After a 50-minute phone call to Optus technical support yesterday, my enquiry was answered in 140 characters or less by the Optus Social Media team.

This is the sad tale of an Optus support call. I’m kicking myself I didn’t record it, because you just can’t invent this stuff. It’s so absolutely absurd that no-one, except those who’ve had the misfortune of ringing Optus for technical support, will believe you.

The problem was quite simple: a customer couldn’t send email. Outlook had just “stopped working”. Receiving email was fine, but sending email was not. The customer is connected to the internet with an Optus cable modem, and uses the Optus mail server and DNS server. This was the error being displayed in Microsoft Outlook when he tried to send a message:

All other internet services were working fine. I stopped and started Outlook, checked the account settings and checked the internet connection. All looked OK.

I could ping the Optus mail server, so I tried to telnet into port 25. (‘Ping’ and ‘telnet’ are basic network diagnostic and management tools.) The response I got from the Optus mail server was: ESMTP not accepting messages. To the technically-minded, and even the not-so-technically-minded, this means there’s a problem with the mail server. It’s “not accepting messages”. Pretty simple. Not much room for negotiation there, and not much more fault-finding to be done at this end.

I Googled “optus outage information” and found this site which told me there were no current issues with Optus email.

I thought (naively, in hindsight) I should ring Optus and at least alert them to the issue, and find out if I could use a different mail server in the interim. I was actually hoping to hear a canned message, like, “If you’re calling in relation to email difficulties, please be aware we are experiencing problems at the moment with… blah blah blah.” That’s all I wanted: a quick explanation, an expected outage time and a possible remedy.

My call to 1800 780 219 was answered promptly and it was pretty good quality to Mumbai. I provided the customer’s account details, and I explained to the helpdesk operator I was a technical support person, that we had a mutual customer, and it appeared the Optus SMTP server was down. I told him the error I was getting in Outlook, and the error I was getting by connecting via telnet. I asked if maybe there was an alternative mail server I could use, until the problem had been fixed?

At that point the call derailed rather badly. The next fifty minutes consisted of questions and suggestions (and my responses in italics) like the following. These were all interspersed with BEING PUT ON HOLD for up to 5 minutes at a time:

“We’ll try deleting all your mail in Outlook, and restarting Outlook.” “We won’t be deleting any mail today. It’s not a problem with Outlook, or the customer’s email. It’s a problem with your SMTP server.”

“Let’s create a new mail account in Outlook, that should fix the problem.” “It won’t, but I’ll do it anyway if helps to escalate the problem at your end.” Surprisingly, a new mail account with the same settings didn’t fix the problem.

“I will change the password on the customer’s account, let’s try that.” “But SMTP doesn’t need a password, we’re not using SMTP authentication.” (Password changed anyway.)

“You need to delete all your cookies and browser history, that should fix it.” “Ummm no it won’t. But I’ll do it anyway if it progresses your script.” (Done anyway FWIW. No difference.)

He asked if I could try the same test from another mail client, or on another machine on the customer’s network. I didn’t think that would achieve anything either, other than to check DNS resolution on an independent machine, but did it anyway. There was (predictably) no change in the response from Optus’s SMTP server.

I asked if the mail server name I was using was correct. He assured me it was.

I asked if I could email the help desk operator a screen-grab of the error messages. ”No, we don’t have email here.” (“Where are you, are you in Melbourne?” “No, I’m in Mumbai.” “Hmmm we have email in Melbourne, are you sure you don’t have email in Mumbai?”)

I asked if he could ping the mail server from his end. “No, we can’t do that from here.”

I asked if he could telnet into the mail server. “No, we don’t have telnet here.” I asked if he was familiar with telnet, and if he understood the tests I was performing here. He assured me he was, and that he understood. Then he asked me to check settings in Outlook again.

I was pinging the mail server name, and read out the IP address of the mail server. I asked him if the mail server name was resolving to the correct IP address? He said it was.

I asked him if the mail server name resolved to a different IP address on *his* network. He said he didn’t know, and suggested making more changes to Microsoft Outlook.

And then, my favourite, about 40 minutes into the call: “Actually, can I just check that you have access to the internet please?”

