Ever have one of those days where nothing seems to go right? Well, when it comes to Arriva and the 55 bus route they provide in Letchworth Garden City, that day is every day. Whether they’re treating their customers like the scum that feeds upon the scum of the earth, attempting to hit and run them, driving recklessly, ignoring timetables, or generally being dicks, they never cease to undermine their company slogan “Raising the bar in customer service”.

Tonight, the god-awful ’service’ came to a head, and I finally sat down and wrote a complaint. I’m turning it into an open letter here.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I write this evening to make a complaint in regards to the driver of the 19:09 55 bus to grange estate. I have, in the past, managed to overcome the urge to complain, however, tonight was the straw that broke the camels back.

Your slogan is “raising the bar in customer service”, however, regularly and without fail, your buses fail to maintain their scheduled timetable, usually arriving and leaving their scheduled stops up to 10 minutes early. This is especially bad at the letchworth station bus stop, where I have come out of the station at 1900 to see the 55 going by. At this point, my only options are to attempt to beat the bus to the bottom of the road as it completes its loop, walk home, or take a taxi.

This evening was one of these occasions. At 19:04, as I crossed the road to the bus stop, the 55 arrived, ejected some passengers and waited for a few seconds - I can only imagine to allow the driver to massage his timetable so that it isn’t obvious to whoever manages the drivers that he’d completed early -, at this point, I believed - naïvely as per usual - that he would wait at the stop until 19:09 and then proceed.

What actually occurred, was him closing the doors as I was within 25 meters of the stop - walking very close to the edge of the pavement so as to make him aware of my presence -, and then beginning to pull away. At this point, my blood began to boil, as this is a regular occurance, and I stepped into the road to block his way and flag him down. At this point, your driver motioned me out of the way and accelerated towards me while mouthing the words ‘fuck off’. Fearing for my own safety at this point, I jumped out of the way of your bus and took a taxi home at the cost of £5.

I’m not really asking for compensation at this point, although, that would be nice. In fact, I’m moving back to London in part because of the awful bus service you provide - no buses on sundays, no buses after 7pm -, which makes it impossible to do anything after work without walking for miles, or paying for taxis.

What I am asking for is this:

1) Reprimand the driver of tonight’s 55 bus. At the very least, suspend him, and re-educate him on the fact that he is only there because buses can’t yet drive themselves. He is not God, and he doesn’t have the right to risk customer lives. I’d honestly rather see the guy get his ass canned or moved to a different service that I don’t have to endure.

2) Fix the clocks on your buses - there’s obviously something out of whack there, when the rest of the world believes it’s 19:05 (or 19:00…) and your bus drivers believe it’s 19:09.

3) Implement a policy whereby the buses may only run to their timetable or run late at every stop. No making up time, no departing stops 5-10 minutes early just because no-one happened to be there at the time. Driving a bus isn’t rocket science.

4) Hire someone to do an audit of tachograph cards to match mileage vs time to see exactly how awful your ’service’ is.

5) Hire some bus drivers who understand the concept of a smile and customer service. Sure, it’s a shit job, but, they applied for it, so they ought to be able to apply a feign happiness and a smile when dealing with passengers.

That is all.

Kindest Regards

Also, should you ever need to make a complaint, first write it in a text editor, then browse to http://www.arrivabus.co.uk/contact-arriva/ - the page has an insanely low session timeout. In the 10 minutes it took me to write this, my session had been killed. Now I get to fill in their ridiculous form again. Ever heard of an email address Arriva?

I’ll be making another post should I ever get a response from them… their contact page responded only with this:

Thank you for contacting Arriva. We appreciate your feedback. If you have asked us a question we will try to respond within one working day. If you have made a comment that we need to investigate further, we will do our best to get back to you within ten working days.

It’s dark. The sky, illuminated by the lights of London, glows orange, highlighted only by the eerie lightness of clouds.
In the distance, the growl of industrial machinery dully cycling can be heard, but, to her, the only thing she feels is that of being enveloped by Sigur Rós, while the smoke of a cherry flavored cigarillo passes through her lips… and for the first time in months, she can say she’s truly happy.

It is a design feature;
Steve Jobs collects the souls;
So cutting peoples wrists on the MacBooks;
Means quicker soul harvesting.

