Glastonbudget is a local music festival, having mainly tribute acts and at a fraction of the size/cost of Glastonbury. I received word yesterday that tickets would be on sale from 8:00 this morning, starting at 99p. Wow! That’s great, I think.

So at 8:00 I go on the intermawebs and their site it down (funny, that – maybe it was rather well publicised). You have to name your ticket holders, so I typed my name, and the ticket went in the basket at £20.00. Uh? That’s not 99p. Oh well… maybe £20.00 isn’t too bad.

Then I typed H’s name and it went in at £25.00. Uh? It went up £5.00 while typing someone’s name?

Then I typed H’s new name (oops! you’d think I would have noticed that whole wedding business a couple of months ago!). £45.00. Eeeeehhhhh?

Up up up!

I guess it’s a good bit of ‘create a buzz’ marketing. But it’s a little bit of a let-down in my opinion. The funny thing is, the prices are going up and down the whole time. They’re now £30.00. Gah.

You know what? I can’t be bothered (and they’re not within the our current budget requirements if they’re more than 99p).

Update

You know what’s even weirder? I removed the £25.00 ticket and the £20.00 ticket turned into £30.00.

Huh?

Oh dear

Chinese is very easy, especially when you use Good Characters’ chinese alphabet (ironic name, no?)

Words truly fail me.

Or should I say…

山口尺力弓 七尺臼心了 下月工心 冊三

No. I shouldn’t say that.

Some Moët, Yesterday

There I was, writing up our list of wedding gifts for posterity and I came to Moët & Chandon. Because I’m a bit of a stickler for the unnecessary, I’d never type ‘Moet’. It has to be ‘Moët’. So I switched to the Finnish keyboard layout because that allows you to type accents very easily – type the ¨ key then the e key and ë appears. However, this wasn’t the case. rather ¨¨e appeared. There was something amiss.

I installed the Swedish layout (same set of keys) and the same problem occurred. I tried US-International which has similar ‘dead key’ accents. It didn’t work. Every layout gave two of the accent key as soon as I pressed the ‘dead key’. (A ‘dead key’ is one that does nothing immediately, but modifies the next keypress).

Looked it up on the intermawebz, and guess what? It suggested that I may be the victim of a keylogger virus, and that I should use the ‘msconfig’ application to look in my startup scripts for anything that looked funny. There certainly was something funny – a program with a name like vpaouheft.exe in a folder clkjnsdvi in my own personal ‘Application Settings’ folder.

I opened the folder in explorer, right-clicked and AVG anti-virus said “Awooga! Danger, Will Robinson”. I’m not sure why it didn’t warn me earlier – except, I guess the offending program starts running before the anti-virus kicks in.

So with that disabled, deleted, burnt, thrown into the lake and stamped on my dead keys now work.

So now I can type Moët.

And go and change my passwords absolutely everywhere.

Cock.

This is a work of art. It leaves the reader in no doubt as to the date, location, timescale, coverage required… it’s truly the most comprehensive brief I’ve ever seen.

Need a photographer for a wedding

Yup. That’s it.

A Carrot, Yesterday

I’m sure that in the olden days you used to buy carrots, and they’d last a week or two in a dark cupboard, first giving the hint they’re going to go off by going a little wrinkly and quite bendy.

Now when you buy carrots, they are great for a couple of days and then you discover that they’ve suddenly gone mouldy, slimy and horrible – before they’ve even thought about going bendy or wrinkly. I’m moderately sure I haven’t changed how I store them, but I think the supermarket keeps them refrigerated before I buy them.

Am I going mad? Is this observation correct? Should I buy my carrots from the market instead?

What am I to do?

Here you go… filling the bath from the ceiling…

Dear Stu,

Thank you very much for buying gas from us for the last year. As usual, we overcharged you on your direct debits and therefore we have refunded £153.45 into your account.

We are also putting your monthly payments up from £39 to £84 per month for some reason we can’t adequately explain.

Lots of love,

The Numnuts At British Gas

While I was eating my lunch, I just saw an advert for Wonga dot com – one of those short-term loan companies that has ludicrous (quoted typical 2689%) interest rates.

I thought I’d see just how high an interest quote I could find. £1 borrowed for 1 day. Repay £6.56. Now, £1 of that is the original loan, £5.50 is charges, so 6p is interest.

That’s an APR of… are you ready… 172,441,114,727%

Sounds like a good deal!

I’ve been having some fun and games with the passport agency.

A friend recently asked if I would countersign her daughter’s passport application since I’m apparantly qualified to do so being a “Photographer (Professional)”. No problem, I said, went round, signed the application and thought nothing of it.

A phone call from the friend a week later alerted me to the fact that the Identity and Passport Service decided that my address looked “a little bit too much like a residential address” and therefore my profession was brought into question and my countersignature invalid. Given a VAT registration number, they would happily accept the signature.

I don’t have a VAT registration number. That’s because I’m not VAT registered. That’s because my turnover is below the threshold that requires me to be VAT registered. I did, however, give my friend all the details of the BIPP of which I am a member – my membership number, the BIPP’s contact details and so on.

I thought nothing further of it.

Yesterday I received a letter from the Identity and Passport Service.

Dear Stu

RE: PASSPORT APPLICATION FOR [Jeannette Thomspon]

You recently signed a passport application for the person named above.

Please:

- confirm your company’s full name, business address and phone number. Also give your profession and professional qualifications.

- say whether your company is a limited business, whether it is a registered charity or whether it is registered for VAT. Please quote the company, charity and VAT registration numbers in your reply.

Your reply should cover each point we have mentioned. Please then sign and date it. It is important that you sign your reply personally rather than allow someone else to reply on your behalf.

I would be grateful for a prompt reply.

Please reply on business headed paper using the enclosed prepaid label. The information provided will be treated with the strictest confidence.

Yours sincerely,

ppsquiggle

Mr. A Hitler

I’ve done them a reply. I don’t think they’ll like it. Their systems don’t seem to want to accept a sole trader, working from home who doesn’t yet have his professional qualification (but is working on it). I bet my friend wishes she’d just given the family doctor a tenner to countersign!

And while they’re making it nigh-on-impossible for the man/lady/baby in the street to get a passport, the professional forgeries continue. Seems the key to being a successful criminal is to be rich and well-connected.

Someone is either very confused or being rather ironic. I’d love to have been present at the meeting where this new product development was approved.