ttj - Tom Jones

My second breakfast on the Condor ferry from Poole to Guernsey this morning would have been around 7 GBP.  Then it was around 16 GBP.  I looked at the screen to see what was up.  The employee said something like "when you're ready", pretty aggressively, to apply pressure. I found the mistake, two fake sandwiches at 4.50 GBP each, resulting in an overcharging of 9 GBP, or around 129%.  I said there are things on there not on my tray.  Employee listed a load of breakfast items, aggressively.  I asked where are those sandwiches.  Employee realised their "mistake" and apologised and removed the items, and did not look up again for the rest of the transaction. Similarly for adding fake items as with short-changing: if a vendor makes a "mistake" that would favor them by +X, it is not good enough to rectify this to favoring neither party by zero.  The correct remedy would be to favor the other party by X, and the vendor by -X.   If the vendor t...

Wine had reduced sticker on, from 8.30 GBP to 6 GBP. Bought fuel, wine, and a couple of other bits and pieces.  Paid the total by card without doing exact calculation.  Asked for receipt. Cashier handed me receipt.  As I walked away, I looked at it, but the receipt was only for the fuel, not the whole transaction.  I asked for one showing everything.  The wine was 8.30 GBP.  I pointed out the reduction.  He hit a couple of buttons and gave me 2.30 GBP.  No apology. What are the odds that, if I hadn't noticed, he'd have hit the same buttons and pocketed the 2.30 GBP? Britain has becomes an extremely low-trust society, where people engage in petty scamming by default.

Having recently read Booker's "The Neophiliacs", which has as its backdrop a succession of British prime ministers from the 50s and 60s, I googled something like "Churchill Eden Home", to see which one I was missing.  The right information to return is something like: Macmillan, and by the way the it's Douglas-Home not just Home.  Instead, it returned a load of I don't know what: U wot m8 ?

Yesterday, I booked an airbnb accommodation for tonight in Poole, so I and another passenger could be in place for the ferry in the morning. I have come to the conclusion that the behaviour of the host amounts to a fraud. They accept the money via airbnb's web site, and then start to impose extra conditions on the customer, hoops for the customer to jump thru.  They do have the ability to provide the service, but they would prefer not to, because then their margins are higher.  So instead of allowing airbnb to define the parameters of the arrangement, they ask the customer to jump through time-consuming and silly and dangerous hoops, and if the customer (victim) says no, they keep the money and refuse to provide the service. I have coined the term "Challis Extra Conditions After Payment Fraud" to describe this general type of fraud, named after the two directors of the legal entity "QUAY HOLIDAYS LLP". Suppose a business offers a service.  Suppose the business c...

This one is a Bosch from around 15 years ago: Bit different from the others. It goes thru periods of multi-cycle cooling with lower highs and lower lows, like the one from around 18:00 to around 8:00 containing 10 cycles. Not sure of the model, something to do with "Classixx": The range is smaller than the other fridges, around 5-7 degrees. 

The cabs in london have the same issue. Plus, it stinks, bad. It's disgusting. London hasn't been cleaned for 4 years.

So desensitised is everyone to bad IT, that airbnb doing the following probably seems okay to someone. It's not:

Black cabs with an orange light on top are supposed to use the orange light to indicate actual availability. During a ride, the light is off. When they are up for being hailed, the light is on. This light has one job to do. To indicate, by being on or off. As a piece of functional design, the job is clear. If the light just looks bright orange in daylight, even when off, the design is a failed design. Yet, around a third of the cabs in Edinburgh have this problem. I first noticed the issue during the epoch where they were putting the finishing touches on their tram system. Despite me stating the issue clearly to several drivers at that time, it has not been fixed. This does seem to throw into question any aspirations around self-governance. Should i try again to get Uber working? It recognises me from a contact detail, and asks me about an old card. I don't have a record of that card. There is no way to progress. It is "required". The options are: (i) try digging thru old...

Edfringe has has bad IT, for as long as it's had IT. Now, all tickets are done as QR codes. Good choice. Except the app requires a working internet connection, to display the ticket for the next show. It obvious to anyone but an IT specialist that the app should cache tickets including QR codes. Since showing your ticket at the door is an important and time-critical, um, user journey, nice app design might even ask the question of how to have this QR + basic details for next show as to-hand as possible.  It could be always displayed when in the app, or displayed on the app's main screen and most of its other screens. Could you even get a qr into a badge on the phone's home screen? If not, then a home screen widget would be possible. How many squares? Maybe 4. Instead of which, we have "you need an internet connection" at the door, or no ticket, no qr, no show. As time went on, we realised more and more was being loaded over the internet. There would be big white e...

The compasses in Samsung phones have been rubbish for at least the period 2012 -- 2023, including in flagship models. This one, an s22u, is out by a quarter-turn. In maps, during navigation, you have to orientate it manually by rotating with two fingers, then drag it along as you go.  Even if the thing is supposed to self-calibrate (it doesn't), they're should be something in settings stating so, rather than a blank (above app is Settings). 

Paying with cash continues to get weirder, not directly due to sinister lizard plotting, but more proximally due to mass stupidity by the human race. There are the usual aborted sales, often after a drink has been poured, like in the Tap yesterday. After standing there with a tenner, "the thing is, you see, we're cashless. Do you not have a card?" "I was intending to pay with cash, and i prefer to choose". Then, in subway (um), something priced at 5.99. It's a lie by one pound. I observe their 9s are wrote so tiny, you can't see, looks like 5, is actually 6, cheapest trick in the book. I wonder why not just be honest and put 6 ? I pay with 6 of the pound coins, and she says sorry, you can't pay that way, we don't have the right change. I say mind about the penny. She then says I'll give you a 10% discount, proceeds to hand me back one of the pound coins, and says sorry i owe you another 80p. Confused, I'm pretty sure I'm up overall, a...

Most trains up the west coast are cancelled.  Meanwhile, an otherwise pleasant carriage is spoiled by these: The more you're not looking at them directly, the more they flicker.  It's not possible to read properly with one of these screens flickering in the peripheral vision. Same for enjoying the views across the pennines.  There is one at each end, placed to visually pollute the whole carriage in both directions. The photo above captures it mid-refresh. That's why it seems to flicker.  The current fashion is to spoil human spaces with this kind of visual pollution. You can put your hand as a visor if you want to read or enjoy the view.