I am dedicating this new blogsite to Huda Bidiwala, who trades on ebay as digits_n_numbers. I’m going to add Helen at ebay here too. Huba Bidiwala is a thief, and Helen is an accessory to the theft.

The story in short, is that I purchased an item on ebay, and it didn’t work. I contacted the seller, Huda Bidiwala, and he sent me instructions which would have resulted in me formatting the hard-drive of my Sony Viao. He then arranged collection of the item, (and supplied me with a phoney collection number… which is therefore untraceable), and refuses to answer mail from PayPal, FedEx, Ebay, or Myself. Paypal is refusing to follow up on this, Helen is to blame, if she really exists… They say that they can’t trace the phoney FedEx number… I told them it was phoney. It’s been 4 months now, I have no external hard-drive and he’s kept my money, so I’m going to fight back, publishing this on all my blogsites, I’d like you to visit my Bebo, Myspace, etc, links, just to promote this in the google and yahoo websearch listings, ta,,,

Here is a history of the transaction….

Dear davypants!,

Congratulations You committed to buy the following item:



80 GB 2.5" External Portable Hard Disk Drive USB2.0 NEW

Sale price: £37.99
Quantity: 1
Subtotal: £37.99
Postage Other Courier: £7.95 for first item, £7.95 for each additional item.



Insurance (per item): £1.99 (required)
View item | Go to My eBay


Get Your Item


Click to confirm postage, get total price and arrange payment.

Details for Item number: 250077564349
Item URL: http://cgi.ebay.ie/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?...

Sale Date: Tuesday, 30 Jan, 2007, 13:58:51 GMT
Seller: digits_n_numbers (digitsnnumbers@googlemail.com)





Dear David Watson,

This email confirms that you, davypants!, have paid digitsnnumbers@googlemail.com 47.48 GBP using PayPal.

This credit card transaction will appear on your bill as "PAYPAL *HBIDIWALA".


Dear Digits,

I've received the item an hour ago, but it appears to
have failed already. It was initially recognised on my
works computer, and allowed me to check the
properties, 37 gig on each drive. I stopped the drive
as per normal for USB devices and took it to another
office computer, which recognised that a new device
had been added and was ready for use, but did not show
the device on "My Computer". I stopped the device and
returned it to the first computer which also failed to
find it on "my Computer". I've brought it back to my
house and tried it on my laptop, a sony Viao, which
cannot find. The green light is lit, but no drive is
showing on any of 3 computers.

Any suggestions? I've tried installing from disc, to
no avail. All the computers run XP.

Cheers,

Davy


digits_n_numbers( 1535 )


Positive feedback: 99.2%

Member since: 15-Feb-06

Location: London, United Kingdom

Registered on: www.ebay.co.uk



Item: 80 GB 2.5" External Portable Hard Disk Drive USB2.0 NEW (250077564349)

This message was sent after the listing closed.
digits_n_numbers is the seller.





Dear Customer,

Kindly follow following steps (For windows users)
Please go to control panel >
Administrative Tools >
Computer Management>
Disk Management>
Refresh your system (by clicking F5 key)>
Highlight drive letter>
Right Click Mouse>
Format.

I hope this will sort out the problem, however if you have any further question please do not hesitate to write.

Please note due to high volume of email/messages, all incoming emails are periodically deleted, once we reply. Kindly mention your original message again when you reply to us.

Sincerely Respond to this question






Responses in My Messages will not include your email address.




Thank you,
eBay
Note…. If you follow these step, you will end up formatting your hard-drive…. Bastard!

The item is

Hello everybody, I haven’t written in my blog for a while, so it’s time for an update I guess. It’s been very busy recently, but I’ve been given the day off today, due to injuries. So, the good news is I have time to attend to my blog. I’m sitting here with three staples in my scalp having walked into a road-sign. It makes a bit of a change, normally I bang my head on “Mind Your Head” signs, which is remarkably stupid of me. So, I guess that you’re intrigued now? I was out with the boss (Alex Copland) checking the Laois County bridges for use by nesting “Dippers” and wagtails, etc. Having finished at one bridge, I believe it was due to be the last one of the day, although we might have pulled one more in, we were scaling the bank, returning to the road. Alex reminded me to to be careful where I was putting my feet as there was an open drain hidden in the grass, and I was being so careful that I missed the 8 foot road-sign and smashed my head into the very corner of it. Luckily I was wearing my Donegal Tweed Flat-hat, otherwise I’d have needed a few more staples, and yes they are real staples just like the ones used in offices, only bigger and stronger!

Whilst waiting for the staples, Alex and I were able to watch most of the Seville V Espanol match on the TV in the hospital waiting room. This was a bit of a coincidence as I had left Seville Airport the previous day, with the plane full of Seville FC fans who were unable to fly to Glasgow due to the thousands that were attending the match. It was an exciting match, with two cracking goals and a lot of cracking strikes and saves.

