Diet Coke
Posted: Sat 25 November, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Travel 2 Comments »Why is it that the following phrase has so many problems being understood?
A Diet Coke, please, with no ice or lemon
Over the last two months, I’ve been eating in restaurants four nights out of seven. Some places have become regular haunts, some have been one-offs, some are just irregular “when I feel like it”s. But the commonality with all of them is that it’s incredibly rare to get what I ask for.
- Drink with ice, but no lemon. Common
- Drink with no ice, but lemon. Equally common
- Drink with both. Worryingly common
- Drink with neither – i.e. what I ordered. Depressingly rare
I just don’t get what the issue is with that order…
Drinking Habits
Posted: Fri 24 November, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »One year ago today, the UK licensing laws changed to allow 24-hour drinking, which in theory was going to mean that there wasn’t the crush of people at 11pm when the pubs closed, and that it wouldn’t mean loads of drunk people were all chucked out at the same time to wait for taxis etc., which was when fights broke out.
So, one year on, has it worked? According to the BBC, No
There was also a load of old bollocks being spouted at the time that 24-hour opening would mean people went out and drank more, or more regularly, and so it was The End Of The World (© Daily Mail, Daily Express, et al.).
One year on, has that happened? According to the same story, No.
What a shocker.
Of course, it’s not the time that’s the issue when it comes to drinking (and to many other things) – it’s the fact that in most cases, the amount of disposable income that can be used for socialising, drinking, whatever is a) finite and b) hasn’t changed. So while people have more hours in which they can drink, they still have the same amount to spend on drink, and so the change hasn’t happened.
Quelle surprise.
Sky Redux
Posted: Thu 23 November, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised Leave a comment »Following on from the farce a couple of days ago with dealing with the idiots at Sky’s “Customer Services” I called them again.
Six calls to India later, having dealt with idiots who couldn’t take down phone numbers correctly, in fact couldn’t do anything correctly, and were incapable of passing a phone-call to anyone else in the department – cutting me off each time, which meant I then had to call back – I ended up speaking to someone in the UK call centre instead.
And lo, the Moving Home form hadn’t been received, so I had to go through it all again. What a shocker. Even better, I’ve paid £40 for an installation fee, then been told they can’t find a free slot, so they’ll call me back.
That, of course, was 24 hours ago, and nothing’s happened.
Sky really are a useless bunch of cunts. It almost makes me want to go back to NTL. Not quite, though.
Paranoid
Posted: Mon 20 November, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Geeky, Getting Organised Leave a comment »It’s strange, but I’m still really really unconvinced that the server move went that smoothly.
My paranoid little brain keeps saying “It can’t have been that easy. Something’s going to go wrong”.
As such, I’m taking regular backups of the database at the moment, just so that if something does go wrong, I’ve got a backup and don’t lose anything. (Except maybe some time) I wish I weren’t this cynical and paranoid, but well, technical stuff just isn’t that smooth and problem free.
I think I’ll probably be happier about it once I’ve arrived at the B&B tonight, and been able to spend some time furkling in the database on the new server, so I know that these posts are entered on the new database, not the old one. Then I might be more reassured…
Schadenfreude
Posted: Thu 9 November, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »I can’t deny it, there is something very satisfying about being a witness on some occasions. This morning’s walk to work proved to be one of those occasions.
At one of the sets of traffic lights, I got to see one cyclist ignore a red-light, go belting into the junction, only to collide with another cyclist who was also ignoring the red-light on their section of junction. Neither cyclist had checked to see if there was any other road-users, and both had just assumed that they had right of way.
Neither was hurt in the clash, but I think it brightened up the day of several drivers and pedestrians…
Christmas Stamps
Posted: Tue 7 November, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Festering Season, Thoughts 2 Comments »
Today, Royal Mail has released the images of their Christmas Stamps for 2006.
What I want to know is why they’ve gone with an image of Father Christmas taking a shit down a chimney as the First Class stamp ?
