That Sucks (or doesn't in this case)

It's rant about a big company time again: Curry's is in the firing line this time!

I bought a hoover last year when I moved over to York and I went for one of those little cyclone ones, a Hoover TFS 7202 to be exact, which seemed, according to the numbers/price to be suitable for whizzing around the relatively small house I'm in.

Well, it kinda worked okay but wasn't then best. Over the past 6 months we both used the hoover and each time we noticed more things that it wouldn't pick up and really how poor the suction was. To cut a long story short: I gave it a proper test and checked filters pipes etc at the weekend and came to the conclusion that it just wasn't very good. Maybe the design was faulty, maybe this hoover itself was just broken from the beginning, basically though I wanted to take it back.

So I tried. I was well past the 28days return period but I thought I'd simply ask to swap for a much more expensive one; after all Amazon sell alot of the same models for about £70 less so I reasoned Curry's wouldn't mind too much since they would have a happy customer.

Apparently that's not important to them, they have to follow policies and procedures and I had to phone up Hoover themselves and get an engineer to have a look at fixing it first. All this hassle for a £70 Hoover which I'm sure they must know is rather a low-end model (they don't sell them anymore). I pointed out that I could see nothing broken, it was useless from the start. No, no help at all. Even when I insisted and the customer service person went to talk to the manager, they wouldn't budge.

Very annoying in itself but really they just didn't seem to care, the woman kept saying she was sorry but that was their policy and there was nothing she could do. Why not offer to have a look at the hoover there and then and see what the problem is, maybe then deal with the manufacturer for the customer? Or at the very least offer to get the manufacturers service centre to phone me. Just anything to show that you aren't just being useless and apathetic towards your customers!

What really made this all the more laughable is that I phoned up Hoover directly, gave them the relevant details, explained the issue and they said I just need to provide a serial number and they will give me a code to have the Hoover returned to Curry's. I couldn't believe how efficient they were!

So, not shopping at Curry's again, they've annoyed me. Instead I'll just get my money back and I've already been to Argos to get the replacement cleaner: a Vax Mach Zen which seemed to work really well last night on it's first try! I now have really clean-looking carpets which has actually cheered me up a bit; I like having things nice and tidy and organised and the house was getting to look a bit of a mess. I suspect I'm going to be hoovering lots over the next month so I can really test the new gadget out ... as well as making sure the house is spotless!

"Christian Cop arrests Gay Protestor for anti-Church comments"

I'm paraphrasing this headline: "Gay Cop arrests Preacher for Antigay (sic) Comments". The story was carried in a few places, e.g. Telegraph, and many pro-Christian and pro-Gay sites. My version of the headline looks a little odd and out of place, and would either make people do a double-take or get quite annoyed.

The balance of feeling now is that gay is fine, it's been incorporated into 'normal', and persecution based on sexuality is fading fast. All good. It's also been shown that religious fundamentalism is seen as just that, an extreme, containing views that the majority of the faithful would not really hold.

So we would, rightly, be quite upset and angry if someone used their faith/belief as bias to persecute someone. Strangely though, it's fine when we do exectly the same but just under a different banner, that of gay-rights. From the reports on this story it seems that the preacher concerned stated opinion, quoted scripture, and was engaged in a debate. He wasn't hurling abused or threatening or "inciting hatred". In my opinion his views are wrong and I agree that, to me they are "offensive" in the sense that I'm gay/lesbian so he's, in a very minor way, insulting me for my sexuality. But it's his right to hold that view, in doing so he's not harming anyone (except maybe himself).

My (vague) understanding of the bible is that same-sex relationships are pretty much painted as a bad thing, you could argue this is devine proclamation or simply practical advice from the time, nevertheless that's what it states. Why persecute someone for stating something that is historical fact?

Seriously, there are lots of opinions that people hold that I could take offense at, and vice versa. You can use the law to force people to comply with what you believe - we really don't want to go down the 1984 route of having the thought police. This arrest was a bad thing, it shows that we've replaced anti-gay bullies with pro-gay ones, is this progress?

"British People"

This may be a little rambling as I don't seem to be able to get the ideas about this in a coherent form at the moment, needs more thinking about.

Anyway, I was listening to radio 4 this morning and a few things caught my attention, one was the criticism of an idea by the Lib Dems (I think) to have asylum seekers doing work, presumably while they wait for a decision on their case. The interviewee was against this but it made sense to me; why have people hanging around doing nothing when, for their sake and ours, they could be doing something useful with their time.

The other thing I heard was some rambling from UKIP about wanting to take us out of the EU and to limit immigration and concentrate resources on the "British People". So I started to wonder what "British People" meant? Who is "British"? Given our cultural, social, racial, and genetic mix, the only real common thing is geography, though the likes of the BNP would have you believe otherwise.

