Virgin Media service adventure

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For the last two or three weeks, I’ve been suffering of a very poor quality broadband provided by Virgin Media in London.

Most of the time the connection has been unreliable with only short periods of decent operation. Mid-week it seemed to be usable, but during weekend it would become annoyingly slow with lots of time-outs and most of DNS lookups not responding.

Speedtest results from the last couple of weeks of my Virgin Media broadband

The Virgin Media service status page was all green, of course. The Virgin Media service status line (0800 561 0061) confirmed it should be all working perfect in my area, of course.

It was not my first time experiencing problems with the Virgin Media broadband. Although, I usually am very patient and easy, but this time it was a bit too much and for a bit too long. So, I poked the Virgin Media support on Twitter. I knew what kind of answer I will receive and I knew it right. Nevertheless, I decided to wait for better times to come and the Virgin Media crossed their fingers for me. (Hmm, perhaps that’s why they don’t answer client’s calls – they keep their fingers constantly crossed on behalf of good service – obviously, it must make it hard to pick up the phone.)

I apologies the Virgin Media team their fingers would probably have gone numb, but it didn’t help anyway.

I am an obedient client and I didn’t want to give any excuses to the Virgin Media. So, I complied and tried to reach the handy support of my broadband provider. Yes, “Oh no!!”

That was on Wednesday, February 27. I thought, let’s give them a few more days. You know, their fingers may be still numb and I perfectly now how difficult it is to make a move with sore muscles, so they may need a bit longish warm-up to get on the problems. So, I decided to wait.

Today, March 3, facing no improvement in the low quality of service provided by the Virgin Media, the assertive part of my brain responsible for the awareness of personal rights started humming Marley’s Get up, stand up, stand up for your right”.

First, I conducted the standard Virgin Media’s pilot client checklist procedure:

  1. restart computer
  2. reset router
  3. make a (proper) coffee and wait
  4. check the service status website
  5. call service status line
  6. if nothing changes, call the Virgin Media tech support

So, I dialled 150 and jumped to the point number 3 from the checklist…

Today, I was trying to reach Virgin Media support. And...waiting...Finally, 31 minutes later my call had been answered. Fun!

(Un)Fortunately, the Virgin Media support line answered so quickly, that I didn’t have a chance to take photo of my phone with waiting time displayed as more than 31 minutes. Anyhow, I eventually heard the sensuous female voice of the Virgin Media consultant flowing, I sensed, from the local customer service offices 5000 miles away where the level of background noise would never pass the Health & Safety audit in UK.

Despite the all possible sources of the Virgin Media service status being green and happy, the lady quickly with great honesty confirmed: “Yes, you are right, there is something wrong in your area, because we’ve received lots of reports from clients”.

Fair enough, it may take a while indeed to transfer the status updates from locally remote offices 5K miles away. Besides, be honest and no-bullshit company is one of the good business practices.

The lady followed with additional information, that computer says the estimated date of bringing the service back to shape is the 8th of March, 2012. (Today, is the 3rd of March, 2012.)

I politely asked, if I will be granted a reasonable discount on my bill for the fact that for around three weeks I am not provided with 30Mbps broadband service, which I pay for, but with 0.5Mbps or none service. The lady suggested to call the customer service back after the 8th of March and see what’s the situation.

I agreed I will be more than happy to speak to her again, but will I have to wait half an hour again, I asked.

“Yes. I understand, but I can not do anything about. I see on my screen now, we are receiving a lot of calls from clients with problems now. I can’t do anything.

Be honest and no-bullshit company. Remember?

I imagine, if Sir Richard Branson had been receiving services of such a great quality from another company not for three weeks, but for three hours, he would buy that company and shut it down before the ink on his signature on the acquire agreement dries.

Thanks to Virgin Media for the break in the broadband service, so I have this opportunity to sit down, have a coffee (or two), and write something new for my blog. Keep up the good work.

By the way, nice job with the new offer sent to clients at near end of current contracts. First letter included offer for existing clients to switch from 30Mbps to 60Mbps, and because you care you will switch it auto-magically. Yea! I don’t have to do anything and I will have better. “Now, how cool is that!”. Then, second letter arrived in which you increased my monthly bill. You realise you could go green save some trees sending both in one envelope together, don’t you. Uncool!

That’s right, be honest and no-bullshit company.

Robert’s rules of Boost testing

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By the way of trying to figure out how to make tests building faster? (I will post about it later), I have learned some interesting practices regarding Boost testing in general. Especially, Robert Ramey shared his best practices, worth to look at really. New release of Boost will be released next week, so I’m testing Boost.Geometry library and it is a good opportunity to apply some of Robert’s rules.

I’m testing against “known good” components – the next release branch.

How to run tests of current development line of a library (a Boost library, e.g. Boost.Geometry) against Boost release branch? Assuming all the library development happens in Boost trunk, let’s say in ${DEV}/boost/_svn/trunk where ${DEV} is your base workshop location, do this:

  • Checkout Boost release branch 
    mkdir -p ${DEV}/boost/_svn/branches/release
cd ${DEV}/boost/_svn/branches/release
svn co https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/branches/release/ .

  • Stay in ${DEV}/boost/_svn/branches/release
  • Build and install Boost.Build v2 from the release branch: 
    cd tools/build/v2
# On Windows, run bootstrap.bat
./bootstrap.sh
# On Windows, I use C:\usr as prefix for my Boost installation
./b2 --prefix=/usr/local install
# Note, this command will also install b2 utility in ${prefix}/bin
  • Switch Boost.Geometry directories to trunk: 
    svn switch https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/trunk/boost/geometry boost/geometry
svn switch https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/trunk/libs/geometry libs/geometry
  • Run tests and generate full log in file: 
    export BGLOG=boost-geometry-test.log
date > $BGLOG & b2 >> $BGLOG 2<&1 & date >> $BGLOG

# On Windows, I run this with logging this way:
set BGLOG=%CD%\boost-geometry-test.log
dateu.exe > %BGLOG% & b2 >> %BGLOG% 2<&1 & dateu.exe >> %BGLOG%

    Note, the dateu.exe is renamed Unix utility date.exe installed from GnuWin32 packages. I just like it.

Inspect the log file for test failures, for example by quick check of number of passed tests:

$ grep "\*passed\*" boost-geometry-test.log | wc -l
111

That’s it.

Try this out – it will help a lot.

Cycling to work – Day #1

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Update: Cycling to work moved to RunKeeper

  • Route: #1
  • Distance: 8.1 km
  • Time:25 min
  • Conditions: first minute in the sun, then dramatic change “When the wind blows and the rain feels cold”…and thing layer of ice is forming on my ankles and lower legs, but thankfully with no head in snow; it lasted for the first 3km and was enough to soak me well. Next, cycling in light rain. My shoes had been wet for the rest of the day. Tip: always have spare trousers and socks backed up in your office (t-shirts are obvious).

New year, new challenges, new ideas. My new idea is to start logging cycling commuter chronicles and perhaps similar log for climbing, and running too if my weak strong will allows. Apparently, I have too much time up on my sleeves. Anyway, I’m going to post rather short log messages than detailed blog posts (if Twitter allowed ~300 characters, I’d probably use Twitter).

I have been cycling to work since I got my first bicycle here in London. A lazy weekend during spring 2010, I made a trip to Brick Lane where I spent 90 quid, and a lot more hopes I hadn’t been buying from a thieve, to get my very first fixi. (If anyone in London used to have bright green fixi (though I bought it as black) with white handlebars and black saddle (photo) and it was stolen, then let me know :-) .) I got my bicycle and started regular commute from N1 to WC2R.

Long story short, whenever I have to struggle through the crowds to get into the lifts in Covent Garden Underground Station, I honestly suffer. Cycling is simply great. The only disadvantage is that I no longer have 40 minutes per day to read a book.

Kudos to folks from CycleStreets for the great service useful in optimising cycling routes.

Tip: every time you approach a minicab, imagine you are cycling on streets of one of the large cities in the far east and apply no trust rule whatsoever.

Boost.Geometry mailing list moved

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I have moved mailing list of the Boost.Geometry library from server at OSGeo to Boost mailing list server. All existing subscribers and archives have been moved to the new server.

The new list is available at geometry at lists dot boost dot org. It is also mirrored at Nabble as Boost.Geometry.

The old ggl at lists dot osgeo dot org will be wiped out soon.

If anyone experiences any problems with the new geometry at lists.boost.org, please contact me directly.

Big thanks to the OSGeo Foundation for hosting the ggl mailing list and thanks to Boost admins for help with the new server.