Free to every complaining customer...

When our conservatory was finished, alongside the final bill there was a feedback questionnaire asking if the installers had followed certain procedures (they had, where appropriate) and asking how satisfied we were and if we would recommend the firm to friends and neighbours. The gist of what we put was that the builders, installers and electricians were courteous, efficient and seemed to do a good job, but we were unhappy with the lack of communication from the company (there were big delays and getting information about what was going on was like getting blood from a stone) and the fact that they tried to change the agreed payment terms towards the end (after a very wet summer, I suspect cashflow was an issue for them). As a result, we said, we couldn't really recommend them.

Well, that was a couple of months back and we didn't hear back until a couple of days ago when <3 received a phonecall, apologising for our dissatisfaction and saying that if we could pop into the shop, they had a hamper of goodies for us. So yesterday we went by after work and now have a rather nice M&S hamper containing lots of lovely consumables, including cake and pudding to supplement our home-made ones, in case we get more visitors than expected.

While we still probably won't be recommending the firm, this has left us with a much better feeling about the experience. Hopefully the goodwill gift is a sign that they have taken our criticisms on board, but if not, it's not a problem: we no longer need windows or conservatories, and we have a great supply of sweet (and other) stuff for the holiday.

More Scores on the Doors

And the final result is in: I now have a first class honours degree in IT & Computing. Ph34R my 1337 X4|\/| 5k!lz. This is such a relief and has put a huge grin on my face.

And the scores from the Milton Keynes jury...

Holy crap! I got my course result today and somehow I actually managed to scrape a distinction. This is a *lot* better than I was expecting and needless to say I am very happy with this. Now I just have to wait for the letter offering me a degree, which should (I think) arrive before Xmas.

I am going to accept the offer, by the way.

One More Couple, Please

Last night <3 and I got out for one of our rare nights out thanks to one of her friends stepping up for babysitting duty. So we pottered off to Grove for a ceilidh organised by White Horse Ceilidhs. These guys organise half a dozen or so ceilidhs each year and the one we had been to previously was great fun, so a return visit was always on the cards.

This time was every bit as good as last time. The band was Boldwood, who specialise in playing tunes found in C18th manuscripts, and are effective proof that the modern era does not have the monopoly on great dance tunes. We came home with a copy of their CD, which is a really nice listen. I'm going to have to see if I can learn a tune or two off there. The caller was Will Hall, a chap who occasionally attends our local pub sessions and who has proved a great help to me in getting used to learning and playing folk tunes, and who is a lot of fun to play with, even with my very limited skills and repertoire. Anyway, this was the first time I've seen Will call a dance, and I really enjoyed it: his choice of dances was a lot of fun and he had a great, gentle presentation style. (I don't have much to compare with, being pretty new to ceilidhs, but he's definitely good.) Half-time entertainment was courtesy of the energetic and enjoyable Borders morris side, Armaleggan, who did a great, manic show full of sound and fury.

So, we danced to the point of exhaustion, we chatted, and we won a big box of fudge in the raffle. All good. Time to decide when we can next make it...

Unknown Beneficiaries

It turns out that HM Revenue and Customs have given our family's personal details to persons unknown by sending them, along with those of 7 million other families who claim child benefit, on disk, via a courier, who lost them. Nice. Chancellor Alistair Darling has apologised for the security lapse, but apparently there is little danger of identity theft. According to the BBC:

The records include parents' and children's names, addresses, dates of birth, child benefit and national insurance numbers and in some cases, bank or building society details.

That sounds like plenty of information for bad guys to be going on with.

There are, of course, calls for Darling to resign. While I love to see a good bit of bloodletting, I'm not sure that he needs to go in this case. The chairman of HMRC has already resigned over this and an investigation is underway. The Revenue had better get its arse in gear over data protection before this happens again.

Actually, when I first came across this story I thought it was just a follow-up to the story from a few weeks back where HMRC lost a load of personal data in transit and more details were now coming out. But no, this is a new and separate cock-up, albeit one of a very similar shape.

And Now, We Wait...

