jasonrumney.net

Spotted today on the front page of Google News UK. The article itself was worded slightly differently.

Someone's asking to be sued, but is it Google, or ABC News?

My brother Adrian has just had his 15 minutes of fame, after a $12.2M cock up by his bank which they couldn't seem to put right for three days. I'm still fighting my own bank over a £20 penalty they charged me a few months ago because I paid my credit card off before they sent the bill out so I wouldn't get stung with late charges while I was away. Thats the £20 penalty for late payment that OFT ruled as excessive last July and gave the banks three months to change, then finally followed up on last month after the EU competition commision came to the same conclusion.

Check out this Satellite image of the M25 near Woking, from Google Maps. No wonder google's directions always seem to be about a block out.

Update: It looks like they've moved the problem a few hundred meters north now.

While browsing the net just now, I wanted to go back to another window I was sure I still had open. Not seeing it on the task bar, I picked up my laptop and started looking around on the floor for it.

An early night tonight, I think.

Interesting factoid: Cocktail Blini's are excellent conductors of electricity.

Periodically on nz.general, a Usenet newsgroup I have periodically frequented over the last 10 years, someone intending to visit the country will ask a question about our electricity supply, and what sort of adapter they need to bring with them. Inevitably, some helpful soul calling himself "Newsman", or "The BILL" will pipe in with a rant about how superior the UK's 13A fused plugs are, compared with New Zealand's plugs and sockets.

But the reality I have come to know over the last four years is very different. Plugs in the UK are so damn big and heavy, and the holes in the sockets for the pins so big and sloppy, that they have a tendency to pull themselves out of the wall. I discovered this shortly after arriving in this country, and have been constantly annoyed by it ever since, on one occasion losing an entire fridge/freezer full of food to the phenomenum.

I might have been willing to concede that the idea of a fuse in the plug had some merit, until a russian miniature pancake snack proved beyond doubt tonight, that it is all just a placebo.

The scenario: Sunday night, and I'm a little peckish. Staring right at me from the relative safety of the fridge shelf is a packet of delicious looking cocktail blinis, that look like they'd go well with that tub of Smoked Salmon Taramasalata sitting there next to them. So I grab four and put them in the toaster. Like little toddlers they squirm around in a futile tantrum trying to resist the downward motion as I lower the lever on the toaster. One cunning little bastard manages to squeeze his way between the iron bars, intended to keep the toast central where toasting conditions are at their optimal. Suddenly, there is darkness. The little bugger has successfully shorted the elements in the toaster, and not the fuse inside the plug, nor even the circuit breaker for that loop of sockets, but the main circuit breaker for the entire flat is tripped.

After a fumble around in the dark for a cigarette lighter that doesn't work, the lights are restored, and I can now get on with the job of extracting the cocktail blini from the toaster. Did you know, that a cocktail blini fits perfectly across the gap between the elements inside the toaster, and is capable of getting into that position unassisted, but the only way it will come out is if it is cut in half by specialized rescue equipment which luckily I just happened to have lying around?