tickets ok but...

We have new tickets for Jirawan they have a different refernce number which was confusing, and we can't check in via the eDreams website, but we can check in via SIA... so...flight wise we're finally sorted.

Hotel wise, I'm a little less sure, on eDreams site our booking is showing as pending cancellation, which I am am hoping does not include the hotel....but thats not showing as cancelled, only booked as the day of our departure rather than the day of our arrival. But... meh... that should be fixable

We fnally have a result though... what a palava

Ahthankyew

No more Credit Card

Almost 2 years ago, my credit card company took the decision to cancel my spread payment facility, in other words the ability to use my credit card as a credit card... Buy big items and pay them off....

It wasn't just me, it was everyone, there was a government policy to reduce credit and the banks were instructed to remove spread payments. For me this was a problem as it had come at a point where I had just hit the card very heavily with payments for trips to Thailand and hotels and the balance was pretty high, close to the 10K limit I had;. a limit I had as a result of being an excellent customer always paying off even high balances as quickly as possible.

But cancel it they did, my limit went from 10K to 500 no K , overnight and they kindly requested payment by the end of the month!!! They later reduced it further to 200, useless.

I was, needess to say, very upset by this and wrote, emailed, phoned them in the nicest diplomatic language, what the fuck did they think they were doing?

Anyway I made it clear there was no way I was going to manage to pay it in a month, or even 3 months as they suggested so I made a couple of big payments and simply told them I'd pay it off monthly but I'd never ever use their service agan.

And that's what I've been doing, sticking in some bonus money when it came, and paying extra each month.

But now, I have been selling a lot of stuff so there's a bit of spare cash to clear it off, I made the last 702.95 payment today.. The credit card is gone.

And I will NEVER use their services again.. not least becuase I am leaving NL but also it was a shocking betrayal of customer/provider trust.. They made the point several times that I was a very good reliable customer, always clearing the card despite yearly bumps... but sorry give us the money now...

Thats just not good business...I appreciate it was a government mandate, but a gradual reduction over a few years, would have been just as effective and less painful to my budget.. 

anyway, done... bye ICS, never again

Ahthankyew

Guitarectomy, no anesthetic

Sold two mid ticket guitars yesterday on marktplats, was very pleased with that, but when the chap came to  collect, he asked what else I had......

4 Gibsons, 1 PRS, 1 Ovation, 1 Danelectro and some pedals gone.

My prized Lucille and Libby my Blueshawk have gone.... god it hurts, I mean I got a good price for them, he got a good discount too, but ouch... I'm in mourning big time, I LOVED those guitars, really loved them.. and now they are gone.

Someone chopping onions in here?

on the plus side the retirement fund makes a big jump and we're over the visa threashold,  and there's still quite a few mid range guitars to sell, so there's more to come, not sure my heartstrings can take it though. But just focus on what that fund will let us do.

Ahthankyew

Almost over

Both the airline drama and the academic year.

We're in that final week of checking everthing has been graded and returned and no students are left out. It goes from being manic busy to... a kind of, don't look around, its too quiet..

But for sure thats the academic year pretty much done. I played my last 2 graduation gigs with Starrcase, and mighty gigs they were too. I love being partly responsible for a hundred or more people bouncing about, or as they called it. Dancing.

There's going to be at least 1 more Starrcase gig though ,we have at least 1 more farewell party for Marcel, which I will try to combine with mine, meaning that Starrcase will lose 3 members, Jelmer 2 isn't retiring but he is stepping back from the band, which will leave them looking for a new Bassist, Drummer and of course whatever it was I did.

I will be sad on that last gig, I really will, it kinda hit me just typing this how much I've enjoyed being part of this band for ohh I dunno.. 12years?? can't quite recall, its been a family to me and helped me so much in hard times.. That last gig will probably be a gusher.

No new tickets yet, a couple of update messages from eDreams confirming a cancellation.. which is a word I didn't use when discussing ticket changes but I'm not going to stress yet, it wouldn't surprise me if they messed up the name change, but it does seem that may just be the way SIA have arranged things with them, cancel and rebook. We've got time for the tickets to arrive.

I've got a lot of copyedited content from the publisher to look over so that book can be totally finalised, not currently too happy with the way this is being handled, due to some technical faults that are preventing me from actually approving/rejecting changes but we'll get it sorted.

And thats kinda it, a few more days next week to wrap things up at work, probably some drinks and then 5 weeks of staying in bed till 10... oh I am getting old, it used to be just staying in bed till whatever but I seldome sleep past 9 these days... old age suks

166 days to retirement... its getting closer.

Ahthankyew

is it??

