James Titcumb

I just had a little rant post on a forum and I thought I’d post it here. The mentioned argument happened last Thursday.

I had an e-mail argument with Matthew Evans, the Assistant to the Chairman & Chief Executive, but they literally don’t care. He shoved all responsibility to BT Wholesale, and said they can’t do anything about it… I said why not, BT Wholesale is part of BT, and you’re the assistant to the CEO, surely you have some say over what BT Wholesale says - and to that he replied with the standard crap I’ve heard before - they’re non customer facing,and he doesn’t have access to the results and reasons why BT Openreach would not give me copper overlay… what does that say about BT??

Basically, you can’t complain to BT about this kind of thing, you have to complain to the ISP, because BT simply do not care.

BT Wholesale’s customers are the ISP’s i.e. BT Retail, Be Unlimited etc. Wholesale liaise with their customer’s only. Unfortunately you cannot liaise with Wholesale directly as you are a customer of the ISP. If you have a complaint re Wholesale you would make that to your ISP. Your ISP would then liaise with Wholesale to resolve the complaint and would then come back to you with the answer.

As far as I can see this process has now been followed and you need to accept that unfortunately, at this current period in time, it looks like a broadband service is not available to you. However in the future, as technology advances, this may change.

You really can’t take this matter any further.

Which translates to me as:

I couldn’t care less you can’t get internet, you didn’t go with BT as your ISP so we won’t bother sorting you out with internet. If you had gone with BT, we would’ve actually given you a copper overlay, but then screwed you over with a 2KB download limit. Haha, consumers are so stupid, look at my BIG PILE OF CASH SITTING ON MY DESK.

Grr.. BT annoy me. Supposedly they were supposed to fix my line yesterday, that never happened. Supposedly they are doing it today. I might get internet one day.. I might not.

I’ve managed to sell the server cabinet now, but I’ve still got a few things to sell. If you might know who would like a server for their birthday… please send them this way:

• 4U Rack Mountable Server 1.7GHz (bidding starts 4th August)
  
• 4U Rack Mountable Server 2GHz (open to offers!!)
• Air Conditioner Unit Silver 9,000 BTU (bidding starts 4th August)

Please buy them, we have a wedding to fund, and they don’t come cheap!

Now, even though I still don’t have Internet due to BT crossing my lines, I am already singing Newnet’s praises. Their customer service is simply supreme. The difference is quite simple… call centre in England, with English speakers, but the important part is this, so I will emphasise this a lot:

The technical support know what they are talking about.

I have never had such a pleasurable experience being told I can’t get internet just yet. It was simply bliss. The good thing is, they explained the problem clearly, in simple-to-understand language, and without just repeating what BT Wholesale just told them, or just reading from a script!

So, here’s to Newnet, possibly the best ISP in the UK.

Pesto is quite a strong flavour, but I think it goes with Salmon just excellently. You can do whatever veg you like with it, but this is the meal I prepared last night.

Ingredients

• 2x Salmon fillet (steaks if you have lots of money!)
• Small jar of Pesto
• 4-5 British potatoes
• A courgette
• Milk
• Butter
• About 4 cloves of Garlic

Instructions

Prepare the Salmon by using a spoon to spread Pesto sauce on top in a thin layer (or if you really love Pesto, a thick layer!). Add a touch of salt & pepper. Slice courgettes, and dice up the garlic into tiny little bits, or use a garlic press… Peel and chop up potatoes into quarters.

Boil potatoes as normal until soft (I usually boil them slightly longer so they fall apart a bit easier). Mash with a tad of milk (or cream if you feel adventurous!), and butter. Salmon should be grilled for some time - I’m not sure how long as I undercooked ours last night, but use common sense here! Finally, fry the courgettes in butter for a minute or so, add the garlic, and turn up medium-high.

It’s a simple dish, but I still managed to undercook the salmon, oops!! Very tasty though.

Inspired by this tiny gadget, a thin client in a wall socket, I got thinking about hiding away your computer in the wall. I came up with this solution…

You could probably hack the Jack PC thin client so that you have the corresponding connection on the wall-facing side of the socket. That would enable you to run cables down from the attic and simply plug into the wall socket, and install.

With that sort of setup (although slightly hacky), as opposed to being a thin client and requiring a Terminal Server, you would literally have a PC in the wall that you can just plug into. You could even have a whole network of PCs.

Of course, the original design of this is meant for thin clients, so converting it into a solid PC would defeat the point of the thin-client-ness. Thin clients are there to save money, and my idea basically just hides away your ugly PC case, and puts it into a nice neat wall socket where you just plug in your monitor/speakers/keyboard/DVD/Blu-ray drives.