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Erk

Birmingham, it's not shit

Ok, slightly random... Decided to go to Birmingham yesterday after learning that the Birmingham Orange shop had some 6230s in stock - so now one happy Burt :D

It's quite a splendid phone, and Its nice to be vaguely in the 21st century phone wise again - all that remains to be proven is the battery life! - video and all that jaz suck battery power, and its the same battery unit as the 6100

Lots of lasts...

It seems to be the time of year for lots of 'lasts'. Most CompSci had their last exam today (except me, damn those DILS modules), and people generally are in an end of term frame of mind. A friend said this before which made me smile:

[name witheld] says: about 2 delete java from my machine!
[name witheld] says: been looking forward to this for months!

I guess I'm sad... I've not removed it off mine completely yet - I'd like to finish off tweaking my final year project

Feedback

Also, it occured to me today that it'd be nice to get something of an idea of how my dissertation is fairing in the marking process. I'm not sure how much they can reveal (probably not much) but might prod tutor about it tomorrow.

Continued Exam Horror

This morning was my CS312 exam, not as bad as I was dreading, but I seemed to have a similar experience to others who took the exam so I am not too worried. Also got the assignment grades and I have a provisional B+ (subject to moderation)... That means that I've already got the 40% for the entire module required to pass - wooo!

Two weeks tomorrow will be my last day in Aber as a student, which seems strange, exciting and scary all at once when I acutally think about it, but really I feel sort of strangely indifferent to it all. It will certainly be a shame not to be in daily contact with all my friends here again, but I guess that's just a symptom of life moving on the way it does. One thing I definitely know is that I shall return to Aber, everyone always does :o)

Yesterday went to visit the careers service, they were quite helpful, however only really as a sounding board more than anything.. Came away with two URLs and a small booklet on IT employers

Not sure if I mentioned it, but in order to do the master's course that I am considering it really is going to have to be totally self funded or some sort of corporate sponsorship if I can organise that - we'll see. Other option is a PHD, but I have yet to see anything that interests, and I am not sure if I want to commit myself to another 3(?) years of education at this stage.

AFter coming out from the careers appointment sat on the grass outside and used the wireless network around the CompSci department, they've installed another access point meaning that I don't have to use my external antenna.

Tomorrow morning (today?) is my third exam, "Network Technologies" to be honest, it could go either way and I've not done nearly anything like the revision I should have done.

One down three to go...

That's it.. the first exam out of the way. Potentially not too worried, think that it will hopefully make up for the other two main exams which I'm not so confident about. Ran out of time which is a shame, but hopefully I at least picked up a reasonable amount of marks for the last question.

Exams

It's my first exam later...

Just a note to people who might be asking, I won't tell you when any exams are from now on*... You'll have to look for yourself and then ask me if the time/place you have matches, for checking purposes only.

* I don't want to give you wrong information about when exams are, so its better for everyone concerned mmkay

BBC NEWS | England | Southern Counties | Six killed in seven-car pile-up

BBC NEWS | England | Southern Counties | Six killed in seven-car pile-up

Ouch!

Procrastination

In attempts to avoid revision (I'm never particularly good at that) I've been contemplating my website again, not entirely sure what format to take yet, and if perhaps a database backend would be the best option or not.

Also, it seems that the 6230 Bug list is growing. Most of them seem petty (for instance, I'd prefer it if phones didn't dial 999 with the keypad lock on anyway!), and when I'm back home I live 10 minutes from a place that will do Nokia sofware upgrades there and then under warranty. It took them 4 months to get my 8310 right anyway...

Finally, slept for 13 hours solid last night, for one reason or other my sleep patterns have been getting a bit bizarre, was up at 9 this morning and I actually feel awake.

Tehnical Note

Also, I got proper blog titles working finally, didn't see the setting.

Not Long Left

Three weeks today I shall be moving back home. It all seems to have come about rather quickly, and I can't think what's happened to the last 9 months here in Aber.

