When I got back from my holiday last month, I got myself a new phone as I thought it was about time that I had a phone with internet on it. I joined T-Mobile because they had the best deal.

But now they won’t stop texting me with SPAM and JUNK!!! Every couple of days, I get a text telling me about some new feature, thing I don’t need or offer I don’t want.

So yesterday I called customer services (on a premium rate number of course) and was told that by texting STOP to 49011, I would be removed from all marketing. So I did.

Since then I’ve had more texts than ever.

Yesterday, 13:22 from “T-Mobile”: T-Mobile is really pleased to have helped you today, for 24 hour access to manage your account log in www.t-mobile.co.uk/somegoddamnstupidlink. Thankyou, Stephen PS78

Yesterday, 13:23 from “49011″: Thank you, you will be removed from the T-Mobile Marketing mail list within 14 days. Pelase note this does not stop marketing messages from other companies.

Yesterday, 13:23 from “49011″: Thank you your request has been received. Please allow up to 14 days for changes to take affect.

Today, 13:26 from “T-Mobile”: Thank you for contacting T-Mobile! We’ll text you shortly for some feedback about your experience with us (All texts are free)

Today, 13:28 from “303510″: Q1 of 4: Overall, how satisfied were you with your call experience? [followed by a list of multichoice]

T-Mobile… listen… stop it! Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it! STOP IT! What part of “I don’t want any more texts from you” don’t you understand??? One more text and I will be making a formal complaint.

By the way, I shouldn’t have to wait 14 days. Their developer needs to simply run the following SQL query to remove me from their database:

DELETE FROM numbers_to_annoy_incessantly_for_the_rest_of_their_life WHERE name = “Matthew Coolness McGee”.

That’s not difficult, is it? If that takes 14 days, then they have a severly defective index in their database schema.

Can I also take this time to say that T-Mobile are shit. Don’t use them. 70% of the time when I try to use anything that requires internet on my phone, I’m hit with “Connection failed”, “No network available”, or that sort of gubbins. This is despite being in an office building 8 floors up with full advertised phone reception. Plus, 30% of texts I send come back with “unable to send message”, and then I find out from my friends that they got my messages twice. That turns out to be costly for me when I start texting people in New Zealand.

Grr T-Mobile. You suck. I was with O2 for 3 years and never had a problem with them. Wish I’d paid an extra fiver a month and stayed with them.

On TV they were advertising CoolHandPoker.com, it seemed okay so I thought I’d give it a try. I used a new email address to sign up – one that I hadn’t used for anything else.

I signed up in December 2009, and now (April 2010) I have begun receiving spam to the email address I signed up to Cool Hand Poker with. And since I only used that email address to sign up to the poker site with, and nothing else, I know they’ve sold it, or otherwise let spammers get hold of it.

So PLEASE BE CAREFUL if you sign up to CoolHandPoker. You will get SPAM!

Here’s one such example I just received:

Our online Prime Play ensures maximum security and safety for its players. You can even hide your membership from your wife and neighbours.
Come if you like bonuses

The email didn’t link here of course, but I’m not going to give the spammers the benefit of a link! Note how the spam is suspiciously poker-themed, even further confirming my theory!

There’s a link on Cool Hand Poker’s website labelled “Spam Policy”. Funnily enough it doesn’t work! I’ve emailed them about this spam – let’s see if they reply.

EDIT: Here’s their reply… almost sounds personalised! Almost. I don’t believe a word of it though.

Hello,

Poker Host

I’ve spent hours playing these two games – I think you have to be a geek to like them, but I think they’re fun!

Blosics 2 – Fire balls at stacks of green blocks to knock them off the screen, but don’t let the red blocks fall.
Taberinos – Launch your ball at the evil white lines, in order to clear the playing field in as few moves as possible.

Do you think they’re fun too?

Yikes, I just came across this funny street view image:

http://local.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=…

I feel like I’m in Jail! I’m not sure if it appears the same for you as it does for me, but here’s what I get:

Remind me not to go to Calvada Springs in California.

Despite saying to myself “nobody’s going to trick me today” several times on the walk to work today, I still got caught out by some April Fool’s day jokes.

I said that I wouldn’t get caught again after last year, when my team circulated a memo saying “management have asked us to do a code review – we need to look through all the code in our application and remove all the swear words”. I fell for it.

But today, when the team said that we need to get our Russian new joiner a Russian keyboard or else he couldn’t do any work, I believed that too.

And when I saw this article on my favourite money-saving website about a batch of 50p coins produced with an error that makes them worth £1,000, I was rushing to my wallet to see if I had one. (Note that at the time, the disclaimer in blue at the top of the article wasn’t there!)

At least I didn’t believe the Guardian story on Labour’s election campaign posters! They are a fake response to the Conservative party’s real billboards, one of which I saw while I was out running last night. I think all these posters are quite cool.

On a side note, I will be so depressed if Gordon Brown wins the election.

Woohoo! As of today, 10 days of work left, and 10 shirts ironed last night! They’re all hanging up there nicely, and I’ve shoved the iron and ironing board away, never to be seen again!

Man I hate ironing. If only the dishes would do themselves for the next 10 working days.

Useless piece of crap web browser! It crashed three times while I was writing that last blog post about Karen.

And it’s also annoying because it automatically updates the browser to the latest version, using up my valuable mobile broadband bandwidth and introducing potential new bugs.

The updates install new features which I neither need nor want, like the Google Translate toolbar, and provides no way of turning them off. Back to Firefox I think – Google, I’m ashamed of you, I thought you knew better.

There was a big fire at the other end of the street from my work this morning, apparently it started at 4am in a restaurant in the bottom of the building. Here’s the news story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8561386.stm

I didn’t see the fire itself until lunchtime, but it was still smoking a lot by then:

Not very exciting, since that’s as close as we were allowed to get, but I thought I’d post it anyway!

It’s the first post in a couple of months

One of the reasons I didn’t update the blog more often was because it was such a lot of effort uploading photos, but I’ve written for myself a whizzy little app which, when given a photo, automatically resize it and put it in the right place so hopefully I now have no more excuses!

Here’s an example:

HANNAH AND THE SQUID

This is my sister when she was recently in the audience for a cookery show in the UK. Nice one Hannah!!!

Woo, my app worked. I just clicked on the photo on my computer and it formatted it and put everything in the right place.

How to remove a stuck screw.

• Turn screw, doesn’t budge.
• Turn screw harder, still doesn’t budge.  Bits start coming off the screw.
• Consult internet for best way to remove old screws.
• Suddenly remember that turning to the LEFT loosens the screw, not the RIGHT.
• Screw suddenly comes out easily!

WHOOPS!  DUH!