benjamin allen

Okay. So, after several emails back and forth (and many more sent with no reply) my laptop has finally been dispatched. Hooray! It left the building in Ireland today, and is estimated at being delivery next Wednesday. However the following, on my ‘Order Status’ page caught my eye… Now, I’m reasonably sure they wanted to say ‘ETA…’ but instead they managed to put ‘ETZ…’. Um, is it just me, or does this not seem right? To make a typo, a human has to be involved, yet for a human to be involved that estimated delivery date would have to be entered manually. WTF?!?

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Yes, I know that this is old news, but I’m late catching on. I just wanted to voice my opinion (don’t worry, it’s short) on the so called ‘broadband’ provider, Virgin Media.

And here it is: They’re utter shit!. Obviously this is a short review, but that’s because I wouldn’t give Virgin the time of day, let alone any more of my precious time than they already have. And they’ve certainly taken a lot. Sat waiting for pages to load is something I thought I left behind in the 56K era, but seriously, they managed to bring it back. They’ve gone retro apparently, but I’m sorry to say it hasn’t really worked. No, let me rephrase that, it was a really, really bad idea from the start, and they need to shape up before someone else gets my business.

What is it with customer service these days? It really has gone out the window (and all the way to India, might I add). But that’s enough of my un-PC ranting, I will let you return to your every day lives, whilst I struggle on trying to load this damn webpage, which will hopefully contain the links to the driver I want for my sound card. Don’t ask. Oh crap, when this page loads I’ll still need to download the… argh! Damn it!!!

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Yes, once again I find myself getting more and more angry with Dell, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I when you spend 1100GBP on a laptop (or anything for that matter) you expect some kind of service. Even if it’s bad… But seriously, I have heard nothing for the last week.

I have been left completely in the dark with regards my order, ever since I sent them a bank statement for address verification. Completely in the dark. I have recevied no calls, no emails, nothing through the post, and cannot lookup the status of my order online as it has still not been entered onto that system. And don’t say I haven’t tried, I have sent two emails over the last five working days, to two different people at Dell, and have I receveied anything back? Hell no. Not even an acknowledgement that my email has been received. Nothing. Nadda. Zip.

Which pisses me off to be quite honest. This is the second time I have tried to order this laptop from Dell and the second time I have had issues. I mean, at least my first attempt was doomed from the start, what with them telling me it would be forever till it arrived right from the get go, but this time there was no warning. I was told ten working days (that was the upper figure quoted too) plus the time it took for the finance documents to be returned to them. Well, it has now been at least ten days, and I have yet to even get the documents myself. How do I sign and return, when they don’t give them to me! I emailed them this very question in fact. I also questioned why, when they were pestering me to send them a bank statement, they sent me three or four emails in the same number of days, and now I actually sent them one they have gone completely quiet. Proabably just sat around doing jack all.

I really, really don’t want to cancel my order again, but I will you know. Yes, I’m talking to you Mr. Dell. You heard me.

As always I will keep the rest of you informed as to what’s going on, as and when (and if) things change, so for now I will bid you farewell. Or something like that…

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Well, a while back I did a couple posts on what I look at on the Net, so I thought it was about time to bring you up to date on what has changed, and fill in the gaps. Today I’m just looking at web comics, of which there are a few, and hopefully I will concentrate on other areas of my interest at a later date. If of course I don’t forget. But I’m sure you can be relied upon to remind me? Meh, we’re doomed.
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So it took a few years, but the UK finally has a bank that will give you plastic with whatever you like on it. Great job on catching up with America there England. Just what I like to see… sigh. Even if this is just a kids account. At a single bank. And they charge five pounds for the privilage. We can only hope, some day, this service comes to the mainstream. Oh, and sorry there really isn’t anything else to see about it on their website, but NatWest obviously don’t feel the need to sell their products. Shockingly bad site, you must admit.

