Yes, a sudden lot of posts. What can I say – I obviously have a lot to say all of a sudden!

But this post gives me an opportunity to make a few small points that I wouldn’t normally bother a whole post with…

1. Is it me or the spell check in Firefox 3 a bit dodgy? I’m often finding that it’s not checking, say, forum entries as I type them but if I turn off the spell check and turn it back on again, it starts working. Weird.
2. Because I’m often posting about customer service – good or bad – I’ve added it as a brand new category. Over time I’ll go back over my old posts and assign appropriate ones that category.
3. I’ve added a translation service to this blog (see the row of flags at the bottom of the screen?). At the moment Google translator appears to be offline, but it does work. Really.
4. I’ve added a new whizzy plugin that allows me to embed my Picasa photo albums into this blog. Rather neat and another good reason why I’m not being tempted away to the warm bosom of Flickr.

So, back in March I bought a new kettle after mine starting falling to bits (literally the plastic was deteriorating). It was one of these new see-through polycarbonate types. The handle, softly padded, glowed when the kettle was heating. And it was all see-through plastic and chrome.

Unfortunately, it’s continued to add a chemical taste to the water if it’s left in for any amount of time, the plastic has began to crack and the soft padding on the handle is coming away. All in 5 months.

As I’m at work and my wife, well, isn’t, she went off to Argos, on her bike, the other side of town, with the kettle and receipt. Except. They wanted to do any kind of refund on the original card used – which was mine. Otherwise my wife could have Argos vouchers, which we didn’t want as the replacement kettle we were looking at was a lot cheaper.

So I have to visit, as I was the one who bought it. But. I turn up and they still won’t accept my card – I changed banks earlier this year and my bank card is now different to the one used to buy the kettle. So they will only swap the kettle or give me vouchers.

Begrudgingly I accept the vouchers.

The kettle we wanted, by this time, was sold out. I found another. That was in the “Extra” range so had to be ordered in (bear in mind I am now without a kettle). In the end I find one – but this is the same price as the one I returned. It means I don’t have the hassle of Argos vouchers to use, but means I’ve spent more on a replacement than I intended. Ho hum. At least this doesn’t have whizzy lights to fail, soft padding to fall off, etc.

Only time will tell how this goes but Argos… get a grip.

Ahhh, the old Blue Screen of Death (or BSoD) – that lovely screen of blue with white text that greets you when Windows goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Normally, my stress levels hit the roof as a result of one, but I guess I must be getting better at sorting them now, as one such really bad one today hardly made me bat an eyelid.

I was using a product named DriverMax to look for outdated drivers – it now has functionality to download and install them as well. So I let it. Some people never learn.

One reboot later and I’ve lost all network capability – any attempt by Windows to re-install it caused a fatal BSoD.

So I calmly reboot, access Safe Mode via F8 and run a system restore for earlier today. Ta-da – now working. And DriverMax? Not being used.