Philip Norton

I downloaded the new version of iTunes (8.0.0.35) today, but only because it kept asking me to.  The really irritating thing about any new install of iTunes is that all of my short cuts get messed up.  Every time I get a new version, which seems to be quite often, I have to add all of the links back in so that I can access the program on my own terms!  I’m going to just leave it this time, I’m sick of it!

Is it an improvement?  Well you can probably guess from the title of this post that it isn’t.  I think it is a definite step backwards.  Rather than sort out all of the stupid and annoying things that this program does, they have just added on some bells and whistles to make it more pretty.

Lets start off with this Genius thing.  I don’t care what it is, if a media playing program simply stops you from using a it until you have enabled some silly little music advertisement component, then it has failed.  I found that the only way to get rid of it was to attempt to create another play list.  However, it does this every time you open the bloody program!  I had to sign up to it just to get it to stop!

What is the point of this Genius program?  When I’m listening to a song from my extensive Black Sabbath collection, I don’t want to be sold a live recording of Iron Man.  I am really not interested!  Not only that, but the thing doesn’t work with any other media, so when looking through videos or podcasts it just sticks a big bar at the side that says “Genius sidebar only works with music.”  I can’t get rid of it now!

As for the bells and whistles let me give this analogy.  Take something, anything really, and jump up and down on it for around 20 minutes, if you don’t weight much then carry something heavy whilst doing this.  Put the resulting bits and pieces of rubbish into the best looking box that money can buy.  I’m talking jewell encrusted, made of gold and silver, literally the best box you can get your hands on.  You now have the new iTunes interface.  It is like trying to paint miniature models, whilst wearing boxing gloves.  Every time you try to do anything it is kept back from you by a level of unnecessary uselessness.  The thing I hate most about using podcasts on this pile of poo is that little grey arrow to the left of the podcast title.  Well the worst bit of usability I have ever seen is still there, you just have to dig through the fluffy pillows with pretty pictures on them to get to it.  What is the point?  If isn’t broken, then don’t try to fix it.  More importantly, if it is broken, fix it, don’t put a ribbon on it and pretend that it wasn’t broken in the first place.

iTunes, pretty on the outside, unusable on the inside.

I have noticed one thing about the new interface as well.  When I have iTunes open my CPU usage goes up to 100% and my computer starts to wheeze like an anorexic hamster on a lead weighted wheel.  My computer is not particularly old or slow, but iTunes just seems to kill it off.  This makes it a little difficult to watch videos with it as it just displays a frame, waits for a few seconds and then displays another frame.  It is like going to the cinema and it consisting of some guy holding up pictures of what is going on, which he shows you one at a time.  Much like Bob Dylan in Subterranean Homesick Blues.

Starting today I’m looking for alternatives.  The only requirements I have is that it syncs my iPod (although I’m shopping for something else) and that can manage my podcasts.  If you have any suggestions then please put them in the comments.

So after eating barely a snack at Yo Sushi I took Mandy and Matthew off to get them something to eat. They hadn’t touched much sushi and I didn’t really expect them to.

So off we went to La Tasca as we had been there about a year ago to the day and it was great then. This time the entire experience can be summed up in one word.

TERRIBLE!

The food was just plain crap, the service was like dental surgery and the toilets needed some attention.

I ordered a paella which was was stodgy, tasteless and dry along with some fish balls, which weren’t very nice. They just didn’t taste very nice, but I’m not sure if they were meant to look like little deep fried sponges.

Mandy’s chicken wings were salty or burnt and her "meat on bread" was like a section of tarmac on a lump of wood. Matthew enjoyed his cheese on toast (they got one dish right) but his children’s menu salad was clearly prepared either that morning or the evening before. The carrots where grim and dry, the tomatoes where mushy and the lettuce was like cut grass. Even the starter of garlic bread was nasty and tasted funny.

The last time we were there they gave Matthew a glass of crayons and a piece of paper. He loved that as he could draw on it. This time they gave him a glass of crayons (perhaps the same one…) and a section of laminated paper that was totally filled up with pictures and images. Have you ever tried to draw with a crayon on a plastic surface. I can tell you no that it’s a little difficult.

To top it all off the waitress make us feel like we were making her work there. She would come up to the table, mumble something and then slap/throw a dish of food in front on you. She really has presentation down to a fine art!

The bottom line? I’m not going to try that place again! They have clearly lost the plot!

We went to the Trafford Center for a little bit of Decemberween shopping on Saturday and I’m always promising myself that I will definitely try the sushi bar/cafe/restaurant. So this time I did.

