Unfortunate marketing....

I saw this in Easons in town recently. I bet the Lonely Planet Marketing department were kicking themselves after publishing this year's guide for Mexico. Not surprisingly, they're going at 20% off!

Things you don't see everyday...

I've decided to start posting pics of things I snap while travelling or around town.

This was something I came across in Nice during a recent trip. It's a VW open backed micro-bus, where the restaurant have put a table and chairs for the patrons to eat out! Isn't that cool?

Cortix web design - scam or cowboy?

I got a call about 2 weeks ago from this woman from Cortix - a leading web development company which was expanding into 'my area'. After a long sales pitch, she said they were going to have a representative in my area on 3rd April and, pretty much, what time would suit me to meet her... A hard sales pitch to say the least... She specifically stated that although they were 'leaders' in their field, they needed my business as a foothold to establish themselves further in my region. As a confirmation of this fact, they would fulfill my web requirements for free...

There's a saying.. if it sounds to good to be true, it normally is!

And this is the case with Cortix. I got suspicious with these guys for 3 reasons..

• 1. the first call was such a hard sales pitch, it made me cautious
• 2. the second call was equally hard pitched, but when I said that I wouldn't agree to a meeting until I had reviewed their site, the rep actually hung up on me!
• 3. I called the number listed on the Irish site for Cortix Ireland and spoke to a guy with a foreign accent.. not sure what nationality. I ask if I could speak with a manager or supervisor. He asked me whyI wanted to speak to a senior person and I told him because I wanted to complain about a call I had just had from one of their reps. He then told me that they had no managers in the Dublin office!! Now that's a new one to me - no managers operating in their offices in Dublin! Must be a great place to work - a bunch of staff with no boss. So I asked for the contact details of a manager in whatever relevant office I could direct my complaint to. His reply was, and I quote verbatim " do you expect me to really give you the name of a manager so that you can complain?" - I replied yes, admitedly a bit shell-shocked by the attitude of the guy I was speaking with.

I know I shouldn't be so shocked - after all I am an NTL-UPC customer, so I know bad customer service first hand, but these guys were Gold Medalllers!

He eventually said, if I didn't want to receive calls from them anymore then I should just give him my details and he'd remove me from their call list. At this stage, I was furious, so I hung up.

I decided to Google them... This is why I'm blogging about them. They have almost no entries in English about the company, service or anything.... But in French, there is a wealth of entries about them.

Here area a few to start - cortix complaint 1 - cortix complaint 2 - cortix complaint 3

These guys have a very dubious reputation - be very careful and in my opinion, don't give them a cent. They will sell you a 'free service' but you'll pay dearly later - a website or design or similar. They get you in the contract's small print and in the poor post-sales service. They'll charge you for every change after the intial template is done, but more to the point, they will charge you for hosting, for traffic and every other thing you can think of.

This stuff is normally free, cheap or at least very reasonable elsewhere.. These guys seem to prey on the less e-commerce savvy and extract their money that way. And, let's be honest, they're doing really well... 28 million Euro turnover in 2008 and listed on the Stock Exchange...

My advice - you work hard enough for your money - don't hand it over to these cowboys.

I'll post again about these guys soon when I've read more material. (It's in French - give me a break... it takes time..)

So this is what they do in Iraq!

Maya Angelou - a video clip from the BBC site

I was having my lunch having returned cold and wet from the local shop with what I can only call an excuse for a sandwich. Like many people, I am still subdued by the combination of January (not my favourite month...), the recession and the weather.

So while surfing the net during lunch, I came across this clip posted by the BBC on their news site. Its from a lady called Maya Angelou - an American poet - on her thoughts about Obama.

I hope it lifts your spirits too.

I enjoyed this - a UFO encounter in the States

Its nearly Christmas...

I've been getting ready for Christmas since June.... Don't ask! Its part of the business I suppose. But even so, I can't believe that its already looming up in 3 weeks.