After this last question I forced myself to take a deep breath, and appealed (in a calm, steady voice) for the operator to think before the next time he spoke. “Oh, yeah,” he said, “After all the tests we’ve done, I guess you do have internet access.” Yep. Good guess.

The help desk operator steadfastly refused to concede there may have been a network problem. I honestly don’t know how I could have explained the issue any clearer. He seemed to understand what I was saying – there was no language barrier – but he kept repeating he had checked with “the engineers” and there was no issue with the Optus mail server.

I asked if there was a better network outage page I could monitor, in case an issue was discovered and later resolved. He said there was nowhere I could go on the World Wide Web to monitor service disruptions or outages on Optus Internet. I asked him if he was serious, and he laughed.

Eventually I said I’d just have to wait to see if the server came back. I said I’d like to wait on the line to answer a few questions in the automated customer survey at the end of the call. He said, “Okay, thankyou for calling Optus.” Click. Beep beep beep.

Now for the kicker: just as I was explaining the situation to my customer, Optus Social Media replied to a tweet they had seen. (I was tweeting vehemently about this sad and sorry tale whilst on hold). Here is the response from Optus Social Media:

I was speechless, dumbfounded, flabbergasted and a little bit pissed off.

To ask the most obvious of obvious questions, why couldn’t the help desk operator have told me this 50 minutes previously, in the first 90 seconds of my phone call?

Here’s what have I learnt from this experience:

• Social Media and Lazywebs will now be my first port-of-call for any technical support enquiry with Optus;
• I will actively discourage people from becoming Optus internet customers; and
• I will actively encourage existing Optus customers to churn to an ISP that offers better technical support than this.

What the hell would have happened if the customer (not being technically minded) had called Optus Support and followed their instructions? He would have deleted all his email, probably his mail account settings, screwed-up Outlook, and never actually achieved anything. This was not a difficult support call to resolve, from the point-of-view of the customer. There should be mechanisms in place for outage information to be shared across call centres, help lines and web sites. Quite clearly, at Optus, there isn’t.

No-one really cares if ISPs have a service disruption. Unplanned outages are inevitable in the IT industry. But for goodness sake, Optus should be able to manage them a lot better than this. If this is characteristic of the help desk support afforded by the telco, it probably goes some way to explaining news headlines we’ve seen throughout the year, like this and this.

Credit where credit is due, and kudos to the Optus Social Media team for monitoring Twitter and responding appropriately and in a timely fashion.

Unfortunately, after 15 years of providing cable internet to Australian subscribers, the rest of the organisation still has a lot to learn.

awkward moments · customer support · email · fail · help desk · Internet · internet support · mail · mail.optusnet.com.au · Optus · outage · poor customer support · SMTP · social media

Another self-indulgent blog post, so next time I have this problem, I don’t waste hours trying to fix something I’ve successfully tackled in the past. Hopefully this helps someone else.

The mysterious, magical Samba service is great when it works. When it doesn’t, it can be extraordinarily frustrating.

Problem

You can’t add Samba users at your Linux console. You get this error; for example, by issuing an “smbpasswd -a” command:

Unable to modify TDB passwd: NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL!
Failed to add entry for user xyz.
Failed to modify password entry for user xyz

The username is a valid Linux user, and the account is unlocked.

I also tried deleting the Samba user with an “smbpasswd -x”, but to no avail. Stopping and starting the SMB and NMB services does not resolve the problem.

My system details

OS / Kernel: Fedora 9 – 2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686
Samba package: samba-3.2.11-0.28.fc9.i386

Solution

** WARNING **!!  This solution worked for me, but obviously, no warranties are made  for any other systems. Make backups and proceed at own risk.

A post on a Debian forum suggested that the Samba password file might be corrupt. The password file is a binary called “passdb.tdb” and will be re-created, if it doesn’t exist, when SMB and NMB are restarted.

Note that you’ll need to re-add all your Samba users and passwords!

• Locate passdb.tdb
• Make a backup of passdb.tdb
• Remove passdb.tdb
• Stop the SMB and NMB daemons
• Start the SMB and NMB daemons

At this point you should see that a new, much smaller passdb.tdb has been created.

Try adding your user again with an “smbpasswd -a” command. Add your other Samba users with the same command.

