-
Submitted an electricity meter reading, and the website told me I owed twenty-one thousand and something pounds. I knew energy prices were rising, but not that much!!!111
My theory is that somewhere the off-peak and peak readings of this Economy 10 meter got mixed up, such that it looks like I’ve used so much electricity that the meter went to 99999 and started counting from 0 again. But I definitely haven’t. Kafkaesque.
Their online contact form freaks out and makes you start from the beginning, reentering your account number and address etc, if you dare to use a proper apostrophe or quotation mark (which will happen if you’re sensible enough to type your message in Notes.app in anticipation of this happening). But eventually I figured that out, and we’ll see what happens next. By the way, these energy wallahs are the same ones who were in the news this week for suggesting, in a marketing email, eating ginger and snuggling with a pet as alternatives to heating.
-
Someone pointed out a deranged Spectator Life article entitled “The joy of cold houses”. I’ve spent time in cold houses, enjoy a jumper, but being cold is miserable and actually there’s nothing joyful about fuel poverty.
And here’s the thing: I’ve slightly met the author, actually had tea and marmalade-buttered brioche at their holiday house in France in the summer, what have I become. What’s more, I remember seeing on their stove a clever heat-powered fan that’s supposed to distribute heat more evenly around a room, and I thought how clever, I might get one of those for someone (although in the end I didn’t).
-
Some work.
-
The DfT has been replacing the NaPTAN data service (what might simplistically, if not quite accurately, be called “the national bus stop database”). I’ve listened in to the public meetings over the past year, and at times they’ve been almost dramatic, as well as asking deep philosophical questions like “what is a bus stop?”
The latest milestone is switching off the old service, which has implications for users of the data – not big ones, but I’ve used it as an excuse for making my NaPTAN-downloading-and-loading process faster and better, which of course I’ve left to the last minute like a tax return. As it happens, the switch-off date (originally 31 December, then pushed back to 14 January) has come and gone and still nothing’s been switched off, maybe the old system is actually too old and fragile to switch off, or maybe they’re just waiting till Monday.
-
Cancelling a Browserstack subscription is fiendishly difficult. Browserstack is actually a useful service, a justifiable expense, especially considering the 50% discount available if you threaten to cancel, but seeing their dark “user retention” patterns made me resolve not to give them any more money, and I’m here to tell you that you can, if you’re determined enough, cancel your subscription.
-
-
To the theatre, to see Stewart Lee. Someone had complained that tickets were all sold out, as I think they’d been when I checked a while ago, but I had another look and lo there must have been some last-minute cancellations. What a novelty to see a live performance within walking distance of the front door.
I previously saw the same show not quite two years ago, and parts have been rewritten, and others I’ve forgotten, since then. It was good to hear the cess material again, which I so enjoyed last time. The folks to my left banqueted their way through a great amount of salty snacks and tinned drinks, but that was OK.
-
The prime minister and his associates are arses, but this isn’t like a new side to them that’s been discovered, and I’m a bit bored by all the repetitive jokes – ha ha let’s courier some wine and cheese and a suitcase of wine to Downing Street, ha ha. But I suppose nobody’s forcing me to look at Twitter. And I did enjoy Tracey’s call 56 minutes and 50 seconds into Allan Beswick’s programme on Saturday (alas, you can’t link a timestamp these days), and also this bit of Friday Night Football.