Which got me thinking some more; there are many people in this country who would vehemently claim to be "British" and yet live off the state, probably don't have much claim to any (spurious) genetic ancestry, and bemoan the fact that we're being 'flooded' with illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. On the flipside there are people that want to come to this country and work hard, not live off the state, and generally contribute society in this country.

So I wonder whether we should stop thinking about nationality strictly in terms of location, surely that means you can adopt a quite lazy attitude to being British; "I'm British therefore I deserve ...". If instead being British, or any nationality, it about contributing to the society as a whole then that mind-set leads to a much more positive and inclusive definition of what it means to be and to belong.

That probably didn't make sense at all!

Money Grabbing B******

I'm generally a very calm and chilled out person but, possibly as other blog posts have illustrated, sometimes certain things do get me very annoyed, upset, angry and stressed. I think generally I'm in need of letting off some steam or spleen-venting so I'll indulge myself with a little rant about two such things now.

First of there are the banks, or in my case, the Nationwide Building Society. There has been a recent court case over the legality of bank charges and whether these are fair. From what I understand this has now collapsed and the banks are claiming a victory. No matter what the charges are still unfair - lawyers may be able to argue that black is white but it still won't change the facts.

I have an ongoing issue with Nationwide where they charged me for cheques accidentally written against the wrong joint account. The first incident was refunded the second not. They then continued to add charges to the account (as it was now overdrawn - no overdraft on it) but the only reason it was in this state was because of the charges they continued to apply, £20 each time. I did finally get some refund and was about to close the account when, yep, you guessed it, another charge.

Charging someone who has a regular income is annoying, greedy, etc ... when you are dealing with someone who is in the process of trying to sort out their finances and a bank, Nationwide again, slap on £90 for direct debits and refuse to refund them, that's when you start to wonder whether the charges are fair at all. It seems even more exorbitant when you remember that these are automated transactions; it would have actually not cost the bank anything to reject them, it would have just been done by a computer.

Obviously I'm being naive; the reason I can get a good rate of in-credit interest and the other services I enjoy is because the bank I choose is ripping off those less fortunate with bank charges and inflated interest rates. I guess that is how things work and I shouldn't complain too much. Then again I think I'd be happier with the whole situation if the banks would just be honest and not try and say that the charges are justified and that customers should be more responsible with their money. In reality they want you to be irresponsible!

And now we come to parking charges. What is the justification for these? Are they a deterrent? Punishment? Or simply a revenue stream? A case in point is the charge that York City Council slapped on me for parking on a residential street when they were carrying out regular cleaning. First of all I wasn't aware this was happening (not a resident of that street or York at the time) and second, the only sign I would have passed was likely obscured by parked cars or at the very least not in my line of sight when I was concentrating on driving, at night, safely down a road flanked on both sides by said vehicles.

Explaining all of this doesn't seem to have made a difference and it's now getting to the point where they are trying to recover the money having gone to the DVLA to get my address to send me various charge/penalty notices. Leaving aside that potential invasion of privacy and the dubious arrangement whereby councils and private parking enforcement companies can just get your personal details without you having committed any crime (so without any oversight), what do they hope to achieve by pursing people in this way? Is it to upset and stress their victims? It's not nice getting letters detailing dire consequences for not paying in large, unfriendly, letters!

The only conclusion I can come to in both of these cases is that the organisations concerned are just basically trying to grab money with little thought for how people feel. These places don't care about "fairness" or looking after customers. residents or visitors, no, it's just about squeezing every last penny out of them. Yes, I know there will always be charges of some kind but I think in many areas now it has long ago past the point where these were in any way justifiable, now it just seems to be common practice to try and penalise anything possible with some kind of fee, penalty or other money-grabbing scheme.

Blasphemy!

I heard this story on the radio while driving yesterday. I wasn't paying much attention to the the news, it was just background noise keeping me awake and mildly entertained. However, as soon as I heard a few bits about this I could feel my blood start to boil.

Essentially it seems that a photographer who liked, as he says, the "architecture" of this particular church took some "erotic" photos of women at the location and now there is some kind of moral outrage and calls of blasphemy which seem to have culminated in legal action.

First some technical points - I'm not sure what the rules are regarding pictures involving property, are the owners entitled to some royalty if the photographer profits as a direct result of the setting? Would this apply to church land? Does church land count as private property? I guess there could be some straight-forward business considerations here which is fine, if the church could legally make money by being used as a location in this way all well and good.

