just a test

whoa

Seems that the French have score a Political Own Goal

A German Engineer with whom I work with stated this 'Own Goal' term to describe the feeling about the French's and the "Non!" in the referendum on the EU's constitution. This seems about fitting to event in question. The question then has to be asked about a constitution written for the French by the French, if it is not good enough for the French, then who are the French ?

Are they Europeans? That is the question ... and where are we going to ...

On the positive side the debate was healthy and the people had good information to make an educated decision, I'm not making any reference here to the blue book of the constitution ( unreadable text ) that will make good tinder for when next time it becomes cold!

On the negative side the whole event has turned inward centric and very political, as politicians jossle for the political high ground, noticing that the public has moved on and the political apparatus has once again been shown to be outdated antiquated.

Service means ripping of the customer

When companies are ripping off the customer, they are making money !!!

So it is not in their interest to make information available on their website and to manage your options with a click...

What interest them is the high tarif on service numbers and trained staff that to tell you their name and keeping you hanging on the line, while they consult something or ask you your telephone number when you know they have digital display with the numbers written in front of them... and it is all because the company loves high tarif communications Jackpot!

Stolen from BouyguesTelecom
Mise en relation avec un Conseiller de Clientèle :
- 0.46€/mn décompté de votre Forfait à la seconde si vous êtes détenteur d’un Mini-Forfait ou d’un Forfait Online.

My problem today was that I need to take off a option on my Mobile telephone, login to my webspace for Bouygues and tried no chance the option was not visible on the options, so holy macaroony it was a call from the Customer Service/Rip off Line.....

It goes like this...

BT : My name is Jean-Francois and I'm here to help you
( Shut up idiot you wasting my money with this American courtsey )

WWW: Yes I like to drop a option from my Mobile Service

BT: What is your phone number I just like to check it
( You know my number read the dial in front of you and check it for what that it has digits )

WW: 0661#######

BT: The Forfait does seems to have that option wait a minute ...
( Of course it does I not stupid enough to call on a high tarif number for nothing, and don't you mean wait a euro )

BT: I will now pass you on to my colleague who will deal with you
( Don't they train these monkey to do more than one things or the pass the relays are a sure way to gain an euro , they know that you have passed the threshold that you passed the 1 euro mark )

BT : Hello my name is Catherine and I here to help you ( Double whammer !!! as there is no compression on the line )

BT: To change I would like ask you a few questions

WWW: If they are marketing/commercial questions not a chance I paying for this call ..

BT : Why do you want change this options

WWW: Whoa this is commercial stuff , because ...

BT : What is your birthday ?

WWW: ..... ( I knew that one )

BT: What is your address

WWW: ..... ( This is easy )

BT: How is the payment made

WWW: Direct Debit

BT : What bank account

WWW: .....

BT: What is the account number ?

WWW: I do not know ....

BT : How old are you ?

WWW : 40 ( ok I got it wrong but I stopped counting at 27!!!!!)

BT : But you said you were born in .... and a long discussion on my age

WWW: what is going on here ...

BT: Sir I afraid the option can not be disactivated ...

WWW : " A Furious Rant!!!! " realise that I'm paying and asks the name of the lady and writes it down and hangs up. And #@$¤ !!!!!

faineant pronounced fay-nay-AWN

Meaning to doing nothing or given to doing nothing; idle; lazy, which is derived from Faineant is from French, from Middle French fait, "does" + néant, "nothing." All this is knicked from dictionary.com so no credit to me here, I'd just signed up for the word of the day to benefit from the free email, as I've always believe that learning a word a day was a most positive and elevating way to educated oneself.

January - was a purposely a writ off Month
February seems to the month of faineant it was not meant to be that way, but the promises and things to do, have been forgotton , as the memory seems to fade. As the great phrase of Customer Services states "set expectations correctly and then exceed them" , just seems that I 've forgotten what I was suppose to do. It seems that the greatest saviour of these times is needed! So out comes the pen and paper and start writing the "ToDo List"

Recent changes of note about the blog is that the template has change colour as the black template was very very popular with bloggers, so the appearance was merging into the flock and as I'm very much a black sheep, I felt obliged to change to the conservative white....

Also I added another blogger to my list Max Zillion who seems to have a lot of things to say of note ... I liked the story about the British Intelligence losing it's web site :o)

Are you well connected !?!

There is a saying that "always be nice to people you never know when you might need them" or "be well connected to get on with your career" well I must admit that I applied to these rules throughout my career, listening to very boring people and biting my lip instead of calling a spade a spade, sending or basically forwarding lame jokes, pictures and video etc to the have friends and keep in touch email lists..., and even accepting being on other people joke emails which were often in dreadful taste and so unfunny and crad. And then the bomb shell hits ...

Jeex invites me to a Social Networking site called LinkedIn which is quite interesting as I start looking for people I'd lost contact and I find them; then as linking through people I begin to realize that most, ... well near all the people I know are in there! So why was I not invite before was the question feeling like the loner "Kes" boy in the playground.

Anyway putting my ego away for the day, I started to update my profile and add some contacts that were absent. As it is always a structure your contacts and disversify helping different people meet new and different people, and as this is a marketing and selling tools to promote yourself and others, although there are many articles to promote this type of node network it does seems that most people just enter some or very little details and few contacts about themselves ... so my prediction is that this is interesting but not really a maintainable as after the initial interest the only reason to go back is to acknowledge that lone straggler in the playground that has been finally invited to the party...

Here are some articles from CNN , DestinationCRM and Guardian about this cyber new old boys club, that seems to hype the new trend, after they have killed of the bitttorrents networks and the venture capitalist out to make a new dollar and a news fad that is on the internet and legal.


Now I remember a good article of the Social Network from the mathematical aspect of 8 Nodes/People to reach anybody else in the world and unfortunately Me and Google cant find it hopefully I find it soon and post it here ...

Apathy or Writer blogged

Seems that an update was needed as the last one was the 8th of Dec and that was a while ...

Can't really say that nothin' as happened as there has been some major events since the beginning of December such as :

1. My grand-mother ( nana ) dying and going back to Wales to the funeral and seeing all the family ( in the Italian sense that is ), ones that I have not seen in a long time and some that I have never ever seen.

2. The company that I work for decided to cut cost drastically, in that they layed off people and quite a few were known to myself, one was french teacher, the only person that still took time to correct my awful french; I suppose in managerial speak, the act is called sticking to core business functionalities for running the company, not perks...

3. Christmas was the usual affair and running the around buying useless presents because it is Christmas etc... yeah the major consumer event of the year.

4. January and a bit of February spill was a purpose right-off; I just wanted to be apathetic, no worries, no commitments, just go with the flow.

5. The inlaws are moving to Brittany, yes retiring not in the South of France but in Gulf Stream and near the English Channel; don't ask me to explain that ???

6. Finally got disconnected from Wanadoo ISP and started Free ISP, bigger bandwidth, bigger price but free IP phone calls (they do seem to disconnect quite frequently) .

To be honest I have not much to complain about the Free Connexion as of yet :o) , but it is evident that the incumbent TELCO do have the best infrastructure, although their rake the money on their services; which is so petty about drying the customer base for every euro.

It is a disgrace that Wanadoo still needs to charge extra for the anti-virus protection, when they customer base is by default is the most worst educated users in wild wide world of internet...

An explosive Gaffe

A recent news item that just seems to border on the unreal, just imagine this bag was yours and you ended up in USA, would that be a tough one to explain ...