ZSE Ponuka E.Zľava?

This time in Slovak about how I was awarded 0% discount from my electricity retailer. Sorry for being silent lately, I have a lot of work and no steam to write here right now.

S neodolateľnou ponukou E.Zľava od svojho seriózneho dodávateľa ZSE (člen skupiny e-on) som sa prvýkrát stretol, keď nám ju poslali poštou. Keďže v nej išlo aj o nejaké asistenčné služby a navyše viazanosť, nebol som si istý, či ju chcem – takže som ju jednoducho neriešil.

Lenže potom som raz dostal návštevu, ktorá mi to všetko vysvetlila. Asistenčné služby sme nechceli, ale zľavu za viazanosť… povedal som si, keď už je chlapík tu, prečo nie. Veci mi boli vysvetlené, ale z mojej strany išlo aj o istú mieru dôvery, keďže som jednal so spoločnosťou, ktorej zákazník som už nejaký čas, bla, bla, bla.

Chlapík odišiel, ja som vyrazil na web – a ľaľa ho, aj takéto články som našiel:

• Verní zákazníci zľavu od energetikov nedostali

• Na elektrinu zlákali aj nulovou zľavou

Tak som sa podujal, že im napíšem, a tentoraz to bolo od srdca. Odpoveď som od 5. januára nedostal.

Vážená ZSE

Elektrinu od Vás odoberáme už vyše 6 rokov a nemal som v úmysle na tejto skutočnosti nič meniť. To sa všetko zmenilo počas uplynulej hodiny.

Dnes sa u mňa zastavil zástupca vašej spoločnosti, pán G. (Gxxx? Gxxxx? ťažko to rozlúštiť) ohľadom E.Zľavy. Ja som hovoril, že sme neporozumeli celej ponuke na asistenčné služby, ktorá nám už skôr prišla – bola pre nás krajne neprehľadná. Váš zástupca túto vec neriešil, išlo len o ponuku zľavy. Celú dobu sa hovorilo o 4%, chvíľu som to študoval, ale zase som nechcel veľmi zdržiavať.

Myslel som si, že ZSE je totiž seriózna spoločnosť. Váš zástupca o.i. povedal aj to, že ak by som aj prestúpil inam (čo som neplánoval), tak by som prišiel len o zľavu. Toto neviem potvrdiť, keďže dodatkom sa upravuje doba platnosti pôvodnej zmluvy na dobu určitú a musel by som zrejme podrobne študovať aj tú, čo by skoršie ukončenie znamenalo.

Vrcholom všetkého je, že sme rodina s dvomi deťmi v 4-izbovom byte, varíme na elektrike takmer každý deň (malé deti) a naša spotreba je pod 3MWh, čo znamená (ako asi viete) 0% zľavu. Aj pri 4% by som ušetril možno 3 eurá, keďže ide o 3 mesiace (čo zástupca zabudol pripomenúť), aj to nie z celej sumy (na to našťastie upozornil).

Takže kvôli možno 3 eurám (v mojom prípade 0) ma zástupca “serióznej” spoločnosti musí otravovať osobne doma, vysvetlenie dopadov zmluvy zďaleka nedostahuje kvality podpriemerného poisťovacieho agenta a navyše mám teraz zmluvu na dobu určitú, pričom predtým som sa o ňu nemusel a NECHCEL starať.

Reči o tom, že “asi len zisťujú, aký kmeň im ostal”, alebo odpoveď na otázku, prečo nemôžu zľavu prosto len tak priznať v zmysle “obchodníci nemajú prístup k osobným údajom”… už tu som mal začať tušiť problémy. Len kvôli značke ZSE som to podpísal, alternatívneho operátora by som vyhodil dávno, alebo by som si pred ním išiel na Internet vyhľadať názorové články o jeho serióznosti.

Takto si dávam do kalendára na december poznámku, že sa treba poobzerať po inom dodávateľovi elektrickej energie. Možno by som si to rozmyslel, keby ste mi originál môjho dodatku doručili späť a najbližšie ma otravovali s niečím, čo mi naozaj ušetrí peniaze. Takto totiž naopak iba plytváte mojím časom, o trpezlivosti nehovoriac.

S pozdravom

Richard Richter

zák.č. xxxx

Trochu ma to celé prekvapilo, keďže – hoci na Slovensku – na mňa ako už existujúceho zákazníka podobné finty zatiaľ neskúšal ani žiadny operátor internetu či telefónie, ani moja banka, proste nikto.