As for this being blasphemous or morally wrong I find that prudish at best and in actually fact quite offensive and repugnant! How dare they vilify erotic art by making a claim that it is in some way 'wrong' or should in any way disgrace those who were married in this church or have loved-ones buried there. Propagating such vile, repressive and, in my opinion, downright evil views is the cause of many problems in society today. What gives any organisation the right to sit in moral judgement over natural sexual acts? Yes, I know they seems a really silly question when clearly almost all of the repressive and puritanical legislation passed in the UK/US (and probably everywhere else in the world) is due to ridiculous religious interference in governments or pubic opinion!

These prudish views are insidious (and insipid in my opinion) and permeate through many aspects of culture and society and are hugely damaging. The news story got me thinking about myself and the fact that I'm not exactly the most worldly-wise person there is, and I don't recall a huge amount of positive influence when it came to erotica; it's still viewed by many as something that may cause offense at the very least or even worse something that should be hidden. And that is so wrong, such a message should be spread, quite the reverse should happen.

Religions should stop trying to dictate moral standards by persecuting people and condemning their actions. Instead they should try leading by example and being accepting, understanding and open. Clearly this is an impossibility however, certainly give the evidence of history so far.

A lawsuit waiting to happen?

One of the principals on which the MPAA (Movie Picture Association of America) and similar organisations pin their continued lawsuit-fest against average people downloading copies of DVDs and movies, is that ever download represents lost revenue. You are stealing from the movie companies, affectively for some amount that is a multiple of the profit they make on, what would have been a sale.

If you accept the premise that one download equals one lost sale then it isn't too much of a jump to accept the conslusion that it is theft (by some definition). However, the premise is, at the very least, based on no actual concrete evidence or reliable statistics and at worst is plain wrong. So while it is most deinitely illegal to copy copyrighted works more fuss is being made than is really justified given that alot of those 'potential sales' would never really happen.

Anyway, a thought just occurred to me: in my previous blog post I was hyping up the latest Dan Brown movie, Angels & Demons, and, while I can't claim to have a fantastically wide readership there might be the odd person who I influence to see the movie. I also mentioned Star Trek in negative terms so might turn people off seeing that.

I doubt I'm going to get anything for the free publicity for Angels & Demons even if my opinion did affect a significant number of people and equally it would seem preposterous for me to be sued/charged for the lost in revenue caused by me saying Star Trek is a bit pants and not worth a look. However, if I let someone have a copy of the DVDs for these films when they come out I would be liable for a trip to court.

But what if the people I gave the DVDs to were the ones that would never have bought it? There is no potential lost sale there. If I did NOT let them have a copy they wouldn't have bought one anyway.

So, the question is, should the movie companies try and squash bad reviews of their films to protect their profits in the same way they attempt to do with 'illegal' downloads? No, they can't do that (bet they wish they could). Should they be able to claim lost sales as a reason to sue people, no, that doesn't make sense either. Should they try and provide more sensible ways to get their movies, e.g. cheap lower-quality downloads (supplemented with advertising revenue and other techniques), yep, that seems like a better idea :D

Hate Excel 2007!

Was going to have a minor whinge about the DVLA but I'll save that until later, want to rant about Excel 2007 because it's driving me insane!

Here's a list of the things that are REALLY p***ing me off at the moment:

1. When you copy something to the clipboard, merrily paste it into a sheet, then switch to another to carry on doing the same, it forgets what you had and you have to copy it again! WHY!
2. If you copy and entire column you have to insert using "Insert Copied Cells" (what would be wrong with an intelligent paste?) and then it forgets what you had copied when you try and do this again! WTF!
3. If you want to copy a sheet you have to select "Move or Copy ..." from the context menu and then select "Make a copy" and where you want it to be made! OpenOffice does exactly the same and it's just stupid!
4. What's the deal with all the buttons on the top, why can't I just have the menus I was quite happy with in Excel 2003!

ARRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHH!

Just really frustrating when software makes it so hard to do simple tasks!

Sexuality ...

... is very confusing for me.

Several people have asked the standard, and I guess obvious, question about whether the whole dressing-as-a-woman thing means that I also take that to the, potentially, logical conclusion that I'm attracted to men in the same way as a normal woman.

The short answer, for the record is "no", which can be slightly elaborated by explaining that, in some respects gender and sexuality can be treated as separate things, e.g. this is obvious when you consider gay men or lesbian women.

The longer answer is even more complicated though and is affected by a whole load of things; general confusion, socialisation, and also a whole host of issues around diagnosis and acceptance of a TG condition. I'm not going to go into the depths of my confusion here but I did want to at least allude to the fact that it isn't an entirely clear-cut decision/choice for me and is something that causes me alot of pain and confusion. The easy choice at the moment is just to try and not think about it most of the time as clearly any decision either way is going to be tremendously complicated!

