To Be Frank …

What a way to spend the October Bank Holiday weekend (just gone) … laying wooden flooring all over the ground floor of our new house. The living room is almost 20ft * 12ft. The hall and dining rooms are smaller … but because of that are harder to floor, as every other board needs to be cut to fit.
All in all – it looks great … and there’s only a few bits of edging to go down now before it’s completely done. I’m happy with the finish – but happier to be finished !!

Linuxant – the company that did the (albeit closed-source) Linux drivers for the connexant winmodems under Linux – have produced Driver Loader (TM) as this press release explains.

Effectively it allows windows drivers to be used under Linux for hardware that – as yet – has no native support. Well done those guys … maybe – just maybe – we’re seeing the start of a vendor-driven model of driver development !

Not sure if you already have one, but someone at work is selling his digital camera off cheap as unfortunately he will be staying in hospital for a long time and doesn’t need it, would you be interested? If so I can pick it up and send it on.

To get an idea of the picture quality, this is the last shot he took with it.

In Kent over the weekend to visit the little brother (Joe) who just got engaged to the lovely Victoria – Congratulations to you both

Anyway … Joe collected us from Stansted (thanks to Ryanair for the 1c each way flights !) and we drove to their house in Ashford. The M25 was (as usual) bumper to bumper, so Joe proceeded down an alternative route to avoid the worst parts (no avoiding it completely !) and as we were driving along there was a sign for a Secret Nuclear Bunker … not just one sign … but about 10 … it was signposted for more than 5 miles each side !

You gotta wonder !

The government abolished the First-Time Buyers Grants last year – fortunately we made it in just before they did … which was good. Effectively, you applied when you signed the contract, got a letter back a few months later, and you sign, date, and return that when you get into the house.
They then send an inspector around to see that yes – you are living there (that’s part of the restriction on the grant) and issue the cheque once he certifies that …

In most places a process like that would be reasonably fast … especially considering it’s a new estate, and most people seem to be buying their first houses!

So, since we sent in the confirmation form ages ago, I decided to phone the department. It’s going to take 16 weeks before we even get the inspector out, and probably another three to four weeks before the cheque is issued. Which means the money we were relying on to cover some basic costs (think fridges etc) is now not going to appear before Valentines day if we’re lucky !

Ah well … only in Ireland !

It seems that the Eircom site definately gets the award for the most confusing site of the year !

I just had a call-back from one of the nice eircom people to tell me that I didn’t need to fill in my CC details on the site, unless I was purchasing a cordless phone from them … ???

Anyway … it’s on its way to being sorted now … if they’d only get their fingers out on the subject of cabling !

Well … it’s true … we’re definately the e-arsehole of Europe …
I used eircom’s website www.eircom.ie to order a new phone line on the 15th of September … about three weeks ago. The process involves filling out a form online, submitting your credit-card details, pressing send, and getting no acknowledgement.

Well, until yesterday, when I got a letter from them, asking me to pay half the installation fee upfront by cheque, agree to their T&C and sign a direct debit mandate.
I’ll happily agree to the T&C (they’re reasonable enough), and reasonably happy to sign the DD mandate (it’s that or pay a €150 deposit !), but eircom want me to pay for something I already submitted payment details for.

The letter of course, was dated the 22nd, and arrived 10 days later due to a typo in the address, which they initially refused to change. But the CreditCard thing irks me somewhat … The reason I decided to use that was that I didn’t have to worry about the cash being in my bank account!

Of course, no-one in Eircom knows of the requirement to submit CC details when ordering online, and one of their reps suggested that the CC number has disappeared into the ether … I certainly hope not !

More to follow – I’m sure !