Lightbody Live: Rant

Booking a cruise - what a bloody nightmare.

Wed, 21 May 2008 17:20:28 GMT

Welcome to the biggest gamble of your life, and the route to maximum stress before you even go on holiday.

July 2007 : Retirement of Cunard's famous QE2 announced.
Mad rush all round to book cruises. Prices are quite low and every cruise is available.
9 months later - very little availability, very high prices (doubled), if you want to go, you're going to have to pay! Most cruises fully booked. They'll even charge you if you want to switch to a pricier cruise.
Another 3 months pass (now) and suddenly loads of cruises reappear, with availability, at SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper prices. This includes dream trips that I'd rather go on (transatlantics and round-Britain farewell), and my own cruise at LOTS cheaper than we've paid.

How on earth are you meant to enjoy it when you know you've literally been taken to the cleaners (even if it is on board the world's greatest ship!)

As it stands, I'd never do this again. I've got better ways to completely waste my money and stress myself out of my mind.

The nice Radio Scotland newsreader

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:15:13 GMT

ARGH.

I want to listen to Radio Scotland in the morning, but I CANT STAND the newsreader! She has a bizarre fake newsreader intonation that is stupendously annoying after a while. She makes every single sentence sound exactly the same whether its something joyously happy, or a massacre somewhere. Its hard to explain unless you hear her, but it causes me to change channel every time, and not go back. You shouldn't really be aware of a newsreader, just of what they're telling you. A commercial station wouldn't have her, because they'd lose their audiences.

Flashing Lights

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:59:31 GMT

One of my biggest grips on my daily commute - vehicles with flashing amber yellow lights for no obvious reason. There are so many of them, that you end up ignoring them, so you don't notice them when they ARE important.

Typical examples are

recovery trucks with a car on the back, driving along with flashing yellow lights on - WHY? Is the car on the back liable to fall off or something??
road repair vehicles, parked safely and out of the way, with flashing lights on
And on a related note - the worst offender - hazard lights turned on, when one side of the car is obscured, so that it looks like its signalling to get let out

I don't suffer road rage, in fact i get road-calmness, but these things do annoy me as i observe them.

New Vista PC : Out of the box experience

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:16:52 GMT

Bought a new Vista PC for my Mum - £400 for a dual-core Compaq with 2 gigs of Ram and a 19" widescreen, pretty good, or so I thought.

Unpacked it, turned it on,plugged in the new router. All was hunkey-dorey and the screen looked fab.

Then it did 21 Windows updates and rebooted.

And the network card stopped working. No error or anything, it just couldn't see the router any more. Tried everything I could think of to no success.

So I gave up and plugged in a wireless dongle so that it could connect that way. It worked perfectly. And installed another 4 updates. Guess what. Yeah thats right, the updates stuffed the wireless dongle too.

I blame Compaq, then Realtek (The network card) and then Microsoft.

I'll probably manage to get it working tomorrow, but I spent 3 hours on it tonight and I'm still hugely frustrated.

Stark contrast to my own £400 HP PC which I bought last Christmas and then put Vista on it - I've never had any problems with it at all.

The BBC and us being manipulated like fools

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:05:26 GMT

OK read this story :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7109118.stm

How stupid do they all think we are? These companies are managing to drum up huge publicity for themselves for free via 'viral' email marketing. Very very clever.

Threshers offer a permanent '3 for 2' on their wines. This means, basically, that their wine is 40% overpriced compared to their competitors. You'd be a mug to go in there and buy a single bottle of any wine thats in that offer. Lo-and-behold the 40% voucher offer only applies to these wines, and you can't do the 3 for 2 at the same time. "Last year, drinks retailer Threshers said it was worried that its 40% off vouchers had been distributed so widely that it could end up hurting profits. " Thats the punchline, absolute genius. Promote the marketing manager I say!
GAP have basically just announced their 30% discount to the world via BBC News - thanks BBC!
And Littlewoods - "decided to stop pursuing online shoppers who it claimed had abused an online £25-off voucher. " "The vouchers had been sent to specific customers but had then been widely distributed" Ha ha ha!! Absolutely superb! WHO DO THEY THINK THEY'RE KIDDING! (Apart from the BBC).

Vodafone 0 : Rob 1

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:34:00 GMT

OK so I called Vodafone last week to ask for my annual phone upgrade, which i've been doing for years and years. As you'll see on my previous blog entry, it wasn't a successful call, and I went away very annoyed, and posted off a cancellation letter.

Immediately they receive it, the phone rings, and its a pleasant apologetic man desperate to keep my business.

Heres my new deal, compared to the previous offer...

Handset price : Free (was £110)
Contract length : 12 months (was 18)
Monthly payment : £25 (was 30)
150 minutes + 500 texts per day (same).

