You read about, and often experience the lack of customer care most large companies have these days. This is a blog to say thank you, for showing it is still out there. The surprise company?, Orange.

I've had my current phone for 2 years. It's developed an annoying habit of not outputting any sound when ringing, regardless of the profile. A reboot sorts it, but it's irritating. So I had a look around. For toys, the N95 seemed like a nice upgrade. I mainly use my phone as a phone, but toys are always nice .

I looked at the orange website, saw that for my contract it was 49 quid. Not too bad. I was prepared to pay it. I wasn't going to leave orange as I have a number of friends/family on orange with orange only minutes, and I've had good service from them.

I don't use anywhere as near as many minutes as I used too, and I now use a few texts a month, so I thought I'd change contracts too. I wasn't sure I could change contracts *and* get the phone for 50 quid, so I phoned them up. I spoke to a gentleman and explained that I was after the N95, wanted to change my tariff, but wanted to check that I could get the handset at that price. He said he would find out, and shortly I was connected to the retentions department. I wasn't planning on leaving, but I thought I'd see where it took me. They found a contract that covers my normal usage for 20 pounds a month less than my current contract, and they said they would do the phone for free. Bonus I thought. Then came the big one. The very helpful lady, who's name I wish I had remembered, asked if I was aware of the battery life issues with the N95, lots of people had been returning them due to it. Not being aware I asked for a reference number, and said I'd do some research and call back. I'm so glad I did, it turns out that even with the toys turned off, 1 day between battery charges is optimistic, most people seem to have to charge them during the day too.

So I had a hunt around and found the HTC TyTN II. Nice toys, more juice.

So I called back, gave them the reference number, said that I'd done some research and I'd like to take the HTC TyTN II instead.

Orange were under no obligation to try and get me a free upgrade, and they were under no obligation to inform me of the limited battery life. It's right there on their website, which if I had been 1/2 awake when I read, I would have seen. I am very grateful to whom ever it was that informed me of the battery life issues. They have saved me a bundle of pain. Added to the reduced contract, I'm impressed. I would gladly recommend Orange to anyone after todays customer service.

Well, it's made the news recently, and seeing as tonight is just about the first clear night for a while, I thought I'd go play. The moon was very bright tonight, almost too bright, most things were unobtainable. I did manage to get a nice view of mars again, and could clearly see the bright pole. Tim managed to get a nice pic or two of the comet. I managed to make out two points of light near the centre, I'm guessing that they were stars shining through.

Well, I downloaded Gutsy Gibbon on release day. I reformatted and started rebuilding my laptop on friday night. I need windows as well, and that had been my primary OS up till now, so that went on first. Then I started on Ubuntu. First thing to note was that as soon as it was done, it popped up a message saying that it had found my nvidia 5650 and the broadcom wireless network, and did I want to install the proprietry components. Went ahead and did that. Compiz turned on, nice flashy eye candy. Doesn't seem to have effected the performance. Wireless just needed configuring and off it went. Thats the first time thats happened to me.

Installed the usual required applications, Java, Eclipse, Pidgin, firefox plugins etc. Started playing around a bit. Noticed that firefox was only 2.0.0.6, 2.0.0.8 is the latest at the time of writing. Then I found a bit issue. After running firefox for a while, with some of my usual pages open, any new window attempt would just result in firefox using 100% cpu, and no new window. I remembered something about this in firefox past. I downloaded the latest version and ran that and all seems well.

If it wasn't for the firefox problem, this would have been the easiest install of linux I would have done for a desktop machine.

edit: Turns out that the firefox issue is to do with the google toolbar plugin. It only happens with the ubuntu distribution of firefox, so I'm guessing it's one of their plugins not liking it.

It was raining on my way home tonight, so I wasn't expecting much. Was also planning an early night after finishing at 2am last night. At 10pm though I took a quick peek outside. It looked clear. I had already decided that I was going to try for M13 next, having done M31 last night. It's a bit smaller, and fainter. Old hat to most 12 year olds with binoculars probably, but new to me. Got it within minutes . I couldn't make out individual stars in the cluster, but I could make it out. I took a quick look again at M31 too, trying hard to see if I could spot M32 or M110, but I couldn't. I have some new eye pieces arriving tomorrow, I'm hoping it will be a clear night and I'll get better results with clean, undamaged eye pieces.

Ok, it sounds impressive, but it's a little pathetic that it has taken me this long. I've had a 6" F5 Orion Europa telescope for a number of years. I don't use it a huge amount, I think that at least 2 of my lenses are scratched so I don't get the results I should.

The area I live in is on top of a hill, I'm in the middle of a modern (10 years old) housing estate, so we are packed in like sardines. This gives me fairly poor light for astronomy on the horizon (think other house lights and street lamps), but as you look farther up, it gets better.

It looked like it was going to be a wet evening, but cleared up nicely. Around 10:30 I went out and saw that Mars was on the rise, so I got the scope out to let it cool down. I've not had much luck with Mars in the past, but I managed to make out some colouration at the pole, which is the first time. I then had a look at the Pleiades with the lowest magnification I have. It's quite stunning. Then I noticed that I could actually make out the Milky Way. I've only lived in one other place where I been able to make it out, so I was most impressed, I didn't think it was that clear here. So I thought I'd try again for M101, I've never found *any* deep sky object before (too lazy, never tried hard enough). Once again I failed on M101, so I thought I'd try for something easier. M31 is large, even binoculars are supposed to be able to see this. I was very happy with myself when I found M31 tonight. I know it's supposed to be an easy target, but it's a first for me, and it looked just like the image in Stellarium. Seeing the pictures is one thing, but seeing M31, with my own eyes, was just awe inspiring. It brings back the memories of when I first saw Saturn, it's rings and 4 of it's moons.

Went out tonight to start the bike, started on 1/2 choke, it did turn over but didn't take up, full choke and vroom, off it went, both cylinders propperly. After a short while I started to reduce the choke and in less than a minute, it was idling with no choke.

Thats how it should be

Still had no fluid going through one filter, which isn't how it should be, but one thing at a time.

I cut the grass on Saturday, whilst I was out there, I thought I would see if my motorbike would start. Predictably it didn't. It only turned over 3 or 4 times before the battery gave out. That's not one of it's usual symptoms, so I figured I hadn't connected the charger properly. So I put it away, made sure the charger was connected, and left it.

Sunday I tried again, it turned over a few times and gave up again. I stripped the battery out, not knowing why, it's not like I can do anything with it. Once it was out however, I noticed it had maybe 80% of the acid missing.

I've topped it up with deionised water and replaced it last night, I was going to try it this morning, but it's peeing it down, so maybe tonight I'll go and see if the battery is totally knackered, or if I have a working bike again (till the next time it breaks, which looking at it's history, won't be long).

Went off to the dentists tonight. I'm not normally that bothered by the dentist, they have a job to do, I'm healthier for it, and it's normally only a short time span of discomfort.

For some reason, I was nervous tonight. I was there to have some plastic caps put on a couple of my lower back teeth, it's just a protective layer. I had the uppers done as a kid, so I knew roughly what was going to happen. It's not a painful procedure at all.

However, after he was done, the dentist pointed out that my lower wisdom teeth are impacted. This is not a problem in it's own right, but where they are touching the teeth in front of them, where the toothbrush can't get too, there is the start of some decay. As a result of where things are in the human mouth, the only way to sort it out, is to have the lower wisdom teeth out. There is a very small chance of some nerve damage which he said can result in temporary numbness in the lower jaw. Clare had hers out not that many months ago, and had added complications, so I know it's not pleasant. What worries me is that when Clare had hers out, she wasn't allowed to drive after because of the sedatives. As I moved to this part of the world to be with Clare, now she is gone, I have no one up here to drive me around if I need it. It's totally selfish I know, but some times, when we are alone, we have to think of ourselves. Now is one of those times.

I'm sure it will work out, these things have a way of doing so, and if it doesn't I'll have a nice long walk back from the hospital

Since Clare left, Eve, the fat cat, has been extremely friendly every night when I get in from work, to the point where she pesters me . Normally I would expect that to be her wanting food, but she doesn't eat much when I put some down, she is eating her normal amount. I think she is just missing the company of the other mogs. She always comes to sit on me when I go to bed now too.

She's getting lots of attention (like I have a choice ). Hopefully she will settle down and get used to being alone all day again. She's done it before. I'm quite liking the distraction at the moment to be honest too.

When I was down visiting Kev, Cath and Meg, I wrote a match maker with chat API in java using IRC and php under the covers. One suggestion was to do a simple, reusable Swing GUI for it. At Lucent, I was heavily involved in developing a complex swing GUI, but it seems I've forgotten how. I just *can't* seem to get the thing playing nice. I'm sure using tabel layout I could get something looking reasonable, but I want mutliple split panes, so each area is resizable, scrollable areas etc, and it just doesn't seem to be there in my head any more.

Maybe I'm just out of practice, or maybe I'm getting old and senile