Monday, September 26, 2005
Merde.
Keypad nicht gelocken.
Hello.
Your remaining credit is zero pence.
Thank you for calling.
Goodbye.
Left to its own devices, my phone magically started exploring WAP (hmm, what happened to that try it free for a month when you first use it thing?). Maybe the phone felt left out by my exploring today.
But still, the future's looking less bright right now. It's probably just as well I'm a miser who was still on his first £10 of credit (over a year after buying the thing). Admittedly the con to not using it is that it beeps more often to signal the battery is on the wane than it does to say someone wants me.
Anyway, today was an oddly fruitless day. Oystered up and raring to go, I got to the proverbial B, and decided my premptiveness was a wee bit pointless. Lots of other people had had that idea too. My cunning fallback plan of looking up an email address or phone number didn't work either. The equally cunning people neglect to put anything more informative than a general switchboard number on the relevant chunk of website.
So after a couple of holding loops and recon fly-bys, during which I could only ever find one end of the queue, and it wasn't the right one (well, it was ultimately, but it's not a good idea to annoy an unknown number of people), I adjourned to the "largest lost property department in the world". At least that's what the graffiti in the loos there claim the British Museum to be.
Noticing potential photographs along the way, I went up to the Money room (because it was just the one room, and I'd never been to it).
Money is fascinating. I only had time for about a third of the room, but the poster on the end wall was informative enough on its own. Just the ideas and politics can easily keep one entertained, but the craftsmanship and innovation are surprising as well. It had never really occurred to me that coins haven't changed since pre-Roman times. Will they ever though? Modern money is more about the little oblong of metal embedded in plastic than a little oblong of metal on by its self. And does that mean that in some distant time, there'll be a collection of people peering at a mounted selection of tarnished VISA holograms?
Anyway, got stuff to do, so I'd better go. Oh, and does anyone know which number I have to call to top-up my credit (I think it has nasty dead-phone status descending quite fast on unused and bankrupt phones)? Orange and Sony Ericsson have designed this phone so well that I can't find anything related. It's their money I can't earn them.
Anyhoo.
PS. Forgive that unspellcheckedness - diff comp to usual.
Keypad nicht gelocken.
Hello.
Your remaining credit is zero pence.
Thank you for calling.
Goodbye.
Left to its own devices, my phone magically started exploring WAP (hmm, what happened to that try it free for a month when you first use it thing?). Maybe the phone felt left out by my exploring today.
But still, the future's looking less bright right now. It's probably just as well I'm a miser who was still on his first £10 of credit (over a year after buying the thing). Admittedly the con to not using it is that it beeps more often to signal the battery is on the wane than it does to say someone wants me.
Anyway, today was an oddly fruitless day. Oystered up and raring to go, I got to the proverbial B, and decided my premptiveness was a wee bit pointless. Lots of other people had had that idea too. My cunning fallback plan of looking up an email address or phone number didn't work either. The equally cunning people neglect to put anything more informative than a general switchboard number on the relevant chunk of website.
So after a couple of holding loops and recon fly-bys, during which I could only ever find one end of the queue, and it wasn't the right one (well, it was ultimately, but it's not a good idea to annoy an unknown number of people), I adjourned to the "largest lost property department in the world". At least that's what the graffiti in the loos there claim the British Museum to be.
Noticing potential photographs along the way, I went up to the Money room (because it was just the one room, and I'd never been to it).
Money is fascinating. I only had time for about a third of the room, but the poster on the end wall was informative enough on its own. Just the ideas and politics can easily keep one entertained, but the craftsmanship and innovation are surprising as well. It had never really occurred to me that coins haven't changed since pre-Roman times. Will they ever though? Modern money is more about the little oblong of metal embedded in plastic than a little oblong of metal on by its self. And does that mean that in some distant time, there'll be a collection of people peering at a mounted selection of tarnished VISA holograms?
Anyway, got stuff to do, so I'd better go. Oh, and does anyone know which number I have to call to top-up my credit (I think it has nasty dead-phone status descending quite fast on unused and bankrupt phones)? Orange and Sony Ericsson have designed this phone so well that I can't find anything related. It's their money I can't earn them.
Anyhoo.
PS. Forgive that unspellcheckedness - diff comp to usual.
Hey Anyhoo, great blog.
Im quite new to blogging, just started my own blog, but stumbled across yours recenty and found it really entertaining. Hope you dont mind if i link to it from my blog.
Azuric
Im quite new to blogging, just started my own blog, but stumbled across yours recenty and found it really entertaining. Hope you dont mind if i link to it from my blog.
Azuric
Hey Azuric. I'll keep an eye on your blog (it seems promising).
AF: Oche? You speak Greek? Yia sou! Although you'll have to explain to me what a "kind of no colour" looks like.
Incidentally, has anyone else noticed how Greek is designed to confused English speaker. Ochi, the thing which sounds like it could be a variant on OK, means no, whereas "nay" means yes. I mean, my God, did no one think of the tourists when they were designing their language?
As for the phones thing - Orange's system gets all upset when you can't remember your PIN. Eventually I found a human who let me overwrite it, except now of course I've remembered what it was.
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AF: Oche? You speak Greek? Yia sou! Although you'll have to explain to me what a "kind of no colour" looks like.
Incidentally, has anyone else noticed how Greek is designed to confused English speaker. Ochi, the thing which sounds like it could be a variant on OK, means no, whereas "nay" means yes. I mean, my God, did no one think of the tourists when they were designing their language?
As for the phones thing - Orange's system gets all upset when you can't remember your PIN. Eventually I found a human who let me overwrite it, except now of course I've remembered what it was.
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