Citylink - useless, useless, useless.

In article , Huge scribeth thus

Complain and kick up a fuss. It might be they just have a useless bloke who works for them and until they get some feedback that he's not a lot of good at his job they might not know...

After all I recently complained to an upmarket power tool maker that the appliance they provided was a very decent bit of kit, however the carry case it came in was pants..

And they replied that I was the "first to complain" would you believe;!....

Yes I would believe! I am a regular complainer (hopefully often constructive) - and the number of times I have had a similar response is ludicrous. And I have often had a "Thanks for pointing that out" which appeared to be genuine.

Many years ago, I told ICL why their VME debugging mechanism wouldn't work. Even on their courses, the tutor would say "Don't know why it doesn't do this for Cobol programs." Well I worked out why, told them, they did change the setting and it worked from then on. So improvement for them, their customers, and me.

As for City Link. Toerags is too goo a term...

I think it does vary from branch to branch and the "round" driver. Here there're fine as are all the other delivery services....

I have a well fitting vestibule door to cut down on draughts from the original Victorian front door which means unless close to the front door won't hear a knock on it. But have two lound doorbells which can be heard anywhere in the house even with the radio on. On the odd occasion someone only knocks and I hear it, I ask them why they didn't use the bell. 'Because they don't usually work' is the common reply. I blame these silly wireless things which may just about work inside, but can't often be heard outside. Which mine can.

If you'd ordered toilet rolls they'd be there next day. ;-)

LOL

Thank you for cheering me up!

You were lucky. Mostly, ICL were a company of closed minds. I identified a design error in their 2960 OCP that caused occasional microcode halts. They weren't interested/denied it was a fault (it was).

I ended up writing a microcode patch to work round it.

In article , tony sayer writes

Same here. I think it's franchised.

How many "Computer Scientists" of today would know (a) what microcode is and (b) how to use it ? Not that I've ever needed it, but I have fond memories of trying to write an ADD instruction.

I know what microcode is, and I'm a biologist by training ...

That was the norm when I was studying ... almost everyone in the "IT department" came from non-IT backgrounds ... my first boss was a historian ...

Yup, our citylink bloke is very good. Even thinks for himself - so if delivering something in the morning and he knows there is also a pickup scheduled for later the same day, will often take stuff then rather than making a second visit...

Knowing what it is, is not going to help you use it on common processors of today...

One of the best programmers I knew was a zoologist.

Microcode is easy just don't let software engineers write a bit that takes over a second to run like they did on a machine I was working on. It screws up the real time responses.

In article , Mike Tomlinson writes

They were franchised up to 2007 but the franchises were purchased back and they became a single entity, which the parent company, Rentokil Initial are trying to sell off now.

I've been using City Link and the previous franchise holder for the past

The drivers we have had collect from us over the years have all been good blokes, (and one woman); we even had one driver who forgot to pick up from us, only remembered when he got back to the depot some 20 minutes drive away, and came all the way back to us for the parcels, adding 40 minutes to his knocking off time.

What makes you think they actually have the parcel with them? I can understand postmen being averse to carrying loads of parcels on their daytime round and nary a soul being in to take them, but the couriers have vans (or cars in the cut-price ones), and I wonder if it's become a habit in some depots for the carding to take place to buy some time while the parcel is still on its way to the depot from a centralised point. Ie, by tracking, they know exactly where it is and it will be here tomorrow, but that might mean they pay a penalty for lateness. If they claim it couldn't be delivered, no penalty applies. Just a thought.

especially writing in javascript..

but it helps to understand them. Fascinating debate on this story

I wonder how many CPUs have been tested for security ?

The idea of rogue processors (effectively identical to bona fide ones except for security holes deliberately added) used to be difficult to imagine due to the costs of making them. I wonder if that is still the case?