Be Excellent To Each Other

Definitely more nays than yays of late -

1) It looks like some bloke in France has scammed me out of £200 worth of stuff on my site. He's placed two orders in quick succession, and not long after the first has arrived, the card holder has reported it as fraudulent. The second order arrived with him today and I'm expecting the same result again. Judging by all the info on the card processing site, I might be out of luck, but I've provided proof of the order, postage contact and tracking info, so we'll see what happens
2) Sent 56 discs to be cleaned/repaired by an online service I'd used before, but now they've just stopped replying to my emails and no sign of the discs after a month, so they could be lost plus the £80+ I spent (and this time I paid via bank transfer so I'm not sure I have any options there)
3) Minor nay - had a phone call a couple of hours ago saying that my rotten window frame and door are getting replaced tomorrow (this is a good thing.. although it's taken six months) so I'm trying to clear some space at short notice. This is what my dining table looks like at the moment...


I'm steadily working on my anxiety and depression, but this stuff isn't helping...

That's awful news about the scammers! I hope you get some recompense.

Good news on finally getting the window and door sorted, it will be worth it when it's done.

Just take it one day at a time, and keep going. I didn't feel like I was ever going to come out of the other side of it - but I kept going and I mostly have now. Still have the odd blip, but recover more quickly and can actually socialise. :hugs:

Bunch of buggers. Is there a chance the disc cleaners have gone out of business?

Possibly. I haven't ruled out them being incompetent either. They were taken over by another disc repair company and I'd been exchanging emails with one of the blokes from the new place and everything seemed in order, so it's a little surprising that the contact has just stopped. I'll just assume the worst in this case and with the French guy and if anything positive comes from either, it'll be a bonus.

The scammers are utter gits, obviously. Particularly picking on small businesses.

Also, what Goddess Jasmine said. And (although I know from experience it's easier said than done), please try to notice and enjoy any small YAY!s, no matter how seemingly-insignificant.

Mimi’s joined the X-Men!

Just had a wisdom tooth out.

Not wise. I hope you feel better soon.

Looks like incompetency might have been the right answer after all. Last week I finally got an email reply from the bloke I'd been dealing with saying that the discs were posted and should be with me by now. No apology and quite a generic email so I felt I was being fobbed off. Except, today, a mere two months after sending my discs off, they've actually arrived! Haven't checked to see how good a job they've done on them, but at least I've had them back again.

Glad you've at least had them returned. 2 months though!

I

robot

Weird. I pocket-posted that.

This is, indeed, the biggest Nay here.

And once again, Dad's in hospital. Interestingly though, I spoke to my brother about him earlier and he said that there's a suspicion that my Dad might have Whipple's Disease. It's supposedly rare, but looking through the symptoms, it does describe a lot of my Dad's problems to a tee. Hopefully if they can come to a conclusion one way or another, they can start with the appropriate treatment.

For the second time in a few weeks, I have ended up in a conversation with someone who believes the media is brainwashing us, that they are 'awake' due to getting their news only from "a few trusted youtube sources". I fell into this one. He mentioned "the muslims" and how "they are trying to divide us" and I thought the latter meant the media (as in, paint them as the enemy), so agreed. Actually he meant the muslims are attempting to divide us, the west has spent years trying to be 'more civilised' and so on. The jews came into it, as well.

The first was more crazy, into 'disclosure', telling me which planet I was from and so on. But add to the second (Canadian) a few conversations with Australians who were interested in "sharia law in London" and it really does feel like people overseas have a strange view of the UK, and there is, as Stewart Lee put it, "a whiff of fascism in the air". If I get into the middle bit of America, I'm expecting to find more. Worrying.

Nay, Amazon. Nay.

I ordered four items for my Xbone X. Quantum Break, with this shown to me.



Noting free Alan Wake and all of the DLC for it. Yay, I loves Alan Wake me, I have completed it all. Game arrives, no Alan Wake, different cover. I leave 1 star feedback saying "Misleading". It gets approved and goes live. This is Prime, but with a different seller. So I then realise that due to my haste in pre ordering the Xbone controller (for my PC) before it even came out I got the poo pants rev 1 version with no headphone/headset socket. I looked for ways of connecting one, but it was £28. FFS £28 !! I then see this for £30.



With 3 months Live Gold free + an extra 3 months Live Gold free. I was dead chuffed. Amazon sent me an email linking me to the free Live, then I get there and it says out of stock. FFS. So I write Amazon a review also, but it gets denied for profanity.



Funny, because I see no profanity there at all. Cheating bastards.

Lesson learned, don't bloody order anything for Xbone on friggin Amazon ! I wouldn't even mind, but my Rare Collection (this)



Said "Order now for delivery tomorrow !" then switches to 28 Jun - 4 July.

GRRRR.

Amazon are getting increasingly dodgy when it comes to who you are actually buying from, and what you are buying, in my experience.
Their amalgamation of reviews can be confusing, I was looking at a new phone on there this morning, and all the reviews for all the models from that manufacturer are all on the same page. Unless you look closely, that can be difficult to tell. As a user, I'd expect to be able to go to amazon, pick a product, the reviews on that page to be for the product I selected, and Amazon to fulfil the order. That only seems to be the case for about 10% of the items I look at these days... It isn't clear who fulfils the order unless you know what you are looking for.

I'm surprised they can get away with it, to be honest.

Just complain complain complain; amazon love giving you free stuff.

Which phone were you looking at, we talk about phones a lot here at work (cause theres nothing to do) so I may've looked into it!

Hmm. Well I just tried the link again (three days after trying it last) and it appears to have worked. It was basically 3 months for £9.99 plus 3 months free (so 6 in total). Already bought a 3 month last night for £11 on CDkeys, so hopefully this 6 months will add onto that.

