Still waiting (part 2)

The SOCO has been round and taken a couple of fingerprints – mainly mine, for reference purposes, but a couple of others as well. They’re not optimistic about it though, and neither am I. Now I’m just waiting for the landlords (it’s a rented property) to come and check the window so they can get it replaced/reglazed. The useless fuckers don’t have any way of contacting them in evenings or weekends, so it had to wait til this morning. Joy.

Still waiting (part 1)

Still no word from Wileys. Tiger-baiting is seeming to be more and more popular as an option. In the meantime, d4d™ zips past the 70,000 page impressions. Not bad going for 11 months in actions.

The cheque has cleared with 34sp.com so the new domain should be live in the next couple of days, with luck. Then I decide how much to play with the design…

Aftermath

Well, the police called round at 3am, to look at the window. Mainly just for the crime number for insurance purposes. All par for the course. He said that if lights hadn’t been on, he wouldn’t have knocked. I’m getting old – the policemen are getting younger.

A fairly sleepless night – the joys of the sofa. The kitchen window wasn’t secure, and I wasn’t prepared to take the chance on some little sod coming back while it wasn’t sorted. My eyes currently closely resemble pissholes in the precipitation.

A morning involved with a trip to B&Q, blocking off the window gap with chipboard and screwing it into place – lots of times – as well as two new bolts on the back gate. Also, making the door between the kitchen extension and rest-of-house secure. It’s ugly, and I resent having to put these measures in place.

I know I’m still ahead of the game – four years of living in a “high crime” area, and this was my first experience of a break-in. Actually, it was my first experience of a break-in. Full stop. I don’t feel the shock and feeling of invasion that people say about – it just seems like another pointless crime, a thing to do because well, why not? He’s left the house, gone to the shops – so lets smash a window and see what we can nick. Not even the IQ to get the batteries from next to the digital camera – an entirely pointless exercise.

It’s not my week

Well, I could almost suspect someone had a grudge against me. I came back from doing some shopping this evening to find the house had been broken into. Nothing special had gone – it looks like I’d disturbed them – but the digital camera (sans batteries) and the old mobile phone, with about 12p of credit on it.

The laptop was unplugged, ready to go, but hadn’t made it. Which was lucky.

I’ve spent the last hour informing the police, renewing the insurance (oopers), trying to get hold of the useless cunting landlord (and failing), letting friends know in case they didn’t want their dog running the vague potential of getting glass in it’s paws, cursing the fucked electric drill, and not much else. Joy.

Farewell, fuck off

With a happy wave of one middle finger, a la the new(ish) pointy man graphic, I’d just like to say that I’m truly pleased to see Section 28 finally leaving the books. I’d publish a guide on “Section 28 for Government Dummies” but I’d get in trouble all over again. Getting rid of this piece of shite has taken 18 years and should never have taken that long, but at least it’s gone now.

And about time too.

Jaundiced

Hmmm, knew there’d be a problem with the Free D4D™ campaign. All the sites I read are now yellow. Reading them at work is – shall we say – problematical. That doesn’t mean the entire thing is unappreciated – in fact I’m totally amazed by the number of people who’ve come out in support of this.

I admit, I really thought that the majority of responses would be akin to Peter’s initial response, “Well, you’ve known it might happen – now it has”. Yes, the Wiley Way was overly heavy-handed, completely out of order, and typically overbearing – interesting, though, to see that even their legal “profession” (I use the term loosely) has gone for the “shock and awe” style of tactics now. But to see the level of support that has been brought about, I can’t begin to express how amazed and grateful I am. (As a side point, d4d™ is now #16 on google if you do a search for “Kirk Bateman” – that’ll upset him.)

I’m yet to hear back from Kirky and his legal mavens. I still don’t even know for sure it wasn’t a hoax. As Iain pointed out, the IP address on the comments from Kirk was correct for Hungry Minds Publishing, owned by Wiley, owned in turn by the official Friends of the Internet&trade, Time Warner. D4D™ was definitely looked at three times by the wiley.com servers. I called the Wiley office, and got put through to Kirk. (At which point, I admit, I rang off – but there’s definitely a Kirk Bateman there) But if I can find that out, so can a hoaxer. At the end of the day, I don’t know how else to check whether it was a hoax or not.

I’m tempted to assume it wasn’t a hoax.

So – where do I go from here? Do I write another email to Kirky, wanting to hear more about what he plans to do? Do I write a formal letter of complaint to Wiley’s, and do I include a mention of the number of sites that have now altered themselves with regard to this cause? Or should I just stay quiet, not cause hassle, and wait for their response?

Lyle™’s useless fact

With a title nicked borrowed straight from Scaryduck (for dummies), I bring you this charming little fact-ette.

Did you know that if you pay cash into your bank account along with a couple of cheques, it can then take up to three days for the cash to “clear” into your account? Apparently it’s “because they’re both on the same slip, they all go off to be processed together”. Yes, that’s right. Cash. Taking three days to “clear”.