venta

Aaaargh! How hard can it be to get a new computer to shut up?

One of the first settings I hunted out when I got it was to set the Windows Personalised Sound Scheme (or whatever it's called) to "no sounds". Then I went back and found the extra ticky-box for "and don't play the bloody Windows start-up sound, either". Is wanting "no sounds" but still enjoying the start-up jingle really such a common use-case that you'd make it the default?

Then of course, I had to find the setting in Outlook to let it know that when it notifies me of an upcoming appointment, the pop-up window is just fine and I don't need the bingley-beep as well. I appreciate applications are different from the OS, but I still think Outlook could examine your system preferences and default to something more in line with expectations.

Anyway, having thus oppressed my laptop it is wreaking its revenge by sporadically ignoring the headphones. Despite them being firmly jammed into the socket, the wretched machine decides that it would rather play staunchly through the speakers. Which is why I treated the office to a good chunk of Rammstein's America a week or two back.

Following that, I got into the habit of checking carefully (low volume, start music with headphones not on my head) each morning. It didn't happen again. Until I got lax about checking, and the whole world got a nice burst of the intro riff to A13 Trunk Road To The Sea yesterday.

Bloody thing.

Still, on the plus side, the file-renaming behaviour on Windows 7 is much nicer than on XP.

Urgh. Feeling this rubbish with a cold, for this long, ought not to be allowed.

However, while I've been lying in bed, whinging, my credit card's been off having fun.

MBNA rang me yesterday, and explained there were some suspicious transactions on my card. Before going into details, they'd need me to answer some security questions. Oh dear, here we go again...

( The usual security rigmarole )

And yes, it seems my card has been off having fun at iTunes and Napster. Not a huge amount of fun, though - three songs, which totals about £3.

What I want to know is how did the credit card company spot it as suspicious ? Admittedly, I don't buy music from iTunes but it's the sort of thing that I might very plausibly do. I do buy downloadable music online occasionally, and MBNA probably don't know that I'd rather eat my own foot than use iTunes.

I've no idea what information iTunes (or any other online retailer) might log which would make it possible to deduce the purchaser wasn't me. And if they thought the transaction suspicious, wouldn't they stop it at the point of sale ?

I guess the heuristics used are kept secret by the credit card companies, just to make it harder to work round them. But does anyone have a clue how it works ?

Has anyone else noticed that toiletries - and other cleaning products - seem to have gone a little mad of late ?

My current bottle of shampoo is coconut and sweet almond flavour. That doesn't sound too irrational. My conditioner is wheatgerm and cornsilk. Now wheatgerm I've heard of - though it's filed in my head under "weird-ass health-food" - but cornsilk is something of a mystery. On Wikipedia, cornsilk redirects to maize, which sounds a lot less glamorous.

Walking to the swimming baths the other day, zandev and I noticed an advert for washing powder containing "crushed silk and jasmine". Crushed silk ? Does that do any good, other than making the washing powder sound extra luxurious and like it will look after your clothes ? Oh, and probably putting the price up.

At the weekend, hanging out in Tesco, I observed that one can buy Lynx shower gel with "guava and volcanic rock extracts". Now which marketing executive looked at their shower gel plans and thought... it's good, but hey, wouldn't it be better if we put rocks in it ?

Accordingly, your challenge is to find the most ridiculous set of ingredients listed on the label of a toiletry or cleaning product. Post it below, and we'll put it to the vote... if possible, please include details of where you found it. We're not going to believe you about the roast marmoset and charcoal face cream unless you provide a link, a photo, or something in the way of hard evidence.