My wealthy deposit

Head Rambles Posted on by 2

I received a letter today.

Oh, the excitement! Someone loves me enough to write to me.

But it was from my old bank. Not exciting at all. Never mind.

It was a statement from an account which is now closed. I had to pay off €30, and the only way I could find to pay that off was with Giro at the local post office. That was fine. I paid in cash, but just for the devilment I threw in a 5c coin I had in my pocket. In other words I paid a total of €30.05 off my debt of €30. I am now five cents in credit.

The statement this morning told me I was fine. I didn’t have to pay anything off and that I had 5c to spend if I want.

I’ll leave it there. In fact I’d have a problem trying to take it out as the account is closed. But the bank now owe me 5c when they finally close their books and leave. In a logical, human world they would just forget about such a small amount and would assume I’d do the same. But we live in a computerised world where 5 is not zero so something has to be done. Programmes work in absolutes so 5c is as important to a computer as €5,000.00. The account cannot be dismissed all the time there is something in it.

I shall just sit back now to see what happens. Will they write and inform me they are binning my vast deposit? Or will I receive a nice printed cheque for my investment of five cents? I hope it’s the latter as it will cost them more to write the cheque than the cheque is worth.

I hope it’s the latter. Naturally I won’t cash it.

I shall frame it as a testament to computer programmes..

 

Starvation once again

Head Rambles Posted on by 1

I hate supermarkets.

It starts with the attempt to find a trolley that will at least head in the approximate direction I want it to go. Then there’s the musak which is supposed to calm me but has the opposite effect. And then there is the problem of finding the items I’m looking for, which always seems to involve about three circuits of the shop before I find it. Finally of course there is the sheer joy of joining the line to check out my items.

I’m happy to say there is an alternative which I have been using for many years. In fact, apart from holidays I think I can safely say I haven’t entered a supermarket in about twenty years. That alternative is of course the joy of online shopping.

Online shopping is brilliant. I can shop in the comfort of my armchair and can browse the aisles with a click of the mouse. There is little temptation to impulse buy and if I find the basket is becoming a tad expensive, it’s easy to remove items without enduring the withering gazes of the people waiting behind me in a queue.

Having filled my basket I then select a time for them to deliver. At the start of the Virus panic that could be a couple of weeks ahead, but now I can usually find a delivery slot the following day. Just before the appointed time I get a text with a link to a map which shows me exactly where my order is. This is quite good fun as I watch the van navigate the tricky parts of the journey from Skobieville to the Wicklow foothills. As soon as he turns into our lane I can open up the garage doors so he can deliver straight onto the kitchen table. All I have to do is pack away the stuff after he’s gone.

What’s not to like about that for efficiency?

Except when something goes wrong.

I put in an order on Saturday night for delivery yesterday at two in the afternoon. Two o’clock came and went. No messages and no delivery. Then I realised I had left my phone in the bedroom.

I collected my phone to find a message from the shop – their driver had gone home sick and would I like to collect the order myself of reschedule the delivery? I phoned back the number. I couldn’t get through. I tried numerous times with that number and a couple of other numbers I found. I still couldn’t get through. Obviously I was too late in the day. No groceries.

I phoned a different number this morning [Head Office]. I got through to a nice enough chap who found my order on his computer but he had no idea of when it might be delivered. He offered to phone Skobieville to find out. I was put on hold for a few minutes and back he came. He couldn’t get through to them.

So I’m in limbo. Somewhere out there is a van full of my stuff. I hope they remembered to put the frozen stuff in a freezer, or it will be mush by now.

Has anyone got a spare sliced pan and a bottle of milk?

 

If you can’t stand the heat…

Head Rambles Posted on by 6

It’s hot.

I know this because I just happen to know when I’m hot. Feeling hot or cold is something I learned to do nearly three quarters of a century ago and I am still able to do it now. I know whether I’m hot or cold and can even tell when I’m uncomfortably so in either direction. Wonderful, isn’t it?

However I am apparently in mortal danger. The radio and television keep on and on about the temperature. It may pass 31 degrees today and break another record [you can hear the excitement in their voices]. They reckon [with some disappointment] that it wouldn’t be an all time record but it might be a record for August. And then they tell us of the mortal dangers of hot weather. In particular they go on about the “vulnerable and the elderly” and how we are the most vulnerable of the lot. We must stay indoors. We must lather ourselves in suncream. We must wear hats. To listen to them you’d think we would all melt or spontaneously combust or something.

What they fail to realise is that we have been around a bit. The clue is in the word “elderly”. We have experienced hot days before though to listen to them you’d swear this was the first warm day ever. I have baked in England. I have baked in France. I have actually spent days outdoors in sunny weather when the temperature was well in excess of Ireland’s all time record. Granted I got a bit burned occasionally and once had a bad dose of sunstroke, but those just warned me to be careful. That’s called experience.

Experience is something us elderly collect over a lifetime. The chances are we have been there before and remember how to react to a situation. Even more important, we grew up in an era where we learned things for ourselves and didn’t need “experts” to guide us. We didn’t need to be told how to react to something or wait to be informed that something is dangerous. They are rabbiting on about the dangers of water for fuck’s sake. Do we really need to be informed that water can drown us?

There’s yet another “expert” on the radio at this very moment. Once again he is pleading for the elderly to stay indoors.

I think I’ll go and cut the grass.

 

A bit of a reprieve

Head Rambles Posted on by  

It looks like I’m stuck with this.

I thought I had a grand excuse to bury this site for once and for all as it had developed a very mysterious bug.

It transpires it was nothing to do with the weather [the meeja here are going frantic warning us of temperatures of 30, as if we’ll all melt], Warble Gloaming, Brexit, the war in Ukraine or any of the various pandemics. It was down to human error. Even better, I’m not the human involved.

I received a mail last night –

Our technical team discovered today, that a version of the database server [server number] was inadvertently restarted on Tuesday the 9th of August at approximately 11am which had an outdated copy of data on it , and this server subsequently became active for website database connections. 

The outdated server was shutdown upon discovery at 11:30am this morning and the correct server version became active again.  The result of this is, that websites connecting to  databases on this node, may have been writing to the outdated version instead of the live.

So the mystery is solved. The techy bods fucked up royally and nearly gave me a nervous breakdown.

There is still a problem though. Apparently people who subscribed in the past haven’t been getting their notifications. Why anyone would want to subscribe is beyond me, but I suppose it takes all sorts? Anyhows I think I may know what’s wrong there {Google fucking things up as usual]. I’m trying out a new system or two so do let me know if it works.

In the meantime, it looks like you’re stuck with me for the time being.