A random thread for small things that don't really warrant a thread of their own

[Aidan]

Why in the paperless age of computers, email, scanners, and all the other stuff Arthur C Clarke thought of, does  a multinational, multibillion Euro company insist on pieces of paper being posted by Royal Mail?

[Deborah]

I was bought an Easter Egg today.  I didn't have one on Easter Sunday, so I am very pleased.

[fuzzy]

There is a Lost Dog yapping away below my office window

[Aidan]

My wifes just going to cut the grass. first time this year

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

There is a Lost Dog yapping away below my office window

Are you working in Lothian & Borders St Leonards station today?

[TimO]

... and also talking to someone in a call centre the back ground noise is so loud that you struggle to understand the people you are talking too.

Because often the call centres are in some far off part of the world (eg India), and they want to use as little bandwidth as they can to link between the UK phone system side, and the far end.  This means they compress the audio as much as they can, frequently much more than people would tolerate on a phone line in the UK (which will almost certainly be compressed in some fashion these days).

[Deborah]

My baby demanded chips. Yummy

[CrinklyLion]

Halfrods, a shop that has an entire section devoted to blingy socket sets when 99% of car owners hardly know what a car engine looks like, do not have a single wheel brace in stock.

The local hardware store, Barnitts, had half a dozen by Rolson at half the price of what Halfrods would have charged.  

What's more they also had those retro wire birdcages in 2 colours and 3 sizes.  (I know someone who wants one).

In my younger days, for my sins, I did a year or two-long stint of temping at directory enquiries (average call handling time approx 21 seconds and 'World Class Remote' on all bar one of my monitoring sessions, in case you're interested) and was surprised to discover that there were several Barnitts in the area.  Obviously, you couldn't assume it was a particular one that a customer wanted the number for, so you always had to check.  If you said 'Barnitts on Colliergate?' it all got terribly complicated as they tried to work out if if was High Petergate, Low Petergate, Whip-ma-Whop-Ma-Gate, King's Square or, as it in fact is, Colliergate.  

Eventually I worked out the right question to ask; "Is that Barnitts the Everything Shop?"

I love Barnitts, I do.

[Zoidburg]

It must be spring.

I saw a squirrel today.

[pcolbeck]

This means they compress the audio as much as they can, frequently much more than people would tolerate on a phone line in the UK (which will almost certainly be compressed in some fashion these days).

Not true. Most people run their VOIP systems using G703 codecs at 64Kbs internally which is exactly the same bandwidth as a BT standard analogue line. 64 kbs is a tiny amount of bandwidth on a data network which will be running at a minimum of 100Mb these days or more likely 1Gb minimum. When they punch out to BT or whoever they usually use one or more E1 (ISDN 30) circuits which are basically bundles of 64 kbs ISDN channels with one call going down each channel. If the calls has to go VOIP between sites or between countries then it is often transcoded to G729a which is about 20Kbs (as good as a decent mobile call so not brilliant but acceptable) to save on the expensive long distance bandwidth. Some VOIP phones are now coming with wideband codecs for internal use within a site or company that actually use more bandwidth than a traditional BT style analogue call. Of course when these punch out to BT they get transcoded to 64 kbs.

[TimO]

Yes, but most of these system aren't internal, they're going half way around the planet to somewhere that it's cheap to employ the call centre staff.

You're info is probably more current than anything I know, but I do know I've had some truly god awful audio links to tech support in the Indian sub-continent, and there were some clear compression artefacts.  Calling back later you can get tolerable quality, which suggests to me that when the lines are busy the system has started doing something like bit stealing, with it's consequent quality losses.

[Zoidburg]

My eyes glaze over when the IT nerds get into in depth conversation.

[pcolbeck]

With VoIP codecs you don't get anything like bit stealing, the end nodes (phones) have no clue that there is congestion on the link they just pump out a constant stream of identically sized small packets. What there are very unacceptable to is delay though and if the link is congested beyond the ability of QoS to sort out then the packets wont arrive within the allowed time window and will just be dropped. You start getting weird audio effects at this point as the codecs and buffers try to cope with it. A good system will have some kind of call admission control on a WAN link that prevents too many calls going through it but not everyone implements things correctly.

[TimO]

...but not everyone implements things correctly.

Which I guess is what it comes down to.  These systems are often being done as cheaply as possible, including the money spent on the people who install and maintain them.

[Deborah]

I know appear to have acquired a profile picture from somewhere 

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

It's difficult to do my eccentric strengthening exercises as ordered by the physio because I don't have a suitable step with bilateral grabrails. Two phone books and a kitchen worktop are a barely adequate substitute. Especially because the top phone book slips off the bottom one and pitches me forward, nearly causing me to take my eye out on the cupboard handle.

[her_welshness]

Its 7:05, my day off and I am awake. Its confusing. The cat has gone back to bed.

[1gear]

Ive been up since 6. Tomorrow and sunday i need to be up early, but i just know that ill struggle getting up early then.
On the plus side im still alive and feel alot better then yesterday, but still recovering!
This water is starting to not taste as nice.

[Pancho]

I've just repaired[1] the lawnmower.

[1] If a liberal coating of WD40 and a lot of swearing can be considered a "repair".

[delthebike]

Last night I walked from Lark Rise to Candleford. The closer I got the more green appeared on the faces of people I met on the way.

I'm aware that Lark Rise to Candleford is a tellyviz show but I have no idea what it is about as I've not seen it. Do people turn green on it? It would be spooky if they did! 

[Deborah]

I'm feeling a bit blue 

[fuzzy]

I have just had some toast.

[robbo6]

Waiting for the train back to sanity.

[fuzzy]

Waiting for the train back to sanity.

Cancelled apparently.

[Oaky]

Just drew "Big Fella Thanks" in the office Grand National sweepstake.  Apparently that's a good thing.