Missing something? Yes, BT, you are

Posted 16 Jan 2009

Daily Life, The Little Things | 41 Comments 

BT has customer relations issues.

Perhaps I should expand on that.

Ever since moving to the UK, I have been a customer of BT Broadband. Mostly I signed up with BT because they were the biggest and most well-known ISP at that time. For a variety of reasons I have stayed with them, even though I have moved house four times in the last 7 years. So to say that I have been a loyal customer to BT would not be inaccurate (yeah, yeah, I pay the bills on time and all that jazz.)

About 18 months ago, I switched my broadband account from BT Residential to BT Business (for technical reasons.) The transition was anything but smooth. (Now that’s a story for another day.)

Back in June of last year, I received a sales call on my home phone (provided by BT) from BT trying to sell me broadband.

Then earlier this week, I received a letter from BT asking me if I was missing something. The body of the letter was as follows:

Dear Mr Dempsey,

Missing something?

Your new broadband provider may have made some impressive claims. But are you left wondering whether the broadband package you’ve got is perhaps a little lacking?

BT Total Broadband is the UK’s most complete broadband. Have a look over the page to see what it could do for your online experience.

Yours sincerely,

Nigel Stagg
Managing Director, Customer Service

I don’t even know where to start with the list of things that BT got wrong with this letter …

Happy Birthday to chickenmonkeydog!

Posted 15 Jan 2009

Blog | 12 Comments 

Our faithful readers, will you please join us in a joyous rendition of Happy Birthday? Yep, that’s right, today marks the one year anniversary of the launch of chickenmonkeydog. From our first post in January of last year, to when we started daily posts in mid June, we’ve come a long way. So, we thought we’d share some of the highlights with you:

The voice of Good versus Evil: 893 comments made, with 3,812 spam comments discarded.

Number of times the editors of chickenmonkeydog were in the same country: Two

For the geography buff: We had visits from 91 countries/territories

Weirdest/Funniest Google searches which brought visitors to us:

1. noel um fetch
2. be my friend spell
3. dog house slippers for boys
4. e.e. cummings throwing up in restaurant
5. four headed monkey dogs
6. how to measure your crotch
7. i dont know my bikes name but i have the number
8. most amount of socks found in dog
9. spear guns mad in hi
10. weird monkey on dog’s back

Thanks to all of you readers who make keeping chickenmonkeydog online a real treat!

The Bailout Industry

Posted 14 Jan 2009

Daily Life | 4 Comments 

Here’s something whacky to put in your Freakonomics pipe for a good smoke:

Governmental Bailouts: A greater than $1 Trillion dollar industry that didn’t even exist one year ago. Governments around the world are dropping gazillions of dollars, pounds, euros, rubles and who knows what else into failing industries. Talk about a growth industry!

A frightful jolt of reality

Posted 13 Jan 2009

Daily Life, People | Leave a Comment 

Yesterday afternoon, I was coding away on a client website – trying to progress my knowledge of Textpattern. The iPod was blasting out my various collections of songs. Twitter was pinging away with tweets from all over the world. I had put two cups of coffee, a can of Coke and my first mug of tea behind me. I was definitely shifting into 5th gear as I powered on through work into the late afternoon.

Then I caught the BBC news.

The death count in Gaza was up to 900 – with about one third of those believed to be women and children. There’s a terribly sad thought: the recent fighting has been going on for three weeks or so, and already almost 1000 people – mums, dads, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, grandmas, grandpas, neighbours, friends and work colleagues – are dead.

How I fear what those poor people must be enduring. They are caught in the world of violence that tears apart Gaza and Israel. Bombs fall, rockets fire, more bombs fall and yet more rockets fire. I doubt I would last even a day.

I drank my last cup of tea in silence and pondered the vastly inconsequential worries of my current work day.

A solution to train schedule timeliness

Posted 12 Jan 2009

Commuting | 8 Comments 

This past week I was out to dinner with a friend in Highwood, Illinos, USA. It was a convenient place to meet, as I was able to take the train – the oft delayed Metra – there and back from Chicago.

As I waited for the 7:31PM train to take me back into the city, I noticed that the Highwood Metra station has come up with an innovative solution to the issue of train timeliness.

Rather than attempting to ensure the trains run on time, they simply attempt to prevent riders from knowing the actual correct time, so the potential passengers have no way to know if the train is actually on time. The station has a clock tower, and when I was waiting for the train it was around 7:25PM.  The sun had set, so I apologize for the low quality pictures, but please notice below that according to the four sides of this tower, it was 7:19, 7:35,  8:22 or 10:54.

Additionally, inside the station they took the vagueness up a notch, presenting a clock with only the hour hand.  Of course, that hand was also incorrect.  Bonus points to the station master for putting this incorrect single-hand clock above signs warning customers about the open hours of the station!