Is it my imagination or is the online checkout process generally getting worse?

We've decided that you need a user ID rather than an email address
We're connecting you to our partner payment site so someone at their end can piss off with the big customer email list too
Wanna use Paypal? Pay the charge even though it's for our convenience as much as yours
That voucher code? Might work, might not. Even though we sent it to you
We don't recognise your sign-in details at the moment, come back tomorrow
Started entering your details? Bear with us while we refresh the page
Forgotten your log-in details? We probably won't send them to you tomorrow. Or maybe ever

The worst was an order placed for mother dearest recently - after much of the sh1te above, she decided that she wanted to take them up on an offer presented at the checkout page. So I clicked to 'add it'. It put the sale through with no mention of what happened to the previous basket item. I had the wit to check the emails and sure enough it had ordered both as wanted, just not bothered to tell me or give me the option to back out.

I think some you you will recall the "horse show" thing I was being steered into photographing. Sounds like it was a real shambles in places. The horse show bit went well. But.....

My wife was there as a steward, making sure people were were they had to be. However, one of the entrants who lives nearby the venue decided that her 93 year old mother (frail, dementia) had to come along. thing is, the old lady was sat in a chair at the side of the field and ignored by her daughter.

My wife was the one lumbered with the job of helping this frail old lady to the toilet tent, and dealing with getting her in and out of it. I mean, What The Actual FCUK?! That's not her job. If anything, old lady should have been brought along, shown the horses, and then taken home again.

This was noticed by pretty much everyone there, and I expect strong words will be had with that person about her mother and her horse (which is apparently a badly behaved animal and kicks).

Did I mention this person doesn't drive either, so retrying mother around relied on other people's good will.

Glad I wasn't there. I'm less likely to be polite about who should be taking responsibility for whom.

Websites that make you continually click to see the next section of an article need to sort it out.

Hate that. Doesn't matter if it's on smartphone tablet or laptop there's no need to make me click through on a page by page basis. Just show the whole thing on one page.

It depends, if it is a very long article and they have a comments section at the bottom, then I don't have an issue if they break it up after scrolling down a couple of pages. On the other hand, a photo gallery that reloads when moving to each new image is just "Geldmacherei" as we say in Germany (money making scam/rip-off).

That's the sort. And you can't even keep your place when you come back the next day or whatever!

So Miss Blue was booked in for surgery on Friday, I went through a lot of hassle to get the day off and managed to get someone to cover me. Then the hospital calls last minute, decides the Doctor wants the day off, and they've delayed it until next Friday, so I'm going through the whole hassle of trying to get next Friday off too! Furious and I need the day off to take her to/from the hospital, work aren't very sympathetic so I have to hope someone covers me.

My phone's pathetic internal memory's used up (I really can't delete or move any more apps), but looking into rooting it to remove bloat... I might as well do a rain dance for all the likelihood of it not bricking the phone.

Please don't do a rain dance, we've only just started to have the sun for the first time this year.

Mark

iPhone has been increasingly unstable of late - ever since the 8.3 update every so often, I'd get a blue screen reboot (screen goes blue, phone restarts) or it freezing, requiring a forced restart. It would do this at random times, though it seems that some apps will trigger it. Just starting them can do it, but in some it seems you can just access certain areas to do so.

I did a restore last week, but that made to difference.

On Friday, it went into a loop. Blue screen, reboot, home screen, blue screen, reboot, and so on. I couldn't stop it, so I had to wait for the battery to run flat. It got quite warm in the process. After that, it seemed fairly stable, but this evening, it did a similar reboot loop. At times, Incan hit the home button to wake the phone and find the screen shimmering.

So a trip to the Apple Store at Lakeside is in order (my closest one) tomorrow. I hope it misbehaves in store, though there is a ton of diagnostic crash logs from the weekend to show them.

I've read that a lot of iPhone 6 models have problems, but the causes are unknown (to users anyway). This started with iOS 8.3 for me, so I suspect it's a software problem, though some are saying that there was a bad batch of internal storage that is the cause. Hopefully I'll get sage advice from a Genius, or possibly a replacement.

It does seem that quality is slipping at Apple. Maybe 8.3 was rushed because of the Watch launch. It just seems odd that a device that's pretty much a sealed box can be allowed to become that unstable. I've had no other problems with iPhones in this way before, and even the current iPhone has been well behaved until this software update.

Dodgy software updates are why I'll avoid Win 10 if they insist on mandatory installs.

I've not had any problems with Windows 8 since release, no dodgy updates. The install of Windows 10 is optional, but free for the first year.

I might not update on day one, but I'll certainly be looking at upgrading soon after launch, at least on my second machine.

How many apps do you have on your phone? My 16GB Galaxy S3 still has around 8GB free...

Been awake since 4am with someone's car/house alarm on the street. What's the point of alarms, no one gives a sh1t if you're getting ransacked, all they care about is losing sleep. I'm so tired, my eyeballs feel like someone else's! I can't even do basic tasks like breakfast, this doesn't bode well for the day ahead

My phone's ancient!

So I managed to get the day off for Miss Blue's operation, the result though is that I now have to work 9 days in row straight after it because I had to move my shifts twice to account for the hospital moving her op.