I’m off to Brisbane for three days.

It turns out the Taxi company doesn’t want to cooperate though - 4:45AM comes and goes - No taxi. Call the Taxi Company: “Oh, it’s booked for 5:45…” Me: “Right, well… that’s not going to do it for me, I’ll have to get a lift.”

*rolls eyes*

Update, Thursday Morning: Well… The flight up was ok, just… noisy (De Hellier DCH-8 300 Series - i.e twin-prop). They have more legroom, which is great — My knees didn’t even touch the back of the other seat. *gasp* The hotel doesn’t have wifi, which sucks - so I’m down at McD’s using the Telstra wifi here. Also, Brisbane is too damn hot - it was 36-ish yesterday, and didn’t get anywhere close to being considered “ok” temperatures until 3-4AM. It’s overcast, muggy and still warm today - crazy place! Ohwell, off to work now…

Update, Friday Lunch time: Been busy as heck - just about to go back to the Airport to fly back home. It’ll be good to get back home.

I’ve had many “OMG You Must read this” emails sent to me before - some funny, most pretty boring.

This, however is one of the kickers, and it’s a graphic reason why you should always be careful about sending nasty emails - to other staff, but also especially to your customers.

I’ve reformatted the emails, so it reads better on the web. Email addresses have been removed, but I’ve still got the original sitting here.

From: Steve Hausman
To: ‘Events Team’
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 4:06 PM
Subject: RE: Quote #00002417; from The Great Marquee Company Ltd.
Hi Klaus

Paula and I went and viewed your marquee setup at Devonport the other weekend and unfortunately we did not like it.
So this is just to let you know we will not require your services on 7 April 2007.

Thanks for your assistance and we are sorry that it turned out this way although we are glad we looked at the marquee prior to booking as that would have been a huge disappointment.

Regards  
Steve Hausman

That’s not so bad - a bit of a p.o’d customer, but, hey, it happens.

This response is the real killer though, from The Great Marquee Company.

From: Events Team
Sent: Wednesday, 15 November 2006 6:30 p..m.
To: Steve Hausman
Subject: Thank You From The Great Marquee Company

Hi Steve,
Thanks for your reply. Your wedding sounded cheap, nasty and tacky anyway, so we only ever considered you time wasters.

Our marquees are for upper class clients which unfortunately you are not. Why don’t you stay within your class level and buy something from payless plastics instead.

Kindest Regards
Katrina
Office Manager
The Great Marquee Company

And this, ladies and gentlemen - demonstrates exactly why you shouldn’t be responding to customer emails when you’re having an off day.

In the traditional nature of these emails - everyone forwards on the email, leaving intact the headers. For fun, I started counting people in the “To” and “CC” lines, but gave up at 150, about 1/3 of the way.

Klaus Jorgensen, of The Great Marquee Company put a statement on their website apologising for the gaff.

The Great Marquee Company was recently involved in one of the fastest spreading internet stories of the year.  Completely against our own philosophy of going to every effort for our customers, one of our people sent a very inappropriate message following a customer decision not to use our product.
[...]
We certainly regret the exchange and have apologised to the customer. We are also confident that this will never happen again.

For those using Outlook, Paul Stovell gives a good bit of advice on turning off the “Send immediately when connected” option.  Although, this won’t save Katrina, who, according to The Register, is the CEO’s Wife and was promptly fired.

This was also in the NZ Herald last week, along with just about everyone else.

More crazy stories from the good ol’ US of A.

This time, a Denver homeowners association is threatening to fine a resident USD$25/Day fine for having a Christmas wreath, shaped like a peace symbol on her house.

Apparently “some” residents complained because they had children serving in the US Armed Forces in Iraq, and found it offensive - others thought the peace sign was a symbol of Satan (…. right).  

Somehow, I don’t think the complainants were the brightest bunch. It’s probably also safe to say they weren’t pot smoking hippies in the 60’s, either.

Lisa Jensen (the tree-hugging, Satan worshipping, anti-Iraq, hippie resident) says she’s not going to take the sign down until after Christmas. Lisa says it will probably cost her about USD$1,000 for her little statement.

Good on ya Lisa, stick it to ‘em.

Well, after having a go at CAD Premium and the whole animated CAD series, there’s some news by another well-known comic in the animation area.

 Scott Kurtz has signed up with Blind Ferret (the same folks who are doing the CAD Animated series) to do a PvP Animated series too.

The preview, is funny - and of the same level of humor I would expect of a regular PvP Comic.  Whether that can be maintained through the entire season remains to be seen. However, I think PvP is, overall a better quality (and generally funnier) comic than CAD. Hopefully that translates into good stuff.  

Scott says that the CAD animators were outsourced, and that Blind Ferret has hired in-house animators to work exclusively on the PvP series.

I guess USD$19 for 12 episodes, it’s not too much to invest in the project and see if Scott and Blind Ferret can pull it off a little more successfully

These Meyer Lemon Loaves look awfully similar to my Gran’s Lemon syrup Cake.  (We make more syrup, and pour it over the cake whilst still in the tin - using much more tart lemons)

Candy Blog has these… strange looking Pumpkin Kitkats.  They’re limited edition - I’m really NOT wondering why.

No worries, ’cause they review some more good looking Organic Dark Chocolates, and some very interesting flavoured/scented hard-boiled candy.

From news.com.au, comes this small, wonderful little piece of Irony.

FORMER Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski has added his voice to complaints that broadband in Australia is too slow.

Echoing the concerns of News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch, who labelled Australia’s internet infrastructure a “disgrace”, Mr Switkowski yesterday said high quality, high-bandwith broadband was vital for the economy.

“Australia remains sort of slow in its development of the broadband development,” he said.

“We really have ‘broadband lite’ at this stage.”

Communications Minister Helen Coonan defended Australia’s broadband speeds, saying 80 per cent of households were able to access speeds of up to eight megabits from 19 different providers.

I find it incredibly funny that Ziggy, of all people, is complaining about it - given he was CEO, it was within his power to turn on 8Mbit whenever he felt like it.

I’m amazed at Minister Helen Coonan’s apparent response though. If accurately reflected in the article, it shows she is completely out of touch with the realities of the market.

What the minister forgets, is that only Bigpond customers can get 8Mbit at present on Telstra owned DSLAMS - other wholesalers are still not able to offer it as yet via Telstra Wholesale. (I’m not sure why, however). So, really her response should be adjusted to “80 per cent of households are able to access speeds of up to eight megabits from one provider”

Others might argue that the other ISPs should build their own infrastructure - and perhaps they should, but to claim 80% of us can get 8Mbit is just plain wrong.

The New York Times has a review, and also a good write-up on a the movie/documentary “Our Daily Bread” by Richard Linklater — The same fellow who did the screenplay for A Scanner Darkly, and co-wrote Fast Food Nation.

It seems like another interesting, albeit disturbing look at just where our food comes from.

(I don’t know what the release details will be for .au, probably very limited release)

This isn’t a new story, but I still found it interesting. From Arab Business Machine (ABM), comes the story that Al Jazeera has picked Apple for all their computing needs.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions!

Hrm… Someone has a little too much time on their.. err… hands.

Looks like there’s a small spree on Xbox 360 thefts — and not individual consoles, nope - they’re taking entire truckloads.

See Bit Tech for the story: Thieves pinch £750,000 Xbox 360 shipment

Best part of the article:

Allegedly the thieves also stole £750,000 worth of Playstation 3’s - they walked away with 10 consoles.