Week Fifteen Why I Ain’t @ Gadget Show Pro Day Today! (F-bomb alert.)

A very select crew showed up to the Portsmouth Sextons JL Audio event and one couple even eschewed chewing the Pizza! That lass is definitely a keeper, mate! The only couple who came, were both ‘˜car guys’. She loving her Japanese high power jobs and Scoobies, him more into his audio.
I did go out and proper test the sat nav in my new ride as described last week, on a 13-fisheries trip and found it pretty good. But whereas the Smartnav Trafficmaster-as-was system I had in the old car would take a fishery post code and somehow put me damn close or all but on top of my rural location, the set up in the Ovlov needs a street number or intersection to be specified before it will do any more than tell you that you have arrived when you get to the end of the ‘˜destination road’. In the Boondocks, this can be some distance off
And talking of destination roads I think I have reached the end of thirty years plus with BT as my telephone and Internet providings company. Here’s why: I changed to an Apple computer and had hilariously grisly changeover teething issues. I honestly think that a kaizen for Apple would be to add an idiot-sheet the same tiny single page size as the dinky wee booklet you do get, that is added optionally at sale only for those changing culture. This would explain to the convert-from-PC where the fucking hash symbol is hiding (it is alt/3, god knows why, with no ‘˜#’ symbol showing on the keys of the keyboard!) and the basics of The Grande Difference from PCs. So, I used the Apple help lines, which are fabulous and you PAY for the use of, in advance, with your machine.
However, there is a paid-premium number and a freephone one as well for Apple support. The premium one starts with 0844. My BT account had marketed me a service that covered 0845 and er.. another single prefix of that kind. Thing is, I have a pathological loathing of being hoodwinked. And Obfuscatory Marketing got me. My five hours (yes, some was spent waiting but Guru-san was right, they are the Kings of Support – at a price) cost me £17.50 I needn’t have spent, had the weaselly premium rate-deal-thing not managed to bite my bum. It is SO not the money issue, that I am about to spend some more to buy out the contracted time until December that I signed up for with my BT Infinity hub. I had called and had a whinge and was treated really nicely but no mention of an acknowledgement, let alone a paltry £17.50 refund to get a thirty-year-served BT customer’s eyebrows less bushy.
And then the automated BT system to badger me to pay my overdue bill called and woke me up on Easter Monday morning. But there was no ‘˜pay in full’ auto option and by the time I had been hung up on, and finally reached a live human to pay upon wading through the damn system after calling them back, I was incandescent. I ended up being kicked upwards three levels until a promise for yet another manager level, which I was really not bothered about by then, was just another wait. They have special emollient customer-keepey specialists but that poor executive could not stay BT’s execution and just insulted me some more by trying to tempt me by wanting sell me a damn mobile phone line too. Mr. Branson’s Girls & Boys at Virgin Media have been papering our world with personally-addressed marketing, as well as street ‘˜Householder’ based stuff, since they ran their optical fibre up our road, two or more years ago.
Having at last gotten the MAC code to give to a new Internet Service Providings I can find out about the costs of phone, and net and TV, as the ruddy phone line is the really big thing the sellers seem to wish to buy the most of all.
Oh, and I am on the Gadget Show Live database!
Oh, and I am on the Gadget Show Live database!
Oh, and I am on the Gadget Show Live database!
Annoying in triplicate, isn’t it? For yes, I have been many times and yet the PR for the biggest pure tech show cannot keep a grip of a list of tech journalists. I applied for my sixth – or eighth press pass, got it and still received multiple entreaties to buy regular £20 entry tickets and others to invite me to apply for press accreditation, this very morning of what is Gadget Show Live Professional Day. And of course, those exhibiting are cool but I have horribly few that are relevant to Talk Audio these days. Well, I could go see JVC at the show or maybe go a tenth of the distance to the NEC and back, and visit JVC/Kenwood head office. I do get to miss making a clip of video or two with the simply telegenic Adam Weigleb but again, we can do that with the kit in a stand at CAS and I do avoid the NEC’s new lack of a hot meal catering and even avoid the one mile walk-plus getting striped for a tenner to park. (and I will get Adze’ undivided attention) Tragically, with that one other deadline, it added up to bad business to go to Brum today. And they won’t know or care, as you cannot even reply to any of the three e-mail addresses I have daft in my humble opinion. OK, bollocks to humble.
But here’s a picture of the winning entrepreneur design innovation from the show today. It’s a baby buggy and has no in-trundle entertainment for baby at all.
Adam Rayner On Line Editor