It worked for me. Good luck.

fedora · linux · nmb · passdb.tdb · Samba · smb

I read Adam Turner’s blog last week with interest: Is the Media Centre PC dead?

Adam filed another article on the popular Hydrapinion blog, too: Media Centre PC – R.I.P.?

My initial reaction was, “NOOooooo, Adam, why would you say such I thing?!” I’ve had a Media Centre PC in the living room for some years, running various versions of Microsoft’s Media Center operating system; with varying degrees of success too, I might add.

What we’re talking about here is not just a Media Centre: it’s actually a PC Media Centre running in your living room, plugged in to the television, the surround sound and your computer network. Like any PC it’s got a monitor (which, invariably, is your big-arse LCD or plasma television), as well as a mouse and a keyboard.

But what does the Media Centre PC actually do? In Adam’s ideal lounge room, he breaks down the technology components into five key functions:

1. High-Def PVR;
2. DVD/Blu-ray player;
3. Streaming media player;
4. Online video player; and
5. Gaming console.

Adam says you can mix and match gadgets, and I agree whole-heartedly, and I think that a Media Centre PC is the best device to achieve most (if not all) of these components.

For Points 1, 3 & 4 – my Windows 7 Media Centre has a tuner card (albeit Standard Definition – time to upgrade, Dr Ron?) and records free-to-air TV with ease. Ad-skipping is a breeze, and the programming and scheduling is made super-easy with an intuitive interface and electronic program guide.

Ad-skipping made easy on the Media Centre PC

Also, if you’re looking for a good streaming media player, I reckon the PC has got this nailed. Despite the occasional horrors of missing codecs, or proprietary players or buffering bandwidth, media streaming is made simple on a PC.

There are two problems that leap to mind with media streaming devices like Western Digital’s WDTV Live. Because there is no physical keyboard, you have to enter search queries, web addresses and server names with an on-screen “virtual” keyboard using the arrows on your remote control. I think I’d rather sit in a dentist’s chair for an hour than have to enter another URL on the WDTV Live with the supplied remote control. Don’t get me wrong, I own a WDTV Live and I think it’s an awesome device for what it is – but there are some things it just can’t do well.  This is one of them.

Second, a lot of “TV connected devices” are region-blocked on providers like Google’s YouTube. Devices other than PCs and home computers can’t play a lot of content. To add insult to injury, the User Interface in these devices often recommends popular clips, only to deliver a perfunctory error, like: ”THIS CONTENT NOT AVAILABLE ON TV-CONNECTED DEVICES” or similar. Of course, the Media Centre PC sidesteps this problem nicely.

For a DVD/BluRay player and gaming console, nothing beats the Sony PlayStation 3 for high-quality DVD and BluRay playback. The digital outputs deliver top-notch audio and video to your 21st Century lounge room. The PS3 is also a sensational games console, despite the recent PlayStation Network difficulties and Sony’s apparent slap-dash attitude towards security. Hmmmmmm.

I found this comment of Adam’s interesting: “To be honest, these days [the PC media centre] is more of a media server than a player.”

In actual fact, we use it the other way around. Apart from recorded programs from free-to-air, we don’t keep any content on our PC Media Centre. Its primary use is playback, accessing on-line content like YouTube, and Windows shares on the family media server (which is a Linux-powered PC in Shack East – read, ManLand).

It also makes sense to me to have a simple PC as a “lounge room component”. Sometimes you just want to do stuff on your big-screen TV: like web browsing, or looking at friends’ holiday pics on their SD card, or even sniping the latest must-have on eBay or GraysOnline.

The only downsides I can think of are the mechanical noise of a PC (which is manageable, and certainly not as bad today as it was 10 years ago); potentially the space it takes up; and the unwieldy mouse and keyboard which need a home somewhere. Even without cables, the wireless versions take up a bit of space.

A wireless mouse is included in my collection of remote controls

I agree with Adam that you’re unlikely to find one gadget to do it all. But wouldn’t you agree, the PC Media Centre comes close?

adam turner · digital lounge room · media centre · media streamer · Microsoft · WD TV Live · Western Digital · windows 7

Well.

Where do I start?

