Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Telecommunications

Friday, March 28th, 2008 | Life, Tech

Having got my new phone I requested my network unlock code for my old phone.

I phoned back in a few days when the said it would arrive. It hadn’t. So they requested it for me again. I rang back on the Monday. They still didn’t have it and requested it again. Wednesday I got an email with it. I entered it into my phone. And it bricked it.

Everything worked fine. I followed the instructions and then restarted my phone to find I got a “configuration error” message no matter what SIM I put in it.

I phoned up Vodaphone, several times, and they had no clue. They said back up your data on it and take it back into a Vodaphone shop and they will send it away for repair. So I downloaded and installed the crappy Sony Ecricsson software to backup my important data and guess what – it fails every time.

Any idea how you can recover data off a mobile phone anyone?

Meanwhile o2 is a whole different story. Norm dug me out an o2 SIM card which I inserted into my phone so I would have a pay as you go phone on o2’s network when my Vodaphone one wasn’t working. But the SIM refused to activate. So I tried to activate it online and was greeted with a message saying this was not an o2 number.

So I phoned up customer services who informed me that they had no record of this number in the database.

So I went down to the o2 store to get a new SIM card. Which I did as well as £10 top-up. I got home, inserted the SIM into my phone, phoned up and activated my top-up card and got the text messages to install the “settings” whatever that is. But despite having topped up, I apparently don’t have any credit. Fantastic.

Blog reorganisation

Friday, March 28th, 2008 | Life

I’ve messed around with the blog a little. The topic links now use /category/ again rather than /tags/ to differentiate them from the actual tags themselves which I am going to make an effort to use from now on. The tag listings are a little ugly at the moment but hopefully I’ll get round to sorting that out eventually.

Fail FTW

Friday, March 28th, 2008 | Life, Tech

Earler this evening (I guess it was technically yesterday evening now) this part of Leeds experienced a power glitch.

The power dropped out for a a second, enough time to kill about half the computers and set pretty much everyone’s alarm off. Including ours. Which was annoying.

If it hadn’t been for the lights going out I’m not sure I would have noticed. Both my UPS backups kicked in and kept all of my computers as well as my network online so I was able to continue streaming my movie from my file server to my desktop completely unaffected.

/smug :D.

Chris needs energy

Thursday, March 27th, 2008 | Life

I’m trying to cut down on my caffeine intake before Rationalist Week (at which point there will be much consumption of caffeine lol). It’s proving harder than expected though. I’m tired! I’m fairly sure most of it is psychological effects but unfortunately that doesn’t really help me. Caffeine!

Snow part II

Monday, March 24th, 2008 | Friends, Life

Giant snowball

…and they say McDonald’s staff don’t know how to supersize anymore.

I wasn’t there at its creation btw, before you say anything. I was tucked up in my nice warm bed. Asleep. Like a normal person.

I really don’t understand why half my friends are freaks who enjoy going out and getting cold and wet when such weather phenomenon arise.

Hmmm (extended edition)

Monday, March 24th, 2008 | Life, Thoughts

I have a feeling it’s going to be a rocky few weeks.

It hasn’t been the best start to Easter ever. I had a nice little square of four issues that knocked me out of my stride somewhat. I feel like they are gradually clearing up but then maybe I’ve just decided they are clearing up and as such is only going to make the fall worse then they don’t.

I guess we’ll find out soon…

Snow

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 | Distractions, Life

It seems somewhat ironic that they day Michelle leaves the country we get such a heavy snowfall.

Still it provided a somewhat appropriate mise en scene for last night’s activities. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it was indeed the long dark tea-time of the soul. Anyone for a snowball fight?

And they say I don’t take my degree seriously

Saturday, March 15th, 2008 | Life

I notice Mr. O’Shea is going to the theatre rather than coming to the pub night. I suspect however it’s just a clever ploy to get out of buying me the drink he bet me thatwhen claiming I wouldn’t dare put a lolcat on my FYP during my demonstration to Tony Jenkins at my progress meeting.

Of course, the doubters in DEC-10 were wrong…

Ceiling cat does a cameo in my FYP

The Chris Worfolk Institute of Computing Excellence

Saturday, March 15th, 2008 | Life

I wanted to go out with a bang so I submited this item to the staff student forum agenda. Brandon kindly accepted said submission. Have a peak.

Staff student forum agenda

Roger Boyle our head of school even approved the plan. Although he added that it only really works when the person you name something after has passed away. Still, phase one complete, just phase two to take care of now…

Like a worm on its belly

Saturday, March 15th, 2008 | Life

I got a call from Vodaphone retention this morning.

Suddenly, they can do me the packages for new customers and can even give me the special offers on top of that too. So I now have 500 minutes and unlimited texts and they’ve even gone as far as to throw in free itemised billing (which I already had lol). Best of all they are now doing it £5 a month cheaper than o2.

So I now have a phone on the way from Vodaphone and a phone on the way from o2 as well as my PAC code even though I don’t need it. Messy, messy situation.