Vista

In the early hours of Wednesday 6th of January 2010 I placed an order with Marks & Spencer for 16 items of clothing, via their website. In order to keep delivery simple, I opted to “nominate” the following Saturday for receipt of the goods, even though it wasn’t the earliest possible date; at that time, the country was struggling with snow and I thought that it might be best to allow a few extra days for M&S to plan the delivery.

As per usual, I received an email almost immediately, confirming that I had placed the order. It also informed me that the order would be split into two deliveries but that both were still due for delivery on my nominated date. Although we had practically zero snow on the ground in our corner of Central London, the media and my colleagues assured me that the rest of the country was covered with the stuff so I wasn’t too surprised when, come Saturday, just the one package arrived, containing a single item. Disappointing but I was sure that the rest would eventually arrive, once the snow cleared up.

Four days later and still nothing (except more snow). And then two emails pop innocently into my inbox:

We are sorry let you know that the following item/s you ordered are no longer available.

…

Unfortunately, due to an exceptionally high number of orders placed at the same time, some popular items have sold out and we do apologise for any disappointment and inconvenience this has caused.

The out of stock items have been removed from your order and you have not been charged for them. All remaining available items can be viewed in your online account.

And yet I’ve just been on the site and ALL BUT ONE of these items is still available to order and listed as in stock in my size – in fact, for many of them the site goes so far as to reassure me that they have MORE THAN 10 of them.

It would seem that even though we’re supposedly in a recession, Marks & Spencer can afford to turn down business on a whim with barely an apology for wasting my time. Hardly the actions of a company that values their customers.

UPDATE: Re-reading this post, I realise that I left out a crucial piece of information – the items being cancelled were all 15 of the outstanding items.  Although M&S were very apologetic – they even sent me a bunch of flowers! – when I called Customer Services to arrange for the order to be resubmited, I was initially told that I would need to provide the size and colour information for each item (miraculously that data became available when I refused).  During a second call (which was made in response to my tweets) there was initially no record of the previous call and re-submitted order, which almost lead to a duplicate re-submission… So, although 1 blog post, several tweets and 3 phone calls (1 from me, 2 from M&S) later, my order finally arrived (13 days after I had first placed it), overall the experience was still a major #FAIL.

I recently had to revert back to using a 1GB memory card in my G1, since the 16GB card spontaneously corrupted.  Ever since, my phone’s been helpfully pointing out, at least once per day, that it’s short of storage space and suggesting that I manage my applications; by “manage” it means “delete”.

There are some apps that I could delete but I’m reluctant to do so because I like them and might forget what they’re called should I acquire a more powerful android device and wish to reinstall them.  There are others that I rarely use but do exactly what I need them to do on those rare occasions that I do need them.  Until now, I’ve been managing to hang on to the aforementioned apps by deleting apps that I’ve installed either because they looked as though they’d do what I needed but didn’t or simply because they looked shiny in the store but quickly dulled with use.  However, with Christmas looming, last night I thought I’d try installing the RTM android app – and it’s a whopper (~3.75MB).  I’m determined to give it a proper trial but this means that finally I’m going to have to get ruthless with the other apps.

As I shall probably wish/need to reinstall some of them at a later date, if not on this phone then another, here’s a rollcall of the victims of this cull:

The RTM app had better be good…

Belatedly:

• Mike Little (@mikelittlezed1) – finally!  Although better known for co-founding WordPress, Mike’s also a member of the ORG tech community, so I’d seen him around before online but never met in person.
• @_vixx, who really should get together with @mseckington sometime as they’re both game crazy :)
• Rhys Wynne (@rhysw1) – who very bravely hosted a session on localisation, with particular reference to Welsh
• Simon Dickson (@simond) – who presented an informative talk on how WordPress is being used by government in the UK
• Jeff Van Campen (@otrops), Rachael Furn (@calmbanana), Laura Kalbag (@laurakalbag), Gareth Tickner (@garethtickner) and Robert McKenzie (@m1xzg) for allowing me to join them in a WordHack, which resulted in  Mobile Kubrick.
• Tony Scott (@tonys) – for organising the event :)

Research has revealed a peculiarity about role models: if you’re a woman, gender matters.  Although any (good) role model is better than none, the effect is greater for women when the role model  is also a woman. Unfortunately, during the last decade the ratio of women:men in technology has decreased or – at best – remained the same in most regions of the world, thereby reducing the pool of potential role female models.  Ada Lovelace Day is an attempt to redress the balance by drawing attention to women excelling in technology.

It’s the brainchild of Suw Charman-Anderson, social software consultant and digital rights activist – if you’ve never heard of her before, here’s your first new inspirational woman!  Not only did she react to this depressing downward trend by having a proactive idea, she acted on it by publishing a website explaining what it’s all about, created a pledge so that people might register their support and then publicised the two widely.

Today, all around the world, people will blog about women in technology – and maybe you’ll discover a new role model.

Wow.  I finally did it.  Now, the question is, what do I write about..?  The general idea is that instead of writing a retrospective account of my fascinating and wildly exciting life, later, when I’ve forgotten all the good stuff, this blog will serve as a living record for all the family to enjoy/inflict on others.  This is wholly in keeping with the spirit in which this website was first created – as a means of passing on the family history using the power of hypertext and other modern magicks.

And, as everyone else seems to be deserting the field just now, I thought it was about time.

Ps. Merry Christmas! :)