drink it dry)

Einstein and Harley at the North Esk

Syria

We can now conclusively state that there will be regime change in Syria. Why?

The spammers are now doing this:

Cannibals

Five cannibals get appointed as engineers in a high-tech company. During the welcoming ceremony, the boss says, "You're all part of our  team now.  You can earn good money here, and you can go to the  cafeteria for something to eat.  So don't trouble any of the other 
employees."

The cannibals promised not to trouble the other employees.

Four weeks later, the boss returns and says, "You're all working very  hard, and I'm very satisfied with all of you; however, one of our janitors has disappeared.  Do any of you know what happened to him?"

The cannibals disavow all knowledge of the missing janitor.  After the  boss has left, the leader of the cannibals says to the others, "Which  of you idiots ate the janitor?"

A hand raises hesitantly, to which the leader of the cannibals says, 
"You fool!  For four weeks we've been eating Team Leaders and Project  Managers so no one would notice anything, and you have to go and eat  the damn janitor!"

If only this wasn't so true.

The curse of Sharepoint.

Sharepoint is really good. But folks forget that its a complicated technology and although you can do some very cool stuff with it, it does get complicated very quickly.

It's been used as a blunt weapon time and time again to snatch applications away from Lotus Notes - and it does work well for simple applications. Discussion databases, project tracking databases. So far so good.

But when otherwise sensible people start thumping the table, drinking the MS cool-aid just a little too much and believe that a single Sharepoint developer can replace something like 50 man years of domino application development - say for a major fund management CRM and tracking system - you really have to step back and wonder how it's going to play.

Well, what happened is that the company has had little or no development on their primary trading platform for years, and after years of unsuccessfully trying to find this single genius Sharepoint developer capable of transforming tens of thousands of lines of code - well, you can guess.

It does take a long time, but the folks responsible for this sort of disaster finally do get put out to pasture. Its a shame that it takes so long.

So beware the curse of [insert other platform here]. You might very well get some tactical advantages, and be able to move portions of your business critical applications off your existing platform - but don't pretend it won't be a long, costly, drawn out affair, eh?

Microsoft Remote Desktop Client

I have to use this a lot on clients sites. And I always end up with a whole shedload of .RDP files containing all the gubbins necessary to connect to the remote servers. However, I keep finding myself googling for two things that RDP files can contain over and over.

1. Admin mode or Console Mode.

Pre windows 2008 R2 had a 'connect-to-console:i:1' option which allowed you to connect to the machine console. The later version no longer has this. What you have to do is to add '/admin' at the end of the address line. For instance:

full address:s:10.176.246.53 /admin

2. Connect my workstations C: Drive to the remote machine 

Because there's nothing more irritating than finding that you can't get the ID file or whatnot on tot the remote machine. Just add this line:

drivestoredirect:s:System (C:);

Happy Anniversary, Mrs Buchan

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, a young couple were married. 

It was a big old fashioned Fishermans Wedding, with hosts of family from both sides - some of whom we'd never seen before. And our friends made the dangerous journey from Edinburgh to Fraserburgh.

Happy 25th Anniversary Mrs Buchan.

Mobile phones and data - the future?

Part three of my view on the mobile phone industry. Part one is here, and part two is here. 

Firstly, go off and read this rather excellent background article here. Back now?

So. We have 2g (slow, digital, 9600 baud), 3g (Fast digital up to 21mb but shared bandwith across the cell, and bad non-urban access and dead spots) and 4g - basically a tweaked Wifi signal with far more bandwidth and less latency.

Telcos are basically dinosaurs. Look at the speed in which they didnt roll out 3g, and look at how O2 - part of Telefonica - messed up 3g even in central london. Why?

3g is expensive. And since its trying to use a lot less signal - we dont want microwaved brains, right - the cells are smaller. Given its a radio cell, all bandwidth is shared across that cell. So they had to put in a lot more 3g cells to replace 2g ones, and those cells are expensive. Since Ofcom (our useless govenment regulator) made the rules, the mobile operators have got off with rolling out 3g in urban areas, and ignoring everyone else. Or 'Cherrypicking'. So if you have a nice urban postcode, you have choice. If you live in the country - that is - you can see green - then you dont.

Apparently Ofcom is going to be a little more strict with the 4g auction, which they havent even started yet. Germany has 4g, and Sweden has 4g. Deployed. We're still arguing about the shape of the deal.

Which is rapidly becoming moot. Why? The operators are finally starting to play smart. Orange and T-mobile are merging, becoming Everything Everywhere. (Very optimistic title, given their current coverage). And Vodafone and O2 are going to share their masts. Leaving poor old Three - the only '3g only' network in the UK in a very exposed position.

It doesnt take crystal balls to see that they will continue to cherrypick urban areas, and merge services in ruralshire areas. We will get the impression of choice, without any competitive pressure, no doubt. In my own humble opinion. There. That should sort out any litigious lawyers reading that.

I have a slightly more optimistic view. 4g is nothing more than a tweaked Wifi. And these mobile phones, tablets, etc, will be able - I'm guessing at some stage - to use any wifi. A roaming femtocell on each device, so to speak. And at that stage, the Telcos are just there to provide connectivity. Not phones, or sims, but simple wifi connectivity. Something, it has to be said, they've been universally shit at so far.

Does this mean that the mobile telcos are going the way of the dinosaur? Perhaps. We can all hope. Perhaps in another 20 years, our mobile phone and data needs will be part and parcel of the fabric of our life - not like some limpet clinging onto our reproductive organs  wallets, sucking out our lives. 

Expenses tracking.

The bane of my life is expense tracking. I always seem to end up with a carrier bag of receipts that are a nightmare for my long suffering bookkeeper to sort out.. Something had to be done.

Last year, I pushed my company onto Xero.com - an online accounting system. And it's fantastic. Auto downloads the bank information. I can access it from anywhere. Loving it. So t made sense to look for an online expense tracking system that interfaced with that. Well, twitter to the rescue. Paul Rigby recommended Expense magic.. So I thought I'd give it a whirl.

You create the account online, and from there you can web-upload receipts. And set up the link between expense magic and other accounts systems, such as Xero. Then you download an iPhone app..

From there you can buy a subscription - I opted for 90 days for £20. And started taking photos of receipts. I think I did 100 in about 30 minutes - so it could be faster. However, once the backlog was done, taking individual receipts is a doodle, as I did this morning for my breakfast.

I also liked the idea that I could email in receipts - so I can finally claim all those sub $10 receipts from online purchases that I don't usually bother with.

I've yet to see the output from this - I'll update this and the result of a support query later this week.

So far, thumbs up,

Update: I've now done 131 receipts - 100 from the iPhone and the rest via eMail. And the wee accounts gnomes at ExpenseMagic have looked at the scans, typed em all up. Fantastic work. Far more detailed than I would ever have done. 

The support mail exchange went really well - prompt, well thought out responses in clear text. They've obviously committed and enthusiastic.

Conclusion: Recommeded. Thumbs up. 

Your Money or your Life (Or how to be a road warrior)

(This is the second of three rants articles on Mobile comms - the previous one gives my opinion of the existing players)

I move a lot for my job. I commute around 1,000 miles a week, and have the occasional trip off to other continents. So how do I ensure I have reliable mobile communications wherever I go, without it costing a fortune? Well, basically I dont. But I'll show you how I get close.

Roaming Voice

Firstly, do you really want your phone to work everywhere you go? You probably do. Especially for family emergencies, flight delays, and other assorted screwups. So how do you do this?

You can enable roaming on your mobile phone contract. This may be cheap - vodafone, for instance, can give you really cheap mobile phone calls abroad if you buy an add on. Or it could be ridicuously expensive - like the time vodafone charged me £2,000 for a months european travel telecoms when they failed to apply the package.

How cheap, and how much hassle, is completely up to you.