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Sorry, again, but yes, I did jinks my easy going life, and so much has happened at so many odd times of the day that over the weekend I really couldn’t find time to write anything worth reading. And to the person that shouted ‘you never do!‘, fuck you. So today I figured I would bring you the happy news of my recently ordered laptop.
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Hooray, I have a phone again! Finally I am no longer the ’slightly less connected’ individual I have been all weekend… Unfortunately I forgot I didn’t have a phone to take pictures of the unboxing with, so you’ll have to make do without. Sorry. Guess that kinda shows how I never, ever went anywhere without my phone. And that tradition can continue now, woo! Needless to say the box is a very nicely designed sleeve arrangement, with the phone being the first thing you see and two boxes beneath containg the plethora of booklets and leads included with the handset. This works very well, if creating a lot of waste, and looks pretty good, with glossy, but thin, black card to hold everything together. Something from the ‘Inspired by Apple’ department I think…

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Hopefully good. Okay, I’m done for the day. Nah, just kidding =)
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Well, after two consecutive days posting, my traffic has increased! Okay, this is hardly proof of a permanent change, and could be completely random, but it does feel good. Also got a little bit of earnings added to my Adsense revenue (getting ever closer to my first hundred dollars now, wooo!) which rocks. So, onto the point of this post. Ummm….
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Dell. Bleuch, it leaves a funny taste in my mouth when I read that. Umm, out loud… Yes, yet again I am on here bitching about Dell, because yet again, just when I thought they could sink no lower, they have managed to fuck up what seems like a simple enough task. As you know from my previous posts I cancelled my order for the laptop of my dreams (exaggeration used for effect there) exactly three weeks ago today. Lets just recap what was said in that conversation…
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Okay, time for an update on my XPS M1330 I think. Not that I have anything to tell you, other than it is exactly as it was. Sigh! Yes, that’s correct, over three weeks later and I am still stuck in pre-production, whatever the hell that is. Other than, of course, absolutely no closer to receiving my laptop. I have tried to resolve the issue however, so I’ll fill you in on what happened last week (W/C 13th). On Monday I thought I’d give Dell a call, to see if they could tell me any more. Now, you have to bear in mind I already had a pretty good idea of what was going on, based on a post on this blog, and the barrage of comments.
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Yes, there’s a part two of my Currys saga. And it doesn’t get any prettier. If you noticed how I didn’t post in the last couple of days (and you’re a very sad individual for doing so) you may be wondering what on earth I was using my new router for… well, as it happens, not much. Nope, the seemingly high quality Netgear router I purchased for 45GBP was faulty. After two days of constant dropped connections I finally flipped and returned the damn thing for a refund. Fortunately eBuyer were prompt in delivering my new Buffalo router, which has so far been excellent, so fingers crossed it holds out longer than the last.
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I am simply astonished at the way I was treated today. There’s no other word for it. Astonished. You would think Currys would employee intelligent people, to sell their high ticket goods to complete Joe Public’s who don’t know what they want, but obviously not. I know this gentleman wasn’t intelligent from two tell tale signs. First off, he spoke to me like this. Secondly, he thought it was acceptable. Oh dear. How wrong he was. Maybe the third reason should be he thought nothing would come of it.
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Found (well, I say found, I had heard of it before, but this was the first time I bothered to check it out) Last.fm today and it seems like a great way of finding new music based on what you already like. Sometimes this is difficult enough, especially when you don’t want to just go ahead and start buying albums willy nilly without trying out some music first, but Last.fm looks like a fantastic way of doing just that (This argument does of course presume that you don’t donwload music illegally. Which I’m sure no one does…)
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Woo, got my laptop ordered last week, in preparation for the second year of University… Hopefully Dell’s prediction of a delivery before 6th September is accurate, or I’ll be into the first term before I get a computer. Argh!
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Yes, you heard me. The entire internet community has gone completely insane. All over the following:

09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0

On the surface a rather uninspiring string of hexadecimal. But when we dig further… yes, just an uninspiring string of hexadecimal.
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