No matter how much I watch the calendar, it always seems to sneak up on me and before you know it, BAMM.. its already too late to post your cards to the US. Next thing you know, that social snowball starts to get out of control with people calling and saying, 'we really must meet for a drink before Christmas'.

The guilty realisation that you may not in fact have seen them since last Christmas suddenly has you accepting every possible invitation that comes your way and,before you now it, you're already relishing the thought of going into post-Christmas detox. Well, actually, its just a thought - I've never tried the real thing. I don't think detox is my cuppa tea to be honest. I think my body might go into seizure or shock if I suddenly withdrew one of its staples.

Anyway, what was I ranting about....? Damn it... its gone - probably the first symptom of it then...

Loss of a Legend - Miriam Makeba 1932-2008

And they're off.....

Finally, the U.S. goes to the polls and although we don't know who the winner will be (it'll be Obama) at least we know one thing..........

BUSH IS GONE!!!! Woohoo....

Got this from the BBC website - worth looking at for a laugh. Its an 'Obama / McCain Dance Off'

Enjoy!

Its Official... Not that you'd know it by looking around....

Its Official! Ireland is now in a recession as of yesterday. And this was very evident as we left the house to go and have a bite to eat at the Milano's on Baggot Street Bridge. The atmosphere was noticeably heavier and darker than of late. Now this could be due to the oncoming winter - hard to know.

As we entered the restaurant, we could clearly see the recession in action. The place was full of people, noise, bottles of wine flowing to every table - all the signs of the local population trying to console themselves over the shock news.

Thankfully though, we have what is probably the best government in place to handle this national crisis. Known for their wisdom, frugality and strict moral standards, its only a matter of a month or two before everything is back to normal.

This is too funny....

Mykonos is just the bees knees...

Go there if you get a chance someday. Great nightlife, great scenery and beaches and loads of talent! Its like being on a Versace catwalk (watching that is.... not actually modelling...)

Although it can be very frustrating I have to add... Thankfully I don't have a complex in that area. No, I have come to accept myself as one of the future drooling 'oul ones that leer at the beautiful people.

Well, I'm not actually that bad yet, but I am heading there :-)

iPhones are the best thing since sliced bread!

I recently got an iPhone and was almost - I say 'almost' - got to the point where I was going to think, well, that's just another gadget in a nice design!

But then, one day, my iTunes asked me to update my software and what did I see when I switched my newly updated phone back on? A little icon with the words 'App Store' discreetly noted below a little blue 'A' icon. What's this I wondered?

Well to cut a long, and not particularly well-narrated, story short, I have now downloaded and installed the coolest gadgets for my iPhone.

One app, called Remote, allows you to use your iPhone as a remote to control anything you have at home with iTunes on it or Apple speakers (like Apple TV or AirPort). Its cool - I can now switch music on in almost any room using this widget.... And best of all, its free.

If you have an iPhone or iTouch, you've got to check it out. There's even an app which allows you to 'listen' to a clip of music and it will then name the artist, the song, the album, give you the artwork and the option to buy it in iTunes.... Just fantastic stuff!

Family Guy

I'm a late but dedicated convert to the Family Guy. I was watching an episode recently where the dad was trying to give his son advice about how to handle women and relationships. The son took the advice and promptly paid the price for it.

So his dad decided to get him a present to make up for his bad avice and to cheer him up.... This is what happened... I could watch this over and over and over again.... But that could be because I have the memory-span of a goldfsh :-)

New-ish site I heard about...

I was speaking to a friend of mine who mentioned this site as being quite good

http://www.ifoods.tv/

Its run by 2 Irish guys and it really seems very interesting - they use a lot of video to show you how to cook and stuff..... Perfect for the helpless nerd like me :-)

I'll have a good poke around the site later when I get home.

So, how's your day going?

Its just not funny anymore.....

I know I keep going on about this but, in past week, we've had:-

showery rain
occasional rain
heavy rain
persistent rain
localised flooding
downpours
blustery rain
and cats and dogs....

