What follows is about e-mail, e-mail addresses and common sense which need to work well together if one was working abroad as a consultant. At the time of writing, (2008) I operated two personal email addresses – one for ‘home’ correspondence, and another for work-related matters. Simple enough, you’d think. The text below is taken from a message between myself and a former UNICEF colleague (on another continent), suitably edited to purge (most) expletives.
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Even though I had been abroad on many occasions before and had accessed my account from abroad at the same time as Mary, my wife, accessed it from England, this time, they decided it was a hacker doing it, so they blocked my xxxx-travel@aol.com address. As you can imagine, I went absolutely ballistic. I paid AOL £18:00 every month, and they decided that I should not use my own account just when I needed it most ? I phoned Mary and gave her instructions as to what to do. Now, the Mary you know - is the only person who can put body language into a text message and when she gets steamed up about something, clear the furniture out of the way or there’ll be chairs and tables flying. Mary told AOL, UK, exactly what she thought of them and they had the gall to say that they NEVER block an AOL address. I think she then asked for the name of the AOL CEO and his direct telephone number, and they miraculously unblocked the account, immediately. I obviously chose my wife well.
For around 6 hours, everything worked more or less normally, then they decided that they needed to block my main address (xxxx-home@aol.com) and Mary went absolutely ballistic. She went through the same procedure (this time with different people) and miraculously, they managed to unblock the xxxx-home@aol.com account, but, not satisfied with that, they then informed me that when I wanted to send a message to someone, that I would not be permitted to send the message until I had “taken the challenge” which involved reading a twisted graphic and typing the characters I saw, into the programme – when they magnanimously would allow me to send the message. This is to avoid spammers using AOL accounts, according to them. Mmmmm !
Fine. I am challenged once and pass the challenge, they now know that I am genuine. Only, because AOL is American, this form of logic totally escapes them, and I was made to “take the challenge” no fewer than 19 times. Naturally, I was right royally pxxxxxd off. If you add to this, the fact that they managed to lose around ten days of my messages which sent me mega-ballistic yet again, and I demanded that they repeat all ten days of messages (because they keep that period of time’s messages on their servers), and they actually did so. I think that I finally had their full and undivided attention. I told them that I would be changing my ISP (internet service provider) as soon as I arrived back in the UK.
On arrival back, the first thing I did was to check out Which? Magazine’s ratings of ISPs and found that two topped all of their lists – Waitrose and Zen – Zen being the top of their list for the last four years, so I approached them. While this was going on, AOL managed to disconnect me about once every 90 seconds, so I had to phone to find out what was going on. I eventually got a young lady on the phone who asked me a whole series of questions to which I knew she had the answers on the computer screen in front of her, and she says that my problem is the modem – “AOL”, she says, “has known that these have been malfunctioning for years.”
“Thanks a bundle”, I said, “you wait until I make a really serious complaint before you tell me this – send me my migration code - NOW.” (This code is required before you can move to another ISP). I won’t tell you what exchange went on between us thereafter, but I believe that she knew that here was one person who knows that AOL is totally incompetent, and that I was going to tell all my AOL friends that they should consider moving. I finally had to put the phone down on her (it was my call – for which I was having to pay, for goodness sake !).
And during all this time, my colleague sent me an e-mail. I had to tell him that I did not see it, and I am assuming that it was one of a number that were kindly lost by AOL, so if he ever considers AOL as a possible ISP, DON’T !!!!!!
I followed Which? Magazine’s advice and switched to Zen, and the change has been complete. Hence the new address. Now, when I go on line, I stay on line. The speed of my connection is now around four times what it was with AOL, and it is reliable (curious this, as they both use exactly the same phone line). Zen have very clear instructions, and what they say will happen, happens. The amount I pay is exactly one penny more per month than I paid AOL, and is it ever worth it ?!
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Thanks for the photos of the Tara pump variant. I’m not sure that I understand why it was necessary to introduce such a high leverage ratio and a reciprocating mechanism which undoubtedly will wear far faster than a direct action pump – especially as the Tara uses buoyant pump rods which by definition do NOT need any leverage. If the water tables are dropping, I’d have thought that a similar but smaller 1”Ø direct action Tara would be a lot more efficient and a helluva lot cheaper. (Colin Glennie designed and tested such a version in Bangladesh in around 1986/87. . . . ). However, some people need to get their names on something and will design anything just to do it. I am sure that Ikramullah (of MAWTS) would also have something acerbic to say about the proposed variant. . . . . . .
Incidentally, The Bangladesh Master Water Plan (UNDP/World Bank) was designed in part on what I had been saying in 1979 and early 1980 about the dramatic fall in water table levels due to the centrifugal pumps which were being widely used in the agricultural sector. I managed to persuade Mike Hyland (Deputy RR UNDP) that we needed a map of estimated water table levels for Bangladesh for the time when mining of the ground-water would have ceased (ie when it became too expensive to mine further). I had – off the top of my head – said that within ~20 years, at least 50% of the (area of the) country would be requiring force-mode handpumps. When the Plan was drafted, it appeared to be pretty close to the estimate - and showed that our work of replacing Bangladesh New No 6 handpumps with Taras was urgently needed. Crude estimates of costs showed that we needed a pump costing no more than US$300 in place for us ever to have any hope of achieving universal coverage. Putting an Afridev top on the Tara would seem to go completely counter to what the financial estimates showed was necessary. One wonders if they have any sensible economists advising DPHE and the Planning Commission ? That, by the way, is a separate comment from the technical suitability of placing a lever action head on a buoyant pump-rod arrangement. Plain barmy.
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I’ve done my UNICEF stint for 2008 (US$22,000 maximum already earned, so I can’t accept any more work from UNICEF until next year), but DfID (UK) has this touching belief that I will “help them out” in Helmand over some irrigation project or other. It involves doing a full one-week security training in London and then, on arrival in Helmand, being constantly in body armour with a helmet and escorted everywhere with two fully armed soldiers and always being driven in an armoured personnel carrier. If they think that this is sustainable development, it’s time we changed our government. My answer is not a simple “No !” but a series of questions which they will, I am sure, be unable to answer. Humanitarian work and using any army in a conflict zone do not mix and I won’t have any part of it, thanks. Incidentally, DfID did not address my query about Life Insurance protection to be provided by the employer if I were to accept their ‘offer’. I wonder why not ?
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So, I am off to sail on the Camel Estuary (having been denied this for so long during my stints in Kenya and South Africa) and to watch the gannets diving and the puffins flapping so fast just to keep in the air. . . .no dolphins nor basking sharks yet, but I keep a sharp lookout for them.
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