For instance, recently I switched to Three. Three's small print (the bit you never read first) says you cannot switch on roaming on the first 90 days of your contract with a SIM only deal, as you might use it a lot, and run away without paying your bill. I think I added that bit. And given Three's 'customer support' basically means 'their way or the highway' I was stuck whilst travelling around Europe (7 countries and 1,500 miles on a motorbike) without telecoms. Bugger.

So what I did was jump onto every free wifi I could find, and use Skype. My email also worked this way, and so at least I got a little bit of contact. In Belgium, I basically walked into a shop, waved my unlocked iPhone at an assistant, got a €20 euro PAYG SIM with some data provision and walked out 10 minutes later with a working phone. Okay, a Belgian number, but at least one folks could contact me on, and one I could text from.

And the iPhone meant that I didnt lose all my contacts, etc.

So you can always do that. You'll end up with a book of micro-sims - one for each country - but that'll work.

There are companies out ther who market SIM's that will work in all countries at a fairly reasonable price. However, the ones like that you can buy in travel shops (in the small print) will charge you £1/Mb for data. So downloading a CD will cost you £60. Ouch. So watch out for that.

Okay, so telecoms is achievable with very little effort. How about data?

Data Roaming

International data roaming is like chopping off your testicles and mailing them to your telecoms provider. Its fantastic money for them, for very little effort. Or a 'Rip Off' as we like to call it. Jake Howlett has a really good example of this here.

Data roaming is expensive. So don't do it. Most modern hotels will have decent Wifi - the ALoft and W hotels for instance have fantastic wifi. Its well worth the £10 or so per day for that. Some hotels have really awful wifi.

In those cases, you might want to try tethering your phone. In my case, I have an iPhone where tethering is carrier specific. Some carriers - such as O2 - charge you extra (Update - they dont now). Three do not. Other carriers - such as GiffGaff dont provide it at all. Which is really stupid.

And I've found that my iPhone runs hot, and the battery drains really quickly when tethering. So I try and avoid it. In the UK, I use an unlocked Three mifi 2 - a wee battery operated device that pulls 3g data in, and gives you a personal hotspot. The Mifi2 gives you up to five connected devices, so its really handy for data for the laptop, iPhone and iPad all at the same time. Lovely. And since its unlocked, its a case of finding a PAYG 3g SIM card for your target country. Its hard, but its really cheap.

For instance, I'm standing in the sleazy jet boarding queue typing this on my iPad, using the mifi 2. No. Really.

When I'm in the USA (assuming I pass the TSA audition to get in) I use a virgin mobile payg mifi. That worked really well at lotus fear. And worked really well on the hog ride with five sweaty bikers catching up on the IBM legal debacle this year.. I just walked into Best Buy and paid $100 - about as much as I'd pay n a week.

Lastly, there is Boingo. It's a wifi plan that works internationally for a fairly flat rate. I tend to be in places away from wifi, so this was less relevant for me, but I know folks who love this service. yMMV.

Why not 3G USB dongles? They mostly tend to be locked down Huwei devices and the drivers are crap. Then you have to set up a personal hotspot on your laptop for the iPad, etc. sod that for a game of soldiers. Especially bad on a locked down laptop, or an iPad...

Updates:

Since I wrote this, Three have started providing a European wide data service, GiffGaff have been caught out somewhat, and I've added a few links.

The Olympic Torch comes through Marykirk

Myself and a thousand other folks lined the street to see the torch coming through. Here it is, passing my gates:

A dummies guide to UK Mobile Phone networks.

Background: I live in rural Scotland, work in London (this year, previous years have included Copenhaven, Paris, Eindhoven, the Hague, etc). Mobile phones are important to me, and I've been a hard consumer of them since 1995. I've tried most UK networks, and found them all to be universally crap. People ask my opinion of them, and after the first 10 spittle-coated minutes, run away. 

So this is my long and possibly offensive opinion on each UK mobile phone operator I've tried in the last 17 years, and why I personally believe they should all be pushed into the sea. Or nuked from space. 