Still not sure what I'm going to do this summer, but starting to get more of an idea that a masters at this stage is going to be expensive - one of the funding sources that had been described to me has apparently dried up, which is a shame.

It's been a bit of an uneventful week really, since the Java project has been handed in I've sort of started on revision (well, ish) and also been contemplating a new design for burt.me.uk, however, I'm not really much of a web designer, so we'll have to see how things go.

Still got a cough from tuesday, too.

Hmm

Another not particularly productive day, spent most of today fiddling with web stuff (yes, I've acutally started re-working burt.me.uk (I want to make it look a bit less tellitubbie(sp?))), generally being ill (I'm still coughing from this cold thing I've had all week) and just fiddling, really.

This week is reading week, and really, all I want to do at this stage is relax a bit, and perhaps quietly go through some past exam papers

Testing blockquotes

Reaching Normality

Things are again starting to go back to normality. Orange agreed on friday to send me out a new sim card, for free, and seemed confident that I'd be able to upgrade to the 6230 on the 31st.... Starting to look forward to having some modern phonefeatures for a change :)

Went for a bit of a drive early this evening, and stopped to take a photo of what I thought was an old schoolhouse, however, when I was there, noticed a whole load of sheep staring at me throught a low fence... As I crept forward they all moved away, however, they were _all_ staring at me... took a couple of photos, kinda hope they come out like I want them to... (Using quaint film camera)

Also, it's getting to the time of year when I'm going to have to start to think seriously about next year's options. Need to decide if I want more education or a job, and at the moment I'm sort of erring towards a job.... maybe.....

In other news

Orange have just decided that they can forward my calls and set up my answerphone, so i'm happy for the time being while they organise a new SIM for me... which is apparently with their technical people...

Also, my printer has just been replaced by samsung after that started playing up (but that's another story)

Shit Day

Oh what a crap day today has been.... At about 3-4pm ish my phone decied to display "sim card rejected" which it sometimes does due to some sort of software error, so I restarted the phone in the hope that it would get it back to normal, however, on being re-booted it decided that once i had enetered my PIN number I should not be allowed in.. After trying the SIM in another phone and getting the same error I noted that it was probably the SIM card that was bust, and so accordingly borrowed (nermal's phone and called orange customer services...

The bloke I then spoke to at customer services tried to blame the fact that my sim card was supplied with my old phone (an orange SPV that I didn't have very long about this time last year) and therefore might not be compatable with my 8310 (at this point I was scratching my chin) ok, they had to refer this to their "technical department" which is fair enough, but they wern't able to tell me when they would get back to me, they said they couldn't forward my calls (a tad inconvient when I'm on the look out for jobs) and they couldn't set me up a PIN so I could activate my voicemail to say that I was temporarily not on this number (ditto). During the call, the "customer service" agent also mentioned that it might help if I could put my sim in an SPV and see if the error occured, so I scoured the local phone shops.. one of which luckily had an SPV and instantly diagnosed my SIM as faulty after trying it and getting error 262144 - convenient

I then phoned customer services again using my old pay as you go sim from my post contract days in 1999, with which they told me that I should redial "07973 100 150" - their contract customer support line, however, upon trying it this number is not available from pay as you go phones!... at this point i was getting rather pissed off as you can imagine... ok fair enough it takes them a few days to sort out a sim failure, but -

• They can't forward calls from my contract phone to another without the phone being operative


• They won't allow me to change my answer phone greeting on my contract phone by calling CS - it has to be done from the phone - which I can't do with a broken phone

At this point I was quite pissed off, and after my 5th call (intially to PAYG customer services) telling them I was unable to call customer services, asked for a Port Authorisation Code (PAK number) so I could transfer my phone number to another operator (...O2 offer the 6230 now, unlike Orange).. and was told "sorry, the PAK team close at 8pm"... at this point I went very silent and I know the person I was talking to realised I was pissed off, however, due to their shit system she was unable to help me...

First thing tomorrow morning this is going to be expressed in a formal complaint letter.... It's a shame to be on bad terms with Orange after so many years of faultless service... :/