The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
This is a stitched picture of the “best view of Prague” as seen from a vineyard atop the old city. All of my Prague pictures from the Staff Association retreat are now online at http://flubu.com/various_pics/prague_may_2010/. You can right-click to save/view a full-size version of the image.
I talk about the weather a lot. I grumble a lot. I have now achieved the next level of Britishness – the sternly worded complaint letter.
In a nutshell, it seems that Barclaycard have been incapable of correctly setting up a direct debit for a balance transfer I’ve done 3 months ago. Because of this, I now have two missed payments on my credit report. The first time, after multiple painful phone calls to an Indian call centre, it came about that some unknown error on Barclaycard’s side had prevented the direct debit to be setup properly. It took another call to refund my late fees and yet another call to have my promotional balance transfer rate re-established. At every step, I was assured that my direct debit had now been properly setup.
This time, a payment was attempted, but rejected by Natwest. Turns out that the payment was made on the 11th, but the direct debit instructions were only received on the 14th. 3 days after the payment was attempted. 3 months (!!!) after it was supposed to have been created in the first place! It took two phone calls to refund my late fees, and I need to call back in 3 days to confirm that the promotional rate is again re-established. Good money says that it’s not, and will require yet more phone calls.
Of course, every time you call any number to try and reach a flesh-and-bone human, you get somebody called ‘Frank’ or ‘Jim’ with the heaviest Indian accent this side of the golden mile in Leicester. They try and be helpful, but they mostly follow a script and can’t really do anything concrete.
So, a stern letter. I faxed it this morning, and a copy of it went out by post. Since the fax number and the postal address are in Leicester, hopefully I’ll get in touch with somebody who can ‘get-things-done’.
We’ll see.
Ever had one of those days?
I just had a very interesting phone call. It went something like this:
Phone: Ring!Ring!
Me: Hello, Proteomic Services.
Phone: Hi, I’m new to the field of proteomics and would like to know what the difference is between a full-length protein and a mature protein.
Me: Buh! Sorry, you just caught me debugging some code, so give me a minute to go into science mode.
In a nutshell, the person on the phone wanted to known which protein sequence to use to generate antibodies against. I explained the differences in protein sequences and steered him towards PDBe so he could use structure information to make sure the peptide he’s trying to raise antibodies against isn’t buried deep within the 3D structure.
The amusing bit came when I asked him how he got my contact information. Turns out my name is the first in the list when you search all staff in the proteomics team.
Hee hee, turns out 6 years of biochemistry hasn’t been wasted after all :D