It might finally be fixed, but I will hold my breath a little longer... SIA did contact Jirawan to confim the error, they in turn contacted eDreams with a solution but it required a fee to change the details.....eDreams blamed SIA for the error and told us to let them know if we'd pay the fee.

We said yes.

They said ok, call our helpline to set it up since it needs to be authorised.

We explain ermm we paid paypal we can't do that over the phone.

Its ok call us we'll sort it out.

I call. on hold 20 mins..finally

Hello thank you for calling edreams customer service how can I help you....

I give details.

So you want to change the ticket details,....I will have to escalate that to the appropriate team.

Wait... what.. no its already been escalated, I just have to get you to take a payment and reset the ticket.

Please hold

Please hold

Please hold

Thank you for waiting, we will send the details to the appropriate team and it will take....

NOOOO, I was told to call you to authorise payment, not to reset the request....

Im sorry sir we can't do that we can only inform the sales team and they have to open a case.

The case is already open, I have the emails from your Customer support.

Please hold I will try to find out.

please hold

please hold

Hello sir, yes we will escalate it here and you will get a callback withing 72 hours.

Jezus wept... you have no clue about this payment I have to make do you?

No sir our system shows your case is already closed to re-open it again I have to escalate it.

This is madness.. fine whatever, I'm done.

I send an email to Customer servies, and explain their man at the other end has no clue... please just call me on +31xxxx

And someone does....20mins later

and she takes my details

and sends me a payment link

I fill it in, 

and she process it

and she sends me confirmation of the change., they are all correct.

and she tells me she will now cancel the old ticket and arrange a new ticket as agreed with SIA, you will get the new ticket in a few days.

.......so its done?

we'll see...... but still a call fixed it, cost 55.88euros but they say they have fixed it.. 2 months of back and forward blaming other depts may be over at last.

never ever will I use a booking agent again unless its a package holiday, only direct to the airlines.

Ahthankyew

Sellers remorse.... it's real

One by one my guitars are being sold... starting with a few of the nicer ones, now some of the acoustics, and a lot of pedals and gear etc. A few might be harder to seel due to cost/tast... I mean who wants a Baritone??

I want to do those things 1st so I can aquire a good 5* seller rating on Marktplaats before I unleash the bigger items, like the Gibson 355 ad Darkfire which are higher end, also the bike and closer to Dec the car.

But every sale of guitar is....killing me.. just killing me, the careful collecting of these bits of wood and string have been something I've loved doing for 15+ years and to watch them go out the door with just mere money to show for these lovely things fills me with remorse. Its like watching your kids grow up and leave.

I am getting more or less their value, some things I've sold to friends at a slight discount, most things I've sold at just about what I paid and few at above. So I'm going to make a few of those mere monies to fill up the bank account.

But dammit, it really hurts. But yes, they are selling and aside from a few silly buyers on Marktplaats making silly offers, we're not in the firesale timeline yet so I can keep them on sale until a good or buy it now offer comes in.

Mind you this weekend I had an Oculus Quest 2 (256gb)for sale, and someone pings me saturday evenng to buy it, (Paraphrasing from memory here) 

"Do you have time?"
"for what"

"I want to buy can I come round"

"sure ok" says I.,

"when can I come round.."

"anytime" says I, "just hit the buy button and its yours"

....pause

"how much do you want, we're on a budget and we're poor."

"Its only been online for a day, the price is 200 and thats a very good price for it, I'm not haggling, you can find lots of them on MP  some are cheaper but a smaller memory and a bit beaten up"
"But they are not good, I want this one"
"Then the price is reasonable at 200"

"I will ask my parents...:" pause... "oh but we're very poor we can't afford it, what will you take"

"feel free to make an official bid, but I won't look at bids until the unit has gone unsold for a few weeks"

"But if I make a reasonable offer, why is it fair you said no?"

"umm do you know how this works, there's a buy it now price which is reasonable, if you want it you buy it, if you want to pay less take your chances and put in a bid, its been on line for 1 day, so Im not dropping my price yet"

"well thats too much, we can't afford,  cya"

"ok I hope you find one at a price you can afford"

strange, clearly a youngster

next day

"I begged my parents to buy it for me they said ok" he msg's

"sure... I will send you the offer with options to pickup" ..marktplaats has a send offer button which the buyer can then accept and pay, the money goes to a holding company in escrow, and when they pick it up if all is well they hit ok and I get paid... simple

"Do you take cash"

"no sorry, I need to keep track of my transactions".  This is true, when I leave NL I will have to report my current bank and cash assets for my tax status and so on, I don't need to pay taxes on sales of my own goods but I do need to show all my income and prove the bank savings came from savings or selling my assets.. but also, there's a good chance he'll come round with less than 200 and try to haggle which I don't want;.here's the final straw though.