I’ve been joking recently about having three full-time jobs. I’ve been employed by the Victorian Government in my current role for nearly seven years. This has been hugely rewarding and I have enjoyed the job immensely. It’s a job which involves shift work, overtime, on-call duties, and accounts for a large portion of my life. It also pays the bills, lets me buy clothes, food, that sort of stuff. I will refer to this as Full Time Job #1.

Also about seven years ago, I caught-up with a long-time friend who I had known since high school (let’s call him Andrew). Andrew has worked in the television production industry for many years. We’d been chatting over coffee about computers, mobile telephones and the state-of-the-fledgling internet. We marvelled at Pentium-powered desktops, the brilliance of Microsoft Office 2003, and how you could access email from your mobile telephone using a technology called GPRS, without making a phone call.

Andrew had, at the time, been speaking about technology on Melbourne radio station 3AK with Brett de Hoedt. Andrew suggested we continue our coffee-talk in front of microphones at a community radio station. I thought that sounded like fun, and on the 29th of November 2004, Tech Talk Radio was born. Tech Talk Radio is a lot of fun, but it’s very time-consuming. It’s akin to a full-time job, which for the purposes of the exercise, I shall call Full Time Job #2.

I’ve always wanted to do a lot more with Tech Talk Radio, in terms of production, interviews, sponsorship, syndication, guests and research. I think we all do as much as we possibly can at the moment, but tempered (and rightly so) with a view to maintaining our sanity, our families, our other full-time jobs, a healthy amount of fibre in our diets, and so on.

Recently, the opportunity arose to help Andrew with a small television project*.

“But,” I said, “This sounds like another full-time job. I already have a full-time job. I’ve got two, in fact.” I shall call this fledgling proposal Full Time Job #3.

So a decision needed to be made.

After much soul-searching, spousal negotiation and visits to the accountant, I’ve devised a cunning plan; just how cunning, only time will tell.

FTJ #1 has been good enough to let me take leave without pay, while keeping open my existing position. The leave period is effectively until the end of this year. I started leave at FTJ #1 yesterday, which was Friday the 27th of May. I will have to go back in for a few days here and there, but that’s part of the deal. I am effectively now on leave from FTJ #1 for seven months.

FTJ #2 will now combine with FTJ #3. I have registered a new company, and will be working until the end of the year doing full-time Tech Talk.

The mind boggles. Am I serious? Yes. Am I insane? Probably. I’ll be doing some freelance I.T. and telecommunications consulting as well, to keep the bills paid and food on the table.

It’s a nervous and exciting time. I’m in an extraordinarily fortunate position of being able to return to FTJ #1 if things don’t work out. But I’m feeling very optimistic about things, and I’m looking forward to the next seven months with copious quantities of zeal.

As one learned colleague said to me last night, “You don’t want to die wondering.”

Words of wisdom indeed. Stay tuned.

*to be continued....

social media · Tech Talk Radio · TTR

This is predominantly a techy, self-indulgent post, which exists for two reasons:

1. there are a lot of people on the intranets that appear to have this, or a similar, problem; and
2. when I come across this problem again, and I’ve forgotten what I did to fix it, at least I’ve got it documented somewhere.

Dovecot is a POP3 / IMAP mail server for Linux systems, used extensively by small businesses and ISPs.

I had a problem recently after adding a Linux user, which was this: I couldn’t log in as the new user to collect mail. Mail was being delivered correctly to the right location, e.g.:

/var/mail/new_user

…but dovecot wouldn’t let me log in to check it. I could see the following errors in my maillog:

dovecot: POP3(new_user): mail_location not set and autodetection failed:
Mail storage autodetection failed with home=/home/new_user
dovecot: POP3(new_user): Fatal: Namespace initialization failed

Trying to use the PHP mail client SquirrelMail I was getting this: “ERROR: Connection dropped by IMAP server”.

Simply trying to telnet into port 110, I was getting this, after entering the correct password: “Connection closed by foreign host”.

Yuk.

