UPDATE: blog now at blog.ghammerton.com

This image is from the wrong side of the road but shows the road itself. (click for streetview)

Holy Hell! That was a scary moment on the way into work today!

I left the house early, about 6:45am today, five minutes into my drive I come up behind a tanker doing about 40mph. I’m on a long strait which I know well so I move to overtake it. As I’m about half way along the length of the tanker he pulls across lanes; into the one I’m in – the oncoming lane! Not a lane you should cross into anyway, but certainly not if NOT if I’M ALREADY IN IT!

This manoeuvre on the part of the tanker forced two of my wheels up the bank, off the road, foot to the floor, flying through the air followed by a cloud of muddy dust. Obviously I managed to land the car fine or I wouldn’t be here to write this, horrifies me to think that if it had been wet I could have easily ended up in a hedge or if I’d been slower to react I’m pretty sure the car would have rolled. Not worth thinking about really.

I always complained about Stoke’s drivers, and with good reason, but I’ve never seen something like this in Kent before, you expect people to play by the rules, naïve perhaps but I thought people around here knew how to drive.

Below, for your amusement, is the horrible trailer for Spielberg’s first (made for TV) movie, Duel (1971).

My girlfriend moved in with me last week and while she’s looking for a job has been a very attentive house-wife/girlfriend/elf herself, I wonder what she’d have to say to these suggestions (I suspect you may find out in the comments given a little time). The text on the original document (click image for full size) was a little small and hard to read so I’ve provided a transcription below.

The Good Wife’s Guide.

Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready, on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favourite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed.

Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work weary people.

Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a list and one of your duties is to provide it.

Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives.

Gather up schoolbooks, toys, paper etc and then run a dustcloth over the tables.

Over the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.

Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair and, if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part. Minimise all noise At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet.

Be happy to see him.

Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.

Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first – remember, his tops of conversation are more important than yours.

Make the evening his. Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment without you. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pleasure and his very real need to be at home and relax.

Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquility, where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.

Don’t greet him with complaints and problems.

Don’t complain if he’s late home for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day.

Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or have him lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.

Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his sows. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.

Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgement or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

A good wife knows her place.

Credit to Susie Smart for circulating this around the office, and Lisa Hammerton for bringing it to my attention.

This advert is great, the phone which it advertises may well be utterly pants, but the advert itself is great! I obviously like it because it speaks to one particular aspect of my personality.. Watch, Enjoy then tell me that I’m wrong to like this advert.

It’s worth noting that while this advert is great, I won’t be buying the Samsung Jet any time soon.

Man or Woman, Straight or Gay, Green or Blue, it’s impossible to read about Emo Bun without involuntarily emitting an ‘awwwww.. CUTE!’ – I dare you.

Despite my best efforts at shortening my list of RSS subscriptions, this one has to join the news folder, Enjoy!

It’s been three days since I last contacted O2 and no response from their customer services so I’m putting this out there for the rest of the world to enjoy. Following last year’s rather good customer service where all previous iPhone customers were allowed to start a new contract with O2, like a new customer, this year they’re sticking two fingers up at the suckers who fell for it. As an existing customer, currently paying £52.50 a month (£45 tariff + £7.50 unlimited text bolt-on) I have already paid O2 £630.00 over the last year alone but am I a ‘valued customer’? Apparently not. I sent O2 a note a few days ago and within 24hrs received the below response:

O2:

I understand that you want to upgrade to the latest iPhone 3G S. I can see that you aren’t eligible to upgrade to the new iPhone 3G S now. You’ll be eligible to upgrade to the new iPhone 3G S on or after 12 December 2009.

I do appreciate your concern, as you weren’t aware that a new iPhone will be launched now.

I would like to inform you that we shared information about the new iPhone 3G S as soon as it was available, which was late last night after the Apple’s World Wide developers conference.

[iPhone 3.0 Free Upgrade stuff]

If you’re still interested in getting the new iPhone 3G S when it’s launched, you can cancel your existing contract and then purchase the new iPhone 3G S.

As you’re still within your contract term, you’ll need to pay the relevant termination charge if you want to cancel your contract now.

This is because you’ll be cancelling your contract within your Pay Monthly contract term. The termination fee would be:

- the amount of months remaining in contract

- multiplied by the monthly line rental charge (£45.00)

- plus any outstanding balances due on the account.

I hope I’ve explained this clearly to you.

I would request you to please keep visiting our website using the link below for most up to date information on the iPhone 3G S:

http://www.o2.co.uk/iphone

Have a pleasant evening.

Please visit our website using the link www.o2.co.uk/iphone for the most up to date information on iPhone.