"oh, but how can I trust this."

Now, I could have explained the concept of escrow to him and how its actually safer for him to have a record of the transction in case the goods are faulty or misrepresented, but it was Sunday morning and I hadn't had my coffee yet.

"you need to learn how to use Marktplaats, go buy from someone else".

And I ended the chat and blocked him... I have a low tolorance for stupidity at 10am on Suinday.

Lucky 99% of the other msgs I get are people just testing the water with low bids or asking reasonable questions on the goods. Sales are going well and my 5* rating is building and my savings account growing nicely. Still got a lot more things to sell too, so Im confident we can put a very nice sum in the account by December to fund our 1st year in Thailand.

Ahthankyew

Some good news

It takes a very long time for HMRC to do anything, but.... they do do it.. after paying almost all my NI arreers last year I have been waiting patiently for the website to update with a list of my complete years..

Only for it to show a couple of years I certainly paid marked a incomplete and not counting toward my pension.

gulp

But I have the bank records od the transfers and even though they sent me a bill for 20odd quid in March for a year I had paid, I paid it anyway to avod issues... 

I sent them a letter, since I have had no luck at all contacting them on the phone, my phone provider cuts me off after 30 mins on hold.

And waited...

and waited..

and... oh it updated last week... and all is good, my payments are recorded, my pension is on track

I still have not had a bill for last year, which I need to pay as well as the next 5 years, that will come soon. But at least I will get my full UK Pension when  I hit 67. This is an important point as its central to our retirement plans. Onc I hit 67, we should get the full uk pension as it will be in 2030, but since Thailand isn't part of the group of countries with agreements on pensions there will be no furhter rises on that UK pension ever.....

We can debate the fairness of that another time...but having the full amount is important. My dutch pension will increase over time, due to inflation and other factors, so I don't have to worry too much about having a decreasing pension as I get older.

So that was some good news this last week... lets see if we get more next week.

Ahthankyew

You can not be serious.... no really

I lost my appeal, on the grounds that goods/services were delivered....

It seems the fact those services didn't produce any valid result or resolve an easy (for them) fix to a simple problem does not mattter, not does the fact I have unusable tickets...they are still goods.

utter utter utter nonsense from Paypal Its now valid to do no work for services charged and to deliver faulty goods with no comeback...great work...not.

Of course  with no options I contacted eDreams and SIA and guess what..... nothing we can do contact SIA<-> eDreams...

But, there's a tiny glimmer of home, the SIA agent, who I think was human (it said it was) mentioned that the issue is probably due to the small local airline at the Singapore to Chiang Mai end, ,SIA can't change those tickets (only eDreams can)  so I contacted Scoot and got a "human" agent, who said.....

yes we can change that for you, we'll need to call you back about it so give us your number and wait for our call.

Can you also change our SIA details to to correct the gender and spelling? I asked .... and yes we can do that too.

wtf.....

ok well that sounds promsing, but so far... no call, but I do have a case number and a transcript of the conversation so If nothing happens by Tuesday I will try and ping them again.

you can't make this shit up can you...ai bots are just the worst things ever when you need a human to look into the harm this denial of service results in its nowhere to be seen.

Ahthankyew

You/re shitting me!

Despite a mountain of evidence of their lack of competancy or care, I lost the paypal claim, it seems they don't think that payment protection counts in cases of services not being up to scratch..

But I have appealled... we'll have to see.

if the appeal fails I am litterly stuck, as its impossible for either eDreams or SIA to move to a sensible arrangment, though SIA are willing to discuss with eDreams and even have a specialist sales team who will we happy to come to some kind of compromise.. eDreams just sticks to its, not my problem response.

One thing I did discover from SIA though is that the actual cause of all this is the flight from Singaport up to Chiang Mai on a short commuter flight, its an small local airline, and they won't allow the tickets to be changed...

If they can just change the ticket between Singapore and Amsterdam I will pay for a cancellation and rebook on the local flight, its a few hundred euros, but if it stops this crap I'll do it..

Still shocked that PayPal refused... hope my appeal wins.

Ahthankyew

How am I supposed to sleep now....

23.59 came and went... no update on my case.

not much I can do I guess, but dammit this is really making me stress out.

Ahthankyew

My suspenders are killing me

Every day I've checked the status of my case dispute with eDreams on paypal, and for over 217years its been labled as "in review". No amount of checking every 2 minutes has changed it...