After a bit of to’ing and fro’ing, I found that when I created the new user, a mail directory was not being created in the new user’s home directory. Now I don’t recall having to do this in the past, and I’m not sure what’s changed (don’t you hate that?) but this definitely fixed the problem. I even deleted and recreated the new user a number of times to double-check this fixed the problem:

• Go to the new user’s home directory, e.g. /home/new_user
• “mkdir mail”
• change permissions and ownership of this new directory if you need to, e.g.:
• chown new_user:new_user mail
• chmod 700 mail

That’s it!

From this point on, I was able to log in to check mail correctly.

Dovecot was then able to access the directory, which it appears to use to hold imap folders, e.g. /home/new_user/mail/.imap/INBOX and so on.

Like I said, I don’t recall having to go through this manual process of creating a mail directory in the past, obviously something’s changed but it had me pulling my hair out for hours.

Hopefully this helps someone. If not, it will probably help me down the track, and that ain’t bad.

autodetection failed · Connection closed by foreign host · Connection dropped by IMAP server · dovecot · linux

Over the Christmas / New Year break, Tech Talk panelists are taking time away from the studio.

During this time, we’re running a “best of” series which showcases highlights from the last few years.

So far, we’ve heard from:

Georgia Simmons, representing the Telstra Foundation;

Graham Henley from GetData;

Michael Crimean, a professional audio engineer;

Adam Turner attending the launch of the HTC Magic in Sydney, as well as the launch of Apple’s iPad and the opening of Apple’s Bondi store in Sydney;

George Pongas, the COO of ISP Domain Central;

Dr James Chon, representing Swinburne University;

Alan Eade from St John Ambulance (Victoria);

Mark Mayer, retired QANTAS airline pilot;

Jeff Alexander and David Glover from Microsoft;

Closet Tech Geek Sally Cockburn (aka “Dr Feelgood“);

Sandrina Branton from BMC Software;

European Correspondent Matthew Robinson;

Gaming expert Leena van Deventer;

Luke Durham from Switch Media, and Adrian Britton from HostWorks;

Independent technology journalist Anthony Caruana;

…as well as select Panel discussions, websites, gadgets and Odd Spots, and entertaining and informative Views from the Couch.

Next week we’ll re-visit the last episode of 2010, and Tech Talk’s inaugural Outside Broadcast, which went to-air live from the Sofia Family Restaurant in December.

We’ll all be back live in the studio on the 14th of February.  Rumours that former Tech Talk panelist Mark Diggins is back in the country are largely founded… stay tuned!

adam turner · apple · Microsoft · Outside Broadcast · social media · Social Networking · Summer Series · Tech Talk Radio · telstra · TTR · Twitter · windows 7

In October 2005 I churned from Telstra to Three.

Telstra was no longer competitive.  At the time, Telstra wouldn’t sell me a SIM card for my brand new HTC JasJar.  They wanted passports, driver licences and credit cards to set up a new mobile account (even though I was already a Telstra customer), and everything was just too hard.  ”Customer service” just wasn’t in their dictionary.

The new Three network, on the other hand, was eager to build its customer base and go the “extra mile” to make and keep people happy.  Three offered free calls to other Three subscribers, and they offered the latest 3G handsets with progressive data packs that left Telstra for dead.

Telstra launched its NextG network in October 2006, which uses the 850 MHz radio spectrum, but customer satisfaction rated poorly for a long time despite Telstra’s technically superior radio network.

Things were going swimmingly for Three.  Sales were booming, they were shoring-up their own coverage through a roaming agreement with Telstra, and they were leaving the incumbent behind in a cloud of smoke.

It’s taken five years for Telstra to wake up, but slowly it’s coming around.  The Australian telecommunications behemoth has been listening to customers, critics, journalists and industry.  The announcement of recent data plans shows that they’re starting to get serious, as well as the introduction of competitive capped plans and slashed broadband prices.

The winner?  You and me.   With the end of my Three contract fast approaching, I took a look at these new Telstra plans.  On Three, I was paying $69/month for a $650 cap limit, plus $30/month for a “Blackberry internet service”.  I also had to pay to access voicemail, and I had a paltry 200 MB data included each month.

(The “Blackberry internet service” was a handset repayment charge.  Three thinks I was using a Blackberry on its network, but I wasn’t.  I sold the Blakberry early-on and used the proceeds to fund a new HTC Dream, which was the first Android-powered handset released by HTC.)