Mimochodom, dnes už ponúkajú 4% od 2MWh ročne, čo by sa nás už týkalo. Ale nič to nemení na fakte, že ide o jednotky Eur. Takže nechtiac, ale predsa, budem musiet koncom roka riešiť nejakú zmluvu na energiu. A nevidím dôvod, prečo ju zase riešiť so ZSE.

Happy New Year 2013!

Happy New year, of course! My last year was a bit poorer blog-wise. For some reasons I was more lazy to write about things. Heck, sometimes I think that I was less lucky with new technology in overall. I achieved some nice results with testing in our company during the previous year. This year I wanted to push Continuous Integration, testing a bit further, maybe Gradle – but results in CI area are mixed and the rest brought no real results at all.

On the brighter side, I managed to finish my quest for system time shifter on JVM that would be usable for testing purposes – all documented in my post. Blogging is not all of course and I am quite happy how topics around Clean Code got some attention around me. We pushed Java Simon project a bit further too, I learned a few interesting things around Spring, MVC and jQuery… Add this beautiful Scala class on Coursera and this year was more than fun after all.

Still I’d like to make some resolutions. I discovered QueryDSL (thanks to a colleague of mine) and this seems to be answer to readable and compile time safe Criteria – because those shipped with JPA2 are simply horrible to read. It works well with IDEA’s annotation processor, Maven and it should be no problem with Gradle either. Ah, Gradle! For around two years I’m watching this guy but for whatever reason I was not able to use it for anything more than a few tests – but that is not Gradle’s fault. I like it, I like the idea, I like the language – and I think this year is time to switch Java Simon from Maven to Gradle. And after that I’ll go on with projects in our company, although the battle there will be more difficult I guess.

Out of technology, I managed to put together a few songs with my colleagues and it was fun – the first time I played in something close to a band. We played only on our company party but it doesn’t change anything… it was a real fun. We didn’t have a drummer so I used my Native Instruments Maschine Mikro and pre-programmed our songs – and I was really happy with the results. I’ll probably dedicate a post to Maschine Mikro, because it is one really interesting controller (and software too!).

Maschine Mikro controller

Talking about music, I managed to upload two full-blown tracks to my Soundcloud and later added two simple guitar+voice tracks. While mixing/mastering is still my weakness, I’m happy that I was able to pull through this recording-wise. And just how I imagined – my songs composed with paper, pen and acoustic guitar many years ago can really work as rock recording too.

So what about this year and those resolutions? Gradle – sure. More testing methodology on our projects – maybe I’ll even manage to document it here on the blog. Pushing Continuous delivery just a bit further again. Scala or other JVM language? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe for tests. And a bit of my music – I need to practice more with keyboard, guitar and bass guitar (yeah, I bought lovely Yamaha bass too).

Bass guitar Yamaha RBX375

Last resolution is no resolution at all – we have to survive somehow “socialistic” experiments of our government here in Slovakia (although there is nothing social about them). Europe has its own deal of problems – and USA? Well they saved themselves from falling down that fiscal cliff or what – just a few hours ago. And it probably means to make the cliff a bit higher for the next time. So we might have escaped one Doom’s day lately at the end of 2012, but who knows how our civilization will fare in the future.

Then I remember those really poor and I know we have nothing really horrible to complain about. So once again – Happy New year – and whole year of 2013!

My last two years with technology

I’ve been quite busy lately – hence the pause in my blogging. My last post was very specific Java related article, today we’re going to do something lighter – a little whine about various devices, gizmos and maybe even software/services I’ve encountered during the last two years. While generally I love our age for the current level of technology, sometimes I’m desperate seeing unnecessary flaws, often just software ones – and these can seriously affect the final experience. However, today I decided to add a lot of good examples, too, and every case should be short (though I’m bad at keeping stuff short ).

BTW: Now I see that this is actually sort of continuation of this post.

Phone case: HTC One V

I like Android phones in general. And I like both my Wildfire and One V – however they both have quite funny flaws. Wildfire’s display is unresponsive when I pull it out of my pocket while ringing (that’s why I call back my friends right after I can’t pick them up) and One V – for a change – is very quite in-call. In both cases those are quite crucial phone related issues – and in both cases many people observe the same (but not all). Other than that – on Wildfire (2.x Android) I liked that default HTC clock application showed time of the next alarm and this view was removed from newer OS. Of course One V is faster and better in overall, but still… 3 out of 5 stars. Both.

Partition case: EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition

I wanted some free legal replacement for Partition Magic – and I found this. It may not be all-powered tool for every thing around partitions, but it did anything I wanted and so far never failed. Partitions smaller or bigger? Merge partitions? (Here it actually needs enough space on the partition you are going to merge to for all the files from the other partition – but that’s rather a non-issue.) System copied to my new SSD disk? No problem. Using Windows repair process took much longer after that. 5/5! For free? Yes!

