Week 113
Months ago, probably last year, someone from the water company left a note to say theyâd âexchangedâ the water meter, like I was meant to know what that means. It turned out theyâd installed a smart meter, which unlike a smart electricity meter doesnât come with an âin-home displayâ (IHD) but does automagically transmit regular meter readings to the water company (which is especially helpful cos the meters here are all locked away in a mysterious central location we donât have access to).
This week, for some reason, I became interested in (it would be wrong to say âobsessed byâ) looking at the water companyâs app, which is excessively theatrically secure (cos we wouldnât want a criminal to steal my phone and sneer at how much water I use or pay my bill for me), and which, in the absence of an IHD can, after a fashion, show an hourly water usage graph (delayed by a day or two).
Alarmed by the allegation that I use âmore water than other similar homesâ, Iâve been consciously using less water. Like, turning off the shower during the soap-and-shampoo application phase â yes, itâs a bit hard to turn the poorly designed tap with a soapy hand, but we donât do these things cos theyâre easy. It wonât save much money, cos most of the bill is a standing charge, but itâs a fun game, and a reason to feel smug about having a slightly smaller environmental footprint. One day, get this, I used just 45 litres of water.
I had some arancini for, I think, the first time (!). Of course Iâd seen Inspector Montalbano eating some before, and thought those orange balls look intriguing, and sure enough they are very tasty.
Some work.
-
You know in TransXChange documents when you have a
ShortWorking
in aStartDeadRun
? I was embarrassed to learn Iâve been mishandling those journeys â treating theDepartureTime
as the start of the dead run â for possibly years. Oh well, those structures are surprisingly rare â which helped the problem go unnoticed for so long â and Iâve fixed my understanding now. Cool story. -
Thereâs a problem with fraud in the internet advertising industry â you know, robots clicking on adverts. The robotsâ motives may vary from wasting advertisersâ money to making it look like website publishers are fraudulently clicking on their own adverts â thereâs a supposed extortion scam involving the latter.
This week, I noticed hundreds of pounds of extra clicks per day, all apparently from Germany â and that Germanity made me suspicious, because very few folks outside of the UK use a website about buses mostly in the UK. I found a bit of suspicious German traffic in the logs, which I blocked, but it made no difference. Then, as an experiment, I removed all the ad code from the website, and only the German clicks continued, proving there was nothing I could do â if I were a robot, Iâd put the ad code somewhere local, and edit my
/etc/hosts
to pointbustimes.org
tolocalhost
, and that (or something similar) seemed to be exactly what they were doing.The thing is, I havenât had any emails about extortion. I have now filled in Googleâs âInvalid Clicks Contact Formâ. Either I get to keep all the money, or I get banned from AdSense unjustly and have to explore alternative business models (get a proper job), or something in between, which is probably OK.