I hate having to wait days on end for what really should be a very simple case of them not providing a service they charge for and clearly don't even attempt to deliver. But thats the way it works.

Today, is the day, and I'm sure it will not come through until 23.59 hours, probably even a we need a few more days.

I honestly can't see anyway they could find against me, I documented every stupid email, every yes we'll fix that for you, no we can't fix that contact SIA, and every SIA reply, sorry but edreams needs to contact us.  As well as their, sorry we'll try something else, sorry they didn't reply, and the coup de grace, we've concluded this is your problem..... utter rubbish. That leaves us with a useless unusable ticket for Jirawan.

The stupid circular blame game is exactly what the paypal claims is supposed to help with.

But its a lot of cash over 3700euros and the great irony is when we get it back, it might not be enough to rebook the flights which get more expensive each week closer to the fixed date we have to for our trip.

There's reports that Thailand is having a massive downtrun in tourist numbers, that might help, but so far the flights are still about 5% more than when we booked them, so we might just need to book a cheaper hotel..

But one thin is certain, I can't do anything at all until I get a we find in your favour reply from PayPal. which is due sometime today........nope, still nothing......nope, still nothing.

Ahthankyew

now we wait

And eDreams responded ot PayPal, sadly I don't get to see the response, but it can only be, user made a mistake, we tried to help, SIA's ssue or similar.

I can't see any situation where Paypal would not see the astonishing lack of service provided by these jokers, but we have to wait and see. Hopefully only a few days.

We need to rebook these tickets asap as every week we delay the price goes up, and availabilty of flights goes down.

Fingers crossed.. but honestly its not supposed to be this hard to book simple flights in this day and age...

Never use a booking agent again, no matter what apparent advantages they say they offer, they simply don't deliver and in eDreams case, lie through their teeth.

Ahthankyew

and they reply after 11 days

4 days after their deadline..... they send the same standard, contact SIA email.... you can't make this crap up..

forwarded to paypal, let them deal with it.

Ahthankyew

still nothing, 1 day left

eDreams, give us 7 days is almost up, if nothing here by 5pm tomorrow I escalate the case on paypal, which they have not even responded to...

Really is shocking that they can be this uselss, when they take so much money off you.

Ahthankyew

Flights not booked

What a palava.... we booked our flights to Thailand last month but when we got the tickets we noticed there was a typo in Jirawans name, not really uncommon for Thai names, we could probably have travelled ok, but worse they had her as Mr... it seems the default booking page defaults to 2 male passengers.

ok no problem you say, just contact the agent and get them to change it, yes, I did that,....and they said sure, we will fix that... and then ...sent a message saying, we can't you need to change at Singapore Airlines.

ooookaaayy, go to SIA website and manage flight, enter details, and... nope only booking agent can make changes..

ermmm... contact agent, explain they have to make the change... and.....

yes several contact SIA, SIA say contact eDreams,  sessions later

I call, (long hold) get profound apologies,  and assurances that it will get fixed, send passport pic to prove spelling and gender and wait a few days..

Wonderful

A few days later... get standard mail to contact SIA.....

and this goes on... 

The excuses vary a little, prove SIA wont fix it, we think they are wrong, we conclude its SIA's fault, we contacted them, will update, we didn't get a reply, they refused to change, we are investigating other options, contact them, and so on.

SIA are very sympathetic on the phone and online but are quite clear that we are not the customer, eDreams bought the tickets and eDreams need to make the change...eDreams don't do that and now we're kinda stuck

I asked for refund, to rebook, then told they can't be certain of a full refund....then more contact SIA nonsense.. 

Eventually I send an ultimatum, fix tickets, or full refund, otherwise I go to PayPal on the not as expected service option

Get a reply... go to the SIA website and change, its easy..... its not, and I showed you that they don't accept any change...

Few hours later......get another, contact SIA they told us its too late to change it.

Thats it... no more, full refund, or new correct tickets, no excuses....

sigh... escalated to PayPal, hopefully it should be a quick resolution their lack of service is very clear and they are causing a lot of hassle... never ever ever use eDreams... shocking company

updates to follow.

Update day1, get 2 mails, one a profound apology, 2 another, our top team are on it and we'll get it done, give us 72 hours....

I forward to paypal, as proof they do indeed have the means to fix this, and will now wait for their inevitable, you have to contact SIA reply in 3 days.... I won't respond directly.

Update, end of day 1... another email, referring to Jirawan as Mr in the greeting... so they just don't read the mail trails.. Seems theyve sent it today 29/5/25 to SIA.... I remind you they've claimed to have sent it multiple times already, and now they want 7 days to resolve... well you can talk to PayPal about that, Im not responding.

