24 July 2008

Au Revoir, Banque

Bye-bye BNP Paribas. We had a great time together for three and a half years, more than your own rules allow. We might even meet again.

Next week: the Pyrennees. Watch this space for photos, assuming there's an internet connection down there somewhere.

After that: freelancing and maybe some startupping.

Beyond that: Hong Kong? Australia? India? Japan? Switzerland?

See you this evening in O'Sullivan's !!

17 July 2008

Urssaf considered harmful

Urssaf is a big government body in France that collects money. I don't know what this money is for, but they send nasty letters threatening legal action if you don't pay.

Urssaf sucks in more ways than I can list.

Today (17th July), however, we received what we thought was an opportunity for vengeance. A customer satisfaction survey. We started crossing all of the "not satisfied at all" boxes in heavy black ink. And then noticed on the cover letter: "Please return this form before the 11th of July 2008". Oops. And then noticed the postmark on the envelope: 10th of July 2008

I bet there is some damned smug pointy-haired manager in the bowels of Urssaf somewhere describing to his boss, through yellowing teeth and cigarette breath, as he strokes his balding head, his innocent surprise at how so few surveys were returned.

Merde, merde, and double merde.

If you can recommend a country that's not as completely broken as France, please leave a comment.

Using checkbox for a multiple-value parameter in Rails

This wasn't obvious. Thanks to satish on rails I learned this is the way to do it:

 <input type="checkbox" name="customer[preferences][]" value="yellow"/>
 <input type="checkbox" name="customer[preferences][]" value="blue"/>
 etc

The extra [] at the end of the parameter name makes all the difference. In your controller, you can now reference

  params[:customer][:preferences]

and get a list.