The sushi bar/cafe/restaurant at the Trafford Center comes in the form of Yo Sushi, which I can only assume is some kind of chain store thingy.

Anyway, I saw that there wasn’t any other people eating so thinking that I was quids in I at down and got a dish from the conveyor. And then got another dish whilst I tried to tell what it was that I had just stuck into my mouth.

It was that that this guy from behind the counter said that they weren’t actually open until 12:00. Looking at my watch I saw that it was 11:45, and looking about revealed that there wasn’t anybody about to actually ask about me sitting there eating something I wasn’t meant to be eating for another 15 minutes. So I sat there feeling extremely out of place before the place opened when we made our excuses and left. I thought that sushi was a self serve kind of meal so I was just getting stuck in.

So why wasn’t there somebody about? It’s not difficult! They didn’t even put up a sign. Anything would have been more helpful than thinking I was there early and realising that I was completely wrong. It wasn’t until 12:00 on the dot that someone turned up and actually served us and then they just treated me like I was a shoplifter or something. Mandy talked to one of her friends who had been there and they said that they had encountered the same problem. I even sent a message to the Yo Sushi people telling them that the service might be improved, but I have had no reply.

Anyway, despite feeling like a fool to start off with the food was very nice. The dish I started off with was crab… something and I also managed to get octopus… something with artichoke… bits. All of which were very nice indeed and I am glad that I had at least something.

The lack of help wasn’t my only problem. The place is a little expensive as I had barely a snack before the bill reached ten pounds. I know that’s not all that much, but I hadn’t even started. I wonder how much the guy across the bar spent as his pile of plates was huge!

Although moving house wasn’t exactly easy, it would have been a lot better if I hadn’t had to deal with BT. To those of you who don’t know BT stands for British Telecom, and they are just about the only people who can get you connected to a phone line in the UK. I say just about as they have begun releasing lines to other companies, much like they have done for Internet Service Providers. In our last house we were with TalkTalk, and I had no complaints at all. Their customer service was good, I didn’t spend much time on hold when trying to call them and above all they where cheap. However, they where unable to connect a phone to my new house as there was a problem with the line and so I had to enlist the help of BT. Not only was there a problem, but I was also informed that they couldn’t do anything about that line anyway as BT had control of it. My heart sank as I new I was in for a battle.

It didn’t start well, but then again I wasn’t expecting much. The first few days of trying to get through to them only made me wonder if I should just have the phone implanted into my head. Hours and hours of listening to on-hold music and people continuously saying "I’ll just put you through to the right department", to which you had to explain the whole story again, before being redirected to yet another department.

At one point, two days before actually moving house, I was actually transferred from a BT operator to some guy in his living room at home. He was watching TV at the time and seemed quite annoyed that another person had been put through to his phone. I obviously wasn’t the first! He said I should tell BT about this, but in order to do this I had to hang up. But after spending another 45 minutes on hold I gave it up for the day.

After the move Mandy decided that she would try but she had to use the phone box in the centre of town. She stood there with Matthew for 40 minutes on hold, and whilst on hold there is a message which says that if you type in your phone number, this can be any number including a mobile they will ring you when you are at the front of the queue, so thinking this might be a good idea she typed in her number.

Some 30 minutes later someone rang back and then they had to transfer her to the correct department, only they lost the connection. She was by now getting slightly annoyed to say the least, so she used the ring back option again, and again someone rang back, and she told them not to put her through unless she was going to speak to somebody straight away, so the person went away and came back to her saying that:

"There is a bit of a queue, why don’t you try later."

"From where" she replied

"Your house phone…" stated the bemused BT fool.

"I don’t have a house phone, that is why I have been on hold for over an hour now in the centre of town"

The BT fool obviously didn’t have any other suggestions, it didn’t occur to them that a person wanting to install a phone line might not actually have one already! In desperation Mandy put the phone down and went to an Internet cafe and tried to get to BT website and do it from there but the internet said that we had to ring them! It’s like the old AOL CD which stated something like:

"If you are having trouble getting onto the Internet please view our online help at www.aol.com."

Mandy had to give up for the day as Matthew was getting hungry, and she wasn’t going to put up with any more silliness from BT.