One thing that I do want to rant about is autogynephilia which, as one forum poster commented forms part of one side of the "Tranny Warz" along with it's supporters such as J Michael Bailey, Dr Anne Lawrence, and the originator of the term; Ray Blanchard. It's worth noting before launching into this theory that I have seen comments about TS (MtF) individuals feeling the need to state an attraction to men in order to justify their desire to transition. This obviously creates concern from both those wanting to get help and those supplying it.

One of the problems I personally see with autogynephilia is that it seems to be a very narrow theory; it classifies MtF TS as either homosexual or non-homosexual. There doesn't appear to be any middle ground or other options for grouping. Also it doesn't appear to even consider FtM TS individuals or for that matter take into account wider sexuality. Quite simply you are either a feminine homosexual male who wishes to undergo transition in order to fully realise the female persona they present or you have no attraction to men but instead you have an erotic and/or romantic attachment to the fantasy of you yourself being female.

The most obvious example of autogynephilic behaviour would be sexual arousal from the act of wearing female clothing or from the fantasy of having a female anatomy. The target of this fantasy always being oneself. First off the problem here is that this theory makes it sound like anyone classified in such a way is doing so because of some sexual reason - in today's society that is a hard thing to accept. It's much better to be able to state your 'problem' is one of identity and gender rather than some sort of kink or even worse, perversion.

Given the pressure I mentioned above that some TS individuals feel to state an attraction to men and essentially fit the homosexual category here it's easy to see that this theory does nothing to help ease this situation and in fact probably makes it worse.

In her article Becoming What We Love Dr Anne Lawrence tries to defend the theory and also put a more positive spin on it by emphasising the "romantic" or "love" part rather than the sexual aspects. I'm not really convinced by the arguments she puts forward, for example one of the responses from TS subjects (who presumably disagree with this theory) is that they have had these feelings from a very young age. In the article this is dismissed by presenting evidence that children as young as 4-5yrs old can express romantic attachment to members of the opposite sex that appears similar to the feelings reported by adolescents. This sounds alot like trying to twist facts to fit the theory!

Another point that really doesn't help is at the end of J Michael Baileys blog entry where he says:

"To me, the most obvious harm occurs when an autogynephilic individual becomes a husband and father and the family then dissolves when he decides to become a woman. Helping to acknowledge autogynephilia earlier in life may help to prevent more trans women from unintentionally ending up in this situation."

This is plainly offensive to those in this situation, and I would suspect that there would be a high percentage of those from the individuals that fit into the theories "autogynephilic" category. So again, not helpful in the slightest and only goes to alienate more people!

What is truly sad though is that there may be some elements of the theory that do apply and do provide benefit to some but this will be over-shadowed by the rather unsavoury aspects of the complete theory as presented. I've personally found that the more voiciferously I present an argument the more likely it is that I've got something wrong and need to back out later. It's often better to simply say what are possible explanations and then see if those that may know better agree and affectively reinforce your theory or modify it until more complete.

I think the main problem here is that those who came up with the theory are not themselves subject to it so they lack some degree of empathy towards their subjects. Anne Lawrence does have personal experience in this area and claims to identify with the theory as a way to explain her situation. However I think her article above shows that she is twisting things to make them sit better with her personal feelings - which is what everyone always does.

So, does this theory help me - no, I don't think it does, and I think, like alot of things it's down to what you feel and think yourself. As long as those caring for you listen and help based on that then there is no problem. We can all talk about what/why/wherefore in an adult way afterwards.

Rant/confession

Well, I've been out for a nice meal and a bit of alcohol so I'm feeling a little fuzzy at the moment and felt like writing something quick and snappy to prove that I can keep up this blog writing thing in the face of a apparent non-readership (if anyone is reading this garbage, leave a comment ... I know there are so many blogs to comment on these days but mine is more important, okay! ;-) )

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, I've uploaded new pics of my outfits. I have mixed feelings about these; on the one hand I think some of the pics came out okay and the outfits look pretty cool, on the other I can see flaws, mistakes, things I don't like, things I wish I could change, things that detract from the "wow" factor I wish I could achieve.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sometimes happy/proud of how good I can make myself look and I know I'm getting better but it is alot of effort and I guess that the more you achieve the more there is to do. This is something I've already mentioned, the fact that I can get to feeling quite bad about what I've failed to achieve even when people are kind enough to say I look good.

