sampsa.com

Bella = O2 customer services monkey
Bella: Sampsa, I've just noticed that your password is not update on the account.
sampsa: you mean it's expired?
sampsa: is it still my pet's name? i think i gave the wrong answer earlier
Bella: The secret question is "Name of your pet"
sampsa: right, that's fine
sampsa: i gave the wrong answer, i have a few standard questions i use
sampsa: i dont think it needs to be changed
Bella: Yes, do you want me to update that for you? It will be easier to gain access to your account next time.
sampsa: no, that's fine, i just gave you the wrong answer
sampsa: they're both X letters long
Bella: No you don't need to change the question. You just need to update the answer.
sampsa: ok
Bella: Do you want me to do it for you or would you like to update it yourself online?
sampsa: but the new answer will be the same as the old answer right?
sampsa: this makes no sense to me, sorry
sampsa: when did it change?
Bella: The answer can be the same however its blank right now. It wasn't changed, it just got erased.
sampsa: just for your information, i'm an information security consultant
sampsa: i develop security systems every day
sampsa: and this is insane
sampsa: ok, let's update it
sampsa: why do you randomly erase passwords?
Bella: Its not normal, I'm not sure of the reason. But I will defenitely check it for you.
sampsa: seriously, this is bad. not filling me with confidence
sampsa: but let's update the answer, the pet's name should be set to *******
Bella: And you are free to update it your self online.
sampsa: since i'm here, just set it for me please

I recently dusted off an old VM image I had built of NEXTSTEP, complete with UUCP and various bits and bobs.

Here’s an action shot of it connecting to Pyffle HQ:

It’s connected to UUHECNET via UUCP and will form an integral part of our upcoming project, The Unix Farm – more details on this will be available later.

This will sound like a stupid whine, and maybe it is, but this drives me absolutely nuts:

Back in the dawn of the GSM age, a bunch of wise men defined a standard with which to write telephone numbers in a universally portable way and named it MSISDN, commonly understood to mean “Mobile Subscriber Integrated Services Digital Network Number”.

Basically, it is a way of representing a phone number in a global way, which can be dialled directly on any GSM handset, and looks like this:

+35892005566

Breaking that down we get the + to indicate that this is an MSISDN number and then:

• 358 = country code for finland
• 9 = Helsinki
• 2005566 = the number

It’s a great little system, and works everywhere. Well it does until retards like one of my old bosses gets their hands on it, and decides to helpfully embed some useless extra zeroes in it for fuck knows what reason, turning his mobile number from 07928 5550011 into:

+44 (0) 7928 5550011

End result? Much borkedness. This will not work ANYWHERE, as the devices try to add the zero into the number dialled, and obviously get a “Number doesn’t exist” error. God damn idiots.

PS: If you want to see REALLY fucked up numbers, look no further than France. They seem enamored with the concept of sprinkling random punctuation marks all over their phone numbers, viz:

(0033)3.21.32.46.09 (This is a restaurant called Esperanza in Wimereux)

WTF?

Sometimes it’s useful to know synonyms for commonly used terms, for example, some useful synonyms for the “President” of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak include:

• الكلب
• الكذاب
• الطاغية
• القاتل
• الخائن

Hosni ibn ash-Sharamutah Mubarak