open letter to o2

Dear O2 Ireland,

I'm a long time customer of Vodafone, for at least the last 9 years. I've also only had 1 brand of phone, Nokia. I have been a loyal customer to both companies.

Now since you got your monopoly on the iPhone here in Paddy taxed Ireland, and I really want one, the only option for me is to abandon the two companies that have served me well for the last decade.

For the last 2 out of the 11 weeks that the new iPhone has been on sale I have been checking your website for the opportunity to purchase one. Needless to say I haven't been able to as you know well, they are all sold out.

I don't want to hear your beef with Apple and their supply, I do know they are mighty pissed with your rediclous tariffs too and there is no one to blame for that. And I am aware that you will be changing them after Christmas, after all how can Apple target business accounts when faced with the options, a Blackberry easily out matches an iPhone on value!

You have me, a customer who is willing to abandon ship and move networks for something you fought hard to gain exclusive rights to (did ye really have to work so hard on this considering the deal was in the bag once O2 UK got it). Yet, after 11 weeks with the phone on the market, I'm here writing this letter explaining my frustration.

From Wednesday, if there is not any news on your website (last updated nearly 2 weeks ago) I will have no choice but to try and buy an iPhone online, get it unlocked and stay with Vodafone for several more years.

If you loose potential customers like me one at a time and don't care if you do. I guess I'll be glad I join your Company. Hopefully that's not the case..

Kind Regards,

Darran :-)

P.S. I know I won't hear anything from you on this.. but wouldn't it be nice if someone dropped me an email..

cork lan sponsorship

Any Cork or National based companies out there interested in sponsoring Cork LAN?

Sponsorship can range from:

• Name of the event - include your company name in the event name.
  
• Competition sponsorship - "The your company challenge!"
• Food Sponsorship - "Today’s meal is brought to you by your company!"
  
• Area for your company at your event - show demo's, answer questions, get your product out there.
  
• T-Shirt sponsorship - Logo of your company on the event’s T-Shirt. We are still looking for Staff T-Shirts, or we can sell CorkLAN ones with your logo on it.
• Banners Placement - Put up banners of your company around the room during the event.
  
• WebSite Placement - Your company logo/banner on the Cork LAN website.
  

Sponsorship can range from one or many of these! We are very interest in competition sponsorship as it is easy to donate prizes, and everyone loves winning stuff!

So if you are interested in even donating a spot prize anything in value from €10 up, please contact us on events@corklan.com and we can organise something!

Thanks and please pass this onto anyone you might know who is willing to help out a new type of event in Cork!

us presidential election post

This will probably be the only post I do about the US Presidential Election 2008.

First of all, has anyone noticed the connections between the West Wing TV Show and this election?
There is definitely a Santos/Obama and Vinick/McCain link. Considering Santos was based on Obama!
The candidates were also brought to the White House for a chat with the current president before he lands the winner in it for the next 4 year? What about the Republican just about to cancel the debate at the last minute?! Only time will tell, but hopefully Obama's running mate won't die on election night!
The BBC also have a nice article on this here.



On another note, as for Vice-Presential pick. McCain's choice was brilliant! A life safer for his campaign which would have been a walk over for Obama if another white male, stereotypical ticket was on offer from the Republicans! For those guts they deserve a it, if only to show the Democrats you messed up not picking Hillary (Altho if the West Wing parallel continues, Obama might have a chance to still pick her!)

I think this comic sums up a lot too:

So anyway, since I don't have a vote, I'm just going to sit back and watch the American People possibly screw the world over for another 4 years!

cork lan

With just about two weeks to go, I suppose it is time I mentioned Cork LAN.

Another boring Saturday?

So what is there to do on your average Saturday Night? Go to the Pub, go to the cinema, go to a club or go drinking in a field. That pretty much sums up for your average Cork person. Now here is an option to do something else, something different, and the only reason it is going to fail is because people in Cork don’t like the idea of not going out and including one of more of the above mentioned activities.

Cork LAN is a Local Area Network Party, held for the first time in Cork. We are unaware of any big publicly available LAN parties available in Cork before, so we are gonna claim that this is the first! (Feel free to let us know, and then explain why we weren’t told about it!)

What is it?
A Local Area Network party or LAN party is where a group of people come to one place and hook up their all their computers together and play games and the like. This has also spread over to the gaming consoles with the new network ready machines and online play. A LAN party is a chance for all these people to get together and play games, hang out and have fun.

When?
In two weeks, on Saturday the 11th of October there will be such a party happening in the Cork International Airport Hotel. Doors open early at 10am, but show up whenever you want on the Saturday. We will be kicked out of the room the following morning at 10 making it a 24 hour event!

Open to all!
This is not just for die hard gamers either. We will have Wii’s and Rockband and Guitar Hero too for the casual gamer!

Why not give it a try?
So the main things to take from this post are if you’re into hanging out, playing games, have a free evening and want something different to do, come along and bring a telly, Xbox and a few games! It doesn’t take that much to pack them into the car, we have do it many many times! Bring a group, it's always more fun with friends!

Check out the website for more information and register your interest to get €5 off!
http://www.CorkLAN.com/

our next chief

I've decided to run my own poll to see what the feeling out there is for the Next Chief Scout of Scouting Ireland.

Who do you think will get it or should get it?


Note: Options in alphabetical order, this has nothing to do with Scouting Ireland and the results of the poll do not reflect the views of it's members and so on, blah blah blah......

my cv

I'm in the job hunting game these days and no better way to get my CV out there than to put it on my blog! After all, whoever is about to hire me will probably just Google my name and find it anyway!

So if you or someone you know has a job opening and looking to fill it, please take a look at or forward on my CV! I'm interested in anything in the Cork area or beyond and involving IT and/or Business.

My Curriculum Vitae in different formats:

• Word Document - DOC
  
• Portable Document Format - PDF
  
• Google Document - HTML

free priority boarding

****WARNING****

This post is only for fun and meant to point out how poor security is and how easy it is to change your boarding card. Changing your boarding card may result in you not being able to board and prosecuted.
****END****

I fly a fair bit with Ryanair. I was reading their in-flight Mag on my recent flight with them to see that there is a glaring mistake in their "aren't we a great airline company" page:

That bit in the middle:

Passengers who avail of our FREE online check-in service enjoy the double benefit of skipping queues at both check-in and boarding, as Check'N'Go passengers automatically receive priority boarding onto their flight.

Besides that mistake and Ryanair stealing €5 from you each way if you want Priority Boarding, I thought what is stopping you editing your own printed off boarding card to give yourself Free Priority Boarding?

It turns out nothing! And I sucessfully managed to skip the queue on my recent trip with a modified Boarding Card. I present to you my:

Guide to Free Priority Boarding in 10 Easy Steps!

1. Book a flight with Ryanair

2. Choose: 0 Bags & Online Check-in And No to being one of the first to board the aircraft:

3. Have a PDF Printer installed on your PC. I use PDF 995, It's Free!

4. Check-in online up to 5 days before your flight and print your boarding card to PDF.

5. Open the PDF in Photoshop (YES! You can do that!)

6. Move the page down a bit to make room for the two new lines:

7. Add the text: PRIORITY BOARDING PASS in Arial, 14pt, Bold Italic.

8. Print the Image to PDF, scale it to A4 size.

9. Open the PDF and then print it to your physical printer.

10. Enjoy FREE Priority Boarding :-)