Author: paul

A great Blackdog

- paul

As you may or may not know I am a fan of Black Dogs and over the weekend I had the pleasure to meet a rather pleasant one (i.e. Buca) . Kevin and Kirsten are just back from their Honeymoon in the Greek Islands, and they popped over for a visit. Buca, the ever shy dog can be see here wearing a nice (black) Nike baseball cap, which is quite stylish and goes with her colouring very well.

Later on in the evening I had a good discussion with Buca about what it takes to be the perfect black dog. Afterwards we hung out and knocked a few beats out on the little goats skin drum.

She was a little bit of a flirt, but in the end she did give me a peck on the cheek. I’m not the greatest fan of dogs, but I do have a weakness for black ones and ones as cool as Buca.

More strange emails

- paul

Yesterday the Irish got to vote on the Lisbon Treaty this was a nice 400 page document outlining new rules about the structure and voting rules in the EU. The Treaty was rejected by 53.4% to 46.6%. And some guy who said he was from France sent me an email complaining about the Irish people. I love getting email, it’s almost as good as getting actual post. But I do get some strange emails via the contact for my irish jobs website. So here’s the email

1% of the european population put the mess for non realistic resasons !!! You did received 30 milliards of euros from us the lats 10 years …Bluoody Irish..F…. YOU

Thanks Jacques !

Interesting Emails

- paul 1 Comment

From time to time I get some interesting, random emails through the contact forms on my sites. The contact forms are a great way to avoid putting a public email address on a website, this will save you the hassle of getting SPAM by these email harvesters in the long run. Generally I aim to have one of these on all the websites, and just get it sent to my gmail address.

So yesterday I got a rather interesting one, asking about Premium Phone operators. The email came via my Black Dog site, which is the location I point people to when asking about web design.

Hi,

Someone told me to contact you in relation to employment as a adult phone
operator..

Regards

K****

The email seemed serious enough, and she even included her phone number. I replied saying that I don’t do anything in that industry, and I asked who forwarded my details to her.

View from Solden

- paul

Sometimes words can never describe beautiful things, and here is one such case.

view from solden

Last weekend I found myself in Sölden, which had some spectacular views looking over the alps in Italy. Anyway I will be putting up a better/longer report during the week on the skiing site. The snowboard held up well, but I think I need to get it serviced. So 2 days of skiing has left my legs feeling like jelly.

About Sölden

Sölden is in the hear of the Austrian Alps, and is about 2.5 hours from Munich and 45 minutes from Innsbruck. It’s on a glacier, and the highest skiable piste is over 3,000m. It’s something I will add to the recommended apés ski resorts list. The partying was great, we found ourselves dancing until the early hours in a place called Fire & Ice.

Guilty by association ?

- paul

Here is a picture of what was presented to me when I opened an article on BreakingNews.ie.

Bertie and the bold boy

In my head I kind of put 1+1 and got 3. I think the way that they have put the image for the headline sometimes can confuse readers, and in some situations associate the wrong thing with the wrong image. For those of you who don’t know who this man is, (i.e joe), it’s the Taoiseach, or Prime Minister, of Ireland. Also isn’t is a bit weird that there is a kid off to the side of the picture ? !

Link to the article : http://breakingnews.ie/ireland/mhmhqleycwsn/

Coffee from your Fridge ?

- paul 1 Comment

No longer will you have to walk from the coffee machine to the fridge in order to get your daily does of java and milk. Actually I take my coffee strong and black (rarely with sugar)

fridge coffee machine

This beast has a water font and an espresso machine in it. It will be available from January next year under the name “20RI D4 Espresso”. Sadly I won’t be able to add it on to my Christmas wish list this year.

Budget Complaint Part II

- paul

A while back I had a complaint about Budget Car Rental where I was overcharged $122 (I did receive $50 of it back). But I hadn’t heard anything about the balance, so I called their UK offices with a case ID from when I originally reported this. Some how the case wasn’t fully submitted and there was some information missing so it wasn’t processed. So I explained the “Customer Service Rep” (quotes necessary) about the story to-date. And he gave me a new case ID and explained the process once more. He finished by saying that he would advise me that they are not likely to call me back within the 10-days and that I should call back in 2 weeks. He went on to explain that they had lost a lot of staff and they were under serious pressure in the European Customer Service centre.

I’ve also not heard back from the US side  of this dealing

  • the customer service email address that I replied to first day hasn’t send a reply
  • CEO John Barrows has replied either from his email address.
  • And the company that dealt with the first charge back , cendant, their email address still bounces.

So much for Customer Service, eh ? That being said I have rented another car (from Enterprise Rentals) for this weekend, so fingers cross to see how this goes.

Budget Rentals

It’s funny as there are lots of unhappy people out there with Budget [1] , [2] & [3] are just while looking on Flickr for a pic for this post.