So it says here that 38 is, among other things notable because:
38! – 1 yields 523022617466601111760007224100074291199999999, which is a factorial prime.
There is no answer to the equation φ(x) = 38, making 38 a nontotient.
38 is the sum of the squares of the first three primes.
37 and 38 are the first pair of consecutive positive integers not divisible by any of their digits.
38 is the largest even number which cannot be written as the sum of two odd composite numbers.
Also, it’s the number of games played by each team in the English Premiership, the atomic number of strontium and the number of slots on an American roulette wheel.
And it’s also the age I turned today. Yay! Cake for me!
I’m no expert but I spent much of yesterday trying to fix my new Dell laptop’s connection to the web. I was getting a wireless connection but was totally unable to view web pages. With linksys support on the router I deleved around in the guts of the machine but we couldn’t fix it. They did help me get a gateway IP again, which seemed to be one problem.
Searching the Dell forums for help I discovered WinSock XP Fix and ran it. The problem was immediately resolved.
Dells aside (I have never set up a computer by wiping more software than I installed!) this vexing problem seems to be common, and the ease and speed with with Winsock XP fix worked was impressive, so here’s a note here.
[tags]Winsock XP fix, web connectivity, Dell[/tags]
Parking Lot…ranked above the fold on Google for:
- beatitudes and commandments
- starbucks customer relations
- Examples of Great Websites
- appreciative inquiry experiences
- fido
- fido prepaid phone cards
…and that’s just from today. Interesting thing is that the posts on fido and Starbucks were both highly critical of their customer service. In the case of the last link, I actually rank number one, obviously higher that fido’s own website.
This blogging thing…it works?
[tags]blogging, google, fido, starbucks[/tags]
Rainbow that set the sky on fire:
In a breathtaking blaze of glory, Nature puts on one of its most spectacular sky shows.
Reds, oranges, blues and greens create a flaming rainbow that stretches above the clouds.
But this circumhorizon arc, as it is known, owes more to ice than fire. It occurs when sunlight passes through ice crystals in high cirrus clouds. It is one of 15 types of ice halos formed only when the most specific of factors dovetail precisely together.
This blanket of fire, covering hundreds of square miles, is the rarest phenomenon of them all. It was spotted in the US on the Washington-Idaho border around midday last Saturday.
I am a sucker for atmospheric phenomena, and this one takes the cake. It’s raining here on Bowen Island today, so it seemed appropriate to post this instead.
[tags]circumhorizon arc, rainbow, atmosphere[/tags]
I’m fond of saying that I’m the last consultant in the world without a cell phone. While that is true for business, my partner and I have one that we use for personal purposes. And because we use it so infrequently (mostly for emergencies or urban logistics when we’re in the big city) we have it hooked on to a prepaid plan from fido.
Now fido offers you a couple of ways to handle prepayment. You can either buy vouchers or use a credit card. A credit card is preferable for us. So because we are running low on our initial minutes, we called the handy prepayment number to refill our prepaid account …or not.
This evening we have been stuck in voice mail jail trying to register to have our fido mobile phone account refilled by Visa. It has taken quite a while and we still haven’t gotten any help. Here’s what happens:
- Dial 611 (or *46 or any of the other numbers fido says to call…they all take you to the same robot. She says her name is “Andrea.” Nice.)
- Follow the robot’s directions patiently to register for instant prepayment, so that we can use our credit card to refill. Optionally don’t be patient and just say “representative” into the phone. It will take you to the same place anyway.
- One of two things will happen. You might get an English speaking representative who will tell you politely that he can’t do this manually, and that you have to speak to the robot about it. If this happens, the robot takes you through the same logic chain that delivers you into the lap of an English speaking representative, who will breezily deny that this reality even happened. We had several very nice young people speak with us this evening, and we think we actually even witnessed a shift change down at the old call centre.
- Once in a while Andrea will not direct you to a friendly but useless English speaking representative, but instead will forward you to another robot who, in French, politely informs you that the French customer service office is now closed and will reopen at 8am. She then terminates the call, leaving you flummoxed and with no recourse but to blog the whole experience.
So that’s it. If anyone can help us figure out how to get credit card refilling authorized and then done, that would be nice. If you fido guys are reading this, give us a call, but don’t mince your words, we only have two precious minutes remaining in our account!. Your robot has the number. Her name is Andrea.
In the meantime I guess we’re thinking about switching to Telus or something. The bottom line for fido: crap customer services trumps friendly robots. The French twist on the whole thing was pretty funny though, so the evening’s entertainment was not a total loss.
[tags]fido, bad+customer+service, voice+mail, cell+phone, help![/tags]