Ahthankyew

Website updates, mostly painless

As a professional, if slightly long in the tooth programmer, Ive had my fair share of oh gawwd moments when doing some boring bit of code.. But the worst type of coding is websites. I really, really really hate coding websites, and the tools available to make it "easy" do not....ever make it "easy"

But I have to say I updated my website in preperation for the 2nd edition content, pretty easily by asking my claude.ai account to take my exisiting code, and use a new template for it, and revamped everything, adding in new pages and layouts.

It was really simple a few errors and some why is it doing that questions that got answered and my site is up and running, ready to have some new content plugged in...lots of features added that would have taken me days..weeks even, all done with a simple request.

I think this is a superb way to use AI systems, but its still pretty crap for C++ game coding.

Ahthankyew

Last bit

The book is now in the publishing phase, some , probably a lot, of proof reading and formattin to be done and a few tweaks, but the publisher has announced it, and will be sendng me mock ups of the cover and 1st proofs, in the coming weeks.

In the meantime the updates to the website are progressing, starting with the all new Pi3/PC builds that will go live 1st, in the next couple of weeks, with the Pi4 content later on when the book is near ready. There's not a lot of difference, just some of the extra shader features that the Pi3 can't handle. The Pi3 does need a slightly different set up though so best to keep them seperate.

exciting times.



https://www.routledge.com/The-Fundamentals-of-CC-Game-Programming-Using-Target-based-Development/Beuken/p/book/9781032863801?_gl=1*1bhm1kg*_gcl_au*MzgwMjAwMTEwLjE3NDE0NTc2NDc.*_ga*NjcyNDgxODIyLjE3NDE0NTc2NDE.*_ga_0HYE8YG0M6*czE3NDY3MTI4ODQkbzMkZzEkdDE3NDY3MTI4OTgkajQ2JGwwJGgw&_ga=2.197532841.723068559.1746712886-672481822.1741457641

Ahthankyew

Sale now on

I've sold a few things already to friends who expressed an interest and allowed them to buy things at mates rates since I knew they wanted them.  But now its time to start being serious and start selling everything to the general market....

Given the sellers guilt I had, selling my Les Paul to Richard my old band mate I may very well end up catatonic selling the others but they have to all go, in the next 6 months or so.. And the Car, which I am very pleased to find has held its value very well, as well as the bike..which deserves someone who enjoys polishing metal more than I do. 

Im testing out the marktplats site 1st to see if it brings in some local sales, if not its ebay time... but 1st up is Frankie. I was hoping Jelmer 2 would buy her and let him take custory of her for a few months but in the end as much as he likes it he can't spend the cash... So its now up for sale... lets see..

If it goes quick I will start listing the other things and hope to keep regular sales going...

feeling the remores just posting the ad....but has to be done.

Ahthankyew

Done, now back to work

The book is done and off to production, there will be formatting and spell checking reports to deal with but they'll get it all done and it will be out in a few months.

So now back to normal services, getting stuff sold, workng on my Empires project and getting ready for my last half year at BUas. We still have a block D to do but I don't really have a lot to do in that as its a group project for all the disciplines, and programmers are working with Unreal so nothing much to teach.  Just supervision and small bits of gameplay/tech advise. They're basically on their own now.

But after summer I get 1 more block of retro game and 3/4's of Pi that I have a big hand in so I will try to go out with a bang.

Looking forward to seeing the new book on the shelves, I really hope this one stays current for longer, I made a point to make it less raspberry specific, while still focusing on the limits the raspberry imposes. If I did it well it will be a soild foundation for any new game progreammer... fingers crossed.

Ahthankyew

ouch...but ok..

Flights and accomodation are booked for our trip to Chiang Mai, in the autumn,  was a bit pricey I have to say, but 3 weeks in Thailand isn't going to be cheap, we just have to deal with it.

This time we got a hotel, no need to live like the locals we got a taste for that last year and loved it, We will be doing house hunting and hopefully bank account sorting.. Though the latter may prove hard given the recent crackdowns from banks on giving "tourist" accounts.

We're not going on a tourist visa though, so we should be ok, I'll apply for a 3 month visa closer to the time. That should make it fairly straight forward.

So now the savings have taken a bit of a hit, we need to rebuild them before October since I need 400K in Bhat available to show for the visa.

247 days to go... still not really got anything major sold yet, a few bits and bobs, but have to make sure I start listing all the small things as well as the big things. And sadly maybe have to clear out a lot of crappy stuff that has no value but might be useful to someone (like a lot of the very old SBC's)

Ahthankyew