The UN Human Rights Office has made the first ever Bollywood music video for gay rights as part of their Free & Equal initiative:
With my Indian ancestry, I thought it rather charming and sweet…
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Note To Self…
…wait until after the 7th September 2014 before visiting the Rijksmuseum. Why? Because until then, my least-favourite philosopher, Alain de Botton, has apparently filled the Rijksmuseum with giant Post-it notes of his own. It doesn’t sound promising:
De Botton’s evangelising and his huckster’s sincerity make him the least congenial gallery guide imaginable. He has no eye, and no ear for language. With their smarmy sermons and symptomology of human failings, their aphorisms about art leading us to better parts of ourselves, De Botton’s texts feel like being doorstepped.
Pity, I still haven’t managed to get back to visit the Rijksmuseum since its grand reopening following a ten-year refurbishment. I want to see L’Amour Menaçant by Etienne-Maurice Falconet again. However, I really don’t want to wade through de Botton’s golden shower of musings during my visit.
Addendum: whilst I don’t like to kick a man while he’s down, this piece of invective from the Spectator contains some choice morsels:
All this would be easy to ignore, except that his latest book Art as Therapy, co-written with art historian John Armstrong, now has a wretched afterlife in a museum. And it’s not just any old provincial museum, but the Rijksmuseum. This important and scholarly institution should frankly be embarrassed. From April to September this year we’ll be able to visit its world-class collection of medieval art, Dutch Golden Age paintings and 20th-century artefacts and find de Botton’s anodyne thoughts, in their utterly uninsightful, depressingly reductionist therapeutic guise, accompanying not only the works on display, but items in the shop, the café, the cloakroom and the entrance.
Well, quite.
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Microsoft’s Keyboard for Giants
Microsoft have been in the hardware business since 1982. The majority of their hardware designs are for mice and keyboards, and I’ve owned a few over the years. The last set that I bought was the Arc Keyboard and Arc Mouse for our HTPC. I liked the minimalist design and small dimensions of the Arc Keyboard, and the Arc Mouse is neat, but I need to put the mouse down onto a flat surface to use it.
Now, Microsoft has announced a new All-in-One Media keyboard. It combines a keyboard and an integrated multi-touch trackpad in one, with dedicated keys for Windows 8.1 and media controls. Sounds like an ideal device as an upgrade for our HTPC. I’m already often using the Arc Keyboard with my ThinkPad Tablet 2 when I want to type long documents.
I’m just a bit surprised that the A-i-O Media Keyboard is not backlit. I would have thought that this would be a natural design feature for a keyboard intended to be used with HPTCs in a darkened room.
I also notice that Microsoft have apparently built this keyboard for giants. According to the current product page, the keyboard is huge: 30.56 inches wide by 10.98 inches deep. This must be an error; the metric measurements are a much more reasonable 36.68 cms. by 13.18 cms.
Addendum 6 June 2014: The keyboard is now available here in the Netherlands. I purchase one a couple of weeks back for use with our HTPC. The all-in-one design is much more convenient than having to juggle a keyboard and mouse. Thumbs-up.
6 responses to “Microsoft’s Keyboard for Giants”
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When I share my old laptop with a friend, maybe to typing in a response or an address, I usually get laughed at because the printed key identifications have been worn off on most of the keys. I am a rotten typist and need such help, so for my desktop use I switched to back-lit keyboards long ago. Not only can I find the keys in the dark, but the double-molding makes the legends permanent. I won’t buy amy other kind, no matter the other features.
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The Logitech K830, which does have backlighting, seems to be a close equivalent to the Microsoft A-I-O. However, it’s more than twice the price of the Microsoft keyboard, and the touchpad seems to be simply a mouse replacement – it doesn’t seem to support multitouch gestures such as pinch-zoom…
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Ian Dixon now has a review of the Logitech keyboard up on his site, and it appears as though the trackpad does support gestures. So that’s good…
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I like Logitech keyboards and trackballs myself. For my Android tablet, I use a Naztech N1000 Universal Bluetooth Keyboard, which is pretty good — somewhat small for extended typing, but a bigger keyboard would negate the portability advantage of the tablet! The Naztech keyboard has a nifty adjustable slot for the tablet device, and a sort of outrigger that folds out to prevent the weight of the tablet device tipping it backwards.
Very handy for taking notes at meetings and the like.