Hopefully this will bring this weeks round of bad luck to an end. I spent the morning at the opticians replacing my specs which had broken whilst in Spain and in the afternoon my Leitz binoculars broke, (the focus wheel has decided to free-wheel). I’m told the bad luck comes in threes, so hopefully that’s that. My two latest eBay purchases (an MP3 player and radio transmitter) both work, so that’s a good sign, although the two of them don’t yet function as a pair because the jack-plugs are different sizes, but what the hell, that’s a lot better than the 80GB hard-drive which arrived broken and I’ve never been compensated for by eBay, the seller, (digits_n_numbers),the carrier or PAYPAL who have really let me and another colleague, Jamie, down. The carrier have promised to try and sort it out for me, whereas PAYPAL, the seller, (digits_n_numbers), and eBay no-longer respond to my mail. I did mention to those three in my last mail that I would enter a web-page naming and shaming them in blogspots and MySpace, if they didn’t sort it out. I might even add one to Bebo as well. So, if anyone else has been dissatisfied with any of these service providers…. Please add your comments and let’s go public.
Labels: digits_n_numbers, ebay, paypal

posted by Davy at 1:31 PM 0 comments

Jim's Retirement Bash!




As I mentioned, I had just returned from Spain. I had been out to a retirement party. My former Senior Lecturer, Dissertation Supervisor, Bird-Ringing Trainer and Friend, the eminent Dr. Jim Fowler (AKA His Majesty, The Royal Maalie King) was celebrating his retirement with some 25 or so of his good friends, family, colleagues and loyal subjects. It was excellent to see some of my favourite folk there, including Kate “House Sparrow” Vincent, Will Kirby and Simon “The Minstrel to the Royal Maalie Court” Cotter, along with some of my blogging friends, including Lorenzo the Llama. Another of my favourite lecturers attended, “Drinking Ken” Stewart, who drank a bottle and half of Irish whiskey, “Crested Ten” and “Black Bush”, with me, complaining continuously that Irish make weak whiskey compared with the dirty disgusting peat-bog and wood-smoke whiskey that the Scottish prefer. Having said that, he admitted that he doesn’t but whiskey any-more preferring to have it given him. He is

Farmers pull out all the stops for the Corncrake this year.
Davy Watson, Birdwatch Ireland Fieldworker.

No-one living along the River Shannon could be unaware of the summer flood this year. The plight of river-birds and the farmers made it onto national TV and radio this year. It was an unfortunately timed flood, catching most of the Shannon’s breeding bird population on eggs. Whilst a number of the birds will have been able to relocate to dryer meadows and replace their clutches a number of the birds will not have been able to do this. One of these birds is the globally threatened Corncrake.

The Shannon Callows are one of the last remaining inland sites in Europe for breeding Corncrake. The traditional late cutting of the callows has offered them a refuge whilst they have become extinct elsewhere. Most of Irelands Corncrake population are now restricted to the Islands and coastal zone of Mayo and Donegal, where agriculture is less intensive.

One of the problems that Corncrakes face is that they breed late into the summer, and require both broods of chicks to maintain a stable population. Most birds live for a number of years and have several years of breeding in which to successfully raise their young. The Corncrake is short-lived and may only get one or two attempts in it’s short life. Thus, if the chicks are killed or the eggs are lost then there may be no birds to return in the following year. Changes in agriculture, particularly the earlier cutting dates of meadows, have meant that these birds have not been able to breed safely away from the callows. The late winter flood traditionally has meant that the meadows are not able to be cut until later in the summer, allowing the birds the opportunity to raise more chicks than they are able to away from the river.

Prior to the 20th Century it was said that was a Corncrake in every field in Ireland. In 1988 there were almost 1000 still recorded in a national census. As recently as 2001 there were 54 calling males still along the Shannon Callows. In the flood of 2002 these numbers became much reduced, to 20 birds. The population had remained more or less stable at 22 or 23 birds until this year. This year there were only 17 birds recorded, south of Shannonbridge; Woodbank 1, Moystown 1, Lehinch 1, Bishop’s Island 3, Tower 3, Kilmeechon 1 and Baranagh, 1; north of the bridge there were 4 on the Clonmacnoise, Coolumber, Drumlosh, Curraghnaboll section and 2 at Clonburren (Fahn’s and Mather’s).

The effect of the flood may have been two-fold, one; that birds will have not raised two broods, and two; that the breeding season was delayed and that the second broods if any would be hatching in late August, during the traditional summer haymaking season, “Make hay whilst the sun shines”.

This year, Birdwatch Ireland fieldworkers went out monitoring the flood levels and were able to work out when breeding could resume, and when the last eggs could be hatching and it left us with only one conclusion, that we needed to the callows to remain uncut until September. This left us with what we thought would be an impossible task; to ask farmers to risk their hay for the year. September does not generally provide conditions ideal for making hay, the days are shorter and greater periods of good sunshine are required to save the hay.

Farmer’s along the Shannon have a great attachment to the Corncrake and this year could not have done more for them. We spoke to each farmer on callows that had calling Corncrake and explained exactly how things stood and offered compensation for delays and Corncrake-friendly mowing techniques. They agreed to stand together and give the Corncrake this one chance.

On callows without Corncrakes, 90% of the meadows had been cut before August 15th. Most of the hay along the Shannon would normally be saved by this date. On callows with Corncrakes 89% remained uncut until this date. Very little was cut before September 6th. A numbe