ttj - Tom Jones

    Given what happened with my outward purchase from them [0], [1], I don't know whether to believe this error message.  Perhaps the ticket has been booked, and the error message is incorrect. [0] < https://wibblement.blogspot.com/2024/01/erimates-unable-to-sell-tickets.html > [1] < https://wibblement.blogspot.com/2024/01/emirates-still-not-very-good-at-selling.html > I guess I have to wait until tomorrow, and see if anything is taken / pending on that card, and call the card company. For those reading from the future, this is normal.  Almost nothing works.  Payments, in particular, is a problem area.  The person trying to make a payment has almost no control over whether the payment goes thru.  False negatives, like that depicted above, are not rare, but part of the normal workflow.  Cajoling anything involving shitfrastructure into working requires patience.

In my previous article "emirates unable to sell tickets" [0], I documented how Emirates is implementing industry best practice, by have a ticket-sale-like web process which ends in an error page instead of a ticket sale. [0] < https://wibblement.blogspot.com/2024/01/erimates-unable-to-sell-tickets.html > In the end, I got a confirmation email for a flight booking from them, and the funds are pending on my credit card.  So the sale did go thru.  On average, this is worse than the sale failing.  I could have gone straight from their error page to trying to book with another airline, and ended up with two bookings.  Or changed my plans altogether, and had a booking to cancel.  The email could easily have not arrived, because that's what email does.  In this case, it's worked out okay. So I went to book the journey back.  This time, after several petty errors, their web page hung indefinitely on "Saving your seat selection".  As usual, a lot more effort ha

 From < https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/201647713-Cryptocurrency-deposit-address-expiry >: The above, in web capture format, states "Deposit addresses on your account do not expire unless you create more than five for the same cryptocurrency".

I just tried sending 6 XMR to my Kraken deposit address, that I have used many times over the years. So far, it hasn't appeared. So I went to Transfer -> Deposit to check they still have the same deposit address for me, which I carefully recorded in my own records years ago, and have used many times since. Look what I got: There is a contradiction here between "you need to generate a deposit address to make your first Monero deposit to Kraken" and the "Recent transactions" shown below, all to my long-standing deposit address. So, what has happened to the monero I just sent to my long-standing deposit address?  And why have Kraken broken the deposit address?  This is serious.  Funding addresses on these accounts are like account numbers: people send money to them.  A service provider can't just disappear them. Luckily it was for a small amount this time.  Because Kraken have visibly messed up their web site and service so badly, I had the heebie-jeebies ab

Kraken recently messed up their web interface, making it so dumbed down that there apparently isn't a way to do any of the basic things, including place a limit order. I used to send XMR or BTC into Kraken, and place a limit order to sell it to a fiat.  Then, perhaps another one to a different fiat, depending on which pairs they had markets for, say XMR -> EUR -> CHF. Now, I just can't see how to place a limit order. There's this thing: From the description, is this a limit order, or a stop order?  Could be either.  I guess I can do an experiment with a small amount, to find out. What you don't see from the above screenshot is the infuriating animation of the picture in the box, disturbing visual peace and making it impossible to concentrate.  Why do people make animations instead of doing their job?

Firstly, the URL I had for logging in to Kraken [0] is giving a blank page: [0] < https://www.kraken.com/sign-in > So I go to the front page, and am confronted with a horrific "modern web" experience.  There is a jarring animation, showing all sorts of things happening on a picture of a phone screen.  There is "Accept" for cookies.  Why?  There is "Get the App".  There is three lines for menu, and when you click on it, by now perhaps just hoping for some respite from the bleeding eyes, okay, now there is a "sign in", and the URL is indeed [0], but it's the blank page. And so, like every modern activity, the thing changes from trying to do the thing, to trying to contact the business about the non-working web site.

Emirates' web site seemed nice, until after payment, including the SMS challenge, "something went wrong" and "we have a technical problem at the moment", as pictured above.  No tickets resulted.  I don't know if the payment was taken. Note the extremely general error handling.  The customer is not told what went wrong with the payment.  It's a mystery how these planes seem to pootle about full of passengers, when most airline web sites are unable to sell tickets.

