eponymousarchon: (Default)
2009-06-23 04:00 pm

Small Ads: The 'as new' Palm Pilot.

Discussion about my previous small ads post reminded me of this:

Previously, the local small ads paper had a regular customer who was trying to sell an unwanted Palm IIIc (the first colour Palmpilot) for around 300-400 quid if I recall correctly. They obviously felt the need to justify that price as they explained that this was the sale price of this ithem hich was an unwanted prize and had been stored for years - and hadn't been used since bought. I beleive that the Small Ads gave you extra weeks if you couldn't sell the item, so the seller wasn't spending too much on this - as believe me, it really wasn't selling.

What the seller wasn't getting was that the Palm IIIc did cost the figure they quoted, but that was (mumble mumble) years ago!

Since then, you could get a current spec Palm that had
  • 4 times the pixel, count
  • an orders of magnitude or two worth of extra colour depth
  • 32-64 times the internalmemory
  • a 10x (or more) faster processor
  • An external card slot included
  • Bluetooth included as well as IRDA.
  • a Lithium Ion battery (and associated battery life instead of AA or AAA batteries
...for about half of the price that they wanted - brand new - and that was from Argos!

The ad was there for months and month and months. The inability of these sellers to work out what was wrong with their money making scheme was the cause of many exasperated conversations between myself and Kit.

Although it took months and months for them to work out that it wouldn't sell, but eventually one week the ad was conspicuous by its absence -- and the Friday Ads were never quite as annoying again.

I do hope they didn't manage to to sell it to some unfortunate person.
eponymousarchon: (Default)
2009-06-18 10:46 am

Blood. Pressure. Rising...

Nice article on the latest entirely unbiased anti-science, psychiatry  'museum' - and it's not the creationists this time. :/

http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=7752

Choice quote from article: "Psychiatry is behind eugenics, all acts of genocide, the Holocaust, and terrorism."... "There are enormous posters of patients in restraints, and models of evil doctors weilding their implements of torture."

Gah!

eponymousarchon: (Angled)
2009-05-27 11:27 am

Twitter spammers.

For heaven's sake!

He's called 'Shudogg Marketing'. He's posted exactly 3 tweets, all of which are spam and in 27 days of his accounts existence, he's followed 1475 other users.And in case you had any doubt remaining at all that he was a spambot, his 'personal name' is '0Rn056'!


So, why the hell have 434 users been dumb enough to automatically click 'follow'?!




eponymousarchon: (Dark)
2009-03-30 01:10 pm

Twitter*koff*Facebook

For anyone who's wondering what the fuss is about the new Facebook style, this post puts it down far better than I would, in a pretty well measured and reasoned post and if there's a certain amount of annoyance bleeding through, well, the author has probably managed to justify it in the post itself.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=57012358002 )




(Edit: I may be having trouble with the links - the full thing is c&ped in beneath the cut below in case the fixed links still don't work. Do go and have a look though - the comments and links qare worthwhile also.) 


Click here for the text of Shauna's article, as mangled by LJ... )



eponymousarchon: (Default)
2004-06-21 12:21 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

And he's been gone a while this time. Wonder if he's gone for lunch? Would be nice to know so's I could LEAVE THE BLOODY HOUSE TOO!

(grump) (grump)
eponymousarchon: (South Park Archon)
2004-05-21 10:30 pm

Back from Honeymoon... [Update]

So, I'm back from honeymoon with my new wife, the synonymous [livejournal.com profile] kyte And (in extreme summary) The wedding was just about perfect and the Honeymoon was damn wonderful - More thoughts to follow at a later date.

But, Goddess, did the real world decide to reassert itself on our return:

Firstly, we arrive home from honeymoon (via Shona's birthday bash and Andy's Eurovision party - good times and lots of fun) to find that the entrance to our apartment building

['Apartment building' - that sounds lots better than 'block of flats', doesn't it?]

to find building site signage ('Hard hats to be worn' and worse) and barriers blocking our way. Ignoring these, we got home to find out that, in our absence the sewerage pipes in the building basement had exploded and everyone had been moved out! No water or drains use allowed. :( We stayed there that night and were put into what the peep from the Housing Association told us it was a 'B&B'. He lied! It was a nasty nasty hostel from HELL for the next night. Yukyukyukyuk.

The saving grace was that we only had to spend a night there before being allowed back. Yay!

Secondly, the Council Tax people had been having a paddy over us daring to miss a payment while we were in the middle of Wedding-preparation-panic and had sent us a warning (while we were in sunny bratislava, mind you) telling us to pay up in full *now* or expect the Bailiffs round.

Talking to them on the phone produced not a single drip of humanity so, taking my own advice, I trumped up in person to embarrass someone at the council offices this afternoon.

Jesus are those people cold! I tried to explain all the circumstances and how getting married was a one-off event and wouldn't be exactly be getting in the way again in the future. Nothing, nada, zilch. It took me explaining that we could afford the monthly payments, but not the whole amount and frankly getting myself into a state in front of them to squeeze any concessions. To wit: If we paid three month's tax now, they'd rescind the 'final' (and also the first) notice) THIS TIME, but woe become us if we slip again, our head would be on the chopping blocks, et cetera.

Anyhow, we were thence naughty people and got our wrists appropriately slapped, and the day got much better from there.

Bleugh!