I’m proud of Geelong. We have a lovely city – wonderful beaches, friendly people and great facilities. Like any metropolis though, we have problems with Trash, and today I got to meet her face to face. After having spent a very pleasant morning photographing the flora of the Geelong Botanical Garden, Mum and I were meandering back to the car when we noticed a steady stream of well dressed doyennes arriving at the Garden, ostensibly for some sort of function. “Lovely”, we thought, “wonderful place to get married!”.

As I was dismantling  the lenses, the carpark began to get full. Unlike most Trash, this piece arrived not on the wind but in a beige-gold Ford Falcon – the same colour as a fake Rolex. Ms Trash alighted from the vehicle, intent on being able to use the carpark we were obviously about to vacate. “I’ll be two  minutes,” I said, noting the large sunglasses and too-short-for-this-weather skirt, “just packing up”. I continued to clean the lenses and pack them away. Pouting, Ms Trash was not to be fobbed off. “Could you do me a favour?”, she whined in one of those used-to-getting-my-own-way-because-I’m-up-myself voices, “we’re running late for a wedding. Could you just back our your car so that we can get in?”

Principle Number #1: Your failure to plan does not make it my problem

No, we can’t. You are late for a wedding because you’ve failed to plan. Your tardiness (and hideous outfit) are testament to this. At this point Mr Trash, for whom patience is not a strong suit, began to beep his horn. His very small horn. The intent of this unashamedly alpha male behaviour of course was to intimidate us. Wrong move.

Principle Number #2: Be nice. It will get you better results than being nasty.

Mum and I are reasonable people. We’re generous and friendly. We talk to strangers, and we let people into traffic. But neither of us tolerates fools, and in particular detest arrogant swine who think their God’s gift to creation. Now, had Ms Trash been somewhat humble (heaven forbid, friendly!) and asked courteously we probably would have been pleasant and calmly reversed out of the car park. Mr Trash continued to beep. Ms Trash continued to pout. Smoke began to waft from Mum’s ears.

Principle Number #3: Don’t piss off my Mum!

Mