Recently in Thoughts :: Pensieri :: Category

As it's nearly that time of the year again I'm currently looking at options for hampers to send friends and relatives overseas.

While I do like the options from 4GiftsDirect, Gifts.ie etc., what about something a bit different?
It's a chocolate pizza!!

It's not just ordinary chocolate - it's high quality gourmet Belgian chocolate!

If I wasn't on a diet I'd order one!

More info here (if anyone gets one do let me know what it's like!)

Sales assistants in shops seem to fall into two broad categories.

They're either incredibly pushy ie. as soon as you walk in the door and before you've even had a chance to look at anything they're right beside you trying to "help" you.

Or you have the complete opposite extreme that ignores you entirely. You know the type, they're too "busy" chatting with other staff to bother selling you anything.

This afternoon I was hoping to buy some sports gear so that I can go to the gym (no I'm not going to turn into a fitness freak). There were a couple of things I wanted to get and a few others that I might have got if I'd been in the mood ie. if the shop assistants had been anyway helpful.

I wandered around the shop looking at things, but even though I tried to subtly catch their eye, not one of the shops staff (I counted at least 6) made even the slightest effort to assist me.

Now what about those shops where they actually look after you? One of my local menswear shops gets all my business for one simple reason: they care. I wandered in there yesterday afternoon hoping to get one or two shirts and came out of there with six shirts, three trousers, a jumper and a belt! Why? Because they made it easy for me to buy from them. They aren't pushy sales people, but they know how to upsell to me, so I'm more than happy to spend money with them.

Considering all the tales of woe about retail I've been reading in the media in the last couple of months you'd think that the retailers would actually be trying to sell stuff, wouldn't you?

I'll probably end up buying the sports wear I was looking for from an online retailer, as at least that way I won't feel ignored!

A couple of months ago there was an article in the Sunday Business Post about US properties for sale on eBay. Some of the figures were insane - you basically could buy a house for a few thousand dollars!

This weekend's Sunday Business Post has another article on the same subject and is listing houses for sale at prices so low that you could probably get them based on a personal loan or a very small affordable mortgage (by Irish standards).

Maybe I need to move to Florida?

While I love playing with technology, that doesn't necessarily mean that I get it right all of the time (or even a lot of the time!)

In my efforts to keep my phonebook backed up I managed to duplicate most of the contacts on my phone (some people appeared 5 times!!)

Oddly enough my phone didn't know what to do with multiple instances of the same contact, so I never had a clue who was ringing me or sending me texts.

This evening, while watching TV, I decided to nuke all the duplicates.

In so doing I came across a lot of contact names that meant absolutely nothing to me, which I promptly removed, but I also came across one that did - my grandfather's mobile phone number.

I have to say my feelings were really mixed.

On the one hand I was sort of amused, as I know he managed to lose the phone months before he passed away, while on the other it was a sad moment to think that he's gone.

My grandfather was a wonderful character and most people he came into contact with were very taken with him.

I know he'd have loved to see me married off to a "good woman", though paradoxically he never took any interest in any of my girlfriends until "after the fact" (He once famously asked me how a "lovely girl" was about 18 months after I'd broken up with her!)

When it came to technology he was always willing to "give it a go" and managed to email some of us from time to time, while also working on his memoirs on his PC (I think he wrote most of them longhand, however). I've no idea which of his friends or relatives gave him a mobile phone, as I strongly suspect it was rarely charged (or even with him).

He's gone now, but as I unbox books and other stuff that I had left stored in various relatives' houses (long boring story!) I keep "bumping into him". I find little letters he wrote me over the years in his very particular handwriting.

Of course part of his legacy lives on in me. Though I'm not sure if the hoarding of newspapers is the main bit I want to remember him for!

Although the company blog has been shortlisted for a Golden Spider this year I will not be attending the event.

Why?

Put simply the event's organisers appear to have serious communication issues.

To start with we had to be told by a third party that we'd actually made the shortlist.

Seemingly they contacted some of those shortlisted, but not all of them.

Why?

God only knows.

Then I got an email from one of their staff to my personal email address asking me if I would be attending or not. (We're shortlisted for the company blog - not one of my personal ones)

At the same time a different member of their staff was in contact with our offices to offer us a ticket for the night. They then followed up shortly afterwards to say that they had two tickets for us.

Cool!
 
So I then proceeded to organise a "date" for the evening, letting them know that yes we'd go but that we'd confirm the second person's name after the weekend. (Fortunately I hadn't booked hotel rooms etc., at this stage - being a bit disorganised can pay dividends at times!)

So I'm beginning to feel vaguely warm fuzzy feelings towards Golden Spiders at this stage (I've criticised them quite a bit in the past)

With me so far?
It's not particularly complicated.

So when we contacted them to confirm everything today they did an "about turn" and now say that there's only one ticket and there had been a mistake.

I'm sorry, but that's not good enough.

You don't invite people to an event and then uninvite them a couple of days later.

Maybe they screwed up, but they should standover the screw up.

There is no way I am going to bother wasting my time attending an event that is that badly organised.

No way.

I love parties and other social gatherings. They're great.

What I don't love is the next day.

The dreaded hangover.

There's no point in complaining about hangovers, as they're entirely self-inflicted and I should know better (of course I don't!)

Thankfully I have plenty of strong coffee to hand, so the effects will wear off .... eventually...

I spend a silly amount of time online every week.

I've got accounts on most of the mainstream social networks (God I hate that term!), as well as twitter, jaiku, loads of fora, mailing lists and of course instant messaging systems.

My typical daily routine used to involve checking my email before I'd even had a shower in the morning, so this cartoon from XKCD brought a smile to my face:




But joking aside I sometimes do wonder if I am spending simply too much time online.

Fifteen years ago I didn't even own a computer. My job, which was in food and beverage, involved me interacting with the public all day long, 5 days a week. The idea that I would have "friends" in Australia, US, Canada etc., etc.,  "chatting" to me at all times of the day or night would never have even entered my head.

I used to write letters to friends and relatives to keep in touch.

Nowadays I rarely write letters of any kind, yet I'm in touch with people all the time.

In some ways all these "connections" are fantastic, but in other ways I miss the simplicity.

I miss sitting beside an open fire and reading a good book. (While I still read I currently don't have access to an open fire!)

I'm not complaining. I enjoy what I do, which is why I do it, but I still think it's important to take stock of things from time to time.

Maybe some people only get a couple of emails a day... I know I don't.

If you don't put a subject to your email I cannot know what it's about without opening it.

This wastes my time and yours.

A meaningful subject line means that I can prioritise the email, find it later or simply pass it onto the correct person.

How hard can it be?

Seriously

I've posted a few times in the past few months about my adventures looking for a house or apartment.

At the moment I've had to suspend the hunt.

Why?

I'm currently waiting on the bank to get back to me about a mortgage. If I get mortgage approval then I can forge ahead, but without knowing what way the bank is going to respond I can't do much more.

The events of recent weeks, with most of the world's financial institutions coming close to bankruptcy and stock exchanges crashing etc. etc., does not help.

I suspect that any mortgage applications they receive at present are being scrutinised a lot more closely, which might explain why I've been waiting.

In the meantime all I can do is try building up my "nest egg".

Of course if I won the lottery all these issues would vanish!

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I'm really tired of the shenanigans involving the IEDR and the IE namespace, so I wrote this rant.

Feedback welcome (on that site :) )