I decided to purchase a three-year on-site warranty extension with next-business-day response time for one of the Lenovo systems I administer. I get this kind of extension for most systems that aren’t critical, but whose downtime would be inconvenient.

My understanding of the contract has always been that, assuming the problem requires on-site service, a technician gets in touch with you by the end of the next business day to agree on a time for the on-site visit. The contract does not guarantee that there will be a technician on-site on the next business day, but for two or three hundred Euros, that would be too much to ask.

However, it turns out that I assumed too much. First of all, Lenovo sells you a “next-business-day response time objective”, meaning that they aim to respond by the end of the next business day, but (obviously) can’t be held liable if they fail to do so. Apparently, they don’t even have to provide a reason for missing the objective.

What’s even more curious, however, is their interpretation of “response”: the term stems from the time when operators would log calls and technicians then processed the queue. Nowadays, Lenovo prides itself with “skilled technicians resolving more than 30% of all problems already on the phone”, so the technicians log the calls and then immediately respond to them.

According to Lenovo, it is thus completely acceptable and within the bounds of the contract if the phone technician logs a call on Thursday (and thus responds to it righ away), an the on-site technician calls to arrange for a visit on the following Tuesday, and the first available slot would be Friday — 6 business days after the call was logged.

I could not find any relevant information about this on their website, nor can you retrieve the agreement which you had to accept as part of the warranty registration later.

Of course, I am not surprised by any of this. The world out there seems to be full of asymmetric arrangements. I just wonder why we put up with them. I certainly don’t, and that’s why Lenovo is getting an angry letter from me with a reference to this blog post.

PS: in fairness, I should point out that I have been please by their support before, but have also questioned it in the past.

NP: Contriva: Tell Me When

During LCA2008, Ed Borland of Melbourne-based Triple R FM Byte Into It show took me aside for an interview and asked some good questions about Debian and my work on cross-distro collaboration. The interview was recorded and is now available as Ogg Vorbis file from the 14 May 2008 issue of Byte Into It.

I am looking forward to any feedback.

Thanks to Ed and Phil Wales for their time and help.

NP: Mono: You Are There

Dear all: I am not interested in social networking sites. Please don’t give them my email address for their invitation letters and email address database.

In general, don’t give them anyone’s address without the person’s consent. You never know what kind of abuse might happen with the addresses they collect.

NP: Gazpacho: Bravo

I am very excited to announce that Jonathan Roes has successfully applied to the Google Summer of Code 2008 and will be working on netconf over this summer. With his help, I am confident that netconf 1.0 in Debian “lenny” is no longer a dream.

Jonathan is a soon-to-be computer science graduate from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and his application was (by far) the most convincing of the ten I received. He has several years of programming and Linux experience and it’s quite obvious that he has understood the philosophy of netconf.

I am looking forward to working with Jonathan!

NP: Underworld: Second Toughest of the Infants

I just saw The Cure, supported by 65daysofstatic, to which we arrived late. But the organisers had a reason why they started early. True to the concept of a Cure concert, the band played three hours, and two minutes more. And boy was it good. It felt like they were having the time of their lives on stage. Flawless.

If you have a chance, see them.

After a failed attempt to fix Penny’s car speakers — taking apart the interior of a Ford is way harder than it should be, and of course we came out of the quest with the obligatory screw which wouldn’t fit anywhere — I bought a pair of portable speakers. The Logitech PureFi Anywhere convinced in terms of sound quality, and we greatly enjoyed them on our roadtrip.

Having bought them in New Zealand, the speakers of course came with a type I power plug, while most of Europe uses a type-C-compatible plug. The design is modular, allowing for the actual plug to be swapped, so I bought it anyway:

Back home, I contacted Logitech and asked them how to get the adapter swapped.

Their response? “It is not possible to obtain the modular plug separate from the speakers.”

Logitech uses a modular approach to optimise their product lines and ultimately, their profit, but they don’t deem it necessary to leverage the power from this approach to serve their clients.

Guess who won’t be buying Logitech products again! If you are considering their stuff, please think twice.

If anyone knows of a way to get at such an adapter, or has one to trade, or can help otherwise, please get in touch with me. Thanks!

NP: The Pineapple Thief: 137

On my way home from New Zealand, I spent a (Friday) night in Melbourne. Peter, Donna, Andrew, and Mark, all of whom I knew from LCA 2008, came out and helped me get away from the after-work-craze that filled centre city. Thanks to them, I found (and refound) a couple of places worth noting:

• The staff of Joe Taylor, a cute bar at the corner of Victoria and Errol Streets, prepare a delicious cocktail they call “Don Quixote”: vodka, lime, basil, sugar, and ginger beer. They also have Mountain Goat on tap; their hightail beer instantly became my new Aussie favourite.

• The Hot Poppy right next door has all-day breakfast, including a fantastic housemade Bircher Müesli. Both Joel, who joined me for brunch, and I enjoyed it, so you don’t have to rely on just my judgement.

• The outdoor bar my brother and I found on our previous visit to Melbourne, fenced off from a small lane with crates and boxes to sit on, is called Section Eight Container Bar. It’s on Tattersals Lane, which is off Lt. Bourke Street between Swanston and Russell. It took me three tries to find it again, but it was worth it. They also serve Mountain Goat beers! Issue 5 of the Melbourne Pixel magazine has a review of it in the right pane.

• The Somerset Gordon Place hotel at 19 Lt. Bourke Street is a splendid location within walking distance from the centre. It’s a four star hotel, but you can get sweet last minute deals there via booking.com, it seems.

• Federation Square and Wharf next to Flinders Station are always worth a visit.

