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You better believe it baby!

Yep, it’s definitely all or nothing for the red men tonight. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to watch it at home or in the pub.

In other news I’ve been playing with the Nokia 6630 and I’ll post my thoughts here soon.

.. and I loved every minute of it. The Telegraph probably has the most colourful write-up of the 50th Eurovision Song Contest. You wouldn’t/couldn’t find anything quite like this anywhere else in the world. It makes one proud to be European. 🙂

Well she’ll go eventurally I guess. So in memory of Wildfire here for your listening pleasure is the “Mad Cow” Easter Egg. You need to be very bored to find this, but I’m proud to say I did. :blushes

1. Call Wildfire from your Orange phone on 123 before Orange pull the plug.

2. Say “do me a favour”, Wildfire should respond with “what kind of favour” in a pretty suggestive voice.

3. Say “what does a cow say”, nine times out of ten you will here a cow mooing. But every tenth time you’ll here Wildfire say “That’s getting boring, here’s what a mad cow says”. If what follows doesn’t even make you smile just a tiny bit then I’m sorry I can’t help you.

Here’s what a Mad Cow says!

In a few weeks my mobile phone network Orange plan to delete all my contacts and messages. Which in view of the fact I spend around £150 per month, more than all my other utilities put together, I feel is unforgivable.

Even if you don’t use the service, and wouldn’t be too upset if it went away, Wildfire is a symbol of the days when the Orange mobile phone network would innovate. Orange were the first network with caller ID in the UK, the first to price match any other operator’s price plans, the first to offer free call forwarding (Orange anyphone) which they later cancelled, the only network to send you free wine if you used your phone enough (which they also later cancelled), the first with free customer services, still the only UK mobile phone network allowing one to have a second line on the same handset, etc. Orange were probably the most innovative of the UK networks in the years 1994-2000. But following the change of hands away from Hutchinson the network has steadily gone down hill with the increase in waiting times to customer services, and withdrawal of services such as: Orange Equity, Orange Anyphone and now Wildfire. If you are a mobile phone user, no matter which network, the cancellation of Wildfire is another blow to innovation and customer service.

At the end of this month Orange will switch off wild fire. And in doing so will delete the thousands of contacts and messages which customers have stored in the system. Should telephone networks be allowed to destroy personal data like this without any apology or compensation? I guess they can do whatever they please.

I have set a termination date for my Orange contract. I don’t want to leave, but Orange’s conduct leave me with little choice.

Please support the Wildfire campaign. I don’t expect it will change Orange’s decision to pull the plug on Wildfire, but it will register as a protest vote, and maybe next time Orange decide to crap on their customers they’ll think twice before doing it.

Campaign web site:
http://www.croftsfamily.com/campaigntoaccessorange/

Online Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?orangewf

Articles from the Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/11/orange_wildfire/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/13/orange_wildfire/

I’m still not one hundred percent. I don’t know what it is, I haven’t felt
right since the middle of last week. I seriously hope that whatever it is
goes away pretty quickly as I’ve got a busy few months coming up. I could
do with a few less sessions like the one I had in the smallest room in the
flat earlier this morning. Yuck. TMI! I know.

Had some good news yesterday. Work have approved some time off in July
after the convention which means I can finally press ahead with my travel
plans. Watch this space.

Today I managed to drag myself out of bed after another late night in front
of the computer doing audio production. I spoke to Geoff in Australia, and
was gutted to hear the news about Kylie having breast cancer. I lost an
aunt to cancer around 15 years ago. Is it me or are cancer rates up? Or
are detection methods improving?

I had to go into town this afternoon to order a visa for Australia. Heh I
told you to watch this space! Basically my online travel agent need my
passport number in order to order the visa, and last time I checked my
passport wasn’t in Braille. Anyway, the lovely ladies at Thompson relieved
me of £25 and promised that my Australian visa would be created
electronically and I didn’t need any bits of paper or cards or anything.
Fingers crossed.

Visited the bank for about the 4th time to try and get a PIN for my
replacement debit card, as they seem incapable of sending it to me in an
accessible format. Even Egg can manage to let you view a PIN online. So
after months of haggling I came up with a compromise where the PIN will get
sent to the branch and I’ll go in and suffer the indignity of having them
read it to me. But can they send it straight to my local branch? Can they
bollocks! Apparently it has to go to the branch where I originally opened
the account a dozen years ago, and then be forwarded via snail mail to my
local branch. Welcome to the digital age.

I dropped by the Stanley to see who was in. Tom, George, Tony and Brian.
Apparently young Kev has tonsillitis. So no food there at the moment. In
spite of my dodgy guts I was feeling peckish so I dropped by MacDonald’s and
tried their new Big and Tasty. Hmm, not bad. Tasted a bit like a flame
grilled burger with plenty of cheese and relish and source etc. Hope it
doesn’t aggravate my already precarious digestive system.

First Direct Computers apparently wanted £55 to reinstall Windows on my Mesh
PC, so I opted to take it away in it’s still unbootable state. I’ll have to
give that one some thought. Although I do need the machine in order to
retrieve some projects which are half completed. So I’ll pull the drive out
later and plug in an IDE cable and pull off the work and hope that one of my
friends can be bribed in to assisting with a reinstall for less than that
£55 extortionate nonsense.

Just spoke to my sister and filled her in on my travel plans. I have a
stack of work to do so time for me to crack on.

Quite fitting that I just found this recording from 5 May and only just got around to posting it.

Ding dong.

Well here we are again on one of Virgin’s finest replacement bus services from Crewe to Preston at the end of another full weekend.

On Friday I Travelled from Preston to Epsom via London. I was feeling pretty under the weather and came very close to cancelling. But it was Martin’s Girlfriend’s birthday and last October she had honoured me by coming to Preston for my birthday. So it was only right, no matter how shockingly rough I was feeling that I make the effort.

Friday evening the 3 of us went to an excellent French restaurant and ate steak, drank Californian wine and listened to British and American music and were served by a lady called Rebecca. And while the place wasn’t very French, it most certainly was very excellent. The service was fantastic as was the steak. Definitely up there in my top 5 steaks of all time.

Saturday Martin hosted a barbecue. The rain held off although the wind was a tiny bit on the chilly side. I met Tina and Paul who sells heart valves, Dan or went to the same college as Martin and I, Dan’s girlfriend who has recently given birth to Zakk their first child, Steve is the proud owner of the world’s greediest dog, some bloke called Patrick who seems pretty cheesed off with the world right now, and hmm did I forget anyone?

Following the barbecue, which incidentally was cooked by Dan and Paul, we all sloped off down to the Riser which is Martin’s local. A couple of pints of the award winning Surrey bitter later and it was time to head back to the flat for copious cans of John Smiths Smooth.

Amongst the birthday celebrations I was keeping in contact with some of the crowd from last weekend via SMS, and coordinating with Geoff and Rachel to support ACB Radio’s coverage of the Florida Council of the Blind’s state convention.

Today was definitely beer gardening weather, and I enjoyed a roast lamb and new potatoes Sunday lunch, while Martin and Dan had curry, before I caught the London train on my way back up to Preston. I had to be back for 9:30 as we were having a staff meeting. And it’s now stupid o’clock again and I’m pretty exhausted after the meeting so it’s time for me to sleep. Lots of work to do tomorrow. Or is that today.

There’s one or two people I can’t stop thinking about right now. But that’s a topic for another day. Get a grip Williams.

Night.

Ok 3rd time lucky. the last two times I tried to write this I managed to hit the back button on the laptop and lost it.

The Mesh box babbled a load of cack at me on Wednesday before diing never to reboot. I took it down to 1st Computers in Preston who are promising a dianosis by the weekend. so now I’m getting a ton of email which refers to the old email to which I don’t have access.

Had several rather incomprehensible conversations with: Rachel K on Skype, Rob and Martin on the phone, and myself in bed. This may be partly due to visiting both the Market and Stanley public houses earlier in the evening where I bellyached about the cost of beer, the injustice of Liverpool not being able to defend the European cup should we win it for a 5th time at the end of May, and sundry women troubles. don’t ask.

Well I better catch some zzzzs and yet again try to contact my employer to see if I can get a vacation any time soon.

Pip.