Googlewacker and America crosser Dave Gorman has being trying to sort his broadband out this week — he’s written up two accounts of his dealings with BT tech support:

I kept hearing the following phrase:
“Your case has been escalated to the complex faults team but due to a system error the task has failed.”

I kept asking the helpdesk staff to explain what this ridiculous sentence meant. On every single occasion, they just repeated the phrase as if repeated listening would make its meaning transparent. Then, when locked in a two-hour conversation with one of them and having long reached a state of tetherlessness I started trying to break it down.
“What is the system? What is the error? What is the task and how has it failed?” I asked.
“Due to a system error the task has failed.”
“Yes. But I don’t know what that means. I need you to explain the words to me. What task has failed?”

Guess what? What it meant was: we’ve sent a message to the engineers but due to a cock up, the message hasn’t got through.

It goes on…

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No seen this before.

Just testing the WordPress iPhone app.

More info.

Had one instance of a bug that meant you couldn’t get back to the draft post after trying to select a category. If that happens you lose your post.

No spell check.

It is a ton better than any customised web interface I’ve seen, but not quite there yet.

Google Street Map Car - Moseley, Bimingham UK Originally uploaded by bounder

While I’m sitting working, what should I see out of the corner of my eye than the Google Street View Car. Breathlessly excited, I rushed to get my camera — luckily I’m in a cul-de-sac so I knew it was coming back.

I stood on the doorstep and without time to focus or zoom snapped a few shots as it went back past.

It flashed when it was about level with me, so I guess I’ve been mapped.

I’ve spent a good hour or so reading the brill History of Lamasoft by the Yak Jeff Minter himself, and then reliving some of his spectrum classics. The great Psychedelia especially.

“I called the program a “light synthesiser”, and advertised it as a new, non-competitive form of entertainment… no enemies, no killing, just light and colour.”

It’s available to run on your modern machines,emulated of course.

I wrote a quiz for WordCampUK, the picture round is 20 “famous people” to identifiy — I thought it was worthwhile to pop it up on the net. So here it is (PDF link) - answers are on page two, and link to somewhere on the net that should explain who they are if you’re not sure.

I tried to upgrade to the new iPhone, I was up at 8am trying on the O2 store last week — it crashed, it was slow, and when I finally got to order there was absolutely no confirmation. Turns out I got a text yesterday saying that my order was received after stock ran out, and I’d get a new phone “soon”. Still, never mind I thought - the 2.0 software update will be something good.

All over the internet yesterday was talk of the Apps store, and the fact that you could download the 2.0 upgrade if you followed a link and did it manually. I held off until about noon today when the update was officially available to us in the UK — if anything went wrong I wanted to be able to follow the instructions exactly.

Plugging in, I selected “update” left the room, I knew I’d be nervous and it was best not to look.

The update failed with an “unknown error”. Then a restore failed. I know have a phone that says “emergency only” and shows to connect to iTunes.

I connect to iTunes and get a message that says :

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“Could not complete your iTunes store request … error -9838″.

And that’s where I am.

I’ve had iPod or computer troubles before, you kind of get to live with them and look stuff up on the internet, or book an appointment at the “Genius Bar” and wait.

But this is not just my iPod, it’s my phone. And to a large part my business too.

Apple, O2, f-king EPIC FAIL.

• 12:11 thinking about writing up yesterdays’ Tim Berners Lee talk — do i write up the talk, or the ideas? they’re very different. #
• 12:44 #brumbloggers how does Thur 24th Aug grab you for a meet-up? #
• 15:07 rambling blog post on Tim Berners-Lee talk yesterday is.gd/P80 I now _think_ i understand the Semantic Web, but we’ll see #
• 16:36 seems one of my iPhone orders got through. i’ve just had a confirmation email <dances round the room/> #
• 17:24 Have found a way to keep the BiNS blogroll updated from Google Reader, need to sift my actual reading list for rubblish now is.gd/Pgi #
• 17:59 a photo of the internet flickr.com/photos/bounder/2652540665/ #
• 18:39 anyone know what’s happened to the Birmingham Polytechnic blog? I liked Ronald’s musings #

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• 12:11 thinking about writing up yesterdays’ Tim Berners Lee talk — do i write up the talk, or the ideas? they’re very different. #
• 12:44 #brumbloggers how does Thur 24th Aug grab you for a meet-up? #
• 15:07 rambling blog post on Tim Berners-Lee talk yesterday is.gd/P80 I now _think_ i understand the Semantic Web, but we’ll see #
• 16:36 seems one of my iPhone orders got through. i’ve just had a confirmation email <dances round the room/> #
• 17:24 Have found a way to keep the BiNS blogroll updated from Google Reader, need to sift my actual reading list for rubblish now is.gd/Pgi #
• 17:59 a photo of the internet flickr.com/photos/bounder/2652540665/ #
• 18:39 anyone know what’s happened to the Birmingham Polytechnic blog? I liked Ronald’s musings #

Squidged out by LoudTwitter

• 22:18 blogging on train FAIL. Went through a tunnel whilst publishing and now the post is tuck in published-but-not-there limbo. #
• 12:11 thinking about writing up yesterdays’ Tim Berners Lee talk — do i write up the talk, or the ideas? they’re very different. #
• 12:44 #brumbloggers how does Thur 24th Aug grab you for a meet-up? #
• 15:07 rambling blog post on Tim Berners-Lee talk yesterday is.gd/P80 I now _think_ i understand the Semantic Web, but we’ll see #
• 16:36 seems one of my iPhone orders got through. i’ve just had a confirmation email <dances round the room/> #
• 17:24 Have found a way to keep the BiNS blogroll updated from Google Reader, need to sift my actual reading list for rubblish now is.gd/Pgi #
• 17:59 a photo of the internet flickr.com/photos/bounder/2652540665/ #

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