Intrusive

Posted: Wed 29 February, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Domestic, People, Sweary, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

I’d forgotten about this ’til now, but it annoyed me at the time.

Over the weekend, I went in to the local Asda store.Along with some other things, I bought some Diet Coke in 500ml bottles. I prefer them that way for drinking in the car, or whatever.

Anyway, I got to the till, and put them on the conveyor belt thingy. At which point the woman stood behind me pointed at them and said “Osteoporosis”.

*shrug* OK, weird. I know, but frankly what business is it of yours, lady?

Obviously she hadn’t stuck her nose in enough yet…

“That’s really bad for you, you know”

“Yep, I know. Mind you, I’ve always said that it’s either Diet Coke, or I can take up heroin instead.”

Her daughter laughed out loud.

“And I can’t imagine all that chocolate and sweetener you’re buying is going to do you any good.”

Silence.

 

But really, how fucking rude do you have to be, to shove your (unwanted) opinion in someone else’s face in the middle of a supermarket?

Advertising Excellence

Posted: Wed 29 February, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Advertising, Charm School, People, Sweary | Leave a comment »

Apparently, the ASA has told Sofa King to stop using this advert because of its rude phrasing…

Advert for Sofa King

Advert for Sofa King

I can’t understand what their problem is…

Google Web History

Posted: Thu 23 February, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Geeky, Legal, Privacy, Security, Technology | 3 Comments »

On March 1st, Google’s privacy policy is changing.

If you don’t want your web history (among other things) stored past that date, you need to delete it in the next week. If you leave it ’til 1st March, it will be too late – you need to have done it by the end of 29th Feb.

The EFF has a useful page here about how to delete your Google web history.

Marketing, Data, and Predictions

Posted: Fri 17 February, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Business, Cynicism, Marketing, People, Shopping | 4 Comments »

Over at Forbes.com, there’s a really interesting article about how companies can make predictions about your life and life-events, based purely on your buying habits.

In this case, the US store Target did analysis on its customers who signed up for their ‘pregnancy club’, and then data-mined their buying habits in the run-up to the birth. Of course, you need something to identify these people by – that’s what ‘loyalty’ cards are for. (Tesco’s Clubcard, Sainsbury’s’ Nectar etc. etc)

And of course it turns out that they could then send out marketing to those people – in one case, knowing a girl was pregnant before her own father did.

It’s always worth remembering, stores don’t give you loyalty cards and ‘rewards’ for nothing. They own all the data about you that the cards give – what you’re buying, why, when, where etc. – and they’re using that for their own profitability.

As David Mitchell said, (and I think I’ve posted it here before) :

When you’re getting something free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

Updated : A quick add – this was also something written about in the New York Times Magazine article ‘How Companies Learn Your Secrets‘

Parking Tickets

Posted: Mon 13 February, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, Creativity, Domestic, Driving, Parking | 1 Comment »

I *so* want some of these…

You suck at parking

Mind you, I must admit I made a *right* balls of parking at Homebase over the weekend – really should’ve submitted myself to YPLAC.

Epic Mileage

Posted: Thu 9 February, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Commuting, Domestic, Driving, Travel, Work-related | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment »

Nuts, I thought I’d posted on here when my car’s mileage went over the 100,000 mark. However, I can’t see it. It’s somewhere around April/May 2009 though, from the look of it.

Anyway, today, with my daft mileage kicking up all the time, my car’s clicked over the 160,000 mile mark.

Looking back, I got it in March 2007 when it had a mileage of 56,000.

So in just under five years, I’ve added 100,000 miles to it. Which isn’t a bad average, considering the stupid mileage I’m doing at the moment. I’m quite surprised, actually, that the average is that low. There must’ve been some times where I did a lot less than 20,000 miles a year – although off-hand I can’t quite think when that would’ve been.

Ah well.

Commuting – a new Journey

Posted: Wed 8 February, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Commuting, Driving, People, Travel, Work-related | 1 Comment »

As regular readers know, I’m pretty renowned for doing stupid commutes. Last year I worked in London for six months, commuting daily, which we worked out (from mileage claims etc.) to have resulted in 19,000 miles of travel ’til the end of 2011, purely for work.

The London run was a 70 mile drive one-way, so a 140-mile round-trip, plus the 10ish miles on the Tube each way. Amusingly, it took an hour to do the drive, and an hour to do the time on the Tube.

Since then I’ve taken on a new contract, this time working in Luton. The driving time is a bit less – about 2 hours in the morning, 90 minutes in the evening – for a few more miles, about 80 each way all told.

Everybody else insists I must be slightly mad to do the driving I do, but I really don’t mind it. It’s a longer distance sure, but it regularly used to take the same time to travel by bus from home to Oldham when I worked there. It used to take even longer when I was commuting by train between London and Bath, or London and Manchester. (And yeah, those runs were seriously insane)

In general I’m less stressed when it comes to commuting by car than when I’m reliant on public transport – people piss me off too much for me to want to travel with them now when I can avoid them.

I probably still am stupid for driving/commuting as much as I do, but it suits me, so I’m happy with it.

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