Memoirs of a Roadie

I Can See For Miles

Posted on 1st September 2008

Idiocy At Work, #1 in a possible series.

In July 2008 I received a letter from my opticians (Dollond & Aitchison), which I've only just got around to reading, and basically proclaims I am breaking the law for doing nothing! Apparently it regards a bit of new legislation that I've never heard of and which they fail to back up with any reference to the actual legislation. The actual quote is:

"Legislation designed to protect the health of your eyes means you are required to have a regular check to ensure that we can continue to supply you with contact lenses."

Further into the letter they also say:

"You must act before 21/07/2008 otherwise we cannot supply you with any more lenses."

So now I'm a criminal and blacklisted by D&A from them ever supplying me any contacts lenses ever again! WTF! How to drive away business in a nutshell. I have tried to phone their office, but keep getting an answer phone, so will have to wait to attempt to follow this up. However, I cannot believe a company would be so stupid as to commit commercial suicide by selling their customers this kind of rubbish.

There is no law that I am aware of that has ever been drawn up, that now means several million people in the UK are now criminals for never had their eyes checked in the last year. Or is it just contact lens wearers? On top of that, that any previous supplier to that (now branded) criminal is now banned for life from ever supplying contact lenses to that criminal. Now I am willing to be educated, so I'll pursue this as I don't believe that the message they are selling is the correct one. If it is then this country is in an even bigger quagmire than I thought, and if it isn't then I'd like to know why they think it's a good sales initiative to use scare tactics to frighten their customers into getting a contact lens check.

To be continued....

If anyone out there in webland is aware of the appropriate legislation and can point me at an online version, I'd be very grateful. If anyone from D&A reads this, then feel free to contact me to explain why you think threatening your customers is a good sales tactic.

Between The Wheels

Posted on 8th June 2008

A friend of mine, Arnaud, has been planning the trip of a lifetime for a couple of years. Earlier this year he began his sabbatical from work and prepared for his trek from France to China. Although based in Cheltenham, UK, he first headed over to France to stay with his parents and make final preparations for the trip. However, there have been a few issues regards getting into China, so at the moment he's unsure of whether he have to fly in, or will be able to ride in.

He has a website, Frog On A Bike, which he has been updating on a regular basis, with tales of his journey and plenty of photos and even a few videos of his trek. He's currently in Russia, heading for Astrakhan and Kazakhstan. Considering it's only been 6 weeks since he hit the road on 21st April for his World Tour, he's travelled a very impressive distance. It's been great reading of his travels, and looks to be a journey I would have loved to have done. Although, I think I would have had to drive rather than ride. I'm not that fit these days :)

The funniest sight he's seen so far has to be the Fake Police Car. I'm just hoping the UK police don't get ideas and start putting these around the country.

I Feel The Earth Move

Posted on 27th February 2008

Last night, just before at about 1AM, an earthquake hit the UK. At the time, Nicole woke me up and was a little worried that something had happened to the house, as she heard the wardrobe bumping against the wall. Unfortunately, possibly because I was tired, I didn't hear or see anything. After checking on the kids and checking outside, everything seemed fine and we went back to sleep. This morning on the news we discovered that there had been an earthquake just south of Hull, that had been felt in London, Newcastle and across the midlands.

Last time there was such a major earthquake in the UK, the other side of Dudley (about 15 miles from my house) in September 2002, I was out of the country, having just attended YAPC::Europe in Munich, so only got to hear about. This time around I was half-asleep and too tired to notice. Not that I want to experience the full effects of a devastating earthquake, but next time I hope I'm a bit more with it!

Other Voices

Posted on 4th January 2008

Back at the beginning of last month I got an interesting email. It came from an internal recruiter with The Mozilla Corporation. She was acting on behalf of David Ascher and was looking to recruit for a number of roles for the newly formed company MailCo. For those not aware of recent developments with Mozilla, MailCo has been setup as a subsidiary of The Mozilla Corporation to directly manage, develop and promote the Thunderbird mail client. The role that they had contacted me regarding was that of QA Community Lead.

From the aspect of being involved with QA activities I can understand why I would be considered, I can also understand that my Perl community profile could be seen as holding me in good standing for a raise in profile, and I can also appreciate that my years at MessageLabs put me in a good position to be accepted as having a fair knowledge of email and the associated protocols. But I still had to ask ... "why me?"

I don't see myself as a high profile player and I haven't previously been involved with any Mozilla related development, so it struck me a little unusual that they would want to get an outsider for the role. Following the initial email, I did a bit of research and tried to get a better understanding of what was expected of the role and what would be expected of me personally. After a telephone conversion I got the impression that the role would be very interesting and would probably have interested me from the QA perspective, as well as having the potential for me to attend a few more conferences around the world. But in the back of my mind was still the fact that I would still be taking on an immense task in getting to know the community and to inspire and lead it. As it turns out they also decided that getting someone already known within the Mozilla community would be better for them, and I think I would have to agree. Especially seeing as they are only planning to work with a small team and need everyone to be able to hit the ground running. However, it was extremely nice to be considered and has made me think a lot about how I am perceived outside of the Perl community.

Snow

Posted on 19th November 2007

It's snowing!

Early this morning, just before going to bed, we happened to look out into the back garden and noticed a rather large abundance of white. It had been trying to snow earlier in the day, but it hadn't been settling. After it had gone dark it would seem the snow had fallen a little more heavily. I tried taking some photos through the kitchen window, using a night setting, but I think it would have been better had I been outside. Seeing as I was too tired to go out (it was 2am) and it was far too cold, I had to make do. Hopefully this won't be the last snow, as I'd like to get some with Ethne playing in the snow :)