You can also visit our online help centre at:

http://www.o2.co.uk/help

Important – When you email us please provide: your date of birth, postcode and mobile number as it helps us answer your query faster.

Kind regards,

Kanchan Parab

O2 Customer Service.

Not a satisfactory answer. I don’t know if I’ve just scared them off but I’m yet to receive a response to my reply:

Kanchan,

Please ensure that I recieve a response from your manager to the following.

How important is customer satisfaction to O2? Secondly how important is customer loyalty and positive word of mouth to your business model?

With government statistics currently giving a life expectancy of 76 years for males and at my previous tarrif of £52.50, over the next 56 years you stand to take £35,280.00 from me as a life long, and satisfied customer. If I were to choose another carrier however, you stand to loose that same £35,280.00 – remind me how much the iPhone 3G S costs O2, I dare say it’s hardly £35,280.00 is it?

Please also note that your script needs to be updated as it refers to the phone’s announcement the previous day which is of course wrong. The grammar in your email is incredibly poor for what reads as a sloppy script and the condesending tone is very dissapointing. Apple has been kind enough to provide me with Beta releases of its 3.0 build so I appologise that I don’t share your excitement for a simple software update; the Gold Master of which I am currently running as I write this. Your customers are not stupid.

Impress me.

Georgie Hammerton

Not an unreasonable set of questions I’m sure you’ll agree. While AT&T, iPhone carrier in the US which is renowned for bad service, has announced that existing customers can upgrade for $100, O2 offer me the option of paying £440.40 for a pay-as-you-go handset OR paying for the rest of my contract to start a new one!

At this point I’m more than happy to dismiss my previous brand loyalty to O2 and give that £35,280.00 to another carrier, Orange for example has the Blackberry Bold at a very reasonable price; I might even get to keep some of my money which would be nice wouldn’t it?

Despite angry twitterers, petitions and very vocal disappointment from O2 customers, O2 failed to take care of its customers which meant O2 were met with this response today.

For the past week facebook, and we geeks, have been counting down to the release of facebook user names! I know, I know; what’s the big deal? I’ve got user names on other sites like my twitter account; @pandapoo for example, but facebook uses real names so why do facebook user names matter so much? Well like it or not, for most of us facebook is our ‘home on the web’ and it’s an important part of both social and casual-business networking too. The problem for a long time has been the question of how to give out your facebook URL; do you give out the whole thing; numbers and all? Create a tinyurl or just don’t give it out at all? I often opted for the latter. I’m lucky in having an uncommon name; ‘Georgie Hammerton’ shows up just me on facebook so I stuck with letting people find me by name, but what about ‘John Smith’; how are his friends meant to find him? The answer is a username!

From 5:01AM (GMT) this morning we were able to jump on facebook.com/username and register the user name of our choice, in the first 3 minutes 200,000 user names were registered. And I, Georgie Hammerton, fastest fingers in the west, was up at 4:30am, counting down with my fellows on twitter, and at 5:01AM managed to snag facebook.com/georgie I’m a very proud man. My girlfriend, with whom I’m on holiday with at the moment, was not as impressed when I woke her up to ask if she wanted to get her username after some persuasion she managed ‘cat.bebb’ and is a happy lady (not as happy as me with ‘georgie’ *grin*.

I briefly spoke to the guy who got facebook.com/usernames, after a tip from Eddie, but he wasn’t happy 5 minutes later when facebook had decided to make that URL redirect to facebook.com/username, he’s stuck with his own name now; so old fashioned.

If you got yours already then please share them in the comments and if you haven’t then GET A MOVE ON!

I can finally say good-bye to http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=272701731, and hello to facebook.com/georgie hmm.. time to order some new contact cards me thinks!

Ciao!

But who wants a long ramble about that night eh? No.. neither do I, so here’s a 26 minute podcast of from a favourite feature of ours; Never Mind the KUBECocks. We were past 9 hours into the show by this point.. enjoy!

This hasn’t been released on KUBE Radio’s podcast feed yet so consider it an exclusive.. oooh! Exciting!

Amazon 1 – 0 iTunes

For those of you who’d like to listen to the track without any of the torture get the mp3 here or click play below. ;)

Urination was a key part of the Disney success story, the collected amounts of urine collected from all members of staff during a single year was the equilivant to fifty five five five football melon stadiums. This collection lead to mass profit and established the Disney currency. Times were not always happy for the Urine collectors, the 1974 outbreak of turtle flu directly contaminated supplies for a full fifteen years.

I genuinely considered leaving it in; it seemed to almost fit with my title; “The Disney Company’s Relationship with Control after Walt’s Death”, which is more than the rest of my dissertation did!