We’re getting a dog…

For some time now, our daughter has been asking the question all parents dread.. “Can i have a dog”.
Both of us have grown up ourselves with pets in the family as well as dogs, so are well aware of the responsibility as well as the fun and friendship that can be gained from a family pet.

we have always had some form of small pet to get our daughter into the mindset of looking after a pet, such as a hamster & our current pet, Henry the guinea pig.

up until now we have always said, that our daughter can have a dog for her 13th birthday, as hopefully by then she will be both strong enough and mature enough to cope with looking after a dog, however!!, after 3 years of asking, we have finally decided that we will get a dog now, after our next holiday in July.

we have no idea what we are going to get, other that it will most likely be a rescue dog, so in the meantime we must start preparing to secure the garden and all the other preparations to make the home dog friendly.

and of course, start to register with some dog rescue organisations.

New Phone – Android G2

As you will probably remember i work in the IT industry and as a result i often keep my eye on what technologies are available and how they could potentially be used with the business that i work for.
Recently i thought that it was about time i looked for a new phone with our current supplier (Vodafone), and was pointed towards the HTC magic, also marketed as the android G2.
I was unimpressed when i heard that HTC were the manufacturer as they have not really managed a good business phone in the past, the HTC touch diamond looked good but had such poor battery performance made it an almost unusable device.

So how would the HTC Magic compare?

well on first view it looks good, feels good and the spec seems to support all the things you would expect, until of course you try to use them…

here are the weaknesses I have found so far:

• Bluetooth, although the device support Bluetooth 2, it is very –basic, for example, it does not support Bluetooth dial up networking, this means that i can hook it up to my tomtom satnav to get traffic updates.
  It does support audio though so will hook up to the car audio system for hands free calling, however it does not allow the sending of contacts via Bluetooth, another major weakness.
• Email, although the specification states support for exchange email, it appears to be missing,what’s more the guys at Vodafone could not tell me why, even though they expected the phone to support exchange.

overall the device is nice to use and seems to be a real competitor to the iphone, however at a cost, is the phone really worth £370? i don’t think so.

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It’s been long time…..

Well, its been a long time since my last post, so what’s been going on?

well in truth i have just been so busy with normal life, being a father and husband with a growing daughter, i find more and more that i just run around making sure our daughter gets all she needs, this ranges from helping with homework (when i am home in time from work) to all of the other little things that us fellas do apart from work that is.

Anyway, i promise to do better in the future, so watch this space.

Music, IPod’s and MP3 Players

Some time ago now, I blogged on how I had got on with MP3 and MP4 players, and after a few, not so good purchases on eBay, had settled for a nice foreign import that, although it was a bit fragile, it had 4 GB of storage and seemed good value for money.

However you can’t beat the quality of a real IPod.

Earlier on this year I had to go to the states on business, while I was there I took the opportunity (and advantage of the great £ and $ rates) to get myself a cheap IPod classic, with a whole 80GB of storage.

That left me with the chance to distribute my other collected MP4 players to my wife and daughter.
It seems ok as they can use Microsoft Media Player to synchronise playlists, while I have no alternative but to use Itunes.

I recently bought some music on iTunes, and was quite disappointed that I can only play it on either my PC or on my IPod. for some reason although I have paid for the privilege of listening to the music, I have been dictated to how and what media I listen to it on, I cant even burn it onto an audio CD to put into my car! well done Apple, for encouraging piracy.

Long Time without Posting!

It has been a long time since I have posted on this blog, partly because i have been so busy at work, as well as in my personal life.

I seem to be at that age where time just fly’s by.

I have just installed some of he new Microsoft live services, and thought I would try the Live Writer, it claims to be able to post to my WordPress Blog and keep the normal styling that i have setup, so we will soon see.

A facelift for the Family website

For some time i have been hosting a family website, it’s only available to the select few that have been issued a username and password, but recently I have thought that it was a bit stale looking and also a bit too difficult to manage.

Working in IT, I tend to have duplicate setup’s for testing and development, so for my website, I had the source code in one place, the test site in another and then the live site, so I seemed to be forever moving content about.

