oday we travelled to 3 places (quite distant from one another). One of them had a beach-like feel to it, but Manchester has no beaches, the closest one can get to that are the reservoirs, the boat canal, or the port-like structures in Salford Quays. They’re not too far from central stations, the weather was perfect (blue sky, but not too hot), so we made the most out of it and everything went smoothly for Rianne’s birthday.

9 years ago on the same date we stayed in the centre of Town, but not this time.

Next up we have the September 2024 [1, 2] counterclaim anniversary, then our wedding anniversary, followed by an anniversary in October, another one in November, and then my birthday in December, exactly a week before XMas Eve.

Lots to look forward to. We still need more rain.

wrote to Evri today, early in the morning to be more specific, opening a second ticket after they had made an error by automation. Finally, after a week, I received a reply. Only after opening two tickets and further chasing the first (unhandled) one.

However, it seems to be a template and it refers generally to a lost parcel incident, which isn’t even remotely what this was about! So I wonder if this too is a bot reply. Notice the generic (no name) signature:

Update

260817-046188

Hi Roy,

Thank you for your reply regarding parcel reference .

I’m sorry to hear your parcel still hasn’t been located and I have escalated this with the courier’s manager to be investigated and to ensure this doesn’t happen again. We will try to retrieve the parcel however at this stage it is likely the parcel is unfortunately lost.

I’m sorry that this has happened, we will liaise with the sender to inform them of this outcome. I would recommend you also contact them as it is within their gift to discuss next steps and consider the options available to you.

Once again, I’m sorry for the inconvenience regarding your parcel delivery.

Kind regards,
Evri Customer Services

From what I can gather, they send false bills to many people and hope that some fools will pay the false bills, knowing it would be cheaper than spending half an hour calling them and then spending a lot of money in phone bills (more than the “worth” of the false bill).

Just reading the above generic (and false) reply is itself further waste of time. It speaks of something that was not even reported!

he 24^th of August is Ukraine’s Independence Day, not just Rianne’s birthday. She happens to know someone born on the same day (same year, too, so literally hours apart) and she sometimes sees her.

The birthday of Ukraine represents freedom from Russia or USSR.

Who would excuse the occupation of Ukraine by Russia and why?

wrote something yesterday and it is something that seems to have attracted attention. My point was, sometimes the court says “you won”, but in reality it’s a bit like poker face (crossposted for emphasis with another title). Sometimes the judge knows upfront no money will be paid, as it simply cannot be paid, but then follows the procedures to set the records right for the court, not for parties. That’s just how the system works.

There’s an anecdote here. Someone cited my article (also from yesterday) that said “life expectancy of a new car is now 7 years”.

He said that “about 20 years ago, a dealer tried to cheat my dad out of a particular lifetime guarantee. He, fortunately, had all the receipts even through they tried to prevent him from that by attempting to “forget” to give him the receipts several times, forcing him to stay and press the issue. However, having all the receipts, there was no way out for the dealer which even tried to buy the car from him, with increasing offers. The dealer eventually took the matter to court. Technically they lost, and had to honor the lifetime guarantee. But in reality it became a major victory for them because the court decided that the lifetime of a car is 7 years from then on. Setting the definition of lifetime of a car at 7 years, established a throwaway culture for the vehicles and rewarded negligence by the dealers…”

So what sort of outcome is this? As an aside, regarding “modern” cars (that physically cannot long): “Proprietary firmware and other forms of technological obsolescence will only worsen that. Proprietary diagnostic APIs being among the worst. Once the last of the independent mechanics are gone, watch out!”

The planet has processes, but not all human processes lead to all parties – if any – being happy. Sometimes only the lawyers win (fees, bills).

ne week ago I wrote about Evri going really rogue, run by bots, and getting very basic things very wrong.

I tried hard to find contact details, I then opened a ticket about it, confirmed to be opened (by receipt).

Now, after a week, not a single person has acted on it.

They have just sent another automated nag to my wife on her birthday.

Yes, their bots bother her on her birthday and nobody there even deals with the ticket!

This is an insensitive and dysfunctional company with no person to speak to.

Avoid.

adopted Gemini Protocol 6 years ago, a year after it was conceived. It has since then worked OK and several of our team nowadays manage capsules. The community has grown and people who read Geminispace have joined IRC (which is also nowadays managed by several of us; it is a neat little project of ours).

Last week Techrights served 305,682 Gemini requests – that’s more than the usual – and I began thinking about having a Gemini capsule for this blog as well. This is still something I’m seriously considering as a project.

At the end it’ll probably boil down to how often I update this blog. I could host the capsule from home on a Raspberry Pi 4.

oday I became aware of a site that goes a long way back and is run by a person I know and follow. It’s “a new age website I started in the late nineties that at one time had about 10,000 articles,” she told me. Along the side, in the sidebar, it says “Now on FOSS Force” (so the connection is not hard to see).

It’s good to see how she separated political writings or personal opinions from her coverage of FOSS.