Organised Parking Procedures
Posted: Mon 29 June, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Getting Organised, Thoughts, Travel, Wembley Stadium Parking Leave a comment »In a direct contrast to Wembley, the O2 have recently made their parking even easier.
The last couple of times we’ve been organising to go to the O2, the parking booking has had to be done via Ticketmaster – and most of the time, it couldn’t be done online for some fuckforsaken reason, so you ended up having to call the tosspots.
Now, though, the O2 deals with booking parking on their own site through a simple two-page form. (There may be more pages if you’re doing multiple bookings, or your address is different to the cardholders, but it took me two pages) And that’s it. Confirmation comes through to the email address, and it’s all done. No fucking about with Ticketmaster’s horrific system, no “you’ve got two minutes to fill in this form”, no godawful captchas to try and interpret, just a simple form.
So my parking’s booked for seeing Nine Inch Nails/Jane’s Addiction in just over two week’s time.
Again, I’ll be knackered by the time I get home – but it’ll be worth it.
Knackered
Posted: Sat 27 June, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Reviews(ish), Travel, Wembley Stadium Parking Leave a comment »So, yesterday was the AC/DC “Black Ice Tour” concert at Wembley Stadium – and right now I’m utterly knackered.
I left the house at 2.15 to go and collect the other person (the almost-brother-in-law) I was going with from Dereham before starting off for London at about 3.30 to go thrashing down to Wembley. We got there about 6pm – not too bad, although we could’ve done better if the satnav hadn’t decided to mis-direct us on the North Circular. Still, got there in plenty of time.
Wembley is bloody impressive – and effing huge. We were right up at the top, which meant that the band were about a centimetre high – although the big video screens either side of the stage meant they were much bigger – ooh, almost like watching a video of them live.
Anyway, two hours of standing, watching the gig – which was ace, and for which another post is due to be written (along with manky cameraphone pictures) – before heading home.
And that was where it all went a bit tits-up. You see, Wembley Stadium may be dead easy to get out of, but the car-parks really aren’t. Considering you’ve paid £25 – yes, twenty-fucking-five quid – to CS Parking (also known as City and Suburban parking) in order to park, I’d expect at least a couple of people out there guiding drivers and managing the traffic flow. But no. The parking situation when you’re coming out of Wembley Stadium is a total, complete and utter fuck-up. So we waited for half an hour, then decided to move, and all told it took an hour and a quarter to get out of Wembley Stadium’s car parking.
Once we’d done that, it was plain sailing – straight round the M40, M25, M11 and A11. Easy. I was back in Dereham at 2:45 and home at about 3:15.
But dear God I’m tired today – and my feet fucking hurt, too. There’s a learning experience in that – possibly “lose some weight you fat bastard”. We’ll see.
Late
Posted: Fri 26 June, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Travel Leave a comment »Why is it that when you know you’ve got a really long day and/or late night the next day, you end up having a really shitty night, and are thus even more knackered?
Yes, it’s what happened to me last night – tonight I’m seeing AC/DC at Wembley Stadium, which means I’m going to be travelling down to London today, seeing the gig, and then driving back – I reckon we’ll be home for about 2am, give or take.
Which of course meant that last night Hound was a total pain, it was horridly warm, and I think I slept properly for about three hours at best.
Should make today a long day – fun, but a long day…
Airport “Security”
Posted: Thu 18 June, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Security, Stupidity, Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »I’ve always been fascinated by the entire “security theatre” thing since 11/9 (Sorry, 9/11) and this article goes some way to showing some of why I find it so interesting.
What’s security theatre? It’s the farcical measures that’ve been thrown up – particularly in airports – since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They’re not about security, they’re about making people think they’re secure – and it’s all pretty farcical when you think about it.
Bruce Schneier has been a critic of airport security and the security hype for a long time now – he’s a security and cryptography expert, who’s written some very cool stuff over the years, and knows what he’s talking/writing about. He’s quoted throughout the article, and makes far more sense than anything that the TSA and associated agencies can come up with.
All told, it’s a well-written piece, and well worth reading.
In Absentia
Posted: Mon 8 June, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Driving, Travel 2 Comments »Yet again, for whatever reason, the weekend resulted in no updates on D4D. Shocking, I know.
There’s no particular reason for not updating – well, there is, yet again I’m playing catch-up on a bout of depression that’s been hanging around for a few days/weeks/months/years (depending on how you look at it) which is probably the subject of another post I keep writing and re-writing in my head at the moment.
Anyway, Friday was primarily spent away from electronic devices, which kind of negated the entire “posting on D4D” thing. I was involved in looking after various animals of the family – several of aforementioned family had gone off to attend a funeral, so I was on “letting them out for dumps” duty. Yes, the morning was still my own, but was still not overly connected to t’Internet, so there we go.
Saturday was just downtime, in several senses of the word, and resulted in no written output at all.
Sunday was primarily spent Out, as we decided to take Hound to the beach (in this case Walcott, and then (briefly) Cromer) and also brought in a visit to a craft place along the way.
And that was the weekend. So it goes.
Wayfarer Software – Refund
Posted: Tue 19 May, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Driving, Travel Leave a comment »Following on from the farce at the start of the month where I needed to use the Wayfarer navigation software on my phone, I’ve been working on getting a refund out of Wayfarer for it, as I’ve no plans on ever using the poxy thing again.
Initially I’d emailed telling them why the Wayfarer Navigator software was so bad in the case of my phone (the consistent 400′ out in position being a pretty significant issue) and got a response telling me to check the GPS on the phone was on, and had located the satellites. (I managed to not send a rude response to that one, patronising thought it was) They also tried telling me to update the software – regardless of the fact I was already on the latest version. (and had said so in the initial emails)
They’ve tried getting out of it by claiming I should’ve asked for a refund within 14 days of buying the full version of the software. Considering I hadn’t used it at all ’til after the 14-day “deadline” had passed, I wasn’t going to stand for that one, and brought up the wonderful phrase “selling goods that are unfit for purpose”.
Another refusal to refund followed, which resulted in the invocation of the Great Old Ones: “Trading Standards” and (my favourite) “Goods of Unmerchantable Quality”
And Lo, today they’ve confirmed a full refund. Charitable of them, n’est ce pas?