Ordinary Gweilo

How can it be so difficult to setup a website that people can use?  In fact, why would you bother to setup a website that was people can’t use?   

Now, to be fair, I think PPS is a great idea.  Pay your bills by phone any time, day or night, whichever bank you use.  Why bother to set up a direct debit when you can use this service free of charge? All local calls in Hong Kong are free, so it really does cost nothing – the only downside was listening to the recorded messages as you used the service ("Welcome to PPS…Good Evening…To register your bill").

These days, of course, they have a website as well, so no more irritating messages.  Except that rather more irritatingly, it seems to require a "Java Virtual Machine".  Maybe I haven’t got one of those on my PC at work, so nothing happens.  I looked at their requirements, and even followed the link to where I could get my own Java Virtual Machine – except that when I got there I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking for.

So I gave up.   

Meanwhile, I finally gave in and upgraded my home PC’s Windows XP to SP2.  Having read a few articles about this I came to the conclusion that it might not be straightforward, so I decided it was best to put it off and to be prepared for some problems.  I waited, I got the CD from Microsoft, I backed stuff up before I upgraded, and I hoped for the best.

As it turned out it was very straightforward – didn’t take long, nothing went wrong, and I haven’t had any problems since I upgraded.  I can even use the PPS website. 

Computers, eh.  Can’t live with ’em, can’t throw them out of your 37th floor apartment window.