Also, I need a sticker for my new MacBook… one which reads “Built from aluminum tempered with the charred, crushed skulls of pretentious mac users“

Someone asked me earlier tonight whether I was feeling festive… my response sums up exactly how I feel about this time of the year:

Festive… me?  No, that’s the last thing anyone would accuse me of being in December.
I’m averse the spirit of christmas as it is these days - an excuse to push capitalism in everyone’s faces, a social requirement to buy things you can’t afford for people you barely see the rest of the year and probably don’t like.  It’s sadly just another way to force people to take loans that they can’t repay, and push people to commit to responsibilities that, at any other time of year they couldn’t fulfil; I find it a sad social commentary that such importance is placed on making that single day of the year meaningful, when in fact the demand for it to occur in a pre-defined way on a pre-defined date merely serves to make it completely insignificant.

Wouldn’t you much rather have someone give you a present at a completely random time of the year, for reasons other than social expectation, where it’s obvious that more thought than “How much money will this leave me to spend on the countless other people I have on my list?” has gone into it?

That’s not to say I completely reject it; I buy cards for people who I consider close, and I visit my family, but I’m happier once the event has passed and people return to normality.

Or, perhaps, entering it. Life is merely a construct, whether that construct exists solely within our collective consciousness, or individually, or on a cluster of computers that we’re plugged into while being harvested for energy makes little difference. Perception of this construct is individual, what one person sees and perceives is wholly unique to them, while you may find someone else who agrees with another’s description or view, it will never be an exact copy. It’s one of the many things that makes life interesting, and the very reason that psychology is such a difficult field to categorize, the purpose being to attempt to slot everyone into pigeon holes, based upon a certain set of criteria, and then use that knowledge to ‘fix’ them. I digress.

There are few things pleasurable or interesting that are not controlled heavily by governments, or by societal expectations. Salvia Divinorum (lit. Sage of the Seers), is a member of the Sage genus and the Mint family; it is one such currently uncontrolled thing. Salvia was relatively unheard of until recently - I’m sure the internet helped with this somewhat - existing only in small, cultivated patches in Oaxaca, Mexico, and has been used by Mazatec Shamans for what I can only assume must be millenia. Militant religious groups - among others - around the world are currently pressing government bodies to add Salvia Divinorum to the list of ‘good things that we don’t want anyone to have because it allows them to escape from what we decide their reality should be’… in English, they want to make it illegal to use and/or possess this plant.

My interest in Salvia Divinorum and its primary constituent, Salvinorin A, is an extension of my fascination with the world of the arcane.

There are some things I should note, Salvinorin A is not a party drug, it is not something that you pop as a pill, it is much more than that; the plant itself, only exists today because of the Mazatec people who cultivate and tend to it; as such, it deserves much respect, and should be revered. I highly recommend reading about the beliefs of the Mazatec people in regard to this herb before trying it yourself. I can also recommend The Salvia Divinorum User’s Guide as a great source of information to get started with.

I ordered a 10ml bottle of tincture, flavored with peppermint to mask the odorous taste, and in the two days it took to arrive, did a lot more research on the best setting and frame of mind to be in while taking it, along with traditional ceremonies performed prior and after. When it finally did arrive, I must admit that I was over-excited; this is most certainly not something which will give you benefits without respect given. I tried 5ml (according to the dosage guide that came with it, this is a very high dose), in the middle of the day, and beyond feeling a little heavy in myself, experienced nothing.

Tonight, having learned much from my botched attempt, I meditated for an hour, and then - with a slight assumption that the tincture must be weak - took the remaining 5ml. I was unsure what to expect, I find that no-matter how much you read online, as I said earlier, everyone is unique. Laying on my bed, what felt like an eternity passed, and I felt myself slowly losing contact with my physical body, strange visions drew themselves on my eyelids, impossible to focus or describe. My ability to judge time completely left me, in my head, I would have assumed a mere 15 minutes had passed, at most, in actuality, it was nearer an hour. Unfortunately, my reason for knowing this was due to not having turned my cell off - it rang, twice, so I ended up being dragged out of my trance and had to answer it.

At this point, I had assumed from everything that I had read, that what I had experienced in that time would be all I would experience. Most people speak of the effects not lasting more than about 30-45 minutes, so having turned my phones off, I lay back down and resigned myself to a botched experience.

All I really remember, waking up 2 1/2 hours later, is a feeling which I can describe only as having my existence attached to a dimmer switch, and someone slowly fading me down to insignificance. Waking up, I felt dazed and confused, as if I had just regained consciousness after a general anaesthetic and after a few minutes, my brain slowly re-engaged with my muscles and I was able to step out onto my balcony for air and a cigarette. Standing there, gazing out across the sodium horizon, a feeling of peace washed over me, the demons that had been plaguing me badly for the past few months have gone, and I can think clearly again. Many people say that an experience in which you remember nothing afterwards is not desirable, or useful; in my humble opinion, I got what I desired - the two things I had asked for while meditating.

My plan is to buy a Salvia Divinorum plant, to cultivate and care for myself, and later, have a milder experience in which I can learn things about my subconscious and possibly make my demons disappear permanently. I can’t help but feel my respect for the old ways is justified.

I had planned to keep this thing entirely tech and interesting stuff only, however, right now, I could use some place to vent, and this seems as good a place as any.

Being single has its charms; no, really, it does.  Singledom goes very nicely with being a social outcast; I control my own schedule outside of work hours, and am free to play computer games and generally be geeky.  There is a limit to these charms, however.  It’s been two years since I last heard the words ‘I love you’ uttered by someone other than a very close friend or a family member, two years since I gazed into the eyes of someone I loved while laying together, two years since experiencing those crazy little moments that pass so quickly, where life seems so perfect, two years feeling alone in the world.

Call me crazy (it’s okay, you can, I really am insane. The doctor said so.), but I hate experiencing things on my own; going to museums, walking in parks, going to the beach, going out for a meal… in my eyes, these are all things couples do, so I don’t do them.  Partly to avoid seeing people in love - it’s not jealousy, just acceptance of the truth -, and because it all seems so gray.  I love discussion, so experiencing things, and not being able to talk about them, hear what someone else thought, seems pointless.

I’d love to be social… be one of those people who can walk into a room full of strangers and immediately start talking to them, making new friends, getting dates; that’s not me though.  I’m the quiet one who sits and watches everyone interact, wondering why I find it so hard,  I’m the one who leaves after 10 minutes because I feel overwhelmed, I’m the one who browses the missed connections… hoping.

It’s funny how far you can fall in two years.

Life is funny that way.

I can only assume that Tower Hamlets council is made up of people who have an IQ of less than 75. At least, the council tax department is, from the experience I’ve had with them thus far.

I live in an apartment, it is nestled on the 3rd floor between countless other apartments, where other people live. There are a couple of businesses here, but they’re in one of the other buildings, and no-where near to me, so I was a little surprised to find a “Non-Domestic Rating Demand Notice” both back and forward dated, for my council tax.

So far, I’ve tried calling the number for their offices, which seems to be constantly engaged - I guess they figure that if they leave the phone off the hook, then no-one will want to get in touch with them (similar logic to how they decided that my apartment is a business premises as far as I can tell) -, and the appeals number on the back, which went through to voicemail.

Tomorrow, some poor person in the council-tax department is going to wish they’d called in sick today, because the level of incompetence displayed here has really pissed me off.

I’ll no-doubt update this with further revelations of just how much a London Borough council can fail at their job.

