David Carrington

I love replying to misdirected emails. Here’s one that arrived in my personal inbox today:

Dear Mr Carrington

After looking through our files for your property ##########, I noted that the gas safety had expired. I contacted Mr ###### (who carried out the last gas safety) and he has reported that the ‘diverter valve is not working and needs to be replaced. Unfortunately he is not qualified to do this. I do have a plumber who can do this work and carry out a gas safety check at the same time. Please may I have your instructions.

Regards
Catherine Cutts

And my response:

Hi Catherine,

Thank you for looking into this. I’ve contacted my colleague, Doc, and he was able to resolve this with the aid of a flux capacitor.

Regards,
David

This morning I dreamt of being in an old car. I was in the passenger while my brother drove and my dad was in the back. I have no idea what brought he following dream together:

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I’ve always been a big fan of smartphones, especially from HTC. I currently own an HTC BlueAngel, Touch, Diamond, Dream (G1), and now I’ve ordered an HTC Desire to match.

This morning I posted to Twitter:

T-Mobile want to charge me £170 to upgrade to an HTC Desire. Yet another reason I’ll probably switch to Vodafone next month.

£170 for the upgrade, on a contract that was already costing me about £30 every month? No thank you very much.

People can say what they like about Twitter but it’s great when I start getting responses like these, it makes it a great place for me:

gavinlew: speak to @vodafoneukdeals for a good deal on a htc desire – there is a nice guy called Ben who is helping me out

artesea: if you want I can get you 30% the line rental on any (standard) tariff. Makes £35 a month only £24.50

VodafoneUKdeals: We can do the Desire FREE on 18 month 300mins unlimited sms and data for £30 all in [and] artesea’s staff discount would still be available on the £30 offer saving you even more! :-) ^BH

After a quick chat with Vodafone’s Web Relation team, they knocked that £30 monthly contract down to £25 and signed me up. With any luck, artesea (Ryan Cullen) will still be OK giving me that 30% staff discount too.

Here’s a random graph I thought I’d put together just for the fun of it:

Hooray for the interweb!

Back in my first post about MW2 builds I focused a lot on the SCAR assault rifle in combination with scavenger perk. While I do still feel that’s a strong combination, I’ve found myself drifting away from scavenger and more towards OMA (One Man Army). Here’s my current builds:

Ghost: Silenced UMP45, claymores, stuns, OMA, Cold Blooded, Ninja
Loud: TAR-21 FMJ, claymores, stuns, OMA, Stopping Power,  Sitrep
Anti-air: Silenced TAR-21, stingers, smoke, Sleight of Hand, Cold Blooded, Ninja
Long: M14A1 Red Dot, claymores, stuns, OMA, Stopping Power, Sitrep
Bang: SCAR w/ nade launcher, semtex, smoke, OMA, Danger Close, Sitrep
Rush: Silenced UMP45,  semtex, smoke, OMA, Lightweight, Ninja

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Today our company marketing team tweeted about Drivers to be fined for leaving engines running, which is essentially a UK scheme to cut down CO2 by fining drivers £20 if they refuse to turn off their engine when requested to do so – e.g. when loading.

It reminds me of the common practice in Switzerland where only the first handful of cars at a red traffic light are allowed to keep their engine running.

That actually makes a lot of sense to me:

“In Sweden, individuals have long refrained from engine idling when stopped in vehicle traffic. In Switzerland, there are laws that you have to turn your engine off if you are waiting at a red traffic light. In other European countries, permissible durations of engine idling vary from 10 seconds to 3 minutes. Italy and France allow 10 seconds, while drivers can idle for 40 seconds in Germany and 60 seconds in Holland. Several cities in Taiwan have banned engine idling effective in 2008. Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore allow 3 minutes of engine idling in any one-hour period. Fines and enforcement measures varies country to country.”

from Unnecessary Engine Idling

Strangely, this is my first post talking about cars after working for a car company for three and a half years!