As an admin user, go to: < https://mailadmin.zoho.eu/cpanel/home.do#dashboard > Can navigate there via: (1) click on your face, (2) wait for microhypnosis to end while the side skids out, (3) click on "Admin Console". Then, click on users in side bar, click on yourself (or whatever user), Malbox settings, Email Alias, and +Add.

Another TZe-541 cartridge was just wasted by a PT-7500, same as the last one.  It went the same way: the feed worked fine, the initial cut worked fine, then as it printed nothing emerged, and it mangled up inside the machine. Faulty machine, or bad batch of label cartridges?  Don't know, but either way this is a triumph for the Label Waste Engineering department at Brother.  Give these psychopaths and MBA. I've just placed an order for two more cartridges at 39 GBP(2024).  Well done, marketing and waste engineering department.  Until I find a better labelling system.

Another 15 GBP or so in revenue for Brother's TZ Tape division, well done. This time, it's 18mm black on blue.

 $ cat ~/bin/xmodmap.altgr.compose #!/bin/sh exec xmodmap -e 'keycode 108 = Multi_key'

There are two times showing in this picture.  One needs setting after the battery got flat, the other seems to have figured it out.  They are part of the same car dashboard. One says 18:22, the other 8:27.  The photo was taken at 8:27. Another car, a toyota iq, has a clock that's always wrong.  You can set it, but it goes wrong again.  This one will have to be taped over, because a clock that's off by 45 minutes is much worse than no clock. Every time the power goes out, the oven clock needs setting.  It flashes, disturbing visual peace, until you do something. Laptops don't seem to have figured out easily moving between timezones.  Doesn't have to be automatic, just easy enough. The air is full of the time, from GPS to special clock-setting shortwave signals to timestamps on whatever packets inside wifi frames, and so on.  It would be nice if someone made a little module that listened to such things, and output its best guess about the current time.  Optionally battery

I got a MacBook Air because a friend said it had good battery life, and something about "silicon", whatever that is.  I also have this idea that laptops should go to sleep and wake up properly, which no pc laptops have ever done. The battery does indeed last a week unplugged, with some use every day, which is nice.  On the other hand, my TV remote battery used to last 8 years.  The difference is that the TV remote worked. Almost everything I have tried typing into the macbook has been erroneously changed, or "corrected".  This included a specific piece of information, something like a username, that I kept entering correctly, and EVERY TIME, the apple computer would change it, to the same incorrect string.  I couldn't work out how to make it stop.  Sometimes I just gave up and accepted the wrongified text. There is something profoundly disappointing about typing on a computer not working.  It's a bit like a boat that doesn't float. Back in the days of wi

I wonder how long the far-derp article by quisling and coward John Bowden [0] will be allowed to stand, now that its subject, about whose incarceration Bowden was crowing, has been tortured to death by his Ukranian state captors. [0] < https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/gonzalo-lira-elon-musk-tucker-ukraine-putin-b2462324.html > As well, the term "far right" has joined the term "fact check" [1] in providing one-hundred-percent certainty that the speaker is not only trying to bullshit you, but is themselves on the far-derp end of the cognitive range. And performing the tricks they know are expected of them. [1] < https://wibblement.blogspot.com/2022/02/fact-check-equals-bullshit-every-time.html > Just in case the article, ahem, changes, here it is, in web capture format, which, due to the architecture of the web [2], means screenshots: [2] < https://wibblement.blogspot.com/2023/05/30-years-of-failed-miserable-web.html > Th

Several design patterns are conspiring to make it harder to switch things on, and off, and to take things up from standby.  This is probably best done by example. I recently tried switching on a current macbook air.  It had an empty battery and I had just connected power.  I didn't know where the power button was supposed to be.  I tried the fingerprint button in the corner, but nothing happened.  At some point, some indicator may have appeared on the screen that it was charging.  Later, I went back, and powering it on worked.  So it can't power on from the live power connection, it has some minimum in the batter?  Without any feedback from the device on what's happening, this is squidgy. Same with a thinkpad x1 carbon (8th gen) here.  Thinkpads used to last weeks powered off, but they now have some standby thing that drains the battery.  Power button is a bit more guessable here, but still not well marked.  That it's charging is indicated by an orange light by the (USB