Between the screams of needy children, and the louder more aggressive screams of their parents, it’s easy to begin to lose your grip on sanity as you walk through the check-in gates of an airport. Often, you require special skill to navigate between those who feel it is both normal, and safe, to push luggage into the path of oncoming pedestrians, or indeed, those slightly over-size folk who prefer to step into your path at the last second, then feign annoyance when you walk straight into them.
I like to think of myself as well travelled, there are many places in the world that I can check off that big list of places to see before you die; some nice, others… not so nice. What has always struck me, is the nature of people within airports - it really doesn’t matter which airport it is, where in the world it’s located, or the time of day. As long as there are flights outbound, chaos will ensue. We may be a people of technology, however, as yet, I have found none capable of mitigating the way people turn as soon as they need to be somewhere. I could describe the atmosphere as akin to ants, moving great swathes of food back to the nest, sadly, it really isn’t that civilized, or for that matter, organized. Perhaps describing it as a thousands of soldiers, all of which are fighting in a great war with each other, and all on opposing sides to each other meeting in a neutral place. None of them really know how to respond to each other - there are looks exchanged, glancing blows as they pass, and raised voices. Sometimes, there’s even overt violence, though to this day, I -luckily- haven’t witnessed this.
If you manage to get through check-in safely, you’re then presented with the security area, which is designed to prevent terrorism, ostensibly. So far, the only thing I’ve seen security do is serve to further enrage the people being herded into lanes to be probed. Most of these people are either sadly inexperienced as to the workings of wholesale travel, and the “security” that comes with it, are first time travellers, or perhaps wish to cause themselves as much pain as possible.
Personally, I have a system, I check-in, having done that successfully and offloaded my checked baggage, I then head outside for a final cigarette, as these days most airports no longer have a sealed smoking room. This also gives me a few moments to compose myself, and prepare for the sensory onslaught that is to come. As I walk back in, towards departures, I begin my preparations for a smooth trip through security - I _always_ take hand luggage, whether I need it or not, it is essential for an easy ride through security. Now, obviously, there are exceptions to this rule, if for instance I’m travelling with one bag, and all I have apart from that is my wallet, passport, boarding-pass and cigarettes, then I’ll just walk through, throw that into one of their boxes, and collect it on the otherside. However, looking around me - people watching, if you will - I have counted 1 (ONE) person so far who is in that situation of having no hand baggage. Most people have a decently sized bag, a jacket or heavy coat, a book, a newspaper, a drink … the list goes on ad nauseum. The jacket is mistake #1 for these people. There is absolutely no conceivable reason on earth - barring the extreme, of say, the airport being evacuated due to fire, or “terrorism” - that you would require or wish to have your coat with you inside an airport. You don’t need it to check-in, you don’t need it while waiting in the departure lounge, you certainly don’t need it on the flight - and this raises another pet hate of mine. If you have your damn coat on the flight, wear it. Don’t put the fucking thing in the overhead luggage compartment. You chose to bring it, you bloody live with it, you don’t take up space by shoving it in there like it’s an extra piece of hand baggage. -, and I garuntee (money back, statutory rights not affected) that you won’t need it before you’ve collected your checked-baggage at the other end. So, WHY exactly do they all insist on bringing it with them? Why not put it inside that oversized suitcase which contains every possesion you own, that you’ve already paid excess weight charges on, and STOP carrying it around the departure lounge as if it were some shield against demons. Anyway, enough ranting about jackets, lets get back on topic. Security. As I’m walking towards security, I’m removing things from my pockets, and throwing them into my hand baggage, by the time I’ve done that, I’ll be just about at the entrance to the security area, and will be removing my belt - if I have one -, along with my coat, if god forbid I couldn’t fit it into my checked-luggage (usually in this circumstance, I’ll buy one in whatever city I’m flying to, and forgo taking a smelly jacket with me. If I have boots or shoes with metal in them, those come off too, and when I get to the conveyor, I neatly place what I have on it, and then step through the metal detector. As of today, I belive I’m about 50 for 50 clear step-throughs - a perfect score. Sure, there have been a few occasions where I’ve been asked ‘do you have a laptop in there?’ or ‘what’s that odd looking object?’, but I’ve never had my bag torn apart, and I’ve never been wanded. There really isn’t some kind of secret to it, it’s all about being prepared, and equally, about body language.
Let me put it another way; let’s take Joe Public as an example - he’s that same person who has his large hand baggage that should really have been checked and is going to cause issues for the flight attendaants when they attempt to close the overhead compartment, he also has his book, his bottle of soda, a newspaper, and of course, his coat. At this point, he’ll be wearing his coat. Usually, though not always, he’ll be with his wife or girlfriend, and they’ll be in the queue waiting for the security queue to go down and for it to become ‘their turn’. The security office will hand them a small container, and ask them to place their belongings into it. Enter stage left mistake #1. At this point, there is a delay of about 2 minutes, while Joe Public and his partner take their coats off, attempt to empty their pockets - they’ll miss something, I garuntee it -, and then begin forcing all of this into one of the small boxes. During this time, both begin to sweat profusely, partly because of everything they’re having to do, and mostly because they’re embarrassed that they’re now the same as the people they were so vocally whining about 5 minutes previously.
The raises two questions to the security folk - #1 What was the reason that they ignored all of the instructions telling them to remove all their belongs BEFORE getting to the desk, and #2 Why are they sweating, do they have something to hide?
At this point, it’s game over, Joe Public steps through the metal detector, and the item he forgot to remove sounds it. He sweats even more, looks sheepish and gets taken away for a wanding, or, if he’s really lucky, a body cavity search. His partner steps through, gets cleared for that, but now has to deal with the slew of questions about objects in the hand baggage and ‘would you mind if we take a look in that bag sir/madam?’. Panic ensues as they realize their significant other is about to be anally abused by a mean looking guy who doesn’t understand the word ‘lube’, and what could have been a very simple process has descended into a world of pain and chaos.
Back to where I started, once you’re finally through security, you arrive at the departure lounge. The whole place is built especially to screw with your head - again, it doesn’t matter which airport it is, they’re all exactly the same. The TV’s that tell you which gate you need to get to for your flight are all strategically placed so that you cannot see them from any sitting position - this encourages churn, and means that people exchange the low number of seats that are available, rather than all just sitting down and never moving. This also causes the interesting side effect of mass exodus within a relatively quiet area about once every 30 minutes. I put it to anyone, next time you fly, arrive a few hours early, and go sit in the departure lounge and watch what happens. Without fail, you’ll get this odd movement pattern, where everyone will ignore the first call for their flight - because they can’t see it -, then suddenly, half the seated people will stand and begin fighting their way towards the TV screens to figure out what gate they need to be at, before charging like stampeding bulls towards whichever gate it turned out to be. Everything could be so much more civilized, if airports provided better information-transfer mechanisms. Though, that said, with the seemingly low IQs of most of the people who form that stampede, and fail their security checks, I’d be suprised if it actually made much of a difference. On a completely different, but very mean closing sidenote, I hope they charged the woman sat diagonally across from me for the two seats she’s going to use up on whatever flight she’s taking.

