Now the clocks have changed and the weather is turning warmer it is now that time of year again.
Caravan season
I guess we are now at the mercy of people out for their weekends away tootling along at fuck all miles per hour oblivious to the annoyance they cause. Great.
On my journey to work I drive past a primary school. The parents park on a blind bend, they hardly ever indicate, stop their cars whenever they feel like it and generally cause chaos. It’s quite annoying but I’ve grown used to it. On my journey yesterday however there was an incident which raised the stupidity bar higher.
As per normal I drove past, stopping for all the non-indicating masses. After grinding to a halt for the last time I was just pulling away when a mum, clutching a child’s hand in each of hers looked directly at me and marched out in front of my car. Needless to say I stopped yet again.
This incident got me thinking about what those kids would be learning from her attitude. Such as: it’s ok to step in front of a car if it’s outside my school. Still, I guess given the lack of intelligence of at least one of their parents I suppose this attitude might weed out the gene pool it bit.
Several months ago I ordered some Converse from Noflysonus - an online clothes shop. I patiently waited for my new pink shoes to be delivered. After a week I had received no shoes and no emails to keep me updated as to when I could expect them so I went back to the site and logged in to see if there was any information. I was informed a had a problem with my credit card. I had not long changed address so this was not surprising (I’d had this problem with another shop).
As there was no information on how to rectify the problem I emailed them using the address I had set up specifically for them. (I tend to alter my email address to companyname@mydomain.com so I’ll be able to tell if my details ever get used elsewhere). I received no reply.
Fast forward a month and I started getting loads of spam to the Noflysonus email address. I guess they either broke their own Terms and Conditions and the Which! Web Trader code of practice they claim to adhere to…
…We will not e-mail you in the future unless you have given us your consent. We will give you the chance to refuse any marketing email from us or from another trader in the future…
…The personal information which we hold will be held securely in accordance with our internal security policy and the law and the Which? Web Trader Code…
…or their server got hacked and my details were stolen. Either way I’m quite glad they weren’t able to process my credit card as I really wouldn’t want that finding it’s way online.
When the Dead Rising demo came out on Xbox Live I eagerly downloaded it. and noticed along with many others the small text size. I don’t like having to sit four feet away from the screen to play a game. I was seriously contemplating buying this game but having just read this I think I’m going to have to give it a miss.
I don’t care if it would take time to fix the text size issue. If I’m expected to pay £45 for a game I want it working, and if it’s a console game that means I can play sitting in my comfy chair. Afteral that’s the whole point of a console isn’t it?
If it’s broke they should fix it. It’s that simple. And maybe Capcom should change their testing processes.
We have a fair number of supermarkets in Malvern: two Sommerfields, a Waitrose, a Co-op and a Morrisons. The Morrisons used to be Safeway. Safeway did fantastic stuffed crust pizzas (sigh) which dissappeared when Morrisons bought them out. Surprising as the pizzas would fit into the Morrisons categories.
Anyway, the trip before my amazing discovery–which would have been the 13th of July–I picked up some grapes. I sat down to watch Batman on TV on saturday (15th July ) afternoon and thought I’d have some of those grapes. Imagine my disgust when I found what looked like Shelob’s lair nestled amongst them. You can clearly see in the photo the display until date says the 15th. Thats not even a use by date. I think I need to modify my shopping habbits to avoid buying fresh food from Morrisons and just stick to the things in cans with halflifes of several hundred years. It’s the only way to avoid the cobweb of doom scenario.
Me and my other half are finally moving in together this weekend. Trying to find somewhere nice to rent has been harder than I thought. As luck would have it one of our friends was looking to downsize so we are moving into his old place, a three bedroom flat. The O.H. gets his exercise room and I get my geek haven–erm–study.
Since I’m moving out of my parents place I don’t have much in the way of furniture so there were a fair few bits we were missing. Ikea, with their modern looking furniture design seemed the obvious place to go. Their entire range is online for you to browse through but only browse through. There is no ordering system on their website. I find this odd considering the size of a lot of their products.
Since there are companies that offer to deliver your Ikea order we thought this would be a better option. We were ordering a TV unit and a couple of chairs and the guy moving out of our soon-to-be flat wanted to get a sofa for his new place. It seemed ideal to split the delivery and get the lot in one order. Because there is no website ordering our friend travelled the 40ish miles to our nearest store. Out of the four items we all wanted to order two weren’t in stock. On top of that he was told that he couldn’t preorder the two out of stock items.
So the 80 mile round trip was had for nothing. Great.
Fast forward two days and our friend and the O.H. decided to drive to Bristol - our next nearest store and buy the furniture, which now consisted of the two chairs, a TV stand and some drawers. A further 160 mile round trip was had but this time we got the stuff.
I do not understand why Ikea don’t let you order online or preorder from their shops given the size of some of their products. There must be a fair number of people who are put off by this inability. I know we won’t be putting ourselves through that again anytime soon.
I find it frustrating that they seem to have stopped selling the things that were nice when Morrisons was Safeway.
Most things on sale at Morrisons can be placed into the following categories: