How you should park your car
May 14, 2008, at 2:48 pm. This entry has 1 comment.
I saw this parked on the side of the road whilst out walking today, and it became clear to me that this guy has discovered the secret of getting a good parking spot in the city:
I like how the parking inspectors still mark the tyres with chalk every time, before coming back later to give him another ticket.
Here’s a question. Parking laws are bullshit, parking inspectors are scum. What do you think is the best way to provide enough parking in the city for everyone who wants to drive in, without a ton of fines, fees or parking restrictions, whilst preventing people from taking up a spot for two years by dumping their old car?
The squeaky wheel gets the grease
May 8, 2008, at 3:28 pm. This entry has 1 comment.
I hereby withdraw my previous comments about Optus’ incompetence. OK, so they took 5 weeks to repair my broken Blackberry, but after complaining to several departments, I got credits of $50 and $250 to my account from two different places. Not bad. When one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing, it seems this can be taken advantage of.
Or as my good friend, Niccolo Machiavelli, would say:
“Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.”
The moral of the story is that you ought to complain to as many people as you can.
Some people exist only to waste other people’s time
March 28, 2008, at 6:25 pm. This entry has no comments.
I drove to the office today and parked at my regular spot. Since I work in a congested area of the city, parking is limited for those not willing to pay a princely sum, but I have a trick. There is a “clearway” zone in one of the road lanes between 7:00-9:30am, after which time, anyone can park there all day for free. Of course, with the high amount of competition in the local parking economy, to get a spot you normally have to get there a few minutes before 9:30.
Get a real job
Today at 9:26am (by my clock), I spotted a man dressed in fluoro yellow on a motor scooter, riding around the area. I shrugged, and pulled into a parking spot. The man stopped his scooter and gestured for me to come forward.
“It’s a clearway, mate” said the man.
I said “No worries” and continued driving. I drove around the block for four minutes and returned, parked in a spot, and went to work.
The moral of the story is that police officers and rent-a-cops usually just waste people’s time, when they should be out stopping rape, murder and terrorism.
Poor customer service from Optus
, at 4:15 pm. This entry has no comments.
I recently purchased a Blackberry Curve 8310 from Optus on a two year contract for $79/month, and the phone is pretty cool. It can do email, web, Google Talk, etc. At least it was cool, until it stopped working. Four weeks after purchase, the phone got stuck in an endless loop of turning on and off every 10 seconds, until the battery ran out. Connecting the phone via USB to the supplied PC software and attempting to reinstall the operating system didn’t seem to help, and although it seems I’m not alone in having this problem, none of the solutions I found online were able to help me.
Blackberry Curve 8310
Anyway, that’s fine. Electronic things stop functioning properly now and then; I work in IT, so I know this. What was not fine, was the customer service provided by Optus.
It being some sort of festival of religious significance over the long weekend (I think they call it “Easter”), not many people were working, and fewer still were able to help me. I rang Optus, and they told me that they couldn’t do anything over the phone, and I would need to take my Blackberry to a shop. Very well. I took it to an Optus World, and they said I needed to show them the contract for proof of purchase, or alternatively, they could fax the central office and get a response back in 3 days to prove that I had indeed purchased the phone from Optus. Damn, I’d left the contract in my other pants.
So, I picked up my contract and went to a different store. “It’ll take three or four weeks to get it repaired”, they said, “and we can give you a basic Nokia in the meantime, but you’ll have to put down a deposit of $50″. Screw that.
Optus support staff member
On going to a third, bigger, better store, I was told: “It’ll take a week or two to get it repaired, and we can give you a basic Nokia in the meantime”. Well, that’d have to do, I’d been without phone service for several days and I was starting to worry about missing calls.
“Basic” was right. They gave me the most basic Nokia I could imagine. It’s so cheap, that all the buttons have two functions instead of one (you press them up or down, depending on what you want to do).
It’s poor customer service like this that makes me want to switch to someone else. I’m going to refuse to pay for Blackberry service this month. You’d think they’d give me an equivalent phone to replace my old one. If they don’t have one in the store, surely they could send it out. They were quick enough to sell it to me in the first place and get it sent to my place in two days, but clearly they can’t act as quickly when something happens to an existing customer. I guess they figure that they’ve already got me secured on a contract for two years.