To say that I'm feeling pleased with myself would be a gross understatement. However, it is really pathetic that I had to send a cancellation letter to get any proper customer care out of them.

Vodafone & the Mobile Phone market

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:05:35 GMT

I had a Sony Ericcson T68i, and then a T610i, and then a K750i and then a K800i. Each, at the time, was cutting edge. Each was also FREE under a 12 month contract costing about 25-30 pounds a month.

Everybody knows that technology gets better and cheaper as time goes on.

So why Did Vodafone yesterday try to force me into an 18 months AND ask me to pay for the phone? I bet ANY money its not cost them any more than the previous phones did. Its all a racket. I had a thoroughly unpleasant conversation with their 'promotions' department - I certainly didn't feel like they cared about me.

The cancellation letter is in the post.

Top Up TV Anytime Hard Disk Recorder

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:06:58 GMT

BRILLIANT idea.

COMPLETELY USELESS in practice.

I've managed to cope with it for a few months because i love gadgetry, but really anyone who wasnt into gadgets would have given uplong ago - and now I have. Lockups. incorrect recordings. crashes. Suddenly jumping to the start of recordings from the middle.

I'm sending it back. DO NOT buy this product.

The Scottish Media

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:08:20 GMT

Morgan Stanley is to create 600 new jobs in Glasgow City Centre. These are PROPER senior jobs, paying a minimum of £30k. Morgan Stanley will pay out £6m in Salaries in the first 4 months alone...

The Scottish Executive gave them £6m pounds to persuade them to do this, because Glasgow is an EU 'assisted' area.

What angle does the Scotish Press take (I read a Scotsman and Sun to see today) ? That its a disgrace that taxpayers money is being wasted on something like this!

ARGH!!!! Create jobs. Create tax payers. Create economy! Create more jobs.... its a no-brainer.

WHY CAN'T THE PRESS JUST REPORT THE NEWS, INSTEAD OF TRYING TO TAKE AN 'ANGLE' ON IT?

Courier Companies

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 11:29:59 GMT

In this age of Amazon, eBay and online shopping, why are courier companies still in the dark ages?

Why do I have to collect my parcel during working hours, and have to drive for 30 minutes to the delivery depot?

Why do they attempt redelivery at the same time each day (the ones that bother).

It MUST be cheaper for them to deliver to domestic addresses out of working hours? It would free up their vans for business stuff, and save them having to do so many redeliveries and store so many parcels and have so many pissed off customers!

Finally, why don't people just send using the Royal Mail - its by far the most convenient method for non-businesses, and I've never had any problem with them.

Branding on mobile phones

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 10:00:48 GMT

I got a Sony Ericsson K800i from Vodafone late last year. Now these things are sold as being "free", but they're not, you pay through the nose for them through the life of your contract.

Many aspects of the phone were heavily customised by Vodafone to have their 'look and feel' but in the process they dramatically degraded the functionality of the phone, making it frustrating and unpleasant to use. An example was that while typing a text message, if you accidentally bumped either the camera button or the lens cover, it would switch into camera mode. This is VERY annoying! Another thing they'd done was to change the answer/hangup buttons to be the tiny buttons on either side. WHY?

Last night I debranded it myself using Davinci.com for £8 using their free software and the cable that came with the phone. Money well spent. The phone is now generic, with functionality as Sony Ericsson carefully designed it after years of development, and much more pleasing to use.

Windows Vista Speech Recognition

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 23:13:41 GMT

Did they test it on a HUMAN? let alone a scottish one?

Its truly dreadful. Interesting from an experimental "have a quick play of it for an hour" point of view, but COMPLETELY not fit for its purpose in any way at all.

Vista in general is impressive, with some very clever features, but it definitely has a few rough edges still showing, and things like the speech recognition should just have been left out altogether.

I can't imagine what accent the virus has got that they claim can hijack your computer by speaking to it....

- R

Flying

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 17:13:49 GMT

I was talking to a friend, saying how I really think that i'd feel guilty for flying somewhere now. Its by far and away human activity with the biggest damage to the environment, and the one that is the most easily fixed.

His attitude was that the plane was going whether he was on it or not, so he might as well be on it.

Unfortunately this is an incredibly selfish self-centred view of the world. If everybody thought like I do now, and didn't fly, the number of flights would get cut back... if everybody thought like he does (and everybody does think like that) air-travel will continue to boom, and we're just buring jet fuel all the way to the death of our planet.

Train station timetable boards

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 22:26:17 GMT

I've been using the train to get to work for the past week, while my car is in being overhauled.

Each station platform has a nice monitor displaying the departure time and route for the next train.