Now I’m on a new Telstra plan.  This means:

• I’m $20 /month better off on a NextG $79 Cap Plan which includes a $750 cap limit and no handset repayment fees;
• I’ve got a nice shiny new HTC Desire; and
• I’ve got a whopping 2GB /month included.

The only down-side is that I don’t have free untimed calls to other Three subscribers.  However,  I think this is a small price to pay, especially since most people I know on Three are churning anyway.

It also means I’m on a technically superior phone network, and after nearly a week I’m yet to experience a call dropout (except yesterday afternoon when I was talking to a Three subscriber.)  I was really getting sick of hitting redial eight times in one half-hour period, trying to maintain a voice call on the Three network.  Since Three did a deal with Hutchison and formed the VHA conglomerate, and then announced in October that they were dissolving their roaming partnership with Telstra, Three’s network coverage has been on the down-and-down.  I’ve noticed a significant degradation in service on the Three network over the past few months.

For me, the decision was a no-brainer.  As the helpful Sales Rep in the T-Store said to me, “Welcome back to Telstra.”  The days of Sol Trujillo are gone, and David Thodey is now in the hot seat.  There’s no doubt that David Thodey is anxious to repair the image of a telco with a mobile network in this country second-to-none.  The decision to use Telstra should always have been a no-brainer.

android · churn · HSDPA · HTC · HTC Desire · HTC Dream · NextG · telstra · Three · VHA

awkward moments · funny · motivational

For the love of God, will people please stop sending money to complete strangers via Western Union, and complaining that their money has mysteriously disappeared?!?!

I had the unfortunate experience of dealing with the following gentleman at work yesterday. This man, let’s call him “Phil”, was looking to buy a car on carsales.com.au, which is a popular Australian car auction website.

Having found an almost-new Ford Falcon sedan with low mileage for just $12,500, Phil thought that was a bargain.  IT’S ALMOST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, thought Phil to himself. He made some email enquiries, and the seller said that he had to travel overseas with the military, and that he was reluctant to sell the car for such a low price, but that he needed a quick sale and didn’t expect to be back anytime soon.

The seller told Phil that he would remove the car from carsales.com.au, and list the vehicle on eBay with a “buy it now” link.  The seller then sent Phil an email with a URL, to something which looked a bit like this:

http://www.ebay.com.au.car-sales-server.someotherdodgydomainname.co.cn/

Phil clicked on this link which took him to what he thought looked like an eBay listing for the car, with a “buy it now” link.

But Phil was concerned about buying the car ’sight unseen’.  So he did two things:

1. He rang VicRoads, and they referred him to a VicRoads website, to check the legitimacy of cars being offered for sale.  He entered in the registration details, and the make / model / colour / VIN matched the vehicle being offered for sale; and
2. He asked the seller if he was covered by eBay’s “Buyer Protection” scheme.

The seller said yes, of course, and sent him another link to an address which looked a bit like this:

http://www.ebay.buyerprotection.biz/

At this site Phil submitted a form with the eBay Item number, and received a cheerful email reply confirming that the transaction was legitimate, and that Phil would indeed be covered by eBay’s comprehensive “Buyer Protection” programme.

Phil and his money were easily parted. He journeyed down to the local Post Office forthwith, and used Western Union (as requested by the seller) to wire $12,500 to a man by the name of JOHN SMITH.

For some unknown reason, the car never arrived. Phil used a freight-tracking website which the seller provided, but then that shut down, then the emails stopped, and the eBay link which Phil had in his emails stopped working too.

When Phil reported this to eBay, they told him it was a common scam and that Phil’s transaction ID did not exist.

When Phil reported the incident to the police, they told him that the car registration and make / model / colour / VIN were all legitimate, and that the scammers had simply copied these details (and the digital photographs) from a legitimate car advertisement.  They also told Phil that there was little, if any, chance of recovering his money.

