Without wishing to tempt fate

On the eve of my spending the next two weeks pretty much MOVING in some form or another, here's what happens when I go to the US.

I land.
I go to customs.
I wait.
I get escorted to the little room.
They realise that I'm not who they're looking for.
The security guy tells me that he's not *MEANT* to tell me, but that there's someone with the same name they're looking for. They tell me this every time. All of them.
I get to go into the US.

This is an enormous pain in the ass. Sometimes I meet one with an ounce of common sense who realises that being that I'm a different nationality, a different age, and have lots of US passport control stamps for the last decade, I might not be the man they're looking for. But the majority of the time I get the jobsworth dumbass who acts like he's just singlehandled captured Bin Laden and saved the universe. Or just likes to fuck with tired, midly sarcastic British tourists who know what's coming next.

I hate security theatre. I particularly hate security theatre at airports. Has anyone ever been saved by the 50ml liquid rule? I should confess now that I accidentally took 100ml (one hundred whole mililitres) of toothpaste on a flight to Ireland. I forgot to take it out, they didn't notice, and - who knew? - the world didn't end. On that same trip, however, they took my mother's hand cream. The woman is sixty five years old. It was hand cream. The world was not saved by this act. No terrorism was prevented.

Anyway, for those of you who might care, I shall be moving pretty much constantly for the next two weeks, to wit:

Tomorrow - Manchester > London
Wednesday - London > Miami
Thursday - Miami > Fort Lauderdale > Eleuthera
Friday - Eleuthera > the general direction of St Thomas
Saturday - the general direction of St Thomas
Sunday - St Thomas (Scuba Diving)
Monday - St Kitts (Sailing, Snorkeling)
Tuesday - Barbados (Swim with Turtles)
Wednesday - Dominica (River Tubing)
Thursday - Antigua (Sailing, Snorkeling)
Friday - General direction of Ft Lauderdale
Saturday - General direction of Ft Lauderdale
Sunday - Ft Lauderdale > Sawgrass Mills > Miami > London
Monday - London > Manchester

On Tuesday I think I might have a little sleep, then try and work out my average speed over the preceeding fortnight...

If you're good there'll be photos on my return. If you're bad, there'll be LOADS of them. I shall be entirely without interwebs, although the ship itself has a webcam you can watch here

See you in a fortnight, then... wish me luck with immigration!

Copyright infringement, The Bangles, and me...

A few weeks ago, I noticed that Daisy Rock guitars had decided to link to my video of The Bangles from the Cornbury Festival.

But imagine my surprise when on one of my irregular visits to Myspace (David Ford had just posted a blog - that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it) I spotted that they had used some of my photos from Cornbury. Strange, as I seem to remember marking them "All Rights Reserved"

Going to their main website, I found that - yep - they'd use them there too.

Let's play "spot the different", kids...

Bangles site 1
Bangles site 2
Bangles site 3

Respectively

My Flickr 1
My Flickr 2
My Flickr 3

I've fired a quick email off to their manager and webmaster. You know, just to see what their justification is!

Edit - fair play to them, they said they'd been sent to them by a fan (although I assume Getty images won't be as accepting of this explanation) and are happy to take them down. I've just asked them to attribute them properly and I'm happy for them to be left up.

Why I Hate Dell Outlet

I seem always to be blogging about poor customer service, but there's so much of it about to go round!

Ordered a laptop last Friday from the Dell Outlet. So this is a machine that is built, it exists and just needs payment to be taken, the machine stuck in a box and shipped. This is not rocket science, especially for a big player like Dell.

Got a confirmation email, promising further order status updates.

Five days pass, no news.

Call Dell. Call centre. India. Now let me take a moment to say that I have previously argued against automatically tarring all Indian call centres with the same brush, but I'll be damned if this wasn't the worst customer service experience I've had in years. They told me I had no order and that I needed to re-order.

So I called the Outlet sales people who told me that I did have an order, but Dell's computers didn't talk to each other, so customer service in India couldn't see outlet orders. I'm pretty sure it isn't beyond the gift of a company that makes, y'know, computers, to have a joined up IT system. But apparently it is. Hey ho.

Anyway, Outlet assure me order is fine and that it'll be processed yesterday (Thursday) and I'll have an email to confirm this by 6pm.

6pm comes and goes.

So I call them again today. Same guy. Investigates, assures me that the order will be processed by 4pm today.

4pm comes and goes.

Even if it comes tomorrow (it won't, they haven't even debited my card yet), I won't buy another Dell machine as long as I live, because I'll always remember the poor customer service. What I don't understand is why THEY don't realise that.

From the 'very punny' department.

Following the problems in the sub-prime lending market in America and the run on Northern Rock in the UK, uncertainty has now hit Japan.
In the last 7 days Origami Bank has folded, Sumo Bank has gone belly up and Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches.
Yesterday, it was announced that Karaoke Bank is up for sale and will likely go for a song while today shares in Kamikaze Bank were suspended after they nose-dived.
While Samurai Bank are soldiering on following sharp cutbacks, Ninja Bank are reported to have taken a hit, but they remain in the black.
Furthermore, 500 staff at Karate Bank got the chop and analysts report that there is something fishy going on at Sushi Bank where it is feared that staff may get a raw deal.

Valley Of Sound

From the "How did that pass me by" department...

Heather Nova has an album out. Next week. We are not scaremongering. This is really happening.

New Heather Nova Album

Politics

I'm not sure you necessarily want Sarah Silverman on your side in an election...

The Great Schlep

Shure thing

Things I have learned this week:

Royal Mail's track & trace lies about whether things have been delivered.

Shure's customer service is superb. Called them last week about my frayed headphones. Posted Saturday, brand new boxed pair arrived today, upgraded to the newly released equivalent of my old pair.

Apple's bundled iPod earphones are the work of satan and all his horned minions and everyone involved should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Three days using them was three days too many.