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PS: Microsoft has apparently fixed the error in the dimensions; when I looked at the product page just now it says 14.4″/367mm x 5.20″/132mm.
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Yes, someone clearly kicked the web/marketing team awake… Microsoft sometimes drop the ball, but they are far better than Lenovo – new stuff on their web site is often riddled with errors. Often they seem to just cut and paste from older collateral and introduce errors that way.
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Music and Windows Phone
Back in the days of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s Zune application was used to copy or synchronise media (music, photos, videos and podcasts) between your PC’s media libraries and your Windows Phone. When I had a Nokia Lumia 800 (which used Windows Phone 7.8), it was wonderfully easy to transfer music and podcasts from my libraries to my phone and to manage them on my phone with it.
Then I upgraded to a Nokia Lumia 1020, which uses Windows Phone 8, and found that I’d need to change the media management software, because Zune doesn’t work with Windows Phone 8. Microsoft has released a new generation of media management software for use with Windows Phone 8.
Microsoft make two versions of this media management software for Windows, a desktop application and a Modern UI App.
I have tried both of them, and I’m here to tell you that they are both absolutely abysmal. Microsoft should really be embarrassed at how bad they are.
Here’s a screenshot of Zune displaying some of my music albums. To copy an album across to the phone, I simply drag and drop the albums onto the icon of the phone:
Here’s the equivalent screen of the new desktop application:
For a start, there’s no way of displaying albums; only a list of genres and artists. Secondly, there’s no display of Album Art, which I find gives me useful visual cues. Thirdly, if I select a genre, then the list displayed under Artists does not change to display only those items (songs) that are tagged with the relevant genre, so I have no way of knowing the specifics of what I am about to sync. Also, I have no way of knowing how much space will be required on my phone.
If you think this is bad, here’s the equivalent opening screenshot of the Modern UI App when adding music to your phone:
The problem is that Microsoft has focused on its subscription-based cloud service for music – Xbox Music – and forgotten about those of us who have our own music collections or have no interest in paying a monthly subscription fee. If you are a subscriber to the Xbox Music service, then you can download music from the service directly to your Windows Phone 8 device. But if you are not a subscriber, Microsoft will point you in the direction of one of their media management software applications to transfer music to your phone, and using them is a horribly painful process.
Fortunately, I have discovered that there is another alternative; and that is Microsoft’s good old Windows Media Player. It knows about Windows Phone 8 devices, and can sync to them with ease. I can display my music collection by Album, Artist, Genre, Rating, even by Composer (none of the other Microsoft applications can do this), and sync my selection to my phone with ease.
You can also use it to browse the content of your Windows Phone and manage your media on the phone if you so wish. Here’s the Album view:
And here’s the photos on my phone:
By way of contrast, here’s what you see when you use Microsoft’s brand spanking new desktop application for Windows Phone to browse your photos:
Yup, it can’t even display thumbnails of your photos… As I say, Microsoft should be thoroughly ashamed of this rubbish.
I’ll be sticking to Windows Media Player for managing the music media on my phone from now on.
There’s a sting in the tail I’m afraid for those of you who are using a Windows device running Windows RT, such as the Surface 2. Windows Media Player isn’t available for Windows RT. I’m afraid you are stuck with Microsoft’s abysmal Windows Phone App.
4 responses to “Music and Windows Phone”
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Thanks for the tip on WMP being of use!
I was momentarily excited to see that Zune had a replacement, but now a little deflated – I don’t think I’ll even try the new app looking at that. I’ve been using Windows Explorer since moving to WP8, which itself appears infinitely better than the new utility looking at this…-
Yes, I still use the Windows Explorer for management of my photos. It exposes the high-resolution DNG files on my Nokia 1020, which WMP does not. However, for management of music media, WMP is streets ahead…
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A naive question: why do you use WP? Is it only because of the Nokia HW or am I missing something?
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Two reasons why I use Windows Phone. First, because I use Windows on other devices, and the Microsoft ecosystem is developing nicely, across a range of form factors and devices, all connected by cloud services. It meets my needs. And second, because my current Windows Phone is a Nokia 1020, which I invested in precisely because of the camera.
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First Day Out
Our neighbour has a herd of dairy cattle. During the winter, they are kept indoors, but come the spring, they are let out to graze in his fields. Today was the first time they were let out this year, and you can see from the videos that they are pleased to be out in the fields. In the second video, near the start, if you watch it fullscreen, you can just see a couple of hares running to avoid getting trampled on by a cow weighing 500 kg.
