Category Archives: Opinion

Hello Peter

Posted on by
2

People like to complain, that’s not exactly true, but people complain far more often than what they compliment. And it’s understandable. When paying for a service, one expects a certain level. If one receives this, great, they did what they said they would, this was expected, why would I tell anyone about it. But when our expected level of service isn’t reached, we feel founded in complaining.

A while ago I was introduced to a web-service called Hello Peter. It’s a directory of hundreds of local and national companies in South Africa, where people can go list comments on their experiences with these companies. This gives people the opportunity to complain about companies, but it’s also a nice way to get an idea of a company’s reputation.

Companies are allowed to assign an employee to address complaints and compliments on the site. So if people go and make accusations, they have the opportunity to reply and one can hear from both sides.

As is human nature, most of the companies generally have a negative rating on the site, that is more complaints than compliments. But scanning over comments and reading replies one can get a feel for the company.

I’ve used the service on several occasions when wanting to use new companies. I find, that especially when it comes to online based companies, one never knows what kind of service to expect.

I’ve often restrained myself from making complaints on the website, ’cause I feel they may be frivolous, so instead I looked around at the ratings that companies I’ve used in the past have received, and decided to make my fist rating a positive to a company that I’ve had nothing but great service from, but that has received several complaints.

Human nature isn’t going to change any time soon, but people always appreciate a complimen,t even if it is just for doing what’s expected of them.

AmazonUK Super Saver

Posted on by
Reply

AmazonUK, quite a while ago, instituted the Super Saver delivery option on certain of their products.What this entailed for customers in South Africa, and a few other Commonwealth countries, is free delivery on orders over GBP25.

I would have liked to have taken advantage of this previously but for some reason the deal doesn’t applyto any video games. I did recently have the opportunity to try it out when I placed an order for a book and a Blu-Ray disc.

The main advantage with ordering from AmazonUK is the usually lower prices on products, and also the some times earlier availability of certain products. The book I ordered was on special at half the cost of what I could obtain it locally, and the Blu-Ray at the time wasn’t in stock with local suppliers.

To keep their costs down, AmazonUK make use of standard Royal Mail postage service. One major drawback with this is the lack of tracking system for your parcel. When I placed my order they said it would take 8 working days to arrive here, which placed in SA on the 22nd of December.

Being near Christmas I didn’t really expect it to arrive that early, and previous packages I’ve sourced elsewhere have spent extended times in customs before arriving.

On the 30th I finally received notice that the package had arrived at the post office. Going to pick it up I was greeted with a small invoice from SARS. The customs duties I was charged weren’t exorbitant, but definitely off set the expected savings from the overseas order.

I was charged roughly 16% tax on both items, plus a ZAR15 admin fee. In the end I payed about R320 for products I would have paid R470 for had I bought it through local suppliers. Although it meant it took about two and a half weeks to arrive here, whereas I could have expected the same package within a week had I purchased it locally.

So as long as you have the time it definitely seems worth the while. You do place a slight bit of trust in the SA Post Office, but although the degree of service I’ve had from them over the past few years has been extremely varied, I don’t recall them ever having lost one of my packages.

Reading through the Super Saver details however, it states that it is only available until 15 January 2012. From what I understand they are in the habit of extending these dates, as it has been available for more than a year. There exact words are: “At the end of this period, we reserve the right to further extend, amend or withdraw this offer”

NOTE: Since this post it appears that Amazon chose not to extend the period. No news on how permanent this is.

Analogue vs Digital

Posted on by
Reply

I have always been in favour of digital over analogue. It’s quicker, easier to read, more accurate, and although I currently wear an analogue watch, I still maintain a digital watch is better. This being said, the more things become digital around us, the more I see value in certain systems remaining analogue.

cfnewsads.thomasnet.com

From my experiences, analogue has a very set place. It’s great for comparisons. My first example is in reference to a speedometer. When driving, the times I’m concerned with my speed, I’m not so much concerned with what speed I’m traveling, but more that I am within the speed limit.

Whether I’m going 115 or 117 is of little significance to me, and it is far easier to see that the needle is below 120, than it is to process 115 and realise, yes, it’s less than 120. I say “far easier”, not that much processing is required either way, but that one can just look at the speedometer and know what you want, without having to read, or focus much. I’ve driven a car with a digital speed read out several times, and often found myself driving faster than intended, and generally not being sure as to what speed I was travelling.