Disclaimer: For the litigious lawyers out there working for each of these organisations - this is my opinion based on all the events which happened to me. So its factual as well. At every opportunity, these organisations were given a chance to fix these issues, which they spectacularly failed to. 

Coverage: As I write this, I've found that Orange and T-Mobile are merging their phone networks. And vodafone and O2 are merging theirs. In Scotland, we get O2. Feck. So if its coverage you're after, wait 6-12 months and we'll end up with a completely consolidated mast network here in the UK. So then you can really shop around between carriers, confident that the coverage you receive will be as bad as the coverage everyone else receives.

Because OFCOM - our government telcoms authority - are about as much use as a chocolate teapot. They havent even started the 4g network auction process yet - where countries such as Sweden - have actually rolled out their infrastructure a year ago.

Carrier Overview

• Vodafone. The biggest. Best coverage, worst customer service, treat both business and personal customers as victims. Ripped me off for over £2,000.
• O2. Terrible network, terrible support (because they cant fix their network). So bad, there's an entire blog devoted to them here.
• Orange. No rural coverage. The phones were purchased, taken home, and despite assurances from the folks in the shops - didnt work at the house. Returned within hours, despite huge arguments. If you live on top of a transmitter, then they might work for you. 
• T-Mobile. Terrible customer services, opaque billing, bad coverage.
• Three. By far the best 3G network, and even covers rural scotland. All you can eat mobile broadband. Promises a Femtocell to folks in marginal signal areas. Guess what. If you ask for one, they refuse.
• BT. By far the worst customer service on the planet. Absolutely no clue. 
• GiffGaff. A thinly veiled subsiduary of O2, which runs on top of O2 network, but for a third of the price of O2 and all you can eat internet. Basically O2 without the customer service (which isnt a bad thing) but with terrible SIM card provisioning.

Which one would I choose ? Actually, I'd rather trim my pubic hair with a flamethrower than deal with any of these muppets. But at the moment, I'm moving from three to GiffGaff. So as you can see, I'm clearly insane

Vodafone

The biggest mobile phone operator in the world, the most extensive 2g network in the UK, and the most expensive carrier with the least flexibile customer service in both business and personal accounts. 

They were my first mobile carrier, and as such, I thought their abusive behaviour was normal for the market (which it appears to be). So we have exorbitant roaming charges - so if I use a vofafone network in another country, they would charge me crazy amounts of money. Incoming calls would cost crazy amounts of money. Both have now been fixed after years of being ripped off by the EU courts.  Dont even talk to me about Data Roaming - that hasnt been fixed yet.

So every year, I would pop along to Vodafone with my business acount, be completely misled by some bubblehead in their shops (never ever believe anything told to you by anyone in any mobile phone shop. They are there to make commissions and will invariably sell you the deal that benefits them the most), walk out with some shitty phone - remember the XDA2 ? - and get ripped off.

Vodafone ripped me off for over £2,000 in a single month. Every time you change phone, a 'new contract' would be created, and it was up to the shop-based bubblehead to transfer across all your packages and tweaks. In my case, due to lots of international roaming - my 'international roaming' packge was rather fundamental. So the bubblehead didnt transfer it, and I got a £2,000+ bill the next month.

Of course, going back to the shop, asking them to fix it - proved useless. I had to pay up. So I paid up and moved.

Dont for a second think that this problem is restricted to Vodafone - all these useless feckers do it. Now there are laws in place to prevent 'bill-shock' - so if you suffer from 'bill-shock' like this, tell them, you'll be transferred to the 'bill-shock' team who will offer you discounts off your inflated, rip-off bill. Just be firm with them, and the bill will go away.

Vodafone are so bad that whenever we switch mobile phone carriers, SWMBO channels something from the seventh level of hell, and shouts "NOT VODAFONE".

BT

A special place in hell is reserved for BT mobile phone. I walked into a BT shop, and asked for three blackberry Pearls on a business contract. I told them that I had my own BES server, that I needed enterprise phones, and that I didnt want consumer phones.

How long to fix this ? Most of a year. And it required a phone swap. Never trust anyone in a phone shop. If its a BT phone shop, just walk out the door. It'll save you lots of hassle. 