It’s unfortunate, I should have known by the low price of the item - $20 under retail -, and the (at the time I ordered it) single negative feedback saying a buyer hadn’t received their item.  The thing that strikes me, is the audacity of the guy, Amazon is not a small company, and I doubt it lets people slip under its radar when they make a goal of taking buyer’s money, and not shipping the product out; I guess the seller must be a little slow - in the IQ department, not in the shipping department.

Since I paid for my order back on the 30th of may, the guy has received several pieces of negative feedback from people who’ve paid and not received anything, and I’ve sent off my request for a refund and assigned his debt to Amazon so they can reclaim it. His feedback profile is here, thus far I’ve decided it’s best to not leave feedback until I’ve at least received my refund from Amazon.  On the bright side, he no longer has any items listed on the market place, so perhaps Amazon is listening to its users and is in the process of terminating his marketplace account.  I can but hope.

That title really wasn’t supposed to sound as phallic and egotistical as it appears to be.. it really is huge. No, really, it is. Okay, I’ll stop. Last week, I got my hands on a Dell XPS 730 H2C, and then spent the next day (i kid you not) reinstalling it, and making it function properly. I read many reviews online about it before picking it up, and I believe that some of them were… set up. In all cases, they claim that the machine comes with nothing on it, bar 3dmark06, and that the configuration it ships with is just fine for gameplaying. That really isn’t the case - or perhaps I just have really bad luck; that, or the UK market makes things worse. In any case, having spent a good several hours installing games and other software, I found that most were unplayable - black screens, crashes, slow FPS. Blowing it away was the best, and worst, thing I’ve done thus far. The biggest bone of contention was getting CrossfireX to function afterwards - it’s very new tech, and being ATI, there is zero output from the Catalyst Control Center with regards to crossfire (they decided it would be a good idea to remove the check box for it on HD3870X2 cards).

I discovered, somewhere on the internets that the way to get crossfire functioning correctly is to remove a card, install the driver, reboot, install the second card, reboot, connect the crossfire connector, reboot. It worked. I shit you not. 90FPS in crysis, biotches.

Unfortunately, and here’s where things go downhill entirely, the fan management on this thing is less than adequate. ATI wholeheartedly believe that GPUs don’t need their fans to run while under heavy load; that’s about what I can figure at least - the fans are completely manual, they do not engage automatically. I have to run rivatuner if I don’t want everything to crash horribly with massive graphics corruption.
Dell appear to have followed suit, giving zero control over what the fans are doing, except by way of the nVidia ESA Control Panel, which is pretty awful at controlling anything - except for the LEDs. To top that off, today, 5 minutes into playing Neverwinter Nights 2 -hardly the most intensive game- I leapt from my seat as a nuclear launch sequence kicked in, every fan in the thing went batshit insane, air-raid sirens sounded, the ground shook -okay, so it wasn’t quite like that.. it certainly seemed like that at the time- I bring up the system monitor (thanks nVidia), and find out that my CPUs are hitting 212F (100c for you metric folk), and discover to my horror that the “Front CPU Fan” (read: Radiator Fan - it’s watercooled) is not running, at all. It has been told to run at 100%, but it’s doing absolutely jack shit.

Dell give you a nice tool kit, and a nice pen with a torch/laser built into it; now I know why. I stripped the thing down to re-seat all the wiring for the overly complex cooling setup, and this took me about 45 minutes to do. The radiator itself requires the system to be drained if you want to lift it off the radiator fan to get to the wiring that comes out the back of it, and the control unit for all the cooling/extras sits neatly behind that, a huge air intake and the front drive bays. They also use self-tapping screws into plastic, which is evil if you actually want to be able to put what you take apart back together. The radiator fan is still dicking around, ignoring calls to increase speed by the system from what I can tell through the system monitor, however, it is at least running now, and efficient enough to keep the CPUs at 104F (40c) during normal load. I think perhaps I shall be giving Dell a call at some point to get this fixed properly. It’s a lovely system, looks mean, is mean, plays everything I throw at it at 1680×1050 and max performance settings without even blinking. I’m still unsure whether it’s worth almost $7k though.