NP: The Phoenix Foundation: Happy Ending

Update: Joel points out that the “Australia on Collins” shopping centre on 260 Collins street has free wireless…

Following the first phase, the second and final phase of the Penny and Martin adventure ended last Friday at Wellington airport.

I am now 11’500 metres high on my way from Bangkok to Zurich, looking back at seven days on the New Zealand South Island, another in Wellington, and a night in Melbourne. Here’s the summary of the 2200km we travelled, with selected photos inline. Penny has more pictures in her Flickr album.

• Thursday: ferry from Wellington to Picton and on to Amberley, where we stayed with Penny’s sister Janey.

• Friday: via Christchurch to Lake Tekapo for a lovely swim in turquoise water, before we set up the tent at Lake Pukaki with Mount Cook in the distance.

  

  Camping with a car isn’t all bad.

• Saturday: via Wanaka en route to Haast Pass with a stopover at the Gates of Haast for some rock hopping and full body immersion in the icy water (yes, Penny went in all the way, too).

  

  From Haast, we took the beautiful road to Jackson Bay and back, before heading into Cascade Valley for another night of camping, this time with millions of sandflies forcing us to dress appropriately.

  

  NB: please, no new offers for fashion modeling contracts, I am already fully booked. Penny might appreciate them though, especially if she gets to wear white socks.

• Sunday: fled the valley as if running for life (think final scene of Hitchcock’s Birds) to prevent further sandfly attacks and headed north to the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers, where we got soaked in heavy rain.

  Reached Greymouth in time for the tour of the local Monteith brewery and spent the night recovering from the camping in the Charles Court Motel. Monteith’s “Munich-style” Golden lager beer is actually quite reminiscent of Munich-style lager!

  I also got to take three girls to the men’s toilet to see the world’s coolest urinal.

  

• Monday: the bad weather followed us up the west coast to Punakaiki but didn’t deter us from taking a short hike to the pancake rocks, nor from visiting the seal colony at Cape Foulwind later in the day. I found out how much Penny loves Nikau trees.

  

  From there, headed west for Lewis Pass and passed up on camping due to the heavy rainfall. Instead, we booked into the Maruia Springs Resort Hotel and indulged in hot springs recreation and camping-stove-cooked pasta in the room.

• Tuesday: the weather in Kaikoura, which we reached around noon the next day, wasn’t any better, which foiled our diving plans, so we continued on to Picton and decided to cut our road trip short by one day to give us more time tying up loose ends in Wellington.

• Wednesday: got up early to rent diving equipment for two dives at Karaka point, where we inspected (and swam through) an old ship’s wreck. We also collected around 20 scallops, which we brought to Penny’s parents and enjoyed them cooked in ginger and garlic for a late lunch.

  The ferry took us back to Wellington that night, where I got to see Eagle vs. Shark, a Kiwi movie starring Jemaine Clement from the Flight of the Conchords and music composed by local bands, foremost of which The Phoenix Foundation. I have to side with Penny: it’s an enjoyable flick but probably not worth watching multiple times.

• Thursday: following breakfast at the Olive cafe, we went on shopping sprees (I found a store selling Icebreaker gear at 50%…), chilled in the afternoon, fetched excellent Sushi at the Wasabi Sushi Train, and finally saw The Phoenix Foundation play a free concert at Frank Kitts Park.

  

My New Zealand beer top-ten, in reverse order: Monteith’s Original, Monteith’s Black, Mac’s Great White, Monteith’s Golden, Monteith’s Celtic, Monteith’s Pilsener, Emerson’s Pilsener, Mac’s Hop Rocker, Emerson’s 1812 India Pale Ale, and… (drum-roll): Mac’s Sassy Red. Yum! The Emerson beers get no links because the brewery website uses Flash.

Thanks, Penny, for a fabulous two weeks!

NP: The Flower Kings: Back in the World of Adventures

At Melbourne Tullamarine airport today, I was asked to present the credit card used to book my flights as a security measure to be able to fly Bangkok-Zurich. I did not need the card for the Melbourne-Bangkok leg. Unfortunately, I left the card at home for various reasons. In the end, they just issued both boarding passes anyway.

I was not allowed to take the throw-away wooden chopsticks that came with my Pad Thai lunch through the security checkpoint.

For dinner on the airplane to Bangkok, we were given plastic knives and metal forks. For dinner on the second trip, we got metal knives.

At Bangkok airport, I had to pass a security checkpoint changing planes. They confiscated the plastic water bottle which was given to me on the flight from Melbourne (the bottle said “Thai airlines” on the label).

The lady in front of me was using one of those telescopic walking sticks, she apparently had a bad leg. They didn’t even bother asking about the stick, which she ran through the x-ray. Terrorists don’t have bad legs, nor know how to pretend.

How long are we going to put up with this bullshit?

NP: The Flower Kings: Stardust We Are

I would like to suggest to my readers to ask airplane crews for explanations of their rules. If we can get a larger number of people to inquire about the reasons behind the do’s and dont’s on airplanes, maybe the airline companies will adopt the practice.

In the context of a previous post on the lack of explanation of the motivations behind airline rules, I was utterly impressed when the steward on the Air New Zealand flight from Melbourne to Wellington asked me to turn off my music player so that I would hear when they asked us to evacuate the plane or similar.

While I doubt that I would continue to listen to The Flower Kings in an exceptional event, his explanation actually got me to turn off the player, which I had previously never done (rebel me!). I know it’s a bit ridiculous, but I was previously so set on the idea of small devices like a music player interfering with the airplane instruments that I failed to see this obvious bit of logic. The steward thus gets my “best steward” award.

When you fly, ask the crew about the reasons for the rules they impose on you, the passengers!

NP: The Flower Kings: Unfold the Future