It took director level emails to get this sorted out. And BT being glacially slow at customer service, moved at the speed of a continent.

I would rather staple my scrotum to a wildcat than ever deal with BT mobile ever again.

Orange

Crap network, misleading sales folks in the shop, and a buttload of hassle one weekend, when I foolishly tried them out. Never again. Even folks in urban Londonshire hate them with a passion, and they're supposed to actually have coverage there.

I think I'd rather undergo a self-inflicted appendectomy with a plastic spoon than ever deal with them again.

T-Mobile. 

Terrible coverage, really bad customer support. So bad that one time I went into a shop, demanded support, so they just picked up the phone and dialed the support number. I have fond memories of banging my head against the inside of glass window at the T-Mobile shop in Princes Street, watching the tourists fleeing the scene.

Parts of my forehead ache when I think of T-Mobile. The therapy isnt working. I flinch every time I walk past a T-mobile shop.

O2.

O2 were by far the most recent of my major fallings out with mobile phone providers. 

O2 are the ex BT Cellnet network - and as such, inherited a state-paid-for, almost complete coverage of the UK, 2g network. Talk about a good start. And then they were bought out by Telefonica - the huge Spanish mobile telco. So no shortage of money or talent. Or so I thought.

I was at one stage a complete O2 fanboy - ADSL, mobile dongle, three phones, the whole nine yards. I foolishly thought that putting all my eggs in one basket meant that the person in charge of the basket would treat me as a valuable customer, instead of say, a mugger eyeing up his next victim.

Coverage. Network. These are things we take for granted. We pay these idiots £35/month/handset (And then crazy call charges) so that the wee iShiny in our pocket works all the time. This is the expectation we have been given by the shiny advertising, and the sales patter.

What O2 delivered was akin to the Boy Scouts attempting to build a space shuttle. I'm not denegrating the Scouts - I'm just pointing out that no matter how organised or motivated folks are, sometimes something is really difficult. And no amount of enthusiasm willl work.

I heard on the grapevine that O2 took a choice one year. Continually improve the network, or build new customer service facilities. I'm really glad they chose the latter, as when the former kept collapsing, we had someone at the other end of the phone to yell at. They couldnt fix it of course - the O2 nework was (and probably still is) completely oversubscribed, IMHO.

Why?

O2 won the iPhone deal here in the UK. iPhone as you recall, went 3g. So O2 had to go 3G. But did they install lots of masts all over the UK, replacing or augmenting their 2g infrastructure with 3g antenna? No. Of course not. They cherrypicked the bit of the UK inside the M25 and hoped and prayed they'd done enough.

They hadnt. They sold iPhones on the basis of fast network connectivity, and folks bought them for that. And - dont forget - paid a hefty premium for that service. Which they didnt get.

Case in point - I worked on the South Bank. We had a base station at the other end of the building. So 5-bar signal coverage. Great. But the base station backhaul pipe was completely overwhemled by people using the service. And it took six months, 50+ people on a petition, Ofcom and my MP to actually get O2 to recognise and fix the issue.

Dont believe me ? Its all over here. 

And for six months downtime at my place of work - what did O2 offer me ? £80. 

I then moved offices to Docklands. And for the first week, my O2 phone did work. And then it didnt. For weeks. Docklands. Not a rural part of scotland. Not the moon. O2 again failed completely to provide a network, failed completely to fix it, and so finally - sick of my complaints - let me out of my contract a few months early.

Which they have to do, by law.

O2 share, IMHO, the customer service attutude of Vogons.

Three

Three is ran by Hutchinson Telecom, and are the only 'pure' 3g network in the UK. If you have a signal, its 3g. Unlike O2, Vodafone, the rest, who want you to use the far cheaper 2g networks.

Great. And Three -when you get coverage - works great. I use a wee Three Mifi (3g to Wifi personal hotspot) all the time. Very handy.

