menu.

A couple of months back I switched to Pay as you Go on Orange. This is my first time on a pre-pay mobile phone plan so I’m new to this lark. Anyway I just received a text that said:

Hi from Orange. You now have 60 free minutes to call your friends and family. This can be used to any network or landline within the UK at anytime. Enjoy.

My immediate reaction was concern that they’d given me talk time as a reward instead ofmy 300 texts for topping up by £10 in the month ending 12th December. I phoned 453 to confirm the message was genuine as it came from +447973100610 and not “Orange” or something similar (O2′s messages always had “O2″ in the From field).

According to 453 I have 278 messages left to use by midnight on 10th January so that’s about right, but I also have “60 minutes of free calls to phones in the UK” to be used by midnight on 13th December 2008. Nice one, but why?

I can only assume it’s a Christmas present of sorts, since there’s been no explanation in the text or at 453, and all bundle-related information seems to have dropped off the “My Account” section of their web site altogether. Since I refuse to pay 25p to talk to some muppet at Orange’s call centre unless I absolutely, no other choice, end of the world have to, and they refuse to answer account-related questions by email, I suppose it’ll have to remain a mystery.

Update: 17th December 2007

I’ve just received a text which seems to go some way to explaining the above.

From: Orange
Thanks for topping up. You have won 60 free minutes of talk time for 12 months. We will send yo ua text in the next few days and then they will be ready to use.

That’s handy since I’ve already used 8 of them!

I have found what appears to be the Best Page in the Universe.

(Thanks to user arotabi at the second best page).

I’ve decided to introduce a new permanent page to nerd. – the “I’m Playing” page which will give brief information on whatever video game I’m currently playing. The first one: Final Fantasy XII.

At the moment I’m mostly playing Final Fantasy XII on PS2. I played through Final Fantasy X but felt frustrated at the random fights that have been a trademark of the Final Fantasy series for as long as I can remember (that would be Final Fantasy VII then).

Final Fantasy XII finally does away with this annoyance; because of the way the field areas work you can see the enemies before actually engaging them in battle, which means you can avoid them and even run away. The battle system is also much improved with real time fights and the ability to swap in other characters for ones that die during battle (if you don’t want to revive them). Other major improvements I’ve noticed include superior graphics and a more interesting storyline.

All this and it’s available for less than a tenner brand new, so what are you waiting for?