Honor 10. Not too sold on the blue colour though, and I'm not sure it'll do anything much better than my very ageing Note 3...

Edit to add: the only really issue I have with my Note 3, is that it is stuck on Android 4.3.

I actually have the Honor 10, you get a lot of phone for your money. Very nice phone there's very little about I dislike, but I've listed what I dislike/like below.

Pros
Great battery life
Great Storage capacity
Dual sim
Updated frequently (I've had 3 updates since I got it)
Great processor

Cons
The Screen literally is always covered in fingerprints.
It doesn't cope well with the direct sunlight because of the LCD screen.
There is a menu at the bottom of the screen with the home button, back button etc on - It gets in the way sometimes when typing cause I have big fingers

If you're just looking to do a cheeky upgrade and you're not too fussed about being all singing all dancing.

HTC has released the desire 12+ it's a pretty good phone for £200 comes on with android oreo on it too.

https://www.htc.com/uk/smartphones/htc- ... e-12-plus/

(You may even be able to get some cash off it if you trade in your old phone)

Nope apparently I got 3 months which won't activate due to a region issue. Have been through every device (two PCs and a XBX) and they are all set to UK.

Will try it again later directly on the console and see what happens.

Get a PS4.

I was about to. Then when I went to finish the order with Game it said out of stock

Looked around loads, but after you've been offered a PS4 Pro for £349 with two top titles it's kinda hard to swallow paying £349 for a bare console

I ended up picking up the Scorpio for £340, then bought FO4 first. I'm glad I ended up with the Xbox, because the PS4 Pro only manages 1440p in FO4 whereas the 1x manages almost 4k almost all of the time. I've been playing FO4 on my PC at 4k for ages now and the step down would've sucked a bit. Plus my pal had a Xbone, so I got GOW4 and we've been playing that.

PC days are most certainly over. I really can not believe how far consoles have come since I last tried playing FO3 on the 360. The 1x is amazing. Proper 4k Netflix, proper 4k BR. Shame about the browser (we won't go there) but I just love the interface of it and the media-ness of it all. It really is a Swiss Army knife.

I have decided to buy a new laptop.

Why is that nay?

Because it will involve a project in which I’ll have to investigate and compare makes, models, OSs, drive types snd sizes, retailers, etc etc.. There will be a lot of indecision, changes of mind, doubts about whether I’m making the right decision and getting the best deal.

Why put yourself through all that? Get a 360!

But the range of options, choice of manufacturers .... just saying I’ll go for a 360 is only the bginning of narrowing it down.

@Jem hook em up with he model of the beast you have.

That'll be a GazChap v1.0 but they broke the mould unfortunately.

"unfortunately"

My laptop is a Dell XPS 15. Dis one:
https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops ... 60-laptop/

It's pretty awesome.

I may be on the wrong track, but I expect that is a bit higher spec than Warhead is looking for

Tell us what you need it to do Warhead, we'll tell you what to buy!

We've got a pile of them at work. They're pretty nifty, but they weigh a fair bit. Also describing the screen as "virtually borderless" is a flat-out lie.

I need it for school work and homework, obviously.

Macbook air.

They're not borderline virtual.

Now then.

I did think about Apple, considering that my experience of Windows 10 to date (which is not a lot, tbh) has given me the feeling that it’s visual design was created by a 5 year old and it’s underlying objective is to make it do what Microsoft want it do do, not what the lusers want. But in terms of bang-per-buck, I’m not convinced it’s a step I want to take, but I haven’t completely ruled it out.

I wouldn’t be buying one at all, if my ancient Acer wasn’t now so slow that if Mrs. W started cooking Sunday dinner when I boot it up, she’d have finished and got it on the table by the time the desktop settled down.

360s look interesting, but I could be paying for gimmicks I wouldn’t really use. I’ve got an iPad that I use a hellovalot, but I can’t use that to add choons to my iPod, and it’s not as user friendly for editing docs and spreadsheets as the old lappy. As you’ve surmised, I’m not much of a game player, so I don’t a games machine spec ....

Me tea’s ready. I’ll continue l8r.

Yu can stick office on it.

Do you have a restore disc for the Acer?

No. In fact I’m not sure it came with one. I rarely get a chance to use it, as my son has monopolised it since he moved back in. It generates enough heat to warm the house, the battery’s knackered and as I’ve had it since 2011, I think it’s time to treat myself to a new ‘un.

I did look at the MacBook Air as a possible, but also the HP Pavilion x360 and the Dell XPS range. Different prices and specs, obviously, and I’d really like not to pay more than £1k, including MS Office cheap version, but I’ve got a bit of flexibility on the budget.

As to what I’ll use it for; a bit of word processing and spreadsheets, audio recording and editing with Audacity, i.e. I’m gradually recording my old vinyl prog rock library to import to iTunes and on to my iPod. Printing the odd doc (I have an old HP Inkjet that works perfectly well, but I can only print from the Acer, as it’s not wireless, but I could just buy a wireless one, I guess). Also, just the other usual stuff, web surfing, watching Rubbish on Youtube. Nothing very demanding, really, but as the new machine will be used until it’s screwed like the Acer, or I pop me cloggs, I don’t want to go really cheapo.

I've also heard really good things about the Dell XPS 13 and was something I considered before picking the 15 if that helps.

It does, thanks.

XPS 13 is about the best Windows/Ubuntu* laptop for that sort of purpose now. Obviously Macbooks are OK if you want to run OSX.

* it requires some effort and a little brute force.

Oh fuck off giphy

It kinda works, my Air runs windows and osx

Voting is closed and the results have been verified by an independent adjudicator.

And the winner is .......

Booooo!