These signs are crucial... and often, when you're in a rush or trying to catch a connecting train, you need to see the information immediately. Which is why its very annoying when they sit, tell you not to leave your bag unnattended, for 10, 15 seconds or more. it can actually be enough to cause you to miss your train! People have to stop walking and stand, waiting for the sign to show what its MEANT to be showing and then digest it before it changes back to the security warning.

So, 100000s of people are inconvenienced every day for the 0.0000000000000001% of the time when a terrorist leaves a bag lying (has this ever happened?).

Its annoying. very annoying. One of the many ways in which the terrorists won on 9-11.

We never had these bloody stupid signs when the IRA was bombing the UK over and over... with, yes, unattended bags.

Top Up TV

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 00:04:18 GMT

I'll be cancelling it in the morning. Whoever thought that £8/month could be a rip-off?

I was just enjoying watching an old movie on TCM, one of the few channels thats any good for my £8 a month, and it cut off 5 minutes before the end, because it was 1am and thats what they do. More and more channels with narrower and narrower time slots for each. UK Style, for instance, has stopped broadcasting in the evening, which is the only time i want to watch it.

Apple's advertising

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 14:21:46 GMT

An email advert arrived from Apple this week that promptly made me unsubscribe from their mailing list because it annoyed me so much. I know it made at least one other person do the same.

Apple don't understand that many Window's users are actually quite happy - very happy in fact - and when told that they're stupid for choosing so, they take it as an insult.

I don't care about Window's security problems because i've never been affected by them. i've got a firewall, i've got free anti-virus software, and if you've got an up to date version of XP, you should also have Windows Defender (also free) to look after the rest. With that setup, I've never had a single problem. So i simply don't care that there's 10 million viruses out there. If me and my friends and family kept getting affected by them, I might get bothered, but none of them ever have been!

I'm currenty sitting on my couch with a coffee and my fab wee laptop on my knee. Its playing music at me off the internet, i'm editing my website, working on my blog, remotely accessing my other PC to check email and stuff, im on yahoo and msn messenger, and i've got various websites open all at once. Oh yeah and my laptop cost a fraction of an Apple one, isn't about to set my lap on fire and is very fast.

The great MINI scam

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 10:29:34 GMT

I've had my MINI for 2 years. Its a fantastic car, no doubt about it. Completely reliable, and brilliant to drive.

BUT

Now I want to sell it. And I can't.

The motoring press tells me that the MINI is the lowest depreciating car on sale today - period. But I don't think they're taking into account the options. Options that EVERY MINI has. Usually thousands of pounds worth of options that you're encouraged to get to make your car 'individual'. There are tens of thousands of combinations available. Each car is built to order for you, so you can get exactly what you wish on it.

BUT THEY DONT TELL YOU THAT YOU'LL GET NOTHING FOR THESE WHEN YOU COME TO SELL!!!

So, in a random example plucked from the air, you may have a MINI COOPER with £3k of extras on it which cost over £15k new. List price £12k. So if this car sells for £10,400, it looks like a good deal - compared to list price. When actually the owner has taken a near £5,000 loss on it - making it one of the poorer performing cars with regards to resale values!!!

Its a huge CON. And I think BMW pull it with the rest of the range too. I'm a seriously disgruntled owner now, despite the product being good.

NEVER BUY A NEW MINI!!! AND IF YOU DO, DON'T GET *ANY* OPTIONS!!!

Glasgow Gorbals Roads

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:36:01 GMT

ARGH!!

Whoever designed the roads in the gorbals should be made to drive them all day long! Its CRAZY!! You cant go from and to anywhere without doing an insane zig-zag that takes in the entire area each time!! It looks like there's lots of traffic, but its actually just a few cars trying to get home!!! To turn left you have to turn right 3 times. The one-way system simply doesnt work or make sense.

I tried to drop my Mum off at the Citizens a few weeks ago and it was just insanity. We knew where it was but couldn't get to it!

How about flattening the whole area and starting again with a giant roundabout like that one they have in Paris?

Britain for sale

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 15:31:09 GMT

The days when Britain built Concorde and QE2 now seem far, far away.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1752152,00.html

"Pharmaceuticals and defence industries will become the only key sectors

employing British labour. And without a massive expansion of the public

sector most of our workers will just be surplus to requirements."

Recruitment Agencies

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 10:00:58 GMT

ARGH!!!

What a nightmare. Its like dealing with really dodgy car salesmen over-and-over again.

Kwik-fit

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 16:55:45 GMT

<RANT>

To cut a long story short... trying to diddle me into getting 2 unnecessary tyres for my car.

Worse still, they were going to cost a total of £250. A quick session on Google found the exact same ones available locally for under £200... ARGH!

</END RANT>