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Welcome, England and Wales…
…you finally made it. At midnight on Saturday 29 March 2014, same-sex couples in England and Wales will be able to legally tie the knot. It’s been a long, hard battle for them to get equality, but the day has finally come. England and Wales join the other fifteen countries that recognise same-sex marriage.
It’s also refreshing to see that the Church of England has thrown in the towel, and that the current Archbishop of Canterbury has publicly signalled the end of the Church of England’s resistance to same-sex marriage. Mind you, the global Anglican Church still has plenty of spleen and venom to vent on the issue, so now the fight moves elsewhere.
In the meantime, congratulations to those who are preparing to get married. Sandi Toksvig has an excellent article on what it means to her.
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Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent
Back in 1959, when I was ten years old, I went to our local cinema and saw Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. I was utterly mesmerised by it. Two things gripped me, and never let me go: the look of the film, and the music. Well, the music was by Tchaikovsky, after all, and it merely confirmed to me that classical music was worth listening to.
The look of the film was extraordinary. The backgrounds were styled after the illustrations in medieval Books of Hours. For Sleeping Beauty, although Disney’s regular production designer was in charge of the film’s overall look, the film’s colour stylist and chief background designer was Eyvind Earle. His work was detailed, heavily stylised, and brought a real sense of landscape into the film.
There was a terrific villainess as well – the bad fairy, and in Disney’s version, she had a name: Maleficent. And now, she’s back – there’s a new Disney live-action film coming out in May this year, with Angelina Jolie as the eponymous villainess. I must admit that the film’s trailer looks as though it may actually give the old film a run for its money.
3 responses to “Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent”
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It does look rather promising!
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Also looks like its visual style has been influenced by the LOTR & Hobbit films.
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Geert and Gedogen
Gedogen is one of those (many?) Dutch words that is somewhat difficult to translate. On the face of it, it means to tolerate, permit, suffer and allow. However, there is something lurking behind those straightforward definitions; an additional layer of meaning that indicates that the tolerance, the permission and so forth are granted, well, perhaps not grudgingly per se, but perhaps almost in spite of the thing that is being tolerated. There’s a sense of turning a blind eye to behaviour that, strictly speaking, is illegal, or should not be condoned, but which one tolerates out of a sense of liberalism and of a sense of “live and let live”.
Someone who has been the beneficiary of much gedogen is the Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders. He, on the other hand, exhibits near zero gedogen for his targets: immigrants, Muslims and Moroccans.
We’ve just had elections here in the Netherlands for the town councils (the Gemeenten), and Wilders’ party fielded candidates in just two places: The Hague and Almere. During the campaign, Wilders went on record as saying that voters in The Hague should vote for a city with lower taxes and, if possible, fewer Moroccans. As a result, one Labour candidate (Fouad Sidhali) tweeted a comparison of Wilders to Hitler, a statement he later withdrew after criticism from senior Labour officials, saying the comparison had been unjustified.
I found it fascinating to observe the media and politicians exhibiting gedogen towards Wilders by focusing on Sidhali’s tweet, rather than the initial remark by Wilders. It was as though Wilders was the injured party, rather than Sidhali, who had probably responded with understandable exasperation over yet more of Wilders’ xenophobic rhetoric.
Wilders then (oh so predictably) responded by saying Fouad Sidali’s rethink was sensible but that ‘it would have been more sensible to leave for Morocco’.
And so it goes. Geert grins under the grace of gedogen.
But perhaps a line has now been crossed. During last night’s after-election celebrations in the Hague, Wilder asked his supporters ‘and do you want more or fewer Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands?’ To which the crowd chanted ‘fewer, fewer, fewer’. ‘ We’ll arrange that,’ Wilders said with a faint smile (or was it a smirk?) when the chanting died down.
I would like to think that people are beginning to think that enough is enough, and that the emperor has no clothes, other than rags of xenophobia and racism. We will see what happens during the European elections in May.
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RIP, Clarissa
Clarissa Dickson Wright has died. The phrases: “larger than life” and “a true British eccentric” fitted her like gloves. It was almost 20 years ago that she, together with Jennifer Paterson (also, alas, dead) roared onto British TV with an unlikely cookery programme called Two Fat Ladies. It was an instant hit, and I have all their cookery books lined up on the shelf in the kitchen for occasional reference.
