Graduate student protest at the University of Florida.

as seen on flickr…

I’ve had a Garmin satnav gadget for my car for the past couple of months. It’s a stupid thing really: paying a couple of hundred euro when a map costs around a tenner. But it gets me from A to B. It broke recently in that it would detect the satellites in space but the two wouldn’t talk to each other. Their website said you could email or phone for help. Unfortunately, they didn’t list an email address so I had to phone their British call centre.

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Their operative listened to my story and didn’t try any nonsense. She even knew there were no post codes in Ireland when she took my address. She just gave me an Returns number and told me I’d have to pay the postage to their UK centre. So, last Wednesday, I paid €11 to send it by registered post to the UK. I didn’t hear anything from them until today when a courier dropped a brand new replacement unit! That was a one week turnaround, including postage!

So, all in all, I’m a happy camper. I’m disappointed that it broke so soon but their customer service is friendly and efficient.

How long do I need to do this to get to 25,000,000 people?

I’m sure that everything that can be said has already been said but I’m absolutely amazed at how much damage one can do with 2 CD’s…

from www.breakingnews.ie

…Once the deal is posted out to them. Then all they have to do is post the yea/nay forms back to HQ.

It’s no wonder the British are masters at satire.

William Gibson has a new book out called Spook Country* and he’s doing the rounds at the moment doing book signings. Of course, he won’t be visiting that little island off Engerland called Ireland so the nearest location is Forbidden Planet in London on Wed, 29th August. I’m half-tempted to go (I like London) and take a few days hols there but I can’t seem to get a flight out of Dublin for anything less than €150.

The price of the flights are weird because I can do the London–>Dublin route for a fiver plus taxes, but Dublin–>London is €150 for the Sun, Mon, Tues, Wed on both Ryanair and Aer Lingus. Strange.

*Spook Country:
Spook Country is the sequel to his last book Pattern Recognition. It follows several different plotlines concentrating on a man working in information transfer, an investigative journalist, a junkie and a military troubleshooter. Spook Country also deals with themes of espionage and the media. Added to all that this multi-layered political thriller also revolves around a mysterious cargo from Iraq.

Sigh, here we go again…

A Brazilian friend is moving to a new apartment. It’s all a bit sudden…her partner died recently and she can’t afford the rent. Her English isn’t very good and she’s a bit nervous about ‘officialdom‘ because of her dealings with the immigration people. She wanted to cancel her NTL subscription and asked me to do it.

Long story short…I eventually spoke to a real human being and explained the situation. It went something like this…
.

– You can’t cancel on her behalf.
– But her English isn’t great and she’s in a bad place right now.
– She’ll have to phone herself to cancel. We’re open until 10pm [I maybe misunderstood the closing time]
– But she’s working until late [Spar-type shop] and she’s gotta move out tomorrow. [I didn't mention she didn't have the money to waste waiting and waiting for someone to answer the phone. Nor would she understand the 'press 1 for, press 2 for...]
– I’m sorry but she’ll have to phone herself.
– Do you have anyone there who speaks Portugese or Spanish?
– Err, I’ve no idea. [Puts on helpful hat]. You could write in to cancel?
– Let me get this straight. You’ll accept a cancellation letter from me but you won’t accept a verbal cancellation from me?
– Yes.
– 10% of the population are non-nationals now. Do you have anyone there who speaks foreign languages.
– Err, I’ve no idea.

Let’s be honest realistic. If we wrote the letter, NTL would lose it and they’d maintain they never got it. They’d chase her for the arrears, threatening her with court action etc and further traumatise her.

So I’ve now got to send registered letters to NTL, my friend, myself, and copy the bank to cancel the direct debit. And, in six months time, I’ll almost certainly write again that they’re chasing her for money that she doesn’t owe.

China has been forced to mull the possibility of allowing double-barrelled surnames – a break with the ancient tradition that citizens adopt one of a hundred single character surnames…

…In fact, other less common surnames bring the official total of permitted surnames to 161, but this doesn’t do much to offset the fact that there are now 93 million Wangs in China – closely followed by 92 million Lis – something which is causing the authorities a bit of a problem.

Best comment was by Simon Holt who wrote: “Looking through the Beijing phone-book must give thousands of Wong numbers“. Well, it was a new one to me!