Robert Plant BBC radio interview here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6990000/newsid_6992100/6992121.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&nol_storyid=6992121&news=1

I got a response from the support people for PC2TV and they came clean and said they had no idea why it wasn’t picking up any channels and have given me a full refund.

It’s one of those bits of software that either works or it doesn’t. Well that’s the easy way of putting it. In reality some tweaking of settings somewhere may get it to work, but who knows what they are. The support people almost certainly do but probably prefer not to do long range support tweaking in case it mashes up Vista. Shame.

I’m getting phoned by too many IT agents and some are just rude and others clueless. There’s a load of work around but there are also loads of people available. This has the affect of making the agents a bit precious as so many people are trying to talk to them. Well that’s fine, just keep away from me. But they do phone me, coz they are fed up with dealing with 150 resumes they’ve received as a response to an ad and have instead decided to do a fresh search of their database and find me.

They talk as if I phoned them. When I remind them that it was they that contacted me they say stuff like ‘you’ll be very interested in this position’ and expect me to get gung-ho about it. I do try and convince them that no I am not interested in a permanent IBM mainframe operators position 200 miles from my home and they get sniffy.

Do they realise that some IT contractors cringe when having to talk to them about IT. It’s like having a tooth pulled without anaesthetic. Most of them have obviously never worked in IT development, though I get the feeling sometimes that they do think they are in IT development, so talking to them about that very subject can be fraught.

Areas of agent confusion: Waterfall, Prince 2 and agile methodologies, automated testing and manual testing, function testing and system testing, user acceptance testing and system testing, program testing and unit testing, interface testing and integration testing. Let’s not even mention test requirements, test conditions, test plans, test specifications, test cases and test cycles.

One of them told me, and I do mean told me like it was his decision, that there’s no demand for system testing any more and it was all function testing. When I asked him what kind of defect would a function tester raise that a system tester wouldn’t raise he barely grasped the question. These people are the gatekeepers of jobs in the IT world.  

Somebody should write a blog on agent horror stories and name them.

Quote of the day

‘I phoned my dad to tell him I had stopped smoking. He called me a quitter’ Steve Pearl

Downloaded a client called PC2TV which allows you to see about 2,000 TV channels from all over the world, including live Saturday afternoon Premiership matches.

Usual teething troubles getting it to work. You get a menu of TV and radio channels available, broken down by country and then select a channel. Needless to say it didn’t work right out of the box. The trouble shooting guide says to check that you have Windows Media Player v10 or later, which I have. It then tells you to start WMP and open up an Albanian WMV url, which will force WMP to download any required video codecs. Did that and the WMV file played, though not very well, but it does prove that the video codecs were in place.

I then tried to watch the same Albanian TV station by browsing its web pages, which I found but which got stuck with a ‘buffering’ message on its TV window. That was probably because I was bittorrenting a few large files at the time, but it does prove that the site existed. Did the reboot rubbish a few times within those steps. Tried the PC2TV client again and still squat.

There are also numerous links to radio stations that broadcast on the net. Tried BBC Radio 5, which I know can be listened to via the BBC’s web pages, and that failed. There is a convenient ‘Report a problem’ control on the client so I better hit on that to find out what I am doing wrong.

Zepp again

Led Zeppelin are reforming for a one off gig in London. What chance of getting a ticket for that, small I reckon. I saw Plant & Page several times when they played together in the 1990’s. Twice at secret warm up gigs, several times at Wembley, once in Birmingham and twice at Madison Square Garden. Jeez, even better than that I saw the original Zeppelin at Earls Court in ‘75 and at Knebworth in ‘79.

At one of the MSG gigs, I got right behind the stage for the encore and was no further than about 15 foot from the band. Reminded me of their film The Song Remains The Same which was filmed there.

A new version of that film, with more tracks is due out, the limited edition variety, on Blue-Ray and HD-DVD in November. Might be buying that. Sounds like it’s time to get the home cinema sound sorted out to go with the 42″ TV. Also sounds like I’m gonna be listening to Zeppelin bootlegs in a while, and do I have a few of them.

Loads of test work < even more applicants

There appears to be loads of testing work around, going by the number of desperate emails I get (I thought eXtreme Programming was going to get rid of you bums? Ed). Seems to be the flavor of the month as there are also now several agencies that specialise in testing positions.

Just received an email from an agency who demand 3 references up front before they’ll even consider you. Whilst that sounds OK, what the agents are really looking for there are leads to other jobs. Naughty, naughty. I’ve got a feeling that despite there being a load of work around there appears to be numerous available testers around too, so for any contract posted there are numerous applicants. Another agent has just said he received 150 resumes via email in response to an advertised position.

Quote of the day

‘We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police’ Jeff Marder