27 June 2012 (Wednesday) - New Phone

Up with the lark, and I was distributing catalogues to the masses before 9am. Let's hope the masses know a bargain when they see one. I shifted one hundred catalogues in just over an hour, came home and went up town. I got the makings of some beer for the kite festival in Teston in a few week's time, and had a squabble. The beer kit was clearly priced at six quid. They charged me eleven. I argued it, but they were adamant. The six quid price referred to something else. They were vague about exactly what else this might have been, but were insistent that the price was eleven quid. Even at eleven quid it was still less than half the price of the home brew shop, so I handed over the readies.

I then went to the mobile phone shops. First of all to my current mobile phone provider to have a gripe. One of their people phoned me the other day to try to sell me another mobile phone. I told her I wasn't happy with them. She told me to phone someone else. I told her that I was telling her, and that in a few days she could phone me back with a solution to my complaints. Needless to say no one had phoned me, and when I went into their shop today they had no record of my complaint. They listened to what I had to say, namely that their signal was rubbish and that the Nokia N8 hadn't lived up to their promises. They said that if I'd like to come back in a month's time and give them money to buy out the remaining contract, they'd think about what I had to say then.

So I went to the mobile phone shop run by the people who do my home broadband internet connection. They were keen to talk to me. And they did me a good deal in which I got a better phone and a better package at five quid a month less than what I was currently paying. And they even gave me enough money for my old phone to pay off most of the outstanding contract on that old phone. And as an added bonus the new phone even doubles up as a Kindle.

Home; where I spent most (all) of the afternoon getting to grips with my Samsung Galaxy Ace 2. The nice lady in the shop had already copied over all of my contacts from the old phone. In retrospect that might have been a mistake. When I synchronised the phone with my Google and Facebook accounts the thing went mental. Pretty much everyone that I know has multiple accounts all over the Internet, and all of them are now duplicated and quadriplicated on my phone. "The Man with No Alias (Patent Pending)" appears on it five times. I shall have to do something about that. I then copied over all my sound and music files. I'm having trouble getting a customised message tone to work on the thing, and the battery life seems rather non-existent at the moment. But I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. On the plus side the Kindle app seems to be working fine.

Being the last Wednesday of the month, it was arky-ologee club. We met up at the chip shop in Lenham for a spot of tea, and then went on to Harrietsham where we met up with the recently formed Harrietsham Historical Society, and together over fifty of us set off for a stroll. We walked round what was supposedly an ancient hill fort. From one angle it looked hill fort-ish, bit only from one angle. I wasn't convinced.

But we had a good wander in the countryside on what would otherwise have been a dull evening. Might have to go back to that part of the world for another stroll at some point...