Disc case: SSD drives (Crucial M4 in my case)

Talking about SSD – well, technically it is indeed non-disk, but you know how it goes. SSD generally is fast, of course, but also cheap enough nowadays – so to put there your system volume at least is a really good idea. I did so and my computer runs and starts programs much faster. This is currently probably the best boost you can get for your money. CPU or memory or GPU? Phew… SSD made my computer fleet-footed. I can’t say more really, I somehow decided one day, checked the prices, cross-referenced all the new names for me (like Crucial, never heard of them before!), reviews were good, so I bought this one. And I’m not even having SATA3 on my mobo. 5/5

Java case: Spring JdbcTemplate

When I can I program against standard APIs – like JPA2 instead of Hibernate. When I can. Sometimes you need to go through the select cursor-style and while I could use underlying Hibernate, I decided to go straight for JDBC. And I wrote all the code. With ifs and wheres and parameters. After a couple of hours, I was done, piece was tested and then it hit me! “Man, there is supposed to be that Spring class making it much easier!” JdbcTemplate made the job, I didn’t have to write my ifs twice (first to get the query, then the parameters again), all the exceptions were handled for me and there was even every case you could think about how to process the result set (in my case callback for every row of it). This is how I like stuff made. Documentation clear… actually I mostly just let IDEA to offer me the choices and I made them right there the right way thanks to proper names. Love that. 5/5

JavaScript case: File download plugin for jQuery

Check what this plugin is about – and also its demo. Users sometimes want silly things like “can you disable the button after I press download…” (sure I can!) “…and then after download enable it again?” (are you crazy?!) But you can do it with this plugin based on hidden iframe and a cookie. I had to adjust it a bit because I had a corner case (but quite common) that there were no data and no download, which is third case from user’s perspective in addition to success and (server) failure. I’m no JavaScript expert, on the contrary – but I fell in love with jQuery in the process. And however silly HTTP is for delivering applications, things like jQuery and this plugin make it more bearable (though HTML5 and things like WebSocket mend a lot of my 10-year old concerns). For this plugin and the whole idea – 5/5.

Command-line case: GNU tools for Windows – GnuWin

I never liked all that CygWin heavy-weighted stuff, but GnuWin packages made my day. I just installed them, added c:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin\bin into my PATH (they all go to the same dir, luckily) and stared cmd just to enjoy grep (package grep), awk (gawk), ls (and many more in coreutils), zip/unzip/gzip/tar/bzip2 and of course sed! Mentioning typical Unix/Linux tools – you may also like (not related to GnuWin) vim, though I’m happy with notepad2 for most cases (read second half of this post). But you never know when you need vim’s macros. But yeah, these are not really command line tools in Windows. GnuWin packages definitely are and they deserve 5/5 for making my life easier.

Windows environment case: Rapid Environment Editor

After so many times heading into System, Advanced, bla-bla, setting the PATH in that super short line I realized “there must be a better way and someone must have already fixed this”. Yes, they have – with Rapid Environment Editor. Adding new paths with this tool is just so much better, it checks whether the path is valid – even with other variables you are referencing (if those are paths, like JAVA_HOME for instance). No more needs to be added: 5/5

Corporate tool case: Planview

For me Planview is just a tool to report my hours. I don’t use its powerful project management features. And every time I need some report out of it I don’t understand the language it is speaking to me. This tool one of those tools forgetting that they are not my only primary tools I use. Honestly, I openly hate it. Terms out of other world, a lot of misuses of the application (not only mine actually), tons of discussion how we should use it – and still we’re not using it the right way. Personally – I blame the tool. I can use Jira, Confluence and many other tools without any problem, but Planview is simply killing me. 1/5 (and yup, it’s IE only)

More-than-a-mail case: Lotus Notes

Lotus – I think this is love or hate thing, but however defended by people who like it, it is still viewed as pain by the vast majority of users. My Lotus for instance doesn’t display mouse cursor in mail editor when it’s not focused window, wrongly shows which tab is selected when two are opened at once, pastes Excel tables is as image by default and there are many other silly defaults. Date you see in trash is trash date, not the date of the message? You can’t reply to mail in your sent mail?! My contacts get often screwed by some cashing I don’t understand and don’t care at all. Not to mention it doesn’t look like normal Windows application (not that I’m a big fan of Windows, but still). Once a colleague closed Notes by accident and I just thought it funny to remark “see, stupid Lotus Notes” – just because whatever bad happens there is kinda Notes’ fault. I read people testifying how Notes rocks, etc. But these people live in the closed world of Lotus. Linux guys can hate Outlook, but it is really usable. Lotus? As a mail and calendar? Not a chance here… 2/5