So when the mifi started working at home, I lept at the chance to move to them. After all, their website claims, if you are in a marginal signal area, they'll give you a Femtocell (a wee 3g base station that plugs into your network) for free. Excellent.

So I moved to three.

And the phones didnt work in the house. So I asked for a Femtocell.

"No".

What? "No. We wont give you a femtocell".

And this is where the fun starts. Three outsource their call center to India - and its a really good, well ran call center. Clear lines, intelligent folks. No complaints on that front.

But. If you want something they dont provide, forget it. Its a 'my way or the highway' sort of call center. Okay.

After four weeks of begging, trying to pay for, and stealing a femtocell, I gave up and started to move the phones off. At which point I started to get lots of calls, offering me fantastic phone deals (android phone, unlimited internet, £8/month). I even started to get regular calls from management in India, chasing the Femtocell.

So the deal is, if I'd bought a phone, I'd get a femtocell. And in a few months, I can buy a femtocell. But in a few months, SWMBO will have killed me by then. No phone at home == my imminent death. So when the management guy chasing the femtocell called back and said 'No femtocell', I cancelled and moved to GiffGaff.

I liked Three. Pity it didnt work. 

GiffGaff

GiffGaff pretend to be a user-led, user managed phone company. This is complete bollocks, of course. They're a part of O2/Telefonica, and I suspect they're using GiffGaff to see how to run a really cheap phone company.

That is to say, no support. The users support other users via a blog/Wiki (Sound familar, IBM folks?) and they get credited (pennies) per help, and therefore, someone putting 3-5 hours in a month might get free phone service.

They offer better deals than O2 - £15 gets you unlimited internet, lots of calls, unlimited texts a month - but its on the O2 craptabulous network.

And as its not an 'official' iPhone carrier - no visual voicemail (meh) and no tethering (which Three gave away for free).

The biggest PITA is actually getting free SIMS from them. I've ordered NINIE now, and in a month, only received one. Thats pretty shitty. Its only a SIM card folks.

So far - the billing, website, network experience has been okay. And since GiffGaff dont 'traffic shape', the mobile internet experience has been better than on O2. 

In summary.

In my opinion:

1. Treat them all with distain. 
2. Treat them like a bag of rabid weasels. 
3. Never trust anything said verbally in a shop - they're out to rip you off even more.

Rumours abound that Apple might become a global mobile telco. I'd love that - because I know Apple - for all their faults - treat me like a customer. 

Now wouldnt that be a distruptive force in this bloated, sick, market?

Large environments, and complex Domino Configuration

Its been fun at Cheese International, rolling out a new Domino infrastructure, and on some amazing hardware. 

One issue I've been looking at is complex environment Domino configuration verification. As you know, Domino has something like 1200 fields on the server document form, and another 1200 on the server configuration form. Perhaps another 150+ notes.ini variables you care about.

Some of these fields will be set to the same value, and some will be set to some value dependant on the server name, location, zone, type, and so forth. 

So I developed a tool that takes a simple server definition, a 'template' document which can represet the server document, server config document, or notes document, and then apply the definition against the template, and then compare it against the actual documents in the NAB. Its quite enlightening - we track about 300+ settings across all three, and use complex names in things like the security tab.

And it works. We can now audit those documents (at least) in a few minutes, and spit out an excel spreadhseet showing the target and actual values, and highlight the ones in error.  Lets see if I can get it to update existing documents with the correct values - very handy when building new servers. I have about 20 to do in the next few weeks, so this will really really help.

The other trick with large, complex, domino installations is to ensure that all the system databases have their advanced database settings correctly set - we're tracking about six of those (as well as the ODS and the ACL), and again - 50+ servers, 20+ databases and templates, 10+ settings - we can audit and spit out a report.

I'm somewhat amazed that I've not seen tooling like this before on other large sites. What do people do ? Deploy and pray? Manually audit once in a while? Obviously in a stable, non-changing environment, there's not a huge requirement for this. But on a 45k user, 200 country rolling upgrade - well, we've found it more than useful.

Is there an appetite out there to learn more about these tools and how they work?