so yeah. i haven't been updating. because like i've said before, nothing has been happening. literally. when i last wrote, i mentioned my washing machine was broken. well, it still is. i've run out of clothes to wear. no more tees lying about, so i've had to bring my shirts out.

which sucks because that means when i'm done, i have to get around to ironing them. the shirts are also beginning to throughly expire, which is why i've stuck with wearing a hoodie (i'm not juvenile, i swear) over them. to... you know, keep the smell in.

and you might or might not remember that i wrote about my ipod's audio jack being faulty. well, idiot that i was, i had forgotten that the damn thing was still under warranty. so i called the local apple service center, got their address, got a rip-off £14 return cab ride there, and sent it in. only to have them call me and tell them they would replace the ipod for free!

that means losing all my songs and files on the ipod, but when your ipod has scratches on it... it doesn't really matter! so let them replace the ipod, i did. and nary a complain did i make!

i also got over the fear of downloading movies (read here why i was afraid before), and my most recent movie download was the science of sleep. a good watch, from the same person who brought you eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. read more about it on imdb here, and if it strikes your fancy, watch it and tell me what you think!


















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yep, i am having ipod problems again. they're pretty unfamiliar now. especially with me. i've always had problems with ipods - from walking into poles on the street and cracking the screen, to buying an ipod an hour before they update the site with new (cheaper) prices...

this time about, its a problem with the audio jack on my ipod.



now, what's happened now is that the audio jack in my ipod has gotten somewhat loose. a couple of days ago, whilst in my pockets, the sound on the right earbud would buzz on and off. today, it just plain died. that's right, the ipod works, and so do my earbuds, but there's only sound on the left earbud. which sucks, right?

but i'm an engineer! wait, ah ah. a qualified electrical electronic engineer, at that!

so i searched on the internet for a replacement for the existing audio jack, trawled ebay for some tools... and i fixed it!



and boy was i proud of myself! the ipod works fine and dandy now. here, take a closer look:



yeah, its a little bit of cardboard wedged inside the audio jack so that there wouldn't be a gap between the connection point for the right earbud. and hey, what did you expect? a replacement audio jack would cost upwards of £40 and the tools necessary to open the damn thing up would have set me back another £10. £50 to fix the damn ipod myself? fuck that shit, when it completely dies off, i'll bring it to a ipod repair centre and have someone fix it for me, and it'll cost just about as much.

like i said: ipods - they're a love or hate sort of thing.


















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a lot has happened in the past couple of days. i was invited to go for a pussycat dolls concert, with rihanna opening for them, but declined. bought a few new pairs of sneakers. got obliterated by excessive alcohol.

perhaps the most extreme thing that has happened to me in recent days was the suspension of internet in our house.

yes, you read that right. we have been temporarily suspended from usage of the internet.

it all started when -cough- one of us downloaded blood and chocolate. after three days, the download wasn't complete. and then at 11am on monday, the internet just stopped working. thinking it was just a minor problem, we left it thinking the engineers would fix it. by evening, when it was still down, we called them and were told that we had infringed certain rights and that our internet had been suspended.

we had to write a letter of apology, and sign a declaration letter saying that we were sorry and we would do no such thing again. we also have to pay a fine.

simple to fix theoretically, except the housemate whose name is in the account isn't giving any effort to fix it. she claims she's gone to see them, but when i called them up, they tell me no one's gone to see them. its not a very hard thing to fix, just give me the letter and the form which requires her signature, and i can fax it to them - i got the fax number from them, and a contact person inside to talk to once the fax goes through...

but she won't pick up my phone now.

---

no internet. oh god, help me.


















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a lot of people know i love flikr. i love both google and flikr. but when google bought over blogspot, they fucked us by making it compulsory to merge the google and blogspot accounts; and if you were a blogger without a google account, you'd have to sign up for one.

but hey, what can you do - blogspot is free.

now yahoo and flikr are trying out the same hanky-panky.

i got a message from the people behind flikr telling me that they were discontinuing their email based sign-in system, and that everyone will require a yahoo! ID to sign-in.

i don't care what people think, i just prefer to keep both account separate entities!

now here's the key difference betweem google-blogspot and yahoo-flikr:

i am paying for my flikr account!

so why is it, i have no say whatsoever in this decision? by all means, screw the free account holders over and make it so they have to merge their yahoo account with their flikr ones, but because i'm a paying member, i think i should have a choice if i want to or not!

and that's not the worst bit. flikr is easy to use, so now instead of backing pictures up in my hard drive, i just upload it all to flikr - i'm paying for it anyway, and the pictures will always be there as long as i keep renewing my account. now i've got almost 3,400 pictures on flikr and i don't seem to have a choice but to go on renewing my subscription with them! if not, my account will revert to a free-account state and will only display my 200 most recent photos!

"Thanks for your patience and understanding - and even bigger thanks for your continued support of Flickr: if you're reading this, you've been around for a while and that means a lot to us! "

i've been around since beta stages and i mean a lot to them?

utter bullshit.


















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a couple of months ago, i wrote about the delay in getting my phone. after 7 or 8 weeks of waiting, i finally did get the sirocco, and i wrote about it here.

however, there were a couple of things not sorted yet.

sure, i'd received my phone, but i still haven't received my letter of apology, or extra compensation. and the bloke who promised he'd get back to me regarding the complaints i had made... well, he never got back to me. not even after waiting for a month.

frustrated, i finally called O2 once again. this time, i was given the email address of their higher level complaints department. i forwarded them a copy of the first email of complaint to them, and threatened to bring matters to Ofcom (the governing body for all radio spectrum in the uk). i also gave them a timeline - to call me back within a week, and highlighted to them that i could have gotten the phone for £50 less than what they were offering me. to top it all off, i mentioned that my calls were frequently disconnected, and asked if it was company policy for advisors to hang up on difficult customers.

time time about, i did not have to wait long for a response. just one day after i had sent the email, a representative called me up and discussed my complaints with me.

i'm still getting my letter of apology, and they're going to keep me updated on the status of my complaint - especially that bit where the lines keeps getting disconnected. apparently, they're going to listen to the conversations, since all the conversations are recorded for customer satisfaction surveys.

oh wait, i missed the best bit.



they're also giving me the phone for free. yup, you read that right. i've already paid for the phone, so they're letting me choose if i want compensation in the form of credit on my account, or money on a cheque.

i went for the cheque.


















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