use Perl

So two days ago, I get back from dropping the kids off at school to find that there's a large wet stain on the ceiling of the hall. The carpet in the bottom of the boiler cupboard is sodden.

Conclusion: the boiler is leaking.

I ring the letting agency. Jessica is very friendly and helpful and a little while later I get a call from a service company. Their man will call later that day. Result

But...

It turns out that their man ins only a plumber and is not CORGI registered and can't work on gas boilers. So he needs to escalate it to a heating engineer. He does this at ~3pm two days ago, saying (to me) that someone should phone me to arrange a time for the engineer to call. I pass this on to Jessica.

After a couple of hours, no phone call. So Jessica chases them. Nothing.

The next morning, I let Jessica know that I've heard nothing, and she chases again. A little later I get a phone call from a guy from another service company. He tells me that they'll send someone "tomorrow" (i.e. today). Given that we're had no heating for more than 24 hours now, I ask if there's any chance of it being the same day (yesterday) He very officiously tells me that they guarantee a next day call out service and they only got the fax this morning, and the engineer will phone me between 8-8:30 to arrange a time to call.

Conclusions:

1. If you're renting and suffer a breakdown like this, you are more or less powerless as it sounds like there are two separate companies between me and the engineer
2. I'm not sure why it'd called a service contract, when that word is patently not being supplied

Our old monitor seems to be on its last legs, so I've just been to Scan's website (from where, >10 years ago, the now dieing monitor was bought) to replace it. Found one I liked, then tried to pay for it. Unfortunately, like most online merchants, they've been bullied into implementing 3D secure (aka Verified by Visa/MasterCard SecureCode).

Oh how I laughed when NoScript popped up a warning saying that it just blocked a XSS attack from www.securesuite.co.uk (which was trying to POST back to www.scan.co.uk).</sarcasm>

So, not only does the user experience to all intents and purposes look exactly like a phishing attempt, a successful payment gets blocked by security software. Thus, in order for 3D to work (remember this protocol is designed to make the purchasing on the web "more secure"), I have to make my PC less secure?!?

Anyone would think this had been designed by a government.</despair>