Dickson Wright had an appalling childhood caused by an alcoholic and violent father. Her full name, as befitting the larger than life moniker, was Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Dickson Wright.
Whilst I did not agree with her on certain issues, she was undoubtedly a formidable woman, and life will be duller without her.
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Lawrence of Arabia
David Lean’s film Lawrence of Arabia was first released in 1962. Until a few days ago, I had never seen it, but last week I bought the Bluray version of the restored and remastered 50th Anniversary Edition. I watched it on Saturday evening, and it was a revelation. Made in the days long before CGI, the spectacles created by Lean and his crew are simply breathtaking.
The first entrance of Sherif Ali, riding out of a mirage on his camel, is stunningly done; while the subsequent brief exchange between him and Lawrence encapsulates the vast cultural difference between the Arab and the Englishman.
The actors, without exception, are excellent, and Peter O’Toole creates a believable portrait of T. E. Lawrence. How accurate it is, I cannot say, but his character is fully realised.
The film, of course, totally fails the Bechdel Test. Indeed, there is not a single speaking role for a woman in the whole film, which runs to 216 minutes. The only women we ever glimpse are veiled (or dead).
It clearly is a story about the deeds of men, in politics and war, and it’s not a pretty story, despite the stunning backdrops. It is, however, a very great film. I will be watching it again.
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RIP, Tony
Tony Benn has died. One of the few politicians, it seems to me, who combined honesty, integrity and compassion. I never met him, but news of his death has saddened me as much as the loss of a good friend. Of the many tributes gathered here, the one that stands out for me is from Shami Chakrabati, director of Liberty, in particular her final summation:
In an age of spin, he was solid, a signpost and not a weather-vane.
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Going Up In The World
Observation Towers have a long history. One has just been officially opened in a nature reserve nearby. It gives views over the Vennebulten woods and the Zwarte Veen fields. I went along yesterday to take a look. I willingly concede that it offers a new perspective on the surroundings, but a little bit of me thinks that it has the air of a modern day folly about it.
And the views:
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“There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold
And she’s buying a stairway to heaven.”
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Presidential? – I Think Not
Reading President Museveni’s speech at his signing of Uganda’s Anti-homosexuality bill is depressing. Not so much because of his clear bigotry, ignorance, and politicking – that’s only to be expected – but because of my realisation of what this means for gay people – and people who have gay brothers, sisters, parents, relations and friends – in Uganda. They have just been thrown to the wolves. And it hasn’t taken long for the wolves to start howling. A Ugandan newspaper has published a list of what it called “the country’s 200 top homosexuals”, outing some who previously had not identified themselves as gay.
I was heartened, but not surprised, by Desmond Tutu’s condemnation of the new law. I fear, however, that his voice will be drowned by a new wave of witchhunts in Uganda.
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Essential? – I Think Not
I received an email today from Nokia which had the strapline:
Essential Apps for your Lumia: Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram
Perhaps it’s just me, what with my hardening arteries, old age and all that, but “Essential”? – I think not. In fact, I refuse to touch any of them with a bargepole.
I’ve long thought that Facebook is the spawn of the devil, and its recent acquisition of WhatsApp for the absurd sum of $19 billion merely confirms it. WhatsApp is a proprietary, cross-platform instant messaging subscription service for smartphones. It also has the nasty habit of harvesting all telephone numbers that are in a subscribers contact list, whether their owners are subscribers or not. Dutch newspapers are carrying the story today that the Dutch Data Protection Authority (the CBP) are saying that WhatsApp is breaking Dutch Law. The newspapers are a bit late, the CBP published its report on WhatsApp over a year ago, and it concluded:
People who want to use the app must grant WhatsApp access to their entire electronic address book, including the mobile phone numbers of contacts that are not using the app (except in the latest app version on an iPhone with iOS 6). Because WhatsApp does not obtain unambiguous consent from non-users to process their personal data and does not have any other legal ground for processing that data, WhatsApp is acting in breach of the provisions of Article 8 of the Wbp [the Dutch Data Protection Act].
I think I’ll stick to the good old-fashioned (non-proprietary) SMS for my Smartphone messaging needs, thank you very much.
