25 lttrs n th alphbt

Merry Christmas everyone

Ideal Christmas presents

As Spike says in the Amazon reviews:

"If you only buy one 20 inch canvas print of Paul Ross this year, this is the one to get."

Brilliant. In fact all the comments are priceless. Someone needs to explain to me, though, why 37% of people viewing this item went on to buy Mamma Mia. Perhaps it made them mentally unstable.

Drunken Tweets

Twitter can be a dangerous thing after a couple of liveners. Problem is, unlike Dialling Under the Influence (DUI), a lot more people get exposed to your regrettable gibberish. Step foward young Guffy. Your post-Dare Xmas do tweets are super.

Virgin Media really suck

I've always known Virgin were a bit crap, but their utter imbecilic shitness has now been confirmed. Iain Tait's has had a few rather nasty experiences in the past. Firstly when being shifted from Telewest to Virgin, then there was an awful bit of customer service, and then finally with some truly dodgy billing practices.

I too got shifted over to Virgin having been an NTL customer at my old gaff. When I moved houses, there was an old Virgin connection there, so I moved myself across. Didn't really have an option as there wasn't an aerial socket in the house anyway.

Back then I have vague memories of a painful drawn out process to get me set up. But I have wiped that experience from my mind to retain my sanity. Since then it has just been a catalogue of shitness.

From repeated occassions where the channel selection reset itself barring me from most channels, to a terminal collapse of the hardware. Each time I'm forced through a disgustingly complex automated telephone customer service system before invariably being chucked to an offshore call centre. Whilst the haggard service reps do their best, the system behind them is terminally flawed. Any fix takes epic patience and always leads to temporary results.

And when an engineer is required, you are suddenly lumbered with both a week long wait at least, combined with unfeasably broad visit windows.

The final straw came last week when the channels disappeared again. Another long call eventually got it reset. But then a day later all the pictures and sound began to pixelate unbearably. Another long call to India confirmed that there was a problem with the hardware. And so another engineer was sent round. This one booked for 12-6pm on Saturday.

Saturday comes, and I'm desperate to watch us lose to the All Blacks. So when no-one appears by 2.30, we head off to the pub and leave a note on the door. The engineer turned up at half time and I dashed back. The poor chap looked stressed having had a "shocking day". It proceeded to get worse. After an hour of fiddling and replacing the box, he announced that there was a problem with the wires. And that little issue requires a two man team.

Calling up the call centre he manages to get me squeezed into the first available slot for a team to come round. That slot is on 23rd December. A month after the issue began.

In the interim I was advised to play on my PS3. Cheers for that. But hey, it's not the engineers fault, it is the appalling infrastructure that sits behind him. And that appeared to frustrate him as much as me.

So rather than wait, I googled for an aerial installer. Two minutes later I was on the phone to Aerials and Satellites. A couple of rings was all it took to be connected to a real life person somewhere in London. They offered a same day service. Both to scope the project and do the job.

Was a smidge busy, so set-up a visit for today. 8-12pm slot. They turned up at 8.30. Did a quick survey. Gave me a reasonable quote of just over £100. And finished the job in 45 minutes. The biggest hassle for me was needing to go down the shops to pick up some milk for their tea (with three sugars).

And now - magically - I have all the channels I ever had on Virgin without the pain of a faulty box, offshore call centre or impotent engineer.

Virgin have so much to learn. They have for a long time. And it just doesn't seem to get any better. Perhaps they should ring up Aerials and Satellites to get a helpful hint or two as to how to make their customer service work.

All I need to do now is call them up to cancel my Virgin TV and get compensation for the days I was without service. Somehow though, I fear this may take quite some time...

This is an ad for Apple

*Update* It got taken down... But thanks to YouTube, I've put it back up again. Woo! Shout if it goes down again.

Will be interesting to see how long this is allowed to stay up. Brilliant work from Groenig. For a long time, Apple have been slowly becoming the new establishment. With them acting in all those corporate ways that they used to ridicule Microsoft about, it's super to see them pastiche the 1984 hammer ad. Still love Apple to bits though. Gah.

Oh, and in case you haven't been introduced to it yet - have a peek at this is an ad. Of which this is a grand example.