Blu-ray case: Samsung BD-E6100

Recently I’ve got myself a blu-ray player (finally). I wanted Samsung, because my TV is Samsung, price was alright, I chose model with wi-fi, brought it home and after some initial scare (it didn’t play any disk first, I had to unplug it and after this kind of restart it was fine) I was happy about its performance, speed and everything, especially compared to our older DVD player (newer Philips luckily have remotes for common people too, not only for snipers). I managed to play content from computers (with Serviio installed, though SRT subtitles don’t work unexpectedly) and remote control provided four crucial buttons for TV (on/off, Source, volume up/down) – actually many of buttons from Samsung TV remote work as well (expected). After some time I decided to plug ethernet cable in though, because wi-fi often lost the connection to the router (our notebooks never have the problem, even from the same place). Even with ethernet most of the Smart HUB stuff is quite slow. In overall it was a big upgrade compared to DVD player and I was actually surprised how well it works and plays. And Smart stuff? They still might upgrade it somehow and I didn’t buy it for that anyway. 4/5

Conclusion

Not once I was thinking about myself as a “toiletologist”, because I just think too much about every single flaw of toilets as well. I never could understand why we – mankind – are unable to develop total toilet that always flushes everything, why we again and again put urinals so close together that you can use only 2 of 3 in the end, why we put toilet cubicles with legs on shiny reflective floor, not to mention various silly ways how to screw with automation of flushing, washing, drying or whatever.

Sometimes I want to scream “how could you do such a silly mistake?” But then I realize: “Man, it’s just software, it’s meant to be buggy (not that I agree that much ), the whole computer science is so much younger compared to the building industry – and look what they are able to do in a silly way every now and then. Not only on toilets, but when these are still not ‘debugged’ after all those millennia then what should we expect from the software, hm?”

The more I am happy for technology that really helps and doesn’t “think” that it will be the only thing I need to pay attention to. I have my own real life beyond technology too, after all.

Dorling Kindersley vs IKAR preklad

V poslednom čase som si obľúbil knihy od Doling Kindersley – najmä ich encyklopédia (Earth, Ocean, Science) alebo aj ich detské verzie (Animals alebo Nová encyklopédia pre deti). Keď môžem, uprednostním originál – ale práve posledne dve menované (detské) máme v oboch jazykoch a Vesmír máme len od IKARu – tú dokonca najdlhšie, ešte vo väčšom formáte ako ich po novom tlačí DK.

Kniha super, zaujímavá, pútavá, dobrý výber materiálu, fotiek, všetko v najlepšom poriadku – až na chybičky pri preklade – a to hneď zo začiatku knihy, kde sa pri trošku pozornejšom čítaní nedali obísť. Hovorím o čítaní, nie o hľadaní chýb. Prvá veta, ktorá zrejme bola obeťou trošku náročnejšej angličtiny znela… no však tu je fotka:

V originále je uvedené (výrez z Amazon náhľadu):

Keby som nevedel kontext, možno aj ja by som to takto preložil, lebo ide o neľahkú a nie celkom jasnú konštrukciu vety. Predpokladám však, že hviezdy neobsahujú tmavú hmotu, a hoci vznikli z prachu a plynu, nehovoril by som že obsahujú oblaky plynu. Skôr išlo o to, že “okrem hviezd galaxie obsahujú aj…” Či pôvodná veta naozaj znamená “Tak ako (obsahujú) hviezdy, tak galaxie obsahujú aj oblaky plynu…” Určite by som ale zmenil slovosled a spravil to jasnejšie.

Druhý kiks bol pomerne triviálny – copy/paste chyba (pre tie mám ako programátor pochopenie ). Predsa len sa mi nezdalo, že by Merkúr bol od Slnka ďalej ako Zem:

Poďme sa ešte pozrieť na problém s červienkou (Robinom, tak sa volá aj môj syn) v encyklopédii zvierat pre deti:

V nejednej knihe alebo rozprávke (toto bolo tuším DVD s psíkom Spotom, po anglicky) sa nachádza vtáčik Robin (červienka). Keď už sme nedávno kúpili tú encyklopédiu, tak som do nej nazrel a ukázal Robinovi Robina (nemusím snáď objasňovať, že som synovi ukazoval vtáka ). Manželka siahla po preklade, aby sme sa ubezpečili, že ide o červienku – a tam na naše prekvapenie bol drozd sťahovavý:

Na počudovanie na inej strane bola červienka v poriadku:

Neskôr som zistil, že drozd sťahovavý je tzv. “American Robin”, každopádne latinské meno je iné. Červienka je drozdovitý vták, aj americká verzia je pre laika podobná, ale prečo nepoužívajú pri preklade ponúkajúce sa latinské meno, to neviem pochopiť.