So that's it. My OU degree is done and dusted. I managed to survive sitting at a small desk for three hours with nothing but a bottle of water and a bar of chocolate for sustenance and only my calculator and reference books for company. The first part went pretty much by the numbers, with the expected questions about ATM cell sizes, CSMA/CD collision domains, and object models. Part 2 was a bit tougher, with a few surprises (I think this was the first year ever that there was a question on the Bellman-Ford algorithm instead of Dijkstra), and left me burbling on in a vague manner about TMN function blocks (don't ask!) and elements of MPEG encoding.

I'm confident of a pass, and I'm pretty sure it'll be better than the basic 'Pass 4' grade, but beyond that I don't know. It just depends on how close I got with my random burblings. According to the OU website, the results for this course should be available by mid-December, and I should receive an offer of a degree shortly afterwards. There's nothing more that I can do but wait, but it'll feel like a very long wait...

A Glimmer of Light Ahead

So, seven years since I signed up and I have now reached the final hurdle. Yep, tomorrow is my final exam for my OU degree.

The course this year has been a struggle (officially this was meant to take about 16 hours per week and I have also been doing a full-time job and trying to do my bit with raising a new baby) and revision has been intermittant, but thanks to <3 covering for me over the last few days I think I'm just about ready. This exam allows me to take some reference material with me and to annotate it as I see fit. A lot of my time has been spent working on indexing key sections and adding extra diagrams into margins and spare pages. I'm confident of a pass, but beyond that I don't know.

The result is due in before Xmas, and I should get my offer of a degree shortly after that. It's going to feel like a very long wait...

L'homme qui plantait des arbres

A few years ago I heard a story, "The Man Who Planted Trees", on the radio and for about 15 minutes I was transfixed. It's just a simple tale of an ordinary person doing an extraordinary thing and something that really caught my imagination and on more than one occasion left me thinking "that is what I want to do with my life. Of course, I'm not really driven enough, but I really do love planting trees and hope to do so on a fairly regular basis for the rest of my life.

Well, time passed and I stumbled across the story online. It turns out that the original (French) author, Jean Giono, dedicated the story to the public domain, but various translations have been made and remain copyrighted. The version I have linked to was made by one Peter Doyle, who decided to adhere to the spirit of the original and also dedicated his work to the public domain. Good on him. The story is still as inspirational as I remember. It is also, contrary to popular belief, fiction. Sadly.

Parliament Goes Quack!

Thanks to Rich for raising this one... A few months ago, one Rudi Vis, MP, raised an early day motion on NHS homeopathic hospitals. Basically, an EDM is a sort of petition used so that matters of interest to individual MPs can be aired without needing to take up a lot of time. This particular one calls on the government to support homeopathic hospitals through the NHS as they have "the potential to offer clinically-effective and cost-effective solutions to common health problems".

Now let's be clear on this: homeopathy is, according to all scientific studies undertaken so far, snake oil. It relies on patients taking doses of water (active ingredients are diluted to the point that not one single molecule remains in a typical dose) or similar carriers and can be shown to have no benefits at all beyond the placebo effect. At a time when proven effective treatments are being withheld from patients because there just isn't the money to go around, should we really be spending public money propping up superstitious quackery?

I've written to my MP about this as he is one of the poor, misguided fools who have supported this EDM. With a little luck (and some badgering) he may see the light.

If you want to know more about homeopathy, Google is your friend. There is an article on Quackometer about this EDM and many good debunk articles from fairly solid sources floating around.

It's a Bird! It's a Microlight! It's...

On Sunday <3 and I took the Youngling to the White Horse Show near Uffington (just a few miles down the road). The little'un seemed to really enjoy gawping at all the sights and sounds of an English country fair, but there was one thing that really caught my attention as one of the most inspired, bonkers and generally cool things I have ever seen...

There is this French fella called Christian Moullec, who has made it his mission to help save the lesser white-fronted geese which used to be common in Scandinavia, but which are now close to extinction. These geese are being bred in captivity, but to be successfully released into the wild, they need to know how (and where) to migrate. So, M. Moullec has been working with groups of not-so-endangered geese and learning how to lead them on migrations in his microlight, with the intention of learning how to lead the captive bred white-fronted geese on their migrations.

So, the upshot of this was that we spent a little while sitting in a field, watching a microlight flying circles above, in formation with seven geese and (bizarrely — and I never found out why) three storks.

Bonkers. Shine on, dude!