So here's the confession bit: when it comes to clothes/shoes/outfits, I'm turning into quite a snob (okay, not really a surprise there, and certainly not for anyone that knows me in real life) but I also feel the same way when it comes to other TGirls; really I expect people to look as good or better looking than me, if not, I don't think they are trying hard enough!

I know that really people should be themselves whatever that is and however that looks, and I do stand by that view in life, but when it comes to to the whole TGirl thing I have standards that may seem too high to some.

Okay, now the rant bit: again, I can understand why people do this but it does kind of hit a nerve with me. All of my pictures are public and show all of me in my full glory (or lack thereof), I haven't re-tocuhed or scanned anything, what you see is what you get (sadly). I see lots of cases where pics don't include everything (or concentrate on a particular area to the exclusion of all others) or are actually someone elses pics, or scans or similar.

I try so hard to look good and find it annoying that people waste time with junk pics and show no real effort! And don't get me started on pics of CDs with hairy legs - that is just yuck for a start and annoying - I use an epilator and have to scrub my legs every single day and still they don't look/feel right!

Oh rant, rant, whinge, whinge, etc ... think it's time I went to bed and sobered up before I offend too many people! Night y'all!

Is Linus irrelevant for Linux?

A brief break from the shopping and other TGirl pursuits; I was just reading this article:

Is Linus Torvalds even speaking for Linux anymore?

The article seems confused; on one hand the author is saying that Linux is moving far ahead of Linus's limited vision and on the other he says, pointing to NetApp stats (which is meaningless really) that it is such a niche OS that it doesn't matter.

The star quote that is used as the main thrust of the authors argument is this from Linus

"An OS should never have been something that people (in general) really care about: it should be completely invisible and nobody should give a flying [expletive] about it except the technical people."

The author says that this "makes some sense" and then goes on to say that, in actual fact OS X and Windows have been successful because the customers DO care about the OS and thus Linus is no longer in touch with what the users want and is irrelevant.

The problem here is that the author clearly doesn't understand the subject he is talking about and is drawing conclusions from incorrect assumptions. The OS that he sees is all the flashy graphics and cool animations and features which is what the marketing types want you to see, this sells, this *is* relevant to end users.

In reality the *real* operating system is the stuff in the background that does all the boring work of, essentially, moving bits and bytes around the computer. This is what Linus means by the "operating system", not the marketing version of this term used to sell Vista, OS X and even Linux distros based on flashy features.

So the article is really trying to highlight an issue that isn't there; everyone knows that what users see as an "operating system" *is* important because it has been marketed to be, and yes Linus is not really involved with a great many aspects of what makes up such a product.

However, Linus still does have alot to do with the real OS and his opinion and voice on these aspects DOES matter.

Just .... well ... just annoying!

I don't like censorship. It's just plain wrong.

If someone has something to say then they should be able to say it. Okay that's a bit of an over simplification since there are obviously issues of libel, accuracy, etc to consider but these should not be dealt with by blocking or censoring the original material.

So something like the following article gets me really, really annoyed:

IFPI Forces Danish ISP to Block The Pirate Bay

The whole copyright issue is a different matter, I'm not debating (well not yet) whether it's right/wrong to offer such items for download, but as the article points out, all the Pirate Bay does is provide links to these items, they don't host them.

It's been argued in many places that simply having links is, in itself, not illegal - for all practical purposes you could never make it illegal as the whole of the web works on links! Presumably this argument also stands up in court, if not the Pirate Bay would surely have been shutdown a long time ago?

In fact, if there was enough evidence to make a good case that the Pirate Bay is operating illegally then surely you could get an injunction directly against them pending a decision along these lines.

No, it doesn't appear to be that simple, so instead we see this type of action where access is censored. Well it's censored for now, as mentioned in the article there are ways round any such measures.

So the IFPI (and by association any other such organisations like the MPAA) are now very unpopular, they've spent money on the court case, presumably alot of money since I guess lawyers specialising in this area are expensive, and they have achieved what? Well nothing really. I bet torrents will still be accessibly, P2P tools are still out there, people are still downloading movies, the only real affect has been bad publicity, a waste of money, and the start of a slippery slope into censorship.

The solution? Well, I don't know what the real solution is but I would suggest that the money and time here would be better spent in coming up with some service that will tempt people away from their 'criminal' activities by giving them something they clearly want (online download of movies) with some added value (for a cost).

You simply can't fight Piracy head on, it is totally and utterly impossible, the only way to win is to offer something easier, better and more attractive - so that probably means setting up a legal Pirate Bay equivalent that can make money through subscriptions, advertising, marketing, and many other revenue streams ... oh and of course you'd save all that money on lawyers fees as well :D

UPDATE: I spoke too soon:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/05/ifpi_baidu_china_yahoo/