Asking For It
Posted: Tue 21 March, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Security, Thinking About..., Weirdness 1 Comment »In today’s “local” news on the BBC, it appears that police are warning drivers not to leave sat-nav units in their cars when unattended. To me, this really isn’t rocket science. Apparently to a lot of people it is.
When I walk anywhere, I tend to notice what’s in cars. I don’t know why – I guess I’m just nosy, really – but I do pay attention. And it’s quite amazing the number of people who do leave expensive stuff out on view when they’ve parked up. Now yes, maybe it is “only for a couple of minutes” – although a lot are at least overnight – but still, you’ve got to be pretty bloody dumb to leave the sat-nav in it’s cradle, with only a window to “protect” it. Same applies for the people who strong leave their phones in their cars, and even their wallets.
All in all, the “don’t leave valuables in the car” message has now been circulating for at least a decade, if not two. As we carry more and more valuable stuff around with us, it would seem sensible to be more aware, but instead people seem to still make use of the “It’ll never happen to me” mentality that drives me utterly bananas.
So far as I’m concerned, if you leave valuable stuff like sat-nav, mobiles, money, cameras etc. visible in the car – and a lot of people do – then you should be prepared to lose it. And of course if you’ve been a numpty and left it there visible, the insurance won’t pay out for it either – in fact, it’s like a tax for idiots. Works for me…
Increasing Weirdity
Posted: Thu 16 March, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness 8 Comments »Sometimes I get spam mails that are just too weird for words. In this case I can’t even see what the catch is – I must be missing something…
Dear Sir/Madam
My name is Mrs. Jenny Brooks, I am a dying woman who have decided to donate what I have to you/ church. I am 59 years old and I was diagnosed for cancer for about 2 years ago, immediately after the death of my husband, who has left me everything he worked for.I have been touched by God to donate from what I have inherited from my late husband to you for the good work of God, rather than allow my relatives to use my husband hard earned funds ungodly. Please pray that the good Lord forgive me my sins. I have asked God to forgive me and I believe he has because He is a merciful God. I will be going in for an operation in less than one hour.
I decided to WILL/donate the sum of $2,500,000 (two million five hundred thousand dollars) to you for the good work of the lord, and also to help the motherless and less privilege and also for the assistance of the widows.
At the moment I cannot take any telephone calls right now due to the fact that my relatives are around me and my health status. I have adjusted my WILL and my lawyer is aware I have changed my will you and he will arrange the transfer of the funds from my account to you.
I wish you all the best and may the good Lord bless you abundantly, and please use the funds well and always extend the good work to others. Contact my lawyer (Barrister Parker Brown) with this specified email: [dodgy@email.com] and tell him that I have WILLED ($2,500,000.00) to you and I have also notified him that I am WILLING that amount to you for a specific and good work. I know I don?t know you but I have been directed to do this. Thanks and God bless.
NB: I will appreciate your utmost confidentiality in this matter until the task is accomplished as I don’t want anything that will jeopardize my last wish. And Also I will be contacting with you by email as I don’t want my relation or anybody to know because they are always around me.
Regards,
Jenny Brooks (Mrs)
Now, isn’t that just amazingly bizarre?
Is It Me?
Posted: Mon 27 February, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism 1 Comment »On Friday I ordered a new desk (for the refitted office at home) from Argos to be delivered today. OK, I should’ve known better, I realise. But hey, that’s life.
Anyway, I ordered it online, and all was fine. I got a confirmation message on the screen which said something along the lines of “We need to manually verify this order, then we’ll send you a confirmation”. OK, for e-commerce that sucks, but it’s well known that the entire company of Argos has an IQ of 100, and most of that is kept in head office. So OK.
By today, still no confirmation, and it’s supposed to be being delivered today. So I thought I’d ring the useless bastards and check.
First of all we get the “I’ve got to have an order number before I can help you. But I haven’t got an order number, because Argos’ve never given me one. Well I’ve got to have an order number for the system” farce, but eventually we get through that one.
Finally I get to the correct department (“Oh, sorry, there’s two departments that deal with home delivery, and you’ve come through to the wrong one”) and get it confirmed that the desk is on the delivery truck, and will be with us sometime today. Helpful they’re not.
And what’s the excuse when I ask why I haven’t received the order confirmation, despite a) the money having left my account, and b) the order having been processed, and on the truck?
Oh, sorry, the internet’s slow at the moment
Yeah, OK, I’ll fall for that one. Like I came off the carrot truck this morning.
Don’t you just love it when people expect you to know as little as they do?
Irony
Posted: Tue 14 February, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts 2 Comments »While coming home from the gym last night, Herself and I were listening to an obviously-gifted person on the local radio phone-in thing (as you can tell, I listen to it regularly. Oh yes.)
She was requesting Kanye West’s “Golddigger” track to be played, which is fair enough, although to my mind it displays an awesome lack of taste. But anyway. The conversation then went on that she wasn’t looking forward to today, as she’d just split up from her partner of five years, and so Valentine’s Day wasn’t going to be good at all, and instead she’d just go out with a couple of mates and get drunk. Again, OK, not my mindset, but there we go.
The clincher, though, was when one of the presenters asked what kind of person she was looking for as a new partner, and she managed to come up with a reply that basically said “Good looking fit multi-millionaire who’s also able to do basic DIY and so on”. And I couldn’t help but wonder about the irony of wanting the “Golddigger” track while being quite so shallow…
Cynicism
Posted: Tue 14 February, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™ Leave a comment »In light of it being Valentine’s Day, and in recognition of all the shit that goes on around it, I’ve decided to keep a count today of all the sad sods wandering around with bouquets of hyper-expensive flowers.
It should be amusing, if nowt else.
Current Count : 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11.
Oh, and just in case anyone was interested, the header image today is pilfered/adapted from a thing about the St. Valentines Day massacre. Cheers, Google Images…
Personalisation
Posted: Fri 3 February, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Sometimes I find it quite amusing to get supposedly “personalised” emails from companys. For example, on occasion I know I’ll never use a site again, but if I have to register in order to make an order, I’ll use a made-up name, and/or email address, just to see whether anyone ever checks these things. Then you can end up with an email to “tosspot@{domain}.com”, and the title in the email reads to “Mr FuckOff YouBastards”, or somesuch. But that’s something for another post…
Today’s example came from Ticketmaster, who have decided that because I’ve bought tickets in the past for Faithless, Henry Rollins, Chris Rea and the V Festival 2006, I might like – are you ready? – Robin Gibb at Blenheim Palace. Yeah, that’s so similar to all my other preferences…