Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race 2004

[ from the who-should-I-support dept. ]

I visited fumo and Hussein in London last weekend, for a random meet up essentially. We had food in Wagamama and ended up going to Putney for the Oxford/Cambridge boat race of 2004. As the news reported, Cambridge won and I care little about the outcome – it was an experience which was worth doing. Perhaps I should have gone to a BBQ with a friend at one of the markers along the route but there was not time to do everything.

On the way home from the boat race, Hussein and I met Paul (who was with his Brompton as per what now seems the usual situation for meeting him) outside Baker Street underground station and Hussein took a video of the assembly time for the Brompton. Perhaps I could have done something else in London but I felt like going home to read Horrowitz and Hill (hereafter often called H&H) again. I have re-acquainted myself with differential equations over the last week, and I followed through some of the fundamental proofs for RC circuits while on the train to work on occasion this week.

I spoke to BSM in Oxford about the theft of my debit card details and am still unhappy with their cavalier attitude and the time which was allowed before proprogating details to customers who might have been affected quite severely. Apparently my personal details were not compromised and the suggestion that computers were taken was incorrect (apparently the mid level management type I spoke to who is in charge of this farce was not aware that only keyboards had been taken and not whole machines. They also apparently are centralised with only effectively terminals installed in branches, but this was not made clear to me initially). I had already called the DVLA by that point and am going to consider what to do with the information that they chose to leave card receipts in the till machines overnight rather than in the safe which I observed during my protracted conversation with a reluctant manager who proved quite ellusive. I like my instructor but I think the BSM company (part of the RAC) need to really sort out their definition of customer service to some sufficient level.

I considered cycling earlier but the weather was not good and my neck was extremely painful and unable to turn to the right on Thursday. I am currently seeking a violin teacher in the Oxford area and this week am planning to look out for some more sheet music I can play.

Over the last six months, my mail server processed 182759 messages of which approximately 26,000 were manually marked as SPAM and an additional 2239 were filtered by my installation of a popular mail filter which needs upgrading to a version which is not the old one in Woody. I now estimate that I will receive over 400,000 mails this year and that more than 15% is SPAM. Since the bulk of this is from mailing lists which are already SPAM filtered then we are looking at actual signal to noise ratios which are considerably different and closer to 50%. Two mails were in my Impersonal maildir folder too long so please use my official mail addresses whenever possible.

Jon.


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