How to avoid eBay scams

This list is by no means exhaustive. But some or any of these tips might have stopped Phil becoming the victim of an eBay scam:

1. Learn how to read URLs and internet addresses.  It’s not hard.  If in doubt, ask that tech-savvy person in your family for help.
2. Never, ever use Western Union to transfer money.  eBay says that Western Union is regularly used by online scammers: “They typically ask buyers to make payments using Western Union or a similar money transfer service because they are hard to trace.” Pay using direct deposit or PayPal so that some level of accountability exists.
3. Use a current web browser that offers protection from phishing scams.
4. Always type URLs directly into your web browser, e.g. “ebay.com.au”.  DON’T click on links in emails. DON’T click on images in emails.
5. Don’t buy expensive stuff if you haven’t seen it in Real Life!!  Always inspect real estate, motor cars, white goods and expensive items prior to bidding. The opportunity of a lifetime comes along every day.

And remember, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

419 · awkward moments · buyer protection · eBay · email · fraud · PayPal · scam · Western Union

I’m a self-confessed Sudoku addict. I like regular Sudoku, Samurai Sudoku and even hexadecimal Sudoku. I do Sudoku in books, newspapers, and (until very recently) on-line. I find it relaxing, entertaining and mentally stimulating.

Hence my horror last week, when in a personal vendetta launched wholly at me and intended to achieve nothing other than leave me in crumpled, listless, lifeless state on the floor of the computer room, grubby Zynga Games shut down their massively popular Challenge Sudoku game on Facebook. At the time this digital atrocity was committed, nearly 20,000 fans were friends of the game and Challenge Sudoku had received a rating of 3.9 stars out of 5 stars, based on 1,468 reviews.

Here’s the heart-wrenching message which greeted me when I logged on, in order to finish a 5-round “harder” marathon against my Facebook arch-nemesis, a game which I can only assume will now remain unfinished until the end of time itself:

The grubby error message from Zynga Games

Needless to say – but I’ll say it anyway – “important” games like Farmville, CafeWorld and Mafia Wars are still going strong.

Despondent, heart-broken, despised and rejected, I logged off Facebook, shut down the computer and wept quietly for some hours. I then started driving around aimlessly, in an effort to think clearly. I found myself at mum & dad’s, where I stopped seeking consolation and a mug of International Rust.

I confided in my mother, explaining  my Sudoku dilemma.

Mum said, “Well, there’s always the games you used to play in the garage. Let’s have a look.”

Curious, I followed my mother into the garage, where every single game, toy, camping tool, school book and scouting provision from my childhood was safely stored, and will also possibly (and coincidentally) be stored until the end of time itself.

Would you believe, in next to no time, my mother was able to produce 1 x original, genuine, 30-year-old Intellivision games console??!?!?

The Mattel Intellivision

Woo hooo!! The Intellivision was manufactured in the late-1970s by Mattel, and was a state-of-the-art machine in its day. My family spent thousands of hours in front of this bleeding-edge games console as we attacked aliens from outer space, negotiated Pitfall Harry over alligators and swamps, and even dodged dangerous barrels of burning oil in Donkey Kong.

The Intellivision is a cartridge machine and mum found a big bag of game cartridges too. I raced home and plugged everything in. No fancy HDMI output on this little sucker: the Intellivision was equipped with an RF modulator. Kids, this means you switch the television to channel 0 or channel 1, and plug a coaxial cable between the system and the antenna socket on your TV.

I was concerned that the Intellivision wouldn’t work after all these years, and I was especially concerned that the magnetic media on the games cartridges would have long since become corrupt or erased completely.

I was, however, excitedly surprised to find that most cartridges still actually worked, after at least 30 years of use and abuse, and storage in a high-humidity garage.

Here are some exciting images from the next few hours of my life, showing-off the Intellivision’s magnificent 159 x 192 aspect ratio and 16-colour graphics palette:

Space Armada

Swords and Serpents

Donkey Kong

…and last, but certainly not least:

Demon Attack

Other exciting titles include Happy Trails, Utopia, Star Strike, Auto Racing, Baseball and Thunder Castle.

And the GREAT thing I’m discovering about the Intellivision, 30 years on, is that no-one in the world knows who I am – or anything about me – when I’m playing a game; AND there’s not one single privacy setting which can mean the difference between access to the game itself and criminally-motivated identity fraud.

I’m yet to find a Sudoku cartridge, but for now, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve learned to deal with my Zynga pain. I’m too busy shooting demons and jumping oil barrels.

Long live Mattel!

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