After looking around at some open source CMS (content Management Systems), i discovered CMSMadeSimple.

This is a great CMS site that allows me to publish content directly onto the site, it looks better that the old site too, and the best part is that there is a whole community of developers out there developing plug-in modules and neat little utilities.
I can even display my blog posts on it via an RSS feed, watch out, I’ll be podcasting soon.

MP3 Player at last (and it works)

After all the hassle with my Chinese MP3 Player, I decided to go to a seller on eBay that is in the UK, the MP3 layer is still a Chinese import, but at least when it goes wrong I can speak to someone in the same language and the same time zone.

After some basic testing the player seems to do what it’s supposed to, so overall, I’m happy with it.

Although, i will wait a few more days before leaving feedback on eBay.

When the item arrived this morning, I heard a great noise as it fell in the floor, the postman had a real job getting it through the letterbox, i was actually expecting a knock on the door and a request for a signature, but the item had been posted first class only and not recorded, so I expect the postman though he couldn’t knock on the door, and the letterbox was a must!.

The Jewellers

This morning we had some time, so my wife had been through her Jewellry box and picked up a few peices that needed repairing, so we thought we’d nip into the jewellers while in town and get a few things done.

Well, I dont believe it…

We had..

• 4 Watches that needed batteries
• A gold chain that was broken (a very old one)
• A gold bracelet that needed a safety chain put back on
• A silver bracelet that needed a new clasp

The bit that got me going was the watches, each new battery will cost £5.99, but…. if the watch has a waterproof seal,  if we want to keep it waterproof, it will cost an additional £4.99.

That’s like taking your car to the garage and being charged extra to put the bonnet back on the car after an engine lift, even though it had one on when it was driven in to the garage.

Things went down hill from there, we were kept waiting for an incredible amount of time, so I started looking around.

The first thing I noticed was that the shop had undergone a recent makeover, yep in the race to make things better, thay had ripped out the old counters that were placed around the 3 sides of the shop, where evrybody could have a little privacy while making their purchase, and people could queue in an orderly fashion, to a carousel, where by everybody is facing the middle, hence the store assistants never knew who was next to be served?, also I noticed that while I was waiting, with the new system they had of tracking all sales, every time a purchase was made, the request came from the centre, “Post Code please”, followed by the purchasers post code, then, “House Number”, followed by the persons house number, then, yep, last of all, “Name” followed by the persons surname, I now had enough to consider identity theft….., who knows who was listening, but each time a shop full of strangers heard all the details.

Ipod or not Ipod

For those who noted my post about the cheap MP3 player, well the latest update is that, Mr Hongchu1126, refunded me in full as I requested, after I posted a paypal dispute claiming the item was not fit for purpose, i.e. it should recharge the battery to be able to play tunes when not plugged into a computer!!.

It’s a shame though that i also requested that Mr Hongchu1126, send me the cost of posting the item back to Hong Kong, which I will happily do….when he send me the postage.

I have to moan here, its appalling that we (the consumer) is always expected to run around after the retailer when they sell us faulty or shoddy goods, I have lost count the number of times my wife has returned goods to tesco, or I have returned goods to PC World or Dixon’s, all of these have the same symptons, i.e. we buy the goods expecting it to do what it says on the box, we get them home (so far I’m happy to take the cost), we then unwrap the item, discard the instructions (in some cases, but not always) and proceed to make the item work, only to find that it doesn’t.

Then what follows is a call to the shop (normally involving a long queue in an automated queuing system, followed by a hacked off teenager that knows best), then a trip the next day, to get back to the store manager, and convince another teenager, that the item really is faulty, and we are not just being silly!!(now this has involved more precious time, the cost of driving back to the store and the inconvenience), then eventually we get the option of a full refund or a replacement, if we want to take another chance on the goods working!.

Anyway, I will hold this useless MP3 player as ransom until Mr Hongchu1126 pays for the postage back to Hong Kong.

In the meantime, I’m bidding on a refurbished Ipod (With warranty and in the UK) on ebay.