I have phoned from work a couple of times, but there seemed to be this barrier. I have never paid a connection fee to BT before, but they suddenly seem to have started one. In order to get a phone installed I would have to fork out £125! This is a lot of money when you have just virtually bankrupted yourself trying to pay for a deposit and the first months rent in one go! Every time I got through to an operator I would have a long discussion about the bill, refuse to pay it, get into a heated debate about the cost of services, and then eventually hang up when they refused to allow me to continue any further unless I paid the money.

That weekend we went to visit Mandy’s parents so on the Saturday we rang from there and after finally getting through to somebody only for them to say that although there is a phone port in in the house for the phone line, there isn’t actually a line from the house to the telegraph pole.

The only way we were going to get a phone line was to pay £125 for a brand new line to be installed. So after much discussion with this person in BT we decided that we will have to pay this otherwise we weren’t going to get a line. I then got put through to another department, again, but I then spoke to the most helpful and understanding person I had spoken to in three weeks. This Scottish girl eventually convinced me that I would need to pay this money, and that it was kind-of new, but there would be no way around it. I also managed to tell her the story about how I had been trying to get a phone line for weeks, and about the man in his sitting room, to which she was shocked, so when I hung up the phone I was pleasantly surprised. Although quite poor.

Anyway the final outcome was that we got a date for 2 weeks later for them to come and install the line and I had taken a few days off as I was going to go back down and collect Mandy and Matthew.

When the date finally arrived the BT engineer was there at my house at 9 AM and started work whilst I was finishing off my breakfast. Due to the state of the phone port (it’s an old house) he said he would have to replace the lot. 30 minutes later he was finished with the inside of my house and he then climbed the phone mast outside my house. Five hours later I set of for Aberystwyth and I happened to notice as I got to the end of the road (some 50 meters) that there was not one, but two BT vans sat at the end of the road with both engineers looking into an open manhole cover and scratching their heads.

I still concede that £125 is a lot of money for a phone line, but it looks as though I really got my moneys worth out of BT this time. However, their customer services really are shockingly bad! A guy I know has been paying too much for his broadband for 3 months now, and every time he phones up and tries to get it sorted nothing happens and they charge him too much again.

I thought I would do a little update on the status of the stolen Fiesta, especially after we got a letter about it yesterday.

A couple of weeks ago we had a call from an engineer, who said that the car was unrepairable, and then told me how much he thought our car was worth, which was £250. I thought this was ok, not what I was expecting, but at least a little bit. However, I found out that this was minus any excess we had on the policy. So as our excess is £200 we would only be seeing £50! It isn’t even enough to get another policy, let alone buy a new car. I phoned up a guy at Privilege, but after 10 minutes of trying to get him to give me more money for it I gave up.

The other day I got another letter. Actually for some reason Privilege seem to find the need to send me two letters for everything I do, which I find a little odd. Especially as they send the letters on different days. This means that we get a letter, Mandy spends her afternoon trying to sort it out, and then two days later we get another letter, so Mandy spends another afternoon trying to get them to understand her a second time. The really irritating thing is that they have sent us 3 renewal notices, despite the fact that they know for certain that it is in a scrap yard.

So we got another letter that had a cheque enclosed. See if you can work out what they meant from the following quote.

    Policy Excess: £200
    We write to advise you that your vehicle is beyond economical repair.
    Your vehicle has been inspected by an Independent Engineer, and the market value
    has been assessed at the figure of £00050.00.
    The Policy Excess will be deducted from this figure.
    If you disagree with the Engineer's valuation, please contact us as soon as
    possible.  You may still bank the cheque, as this will not prejudice your position.
    Should we not hear from you within the next fourteen days, arrangements will
    be made to dispose of the vehicle.
    A cheque for £00250.00 will be forwarded to you under a separate cover.

Don’t worry, it took me several attempts! From this it looks like we have a cheque for £250 and that we have to give back £50 of this, or is it that we have to pay them £250 and then… oh never mind.

Apparently the woman who typed this got the numbers mixed up, which doesn’t make sense as the numbers look like they where computer generated from a database or something. But when Mandy phoned her up she had to use a calculator to work out the complicated maths involved here.

All in all the only thing this has taught me is that if your car is worth less than £1000 then there is no point going for fully comprehensive insurance. Oh, and that insurance companies are only there to rip you off. I won’t be going for Privilege in the future, but I don’t know if any other insurance company will be any different. Are they all con artists?

What really, really annoys me about Privilege, in fact this whole thing, is that even though none of this was our fault, because Mandy has made a claim she has lost her 5 years of no claims bonus. There doesn’t exist in the English language a phrase or description, lacking corse language, that gets anywhere near identifying the idiot who stole my car.