Na tej istej strane ako zlý drozd bol aj iný rozkošný preklep (slovo je zväčšené v editore, typografia bola v poriadku):

Proste – keď sa darí, tak sa darí. To sme dnes tie knihy otvorili poriadne prvýkrát. Pre nás to znamená jediné – udržať si kritický pohľad na to, čo čítame – najmä v preklade. Samozrejme ani originál nie je zárukou dokonalosti, ale dobre viem, prečo uprednostňujem nepreloženú knihu pred prekladom. Duplom do nášho jazyka s pomerne malým trhom, kde sa zjavne poriadna korektúra či redaktor (či kto to má na starosti) asi nezaplatí len tak.

Stargate, DS9 and other Heroes

I once compared Prison Break with Shawshank Redemption and I wanted to talk about other typical TV shows from the last 20 years or so, where it all goes and what I miss so much about the recent shows. Just to go quickly through what I liked and what not. I liked Star Trek Deep Space 9 – this is one of those long term relationships – and very similar it is with Star Trek: SG1 and Atlantis. I liked 24 (wrote about it here…). I liked Dexter though I stopped after second season and I simply don’t want to go on to the fourth season to see her dead (ok, I saw that scene, obviously ) – but Dexter was really refreshing. I liked first season of Tudors (but I’m not much interested in the next parts) and I really liked fantastic Game Of Thrones – though they really should not let “Boromir” die. So, sci-fi, fantasy, semi-historic, action – I like it all, though sci-fi is probably my favourite.

What I liked less was Battlestar Galactica – how I like it in overall, I just can’t stand those shifts in characters. You just don’t know what to believe. When T’ealc becomes enemy of the rest of guys from SG1, you just know that he is sick or something. You know your heroes. But BSG? You just never know what to believe. And I don’t think that Stargate show doesn’t have interesting twists here and there. But not so crazy like BSG. Or, when I wrote word heroes – I remembered my probably biggest let-down. I watched two season of Heroes. Concept, visuals, idea – all great. But so much of stupidity, so many cliches with the bad guy always running away. And then time-shifting with good heroes becoming bed. All those wannabe surprises and forced shocks – after that an episode from Stargate or DS9 just caresses me so nicely!

I don’t know what is wrong with some of these new shows. Are we running out of ideas? Do we need to push the limits further no matter what? Probably yes. A have to admit that I was able to watch BSG all the way through and I was generally satisfied in the end. I also watched Razor and The Plan – and it was nice to go the whole way. I never forget Galactica going down the atmosphere on New Caprica or Pegasus down taking few cylon star bases with it. Those were magnificent scenes and for those I can forgive the big of mystery that somehow wasn’t believable for me (especially around the final five).

Once I tried Buffy the Vampire Slayer – and while it was fun it somehow didn’t grow on me (though I definitely liked Buffy ). Lately I read xkcd.com regularly (from the old ones to the newer) and there are many hints on Firefly show. Because it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard about it, I decided to check it – and with 14 episodes total + one movie (Serenity) it was quite a brief encounter. And I was more than satisfied! Not only there was that lovely doctor from Atlantis and beautiful cold Adria from SG1 (both of it shot after the Firefly actually) the whole stuff was well thought out, mix of sci-fi and western was very catchy, but without cliches, scripts are indeed great and final movie was just overwhelming. If you don’t know what Buffy and Firefly have in common – Joss Whedon is the man – and that’s why they are in this single paragraph. (Watching the Firefly was also good thing for some further xkcd reading. )

After Firefly (not that my life is divided to B.F. and A.F.) I somehow got more and more suspicious that “classic” series are the matter of past. Now it’s important to compete with BSG, Heroes and Prison Break. Well… whatever people want. New music is still good (among tons of cheap stuff) and so will be TV shows I guess. I can still see the chance there – Game Of Thrones for instance, although it’s not something that would “caress” me like Stargate. Or The Firefly. Or the fond humour in DS9.

Of course your mileage may vary – but I bet there are other people out there that must have very similar feeling. And don’t simplify it just to “you’re getting old!”