One of my recent discoveries has been Tropicana‘s “Orange and Lime” juice. It’s really pleasant (if far more expensive than my normal “4 for £2″ stuff) so while it’s been on offer at [Local Supermarket] I got a couple in. Three for a fiver, rather than near-as-dammit £2 for one. (£2? For orange juice? They’re having a fucking laugh)

Except it turns out I can’t sodding read. Because one of the three cartons I purchased wasn’t Orange and Lime, but was instead Orange and Watermelon. Which is – well, not rank, but not that nice.

Most annoying. And quite a shock this morning when I finished an Orange and Lime, and topped it up with a new carton. Yep, the Orange and Watermelon one.

Orange Lime and Watermelon is – how shall I put this? – interesting. And not in an overly good way.

Yesterday I noticed a new spam / scam / phishing email that seems to have appeared.

It purports to come from Amazon, and tells you that your order has been despatched, along with some links that are clickable.  The links actually go off to a russian site, but I’ve no idea what that does, and have no intention of finding out.

The biggest clue that it’s a spam/scam are

• the prices are all in dollars (which is a bit of a giveaway for us in the UK)
• you haven’t ordered anything from Amazon
• it’s got a link to “see the ordered items”, rather than just listing them in the mail
• the email address it’s been sent to isn’t the one you’ve got listed with Amazon

But all told it’s one of the better spam/scam/phishing-type emails of the moment.  Best to publicise it and be aware of it.

Part of my current work deals heavily with web security, data security and the like. As part of that, I subscribe to a number of information lists, mail services etc.

I signed up to a new one today – one of the better regarded (and indeed recommended by another security auditing agency) ones.

What concerned me during the signup process was this :

You may enter a privacy password below. This provides only mild security, but should prevent others from messing with your subscription. Do not use a valuable password as it will occasionally be emailed back to you in cleartext.

Seriously? Sending – and one assumes storing – a password in clear text is such a bad idea. It’s also a major no-no in every security list – including their own one. D’oh!

Obviously a case of “don’t do what we do, do what we say”.

Following on from yesterday’s post about Pink, Portman Stadium, and signs in general, some extra thoughts…

1) I can be a total arse. I know that’s not really news, but all the same, it’s worth re-iterating.

2) I fucking hate getting lost, being late etc.

3) If I’ve had a crap day, my tolerance for 2) is particularly low, leading to qualifying even more for 1)

Tuesday was, however I look at it, an exceedingly crap day. Stuff had come up at work that had affected me – nothing seriously traumatic of negative, it’d just been one of those days. In all fairness I really wasn’t in the mood for a late night – particularly with the knowledge of an early start in the morning. (For a number of reasons, last working day of the month is a big day in the current job, and requires coming in earlier than usual)

So the afternoon/evening didn’t start off all that well, and my mood wasn’t the best. Not being able to find the stadium just pissed me off a lot, and I didn’t do what I should’ve done, which was either

1. Stop and think a bit
2. Call someone else already there and find out how to get there
3. Use the iPhone to do the same as 2
4. Stop somewhere and ask someone.

I should have done one or more of those. Instead I got locked in to trying to find the place by driving along the A14.

Admittedly, I also didn’t expect the stadium to be in the town/city centre. All the other stadia (stadiums? I dunno) I know of are on the outskirts, not in the centre. Manchester, Norwich, Oxford, Crewe, Stockport – all on the outskirts. I also kind of expect there to be signs to say where the hell to go – after all, it’s not like a stadium is somewhere that no-one ever goes to.

But anyway, I did get pissed off, and went home. It wasn’t my smartest move, but it was the one I did.

No excuses for it at all, just sometimes an extra explanation is worthwhile.

Hey Ho.

Last night I was supposed to be seeing Pink at the Portman Road stadium in Ipswich. I didn’t see it.

Why? Because I couldn’t find the fucking stadium.

I’m normally pretty good on finding places, but must admit that in this case I’d figured there would be some signs to follow. After all, it’s a football stadium for fuck’s sake. Surely they need some signs for away fans to get there etc.?

Apparently not. I have to assume that Ipswich is truly embarassed about the stadium – they sure as shit don’t like to admit that they’ve got one.

Driving along the A14, I got to the first turn-off for Ipswich. There’s a sign there that says “Football Stadium” with an arrow pointing straight on (i.e. don’t take the turn-off). Fine. Second junction’s the same – “Straight on for Football Stadium“. After that, nothing. I got to the far side of Ipswich, no more signs. I turned round, coming back from Felixstowe direction to Ipswich, and there’s not one fucking sign. Not one.

All told I did that stretch three times, checking the exit roads, trying to see any damn signage whatsoever that pointed me in the direction of the stadium. Nothing except those two signs saying “straight on” from one direction.

So in the end I said fuck it, and drove home.

I assume Portman Stadium etc. won’t give a shit, as they’ve got their money for the gig already. But you can be damn fucking sure I won’t be going back there again.

I do feel like a right bell-end for not being able to find a sodding football stadium. But at the same time it’s not just me, others have said it’s a shit to find unless you actually know where it is. Personally, I’m not going to make the effort to try and find it again.

You may recall that back in March 2009, the accountant I had for my company went bust. The basic summing-up of why he went bankrupt/insolvent (not sure if they’re the same or not, and don’t much care) can be listed as :

1. Franchising isn’t a great idea – the fees he was paying to Tax Assist were huge
2. If you’re in trouble like this, don’t take out other loans to shore up the business. It all comes back to bite you on the arse.

Yesterday I got the final official documents from The Insolvency Service, explaining that (as expected) they’d got absolutely sod-all from the cunt’s assets, so no-one who’d paid him fees in the run-up to tax-return time would get anything at all.

Even better, they’d managed to attach the asset-release summing up for a completely different person with the same surname, from two years previously. Oh whoops.

I’ve made them aware of it, but had no response currently. I’ll get nothing from my useless fuckstick bastard of an ex-accountant.

All told, not a great day.