Nothing terrifies me more than an app with no moral conscience in the desperate pursuit of revenue that has full access to everything on my phone: contacts, address book, pictures, email, auth tokens, you name it. I’m not excited by the prospect of installing an app on my phone these days. It’s more like a vague sense of impending dread, with my finger shakily hovering over the uninstall button the whole time. All I can think is what shitty thing is this “free” app going to do to me so they can satisfy their investors?
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Intel’s Obstacles
I’ve been using Microsoft’s Windows Home Server since 2007. In the years that it’s been installed, it’s been doing sterling work, acting as our server for digital media around the house, and also being responsible for taking nightly backups of our other computers. Unfortunately, the motherboard in our homebuilt server developed a fault, so that was all the excuse I needed to replace the old motherboard with a modern Intel Haswell-based design. I chose an ASUS H87I-Plus board, since it had six SATA ports and also came with an Intel controller for the Ethernet LAN interface to the network. The previous board had a RealTek LAN controller, and while it worked, I kept reading that the Intel design was better. So I decided to switch.
That decision caused a few hours of cursing.
Replacing the old motherboard with the new one was straightforward, and being a mini-ITX form factor, it is smaller than the old board, gives more room in the case and should be more energy-efficient. After booting it up into the BIOS to check that the hardware was all working as expected, I began to install Windows Home Server 2011. At first, everything went as expected, but then the installation process halted with an error – there was no driver installed for the Ethernet LAN controller.
No problem, thought I, I have all the necessary software on the CD that ASUS supply with the motherboard. I quickly located the folder for the LAN drivers, and started the setup procedure. First of all, the ASUS setup software refused to run because it discovered that it was on a machine running WHS 2011 instead of Windows 7 or Windows 8. So I dug down a bit and located the Intel setup software and started that running directly. After accepting the license agreement and a few screens marking the progress, everything came to a grinding halt when the setup stated that it wasn’t going to install the necessary drivers on this machine.
Fighting a rising sense of panic, I went to Intel’s download site, and downloaded the necessary drivers straight from there. Trying to install these produced the same result – no network drivers were installed.
A search on the internet produced the reason why.
Intel have decided that consumers should not be running a “server” operating system on a chipset that Intel deem to be for the consumer market. Intel have the i217-V (desktop) and i217-LM (server) versions of their gigabit Ethernet chip. They are in fact the same chip. The only difference is that the –V variant has support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 (desktop operating systems) while the -LM variant has support for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012, i.e. server operating systems. Unfortunately, Microsoft built WHS 2011 (which is intended for the consumer market) on top of Windows Server 2008. So when the driver installation software detected that it was running on a “server” operating system, and the motherboard had the consumer variant of the Ethernet chip, then it simply refused to install the driver.
Fortunately, the same search produced a solution. Ivo Beerens has a post on his blog describing this situation, and giving a solution – a few simple edits to an Intel configuration file. I was able to follow his instructions and have successfully installed the driver. WHS 2011 has now been able to connect to the network and complete its installation. It’s now downloading and installing a further 120 updates to itself. Hopefully, I will have been able to complete the rebuild of the server by the end of the weekend…
Thanks to Ivo, and no thanks at all to Intel.
One response to “Intel’s Obstacles”
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Well done – glad that you found a fix, and have posted it to help others.
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The Streisand Effect in Action
In 2009, Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History was published by Penguin. It seems to have attracted the wrath of Hindu (male) chauvinists; to the extent that a lawsuit from the Hindu group Shiksha Bachao Andolan accusing Doniger (a University of Chicago professor) of “hurt[ing] the religious feelings of millions of Hindus” was instigated in India. As a result, Penguin have withdrawn the book from sale in India and intend to pulp the copies.
Quite rightly, this decision has resulted in a storm of protest, and propelled the book up the bestseller list. I’ve ordered my own copies (paperback and Kindle) out of interest, in support of Doniger, and against the tiresome president of Shiksha Bachao Andolan, Dinanath Batra. As Ophelia says, Batra is an experienced religious bully.
One response to “The Streisand Effect in Action”
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I just bought a copy of the book myself; it happens I’m on vacation this week so will have time to read it
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Be Careful What You Click For
Scott Hanselman has a terrific post about how most people’s computers seem to end up getting infested with Adware, Malware and Spyware. It’s all true. Whenever I’m asked by a friend, relative or neighbour to take a look at their PC “because it’s not running very well”, I usually find it filled to the gunwales with crap that the owner seems to have no knowledge of how it got there.
Even I have to be constantly on my guard that I’m not inadvertently letting something else in along for the ride when downloading and installing software. The latest example is the set of codecs that I use to handle media. I’ve been using the Media Player Codec Pack. The previous version (4.2.9) attempted to persuade me to install some crapware along with the codec pack. Fortunately, the Accept/Decline choice was straightforward.
The latest version (4.3.0) has changed tactics. This time it attempts to sneak in by expecting the user to choose the “express installation” route, as most people invariably do
I’m not sure that I would define an “advanced user” as someone who doesn’t want crapware installed on their computer. I would have thought that this would also apply to non-technical users as well. This
may well beis the last time I use this particular codec pack. I don’t like this sort of tactic.5 responses to “Be Careful What You Click For”
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There are so many codec packs around, I’ve always tried to avoid them as well. But it’s hard to recommend one since they all seem to do this. I’m thinking: http://www.cccp-project.net/ might be the next thing I try. Have you seen that one before? It appears to be pretty community oriented and without junk. I found it from a lifehacker article: http://lifehacker.com/5877208/what-are-codec-packs-and-should-i-use-them. I’m just hoping in Soviet Russia codec doesn’t play you.
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I’m still using Windows Media Center, even though Microsoft have effectively driven a stake through its heart. However, I’m looking around for its successor. At the moment, the Media Browser 3 project is looking good. While it’s early days, they seem to have a clear idea of where they want to go. Their project seems to be recommending the LAV filters.
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Do you think the new “App store” environments (apple, google, microsoft) solve this problem or is it still early in the curve for them. I can see the automatic “one click to download and install” process installing lots of crap unless it is carefully monitored by the store owners.
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I don’t think it solves the problem at all. There have already been examples of Apps containing Malware accepted for inclusion in the stores. Note this quote:
“It’s not uncommon for online criminals to disguise trojans and money-making smartphone malware as popular apps like Instagram and Angry Birds, although typically these things are encountered on the Android platform rather than iOS,” Graham Cluley, an independent security experts, told IT Pro.
http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/21621/flappy-bird-copycats-prompt-app-store-security-warnings
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RIP Stuart
Stuart Hall died today. As the Guardian obituary says:
Hall was always among the first to identify key questions of the age, and routinely sceptical about easy answers. A spellbinding orator and a teacher of enormous influence, he never indulged in academic point-scoring. Hall’s political imagination combined vitality and subtlety; in the field of ideas he was tough, ready to combat positions he believed to be politically dangerous. Yet he was unfailingly courteous, generous towards students, activists, artists and visitors from across the globe, many of whom came to love him. Hall won accolades from universities worldwide, despite never thinking of himself as a scholar. Universities offered him a base from which he could teach – a source of great pleasure for him – and collaborate with others in public debate.
It’s a great loss. It was only a couple of months ago that I was walking through the woods listening to a podcast of a discussion between him and Laurie Taylor and being impressed anew at his insight.
For an overview of his work and thought, this article, also in today’s Guardian, is a good start.
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Nasty, Brutish, and Wrong
The Guardian published an opinion piece by Kevin McKenna last Saturday: Scotland’s assisted suicide bill is an offence to our human dignity. Frankly, if anything was an offence to human dignity, it was this piece of invective. But then again, McKenna is an executive editor of the Daily Mail in Scotland. Says it all, really. The Guardian should be ashamed at publishing such tripe. I see that the comments pretty much call out the piece for the bullshit it is.
I am thankful that I live in a country where I can ask for a peaceful death, should it prove necessary, and where safeguards exist to protect the vulnerable.
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My Head Hurts
The saga of trying to get Microsoft’s Customer Support to fix an issue with Martin’s Microsoft Account rolls on. It’s been over three weeks now, and it still hasn’t got sorted. It’s not helped by the fact that the “Advocacy Specialist” assigned to the case apparently doesn’t bother to read his emails or respond to voicemails. He’s now claiming that the issue has been fixed, when it hasn’t, and so far I’m unable to reach him to disabuse him of his notion.
I’m thinking that the next step will be a
formal letter of complaintplea for help to Rob Warwick in the Xbox EMEA Senior Advocacy Team. At least he managed to get a similar issue with my Microsoft Account sorted.Leave a comment
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