Getting straight

During breakfast yesterday morning, a prolonged hailstorm made us sit up and take notice. In the afternoon I had a funeral service to take at Pidgeon's chapel of rest, which was packed with mourners. Someone arrived, as my driver put it, "Wearing Her Majesty's jewellery" accompanied by two guards. Other mourners were evidently pleased to see him there.  Being of the 'tough on crime' opinion, my driver didn't approve of this brief expensive outing. I said I couldn't imagine anything more likely to cause a costly disruption inside than a prisoner upset by bereavement and absence from the farewell to a loved one. Even treating someone humanely can have a pragmatic side to it. We arrived at the crematorium in yet another hailstorm. And sun shone through the clouds on the way home.

Before supper, I drove out to through the evening traffic to Caerau for a bereavement visit in relation to another funeral I've been asked to do this week. The parish clergy are busy at the moment due to a sharp increase in deaths, perhaps due to the vagaries of the season's weather. I'm glad to help out and ease the pressure. Visiting people in their homes, listening to them talk about their life with the departed person, being trusted to help them with an appropriate service, is always a privilege.

Today, I drove to Newport for a session with Kay, to sort out the problems caused by a poor driving seat in the car. Despite re-enforcing it with strategically placed cushions, I can't drive for more than an hour before neck muscles threaten to go into spasm, and the symptoms will then persist for days, because the constraints of the saggy seat shape twisting my pelvis out of alignment. A new seat might cost as much as the car is worth. It works beautifully for a twenty year old vehicle. Sooner or later we must get a replacement, but ideally I'd like it to stop working first. At the moment it stops me from working as intended. It's good to have a therapist who can remedy the problem and help me understand better how to prevent ill effects prolonging themselves.

Kay, I discovered was also a Blackberry user. She'd greatly enjoyed her Z10, as I had done, but hers had recently died. She'd been given a replacement, whose first action was to update the operating system taking several hours. When it came to re-start it on completion of the update, it too died, and she was awaiting the delivery of a third, as she was tied by contract to that model. Such a nice phone, so sad it was fatally flawed. BT wouldn't issue me with a new Z10 but replaced it with a Q10, as they'd stopped issuing the Z10 altogether. A disastrous blow for RIM's new flagship model. If they'd been able to get the build quality right, it would have been a real market changer for them.

After lunch I took Clare to the opthalmology clinic at the Heath Hospital for a post-op check up. Her consultant declared himself pleased with the progress she's made in the three months since surgery. Mission accomplished, I went into the office to meet Ashley and confer on the new pricing strategy, which we've been working on for the past few days, as we have a meeting with others to discuss this tomorrow.

    

Blackberry Blues

Today's flight back to Malaga was punctual and uneventful apart from a brief bout of turbulence over the Pyrenees which caught everyone by surprise inclding the air stewards. After we landed, I found that my Blackberry Z10, newly converted to run on a BT EE network sim card could find the local network but wouldn't attach to any of the four carriers available with strong signal. I tried different settings, and re-started the phone to no avail. In the end, it booted up to 100% but wouldn't even display what Blackberry call the 'Escreen' = the 'desktop' on an ordinary computer, so I couldn't even use it to retrieve emails via wi-fi. My own personal PAYG phone, on the same EE network switched over to Orange ES, without a hitch.

Nothing much can be done about this over the weekend, and I certainly can't do anything from Spain, it will have to be done by Ashley in Cardiff, as he is the account holder for all our business phones. My guess is that BT, despite having a contract to supply us with acccess to roaming services while I'm in Spain have foisted a new SIM card upon us without checking if roaming abroad was required. If so, it's a serious indictent of the quality of service to business customers in an world where crossing European borders, if not continents is an everyday matter. Once again EE's 'Everything Everywhere' service turns out to be more like 'Nothing Nowhere' despite all their expensive media advertisements. It's not so much the technology that doesn't work properly, as the people who manage it.

 

Incompatibilities

Quite apart from checking and organising financial affairs when I come home, there are always office jobs to be done. I spent time today making a MS Publisher version of a training manual for retail workers, devised by CBS colleague Sarah, entitled 'How to Make an Arrest'. This involved going into town and taking photos of the City Centre retail zone to supply up to day graphics, but it will be up to Sarah to complete the enhancements. Needless to say, we discovered that our versions of MS Publisher are incompatible. Now that's what I call a crime against computer users. Backwards file compatibility is one of the essential attributes of any working system. Unfair.

This afternoon the switch over of the BT SIM card of my work Blackberry Z10 from Vodaphone to EE was completed. Needless to say, because EE reception in our area is so poor, compared to Vodaphone, that I cannot get a signal on the ground floor, once I cross the threshold. So, I have to go up to the attic our out in the street to call someone. The good thing about the Blackberry is that it is quick to pick up a signal automatically, whereas the Samsung Galaxy Ace II automatic facility has never worked, and any time the signal drops, it has to be re-set manually. Inconvenient and such a waste of time. Instant connectivity wherever you are, is an illusion created by marketing people, and an unfulfilled ambition on the part of the technologists. Why create and promote an expectation when you cannot be sure to deliver?

    

Markers of achievement

There's nothing like a spell of pleasant weather, and a little pressure free time in the office to making catching up on work tasks to be completed quite a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. That's how it Monday to Wednesday slipped by cheerfully. The only thing of interest was the arrival of a Blackberry work phone upgrade for me. It's hard to believe that it's more than eighteen months since I first acquired one, and started fuming and fretting over its tiny keyboard and screen. Much as I've disliked the standard Blackberry Bold, however, its connection reliability at home and abroad has always served me better than my Android devices, so it goes with me whenever I travel.

BT Business informed us of a contract renewal deal on a Blackberry Z10 touchscreen smartphone. It received good reviews, but appeared just as the parent company RIM started to go downhill fast, so fearing the worse some sections of the global market went for other devices instead. RIM has had hard times, but this doesn't seem to have been reflected in the robustness of its network connectivity, only its profitability. So, on the basis of the reviews, we signed up Tuesday afternoon, and the new phone was delivered eighteen hours later, backed by a couple of text messages to advise me of a straightforward SIM activation procedure.

It was late afternoon before I collected it from our 'other' office and took it home to unpack. It's an impressive piece of kit, with Blackberry's own user interface rather than the common Android arrangement. It'll take a bit of getting used to, but the clarity and slickness of the display make it a pleasure to interact with. By the time I got around to SIM activation, I found myself with an overnight wait. It's procedure initiated via the internet but overseen by humans, and BT no longer provide a 24/7 service, so the old phone with its larger format unswappable SIM card stayed in use overnight. Hmmm. Even so, I know I'll enjoy using it.

The other good thing about Wednesday was agreeing a satisfactory end of lease deal with our company financier. By this weekend we'll own every piece of equipment in our possession, and owe nobody anything. We've worked very hard for this, never defaulting on a payment, relying on direct revenue, no grants or subsidies. I look back to my time at St John's, and recall how the Tea Room raised a similarly huge sum of money over a decade of selling drinks, sandwiches and cake with a few dozen volunteers - enough money to redecorate the interior and transform the tower porch entrance into an elegant and appealing point of access - I feel proud to have been associated with and supported both of these voluntary social enterprises that in their different ways have done so much good for the city.

It's a delightful co-incidence that I should receive an invitation today, to attend a porch dedication ceremony at St John's next Tuesday. The Mayor and Archbishop Barry will be there.