It's this time of year – a rant

Hiya again

This is my blog and I feel I am allowed to post what I want, right? So, if you don't want to read a wee rant, go away and come back some other time. I love you and I don't want to upset you.

But maybe I'm not the only one who can get quite worked up about a few things, so allow me to blow it all off.

First of all, I've been having some really interesting e-correspondence, texts and telephone calls from and with Scottish Gas (who, of course are British Gas, but that's a different story). As you know, I recently moved house. At the old place I was a Scottish Gas dual fuel customer – "the nation's largest domestic energy supplier" loves the likes of us, because we are particularly easy to please and get money out of.

Fair's fair, despite promising stuff they cannot keep – at least not in this area, which according to one Scottish Gas gas engineer, requires a ferry to get to (I suppose he lives on the Isle of Bute or on Mull or maybe on Skye) – I wasn't too unhappy with them so decided I would take Scottish Gas with me to my new place.

Everyone tells you to switch energy supplier if you're not happy with what you get, right? Well, I suppose I should have left well alone, closed my Scottish Gas accounts and take out a new account with their big competitor in this area, Scottish and Southern Energy (which also isn't Scottish at all any more, but that's a whole another story again).

Well, after I don't know how many phone calls and messages and confusing texts that never stated which account Scottish Gas were talking about, I now have a form in hand that asks me to submit my meter reading. The only thing is, I submitted my meter reading on the 8th of December, twice in fact, because an e-mail had come in asking me to do so and then a text message came in asking me to do the same (or was it the other way round?) – anyway, you get the drift. I even sent them a link to a video clip to show them the kind of electricity meter I have at my new place. I was assured by e-mail that all was well and they had received the readins. So why do they ask for it again?
We'll see how this wee story ends. I so don't feel like sending them my meter reading a third time!


My second wee rant is about lovely, generous, intelligent, communicative and well-meaning friends who post out their Xmas letter by e-mail.

Now,before anyone gets horribly offended and crosses me off their list:
I LOVE LOVE LOVE getting Xmas emails and retrospectives of how these old friends of mine or that family spent their year. I really do! It's a great way of sharing news. And most of the time I even manage to respond within a reasonable period of time.

But some e-messages are so overloaded with huge photos that they take an hour to worm their way into your in-box, choke up everyone's internet connections, fill server space to bursting point – and then they get a message back from someone who tells them they didn't get it – and what do they do? They send those gargantuan files all over again!

Today I received a warning from the server that hosts my website and my e-mail inbox that I was running out of server space – I have gigabytes available there and religiously clear unwanted stuff every day – it was those two humungous mails that clogged everything up! (I've only ever had this warning once before – guess when that was: that's right, mid-December, oh, about year before last.)

Other lovelies get filenames all muddled up – the most blatant is "xmas letter 2010.docx.doc" – no wonder their friends can't open it – their computers are getting all confused.

And finally, how about using a meaningful filename that actually tells the receiver what it is and who sent it? I'm getting maybe six, seven such e-letters and none, but none of them have a really distinct filename. So they sit there and I'm confuseder and confuseder the longer I look at them.

If you read this and are thinking about sending me a Xmas e-letter, please please PLEASE give it a name that tells me it's from you and from you alone. And just fill it with words.

You'll make my day!

PS: If you want to share photos and don't want to max out your printer – which I understand perfectly, why not post them to a site like flickr (as I do) or to your facebook page (as I sometimes do), or some such (I've only ever heard but never actually used photosharing, webshots, photobucket, so am not linking to them), and send your friends the links. So we can go look at them at our leisure. You never know, you might get comments on them in about three years' time, when the likes of me stumble over the link again and decide this is the moment to check'em out. Imagine your surprise! :)

Or create a blog – it will almost certainly be more beautiful than this one, promise!

Rant over – thanks for listening. You're a wonderful friend. I mean it.

Peace and Love and Health and Happiness to you and yours.