I’ve heard the same argument for watches, that when you check the time, you generally want to know where you are relative to a certain time, ie. how much time you have left before you have to be somewhere. I find that in general I’ve wasted more time staring at my watch in a sleepy haze trying to figure out what the time is than I have calculating how much time I have left on a digital clock. As I said earlier, I wear an analogue watch, but this is mainly due to the way it looks and the way it’s made. It’s a good solid stainless steel watch, which I do everything with. My watch wearing started when I was 6 with a digital watch whose body and strap my father had to repair countless times. That being said, all my current watch does is tell the time, and the date. And even that is wrong once every two months. Digital watches offer so much more when it comes to functionality with dates, stop watches and alarms.

At the beginning of the year I worked at ESCape Gauges in Cape Town. They manufacture high-precision measurement components and sell various measurement devices, verniers, micrometers etc. And again both analogue and digital devices have their place.

Much of the work done is go/no-go gauges. A form of analogue measurement, where an object must fit in section, but not another. It doesn’t matter how far it is in or out, as long as it fits, it’s correct. Analogue dial gauges are also used, with the gauge section having red and green areas coloured in. As long as the needle is in the green area, the component is acceptable, it doesn’t matter what the value is.

nr-racing.com

On the other side, certain companies want to record the size of every component, so they can view the data in comparison to the performance of specific processes or the component itself. Here digital gauges are used which output data to be stored on computers. This information is easily obtainable, and allows for greater control. A red and green light are used in conjunction with this type of system to return whether the component is within constraints.

Although not what I was thinking of when I started this post, when it comes to digital media, I am far in favour of it over analogue. The ease with which it can be handled, and, in my opinion, the quality is far superior to that experienced with analogue media.

Digital media has definitely taken over analogue, but it will be interesting to see in the future if analogue displays start to fall away completely, or whether they’ll still hang around.

Justice in South Africa

Posted on by
Reply

Today was my first day in court. As a witness fortunately, and not a defendant. Last year my bike was stolen, and then recovered thanks to some quick work by the campus police (aka USBD, Universiteit Stellenbosch Beskermings Diensteerm, or erm.. whatever the English title is (apparently University of Stellenbosch Risk Management Services)). In any case, I received a phone call about 2 months ago out of the blue asking me to come down to the police station. No explanation or anything, just to please come down. So I pitch up there and hang around for 10min, the Sergeant who was supposed to meet me there was out, but eventually another plain clothes cop sorted me out, serving me with my first Subpoena.

So I pitched up at the Magistrate’s Office this morning at 08:30, as instructed. Hung around a while and my old roommate (who was also called as a witness) pitched up shortly before 9. 9:10 and we were all asked to rise (just like on TV :) ).

I had gone into the day assuming I’d be there all day, but I was rather happy when the first 5 cases were all immediately postponed due to the fact that the defendants were absent. On one side this was rather worrying, on the other I wasn’t keen to sit their all day. Half an hour later and my optimism was all but up.

At about 10:45 the judge finished a case, got up and walked out. In a more formal manner than that, but didn’t really say what was happening, everyone else kinda got up and left the room too. So I sat there for the next 40min, with my roommate, not quite sure what was going to happen. Fortunately the cases resumed and at about 12:15 the case was called.

We went up, with the USBD guard who caught the kid, and I got to see the kid for the first time, to be told that there wasn’t enough time left tothet though this case and have it postponed till the 20th of October. Apparently this was the fourth time the case has been postponed, and we were promised that it would have priority on the next day. All 4 of us were “Warned” to be there again from 09:00.

I was slightly disappointed at the way things were handled in general, and sightly annoyed that I skripsiereturn in October, the day before I hand in my skripsie. But I guess it’s not the end of the world.

We were allowed to leave then, and so we went outside and chatted with the USBD guy for a while. He called a vehicle to come pick us all up and take us back to campus. Those 10min were probably the most interesting of the day. He chatted to us about how often he has to come to court, and how he gets frustrated, because majority of the time the students don’t press charges or don’t come witness, so people just get let free.

It was also very interesting to hear him talking with the USBD guy who came to pick us up, chatting about some of the characters that were in court that day, how they recognise certain people, repeat offenders and how they’ve profiled certain people. He explained the way cars were getting stolen and some of the strategies the guys uses. Also how the holidays are actually worse, because there are no students around reporting suspicious people. thousands of students have thousands of eyes, which makes their job easier. It’s great to see guys like that who really want to make a difference, who know what’s going on and take their jobs seriously. It’s good to know they’re looking after us.

So I actually typed half of this last week, after my court appearance, but only got around to posting this now. Also my blog was hacked yesterday. Haven’t figured out how yet, but fortunately just some script kiddie called “Herculephp(but in a more 1337 way) edited my template’s index.php. Fortunately no lasting damage and it was quick to get running again.