WYRMLOG

Found in Space - Again

Thursday November 19th 2009

By the time a species achieves interstellar flight it has usually developed a sense of aesthetics so refined that exposure to poor design causes nausea, lethargy and (in extreme cases) death. As such the post-humans of Nova Eritrea had long divested their culture of all but the very highest in art and architecture, and had no inkling of the dangers contained in the ancient data device they found in a derelict spacewreck orbiting a nearby star... A year later fourteen billion Nova Eritreans were dead, taken by what the chroniclers would call "The Plague of the Lovely Lady Lumps".

-- Boing Boing 100-word fiction competition — "Found in Space"

Found in Space

Wednesday November 18th 2009

When the joint European probe finally arrived at Lagrange Point four most commentators expected to find at least something. Interplanetary dust. A few rocks. Maybe even some ice - although almost everyone agreed that was a long shot. What we didn't expect was shoes. Eight of them. Not pairs either - single shoes, floating idly in the gravitational void. Once the initial shock passed, the ESA set it all off again by announcing that they each had a dessicated human foot inside. Well, all apart from one. They said that contained a bear paw, but I mean - come on - that's just crazy...

-- Boing Boing 100-word fiction competition — "Found in Space"

Can on a String

Monday November 9th 2009

I'd just like to say that Vodafone suck.

Well OK, maybe I suck a bit as well. But the end result is a big ball of suck which is rather pissing me off, and as Vodafone are the bigger target I'm going to blame them.

A while back, after a dinner date with a friend was almost totally screwed up by the fact that I wasn't contactable, I reluctantly bought a mobile phone. I went with Vodafone for reasons that I can't quite remember, but seemed sensible at the time, and until recently have had absolutely no problems with them. But a while back my credit card expired, and a couple of weeks after that my phone ran out of prepaid credit...

To use a credit card to top up your Vodafone prepaid credit, the card has to be registered with Vodafone. No problem, except that it's apparently impossible to register a new credit card when you're out of credit. Making a call - even one to a Vodafone support number - on a creditless handset diverts you into Vodafone's recharge system, from which it is completely impossible to get to any option allowing you to register a new credit card. Attempts to do so throw you into an endless loop of account options, the only way to break out of which is to admit defeat and hang up.

After dealing with this nightmare a few times I had the bright idea of calling customer support from my landline. This worked up to a point - the point where I was put through to an operator with an accent so thick I could barely understand a word he said (I think he might have been a Romanian who was taught English by a native Irish Gaelic speaker who learnt the language from Billy Conolly DVDs).

He asked me a series of questions, starting with the basic name, date of birth and address. Then he asked me for my PIN number. Now, sure, this is something I really should know, but I don't - which is the reason I was calling up customer support rather than going online to register my credit card number in the first place.

This wasn't a problem, because there were a bunch of other questions he could ask to confirm that I'm who I said I was. For instance what "fodo-eyed" did I use to register the sim card? After some backing and forthing I figured out he meant "photo id" and told him I used my passport.

He checked his computer and said sorry but I didn't use my passport - which came as quite a surprise to me since it's the only photo id I possess.

But that was OK, because there were other questions he could ask. Like what were the last three numbers I called? I checked my handset and discovered they were to my parents, and to Vodafone's support number. He checked his computer.

No, apparently those weren't the last three numbers I called.

But that was OK, because he could instead ask me what plan I was on. I said I had no idea but it was the basic prepaid one. How much did I pay the last time I recharged? I said I thought it was about $30. How much credit did I get from that? I said about $100. And when did I last recharge? I said I thought it was some time in August.

Apparently none of that matched with my account. But that was OK because there was one more question he could ask. He brought it up on his computer...

...and then couldn't ask it because the computer wouldn't tell him what it was.

Having exhausted all his options he said the only thing I could do was to take the handset and some photo ID into a Vodafone shop and they could register my new credit card there.

Fantastic. So I now have to drag myself in to a Vodafone store and produce identification just so I can pay them money. Hooray!

Honestly. I'd be better off with a can on a string.

Fly Season, Beetle Season

Wednesday November 4th 2009

The fly season is on us again.

Way back before Europeans screwed things up, Australia didn't really have a problem with flies. Water being scarce down here, animals didn't waste it on excrement - kangaroos and other native animals generally produce small, dry pellets unsuitable for flies' purposes. The only place flies could breed was in animal carcases and while there were enough of these to keep the flies in business, there were never enough to let them breed up to plague proportions.

Then the Europeans turned up and brought with them all those water squandering northern hemisphere animals like cows and horses and sheep - which wandered around the continent dropping big steaming pats everywhere. The flies thought that they'd died and gone to fly heaven and Australia became a place where you couldn't open your mouth in summer without three or four dozen of the damn things plunging in and trying to claim your lungs in the name of all flykind.

After decades of this kind of thing the government finally decided to do something about it. They engaged in years of trials and careful testing (we at least learnt a lesson from the cane toad fiasco) and eventually a species of small, inoffensive dung beetle was imported from Africa and distributed across the country. Confronted with massive piles of excrement that the ecosystem was totally failing to deal with the beetles thought they'd died and gone to beetle heaven and got on with what they do best - rolling it up into balls and burying it.

Result? Fly numbers plummeted and summer became bearable again.

Except for October.

You see the flies start breeding in late September. The dung beetles don't start breeding until late October. This means that for one month of the year the flies are back in force and we all suffer.

But hey, at least we can comfort ourselves remembering that all of summer used to be like that.