We've decided to stock up on tinned foods and learn a bit of carpentry... The need for an ark is looking decidedly more real....

We will be needing some giraffes and other pets... anybody? anybody??...

What we left behind

In case anyone is interested, this is what we've left behind... A sharp contrast to what we came back to!

Back from holidays.....

And today, is the first day it hasn't rained - although the day's not over yet. We got back on Thursday at about 1am... A very unpleasant flight that took us on a detour via another Greek island and Luton - all in all, about 10 hours door to door.

It must be something about XL Airways that they feel the need to detour or delay every return charter flight. Each time its something to do with the fuel and either being able to, or, not being able to re-fuel.

Last year we had to sit on the tarmac in Mykonos for about 2 hours while they 'de-fuelled' the aircraft - a new one on me I admit. Apparently, the aircraft was over-weight and the extra fuel being removed would solve this problem. After the 2 hours had elapsed, we finally took off only to be told by the captain, that we needed to have a stopover in some remote Italian airport for a refuel.

At least this year they were a little more creative with their reason for needing to refuel at an un-scheduled airport - it seems it was too warm to refuel in Greece, hence the need for a visit to Luton! 35c ! I wonder how the airports in warmer climates deal with this? Do they all need to fly up north to cooler airports to refuel?

Odd that XL haven't worked out the whole 'fuel - weight' equation yet though...

Not looking good folks!!

Well, I've been waiting with bated breath, fingers crossed and anything else I can think of in the hope of a possibility of a few days of warm sunshine... But, so far, no joy.

The best we have been able to get is an intermittent spell of warm sun in between downpours. Not the type of stuff you can plan a bar-b around really so it looks like this summer is yet another washout.

We're off on holidays pretty soon and I'm hoping that we're not bringing any shitty weather with us... I may not be beach material at the moment (well, I am, but I'm more along the lines of 'washed up' or 'beached whale' type thing), but I am still looking forward to bit of heat - the notion of being able to eat out and even better, not bringing a brollie with me on the way out the door. Its just so exciting....

On the other hand, this is the first time I'll be leaving my newly set-up business on its own for any period of time and that's kinda freakin' me out a bit (read 'a lot').

So, its Sunday afternoon. The Men's Final at Wimbledon is on and we're sitting in Searsons having a couple of pints. Nice atmosphere - not too many people around. Just a Sunday feeling.

Might get a DVD or something for later. Anybody seen anything good lately?

Have a good Monday and a good week :-)

I've moved....

I had to do it... I had been resisting it for a while but I finally made the jump...

I have ditched the first of my Windows PCs in favour of an Apple. I've only been using it for a few hours, but I can already see that we are going to be close friends. I am afraid to even start hoping this, but there is a chance that I may not even need to find out what Apple's equivalent of the Task Manager is!

I would never have considered jumping if it weren't for two things:-

1. My first experience of anything Apple was the iPod. I had ventured into the world of MP3 players when they had first come out and had decided that, although a really good idea, there was still a fair bit of development to be done before these things would become accepted as a replacement for the Walkman as the mainstream music player. The iPod changed my mind and, I would think, quite a few others' too. It had everything you could want - it was sexy, small, reliable, functional and fashionable. It was gorgeous!

2. Vista - I am sick and tired of upgrading my software only to get less and less performance with more and more problems...

You just get this feeling with an Apple, that its more intuitive and generally less likely to become a burden. I haven't had to go through the countless questions that Windows makes you answer before allowing you to use a PC. It booted up in less than half an hour - which is something that most Vista users will appreciate.

The Apple laptop that I now have, seems almost apologetic about the fact that, after using it in Searsons for the past hour on battery power, it will only be able to carry on for another 3.56 hours. Enough time to watch a couple of movies on its ultra hi-res screen. My last PC (and this is not necessarily Microsoft's fault, but a general compliment to Apple) would collapse from battery exhaustion in just 45 minutes.

Its black, its sexy and its what a computer is meant to be - a help, not a hinderance! Definitely a good spend...