Intense Rivalry

09:03.02 - Wednesday 17th March 2004   (Link to This Entry)

I'm off the Scotland Job for a day or two to make a start on an Employment Agency website. Oddly enough, Kevi's company went for this one as well but we nabbed it, partly because we showed a demonstration as part of our presentation. I guess it's a wee bit strange being friends with your business rivals, but what the hell :)

The site is for a company that has multiple offices, each of which must be able to log in to the same administration area with their own account. Only one of the accounts has full admin priviledges, however (the ability to create new accounts, for example).

As usual I'm starting work on the back-end before I make a start on the publicly-visible side to the site. This allows me to get all of the data structures in place and the front end development will simply fly along. So far it's all looking very clean and uncluttered, and I'm just waiting for a couple of sample vacancy listings. Once I have those I can start tying vacancies to the various offices around the country, and that will lead to search results based on the office you've selected.

The idea is that a London office, say, will upload it's own local vacancies, but it can specify them as 'National' so that they appear in everybody's search results. There'll be the usual browse-by-category and search-by-keyword routines as well, and I think the whole thing will look pretty good.

Five-Minute Website

11:26.12 - Wednesday 17th March 2004   (Link to This Entry)

Well kinda. I was briefly in-between jobs earlier and came up with this. If anyone wants it, well.. there's only four files to download - go get 'em while they're still available.

Bluetooth / Phone Farce

16:55.45 - Wednesday 17th March 2004   (Link to This Entry)

Now this is pissing me off. Seriously.

I bought a Bluetooth headset off eBay a while ago and try as I might I just couldn't get the damned thing to work. Turned out that the thing was knackered and I duly returned it for a full refund, including postage, so I was only out maybe a couple of quid return post.

Fast-forward a couple of months and I pluck up courage to try again. I ended up bidding on an Anycom AHS-10 unit, nice to look at, seemed to work a treat with my phone only... any sound from the phone was ridiculously quiet. Tones generated by the actual unit itself (Connect, Disconnect etc) were absolutely fine, but the keypad tones and actual call volume from the phone... churchmouse quiet.

And apparently this is a 'limitation' of the headset, according to the response I received in the forum. What the hell use is that? Digital Call Quality? We've heard of it!

So anyway, I arranged with the seller to send the headset back, and we agree a refund which seems OK to me, even though I lose a quid. The seller even arranges the refund before I have chance to post it back, which is supremely good of him, but bugger me - PayPal decide to take a chunk out of the refunded amount! So now my £25 outlay has translated into a £18-odd refund. Gah!

Coupled with the disaster that was the LG 7050 that I tried for a weekend, and which ended up costing me £21.50-odd in return postage and charges, and I feel like I'm throwing money down the frickin' drain where mobiles are concerned. I know it's not a lot altogether, but we're on a budget these days (who isn't?) and I just can't stand watching my money disappear like this.

I've decided which phone I'm going to get now, but I'm not going to jinx it this time by naming it. There's a chance I can get it for free and I'm going to persue that avenue first, and I'm going to try out every bloody bluetooth adapter possible before I actually buy one of the feckers. Gah!