Well wasn’t that a knock about of fun. The pics tell the whole story, but to any members of staff of the unamed department store get into any trouble over this we are truely sorry, but leaving us a whole alphabet to play with was rather asking for it dontcha think ?
Nuff Said !
Cool Colours
Bunny
Mutilated Bunny
To the low life scum who stole my wallet from my back pocket on Sunday night, *THERE WAS NO MONEY IN IT* !!
You could have at least had the decency to drop it when you found it devoid of cash (I use cards muppet, I’m a child of the digital age) somewhere near by so it could be found and handed in.
I’ve had to cancel all my cards (done about 5mins aftr you lifted it) and get a new keys arranged for home and work.
You inconsiderate twat, hope you break a leg. Nuff said.
p.s. If anyone in the Vauxhall area finds a grey Converse canvas wallet please hand in to the police station or at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.
Thanks
Had to write about one of the most dissapointing experiences of my life to date, and I’ve had a few !
For my flatmates birthday I decided to try and book a group of us a night of 10 pin bowling. We’ve never done it before and it makes a welcome change from the bars and clubs typically associated with these sort of occasions.
I decided I would book with All Star Lanes (hence this post title, catchy huh ??!) as they appeared in the google list for ‘London Bowling’, their website looked quite well put together and the food menu sounded great.
In hindsight, it’s my own fault, I should had read up more thoroughly and maybe tried to find some reviews of the venue in question.
The selection of actual bowling balls was quite limited (there was a girlie with us who could have done with one of the lighter balls that had been nabbed by the group in the other lane).
The balls were sticky and could have done with a bit of a wipe with a anti-bacterial agent to be honest.
When we finished our game, we stood looking confused not quite sure what to do next. I had booked a post game table for some of their amazing sounding American style food. But not one of the staff asked if we needed any help. When I enquired at the reception I was told to ‘ask a waitress’.
So we waited for 10mins for one to appear and then asked where we should go for our table. This took a further 10mins to sort out.
The food took an extremely long time to arrive (almost half an hour), but in their defense was very hot and clearly not microwaved in any way (finally a positive note !).
But the single biggest issue had to be THE VOLUME OF THE MUSIC BEING PLAYED !!! This place could give Ministry of Sound a run for their money. I’m pretty certain that all of the communication issues we encountered on the night were a simple case that their poor staff just plain could not hear us. They smiled, they were I am sure polite (coluldn’t hear them to be certain) but ultimately the evening was a resounding failure.
We will probably try bowling again, but not at AllStar :-(
16-04-2010 addendum :
All Star Lanes sent me a feedback email request which a put most of this detail into and sent back. Their manager has responded saying he takes the points on board and they will *monitor the situation*. Possibly worth going again in a few months to see if it’s any better
After spending most of the morning on the phone with Dell technical support *to replace a faulty DVD drive still under warranty* I find myself whole heartedly behind Scott Hanselman’s ‘FizzBin’ initative.
I actually slipped ‘FizzBin’ into the conversation a few times randomly in the first half hour to see if we could get to the ‘I’ll send a replacement unit out to your now sir’ phase, but alas it fell onto deaf ears (or certainly ears not briefed on the ‘FizzBin’ keyword initative’).
This left me repeating the mantra ‘ The optical drive is broken and needs replacing’ to every question and test I was asked to perform until their will finally broke and they promised to send an engineer out with a replacement drive.
So come on people, get behind ‘FizzBin’ coz’ I really don’t think I can handle another one of those calls again !
I came across a random blog by Erik Van Slyke today while skimming the www.wordpress.com website. I was actually looking into the story about the 2 hour outage they had (which seems to have been routing based and nothing much they could have done about it, their systems were fine, the paths into and out from them were knacked).
The blog post Erik had written was about layoffs, or as we know them in the UK, redundancies. I have been fortunate in my life so far to have never been made redundant from a company, or been out of work for any period of time. But, I had always been a little confused as to why companies let people go (unless they were really small companies and keeping someone on meant going bust and closing shop !).
Erik recounts a story whereby an exec level team have a meeting and annouce that the company is doing ok, but to kepp 100% of their bonuses, they need to reduce headcount by 5% !! Sack people doing their jobs perfectly well in order to futher line their pockets.
Are these people wrong ? Are they simply ambitious ? Are they just greedy ?
I wonder if I ever got to that level of corporate structure and was asked to do the same to protect my own bonus and those of other staff if I could go along with it ? Can’t really see it myself, I tend to have apathy towards those less fortunate than myself. I even feel guilty every time I pass a homeless person that I have a job, a home and a reasonably regular life.
I have to say I found the article both enlightening and depressing, especially in the current situation with so many people out of work everywhere. I will now worry that, no matter the quality and volume of work I produce for any given employer, I could be axed through no fault of my own at any time just so someone higher up the corporate ladder can have a swimming pool installed at their home.
Not quite sure who created this, but it pretty much sums what I do from day to day.
In fact, this process had led to the creation of some of the posts here on this very site :o)
And I so very gladly draw the line under yet another birthday and hope all the fuss will die down.
It would seem that London’s tree’s are feeling depressed and need cheering up !
The boys left this morning for a weeks break in Sitges. ahhhhh, a whole week with the place to myself. Here’s hoping they come back sunned and relaxed/recharged :o)
before the holiday
Well, Brighton Pride did not fail to disapoint again this year. We arrived at the train station in what was quite warm dry weather, we had such high hopes.
But after watching the parade for half an hour and then following the tail end of it up to Preston Park things started looking not so good.
By the time we had navigated our way across the park and into the Wild Fruit tent, the skies opened and did dump down some serious water……all afternoon.
But we were undercover and dry and therefore did not care too much about it….until it came to time to leave. It was like trying to get across a much thicker version of the Florida wetlands.
On the plus side, we did get to see some cool lesbian mud wrestling, on the minus side we now have a pile of mud encrusted clothing and footware that will require a hunt for and trip to the nearest laundrette (don’t want to put all that mud through my washing machine, it might not make it !)
Thanks to all our friends who either came down with us or we saw there on the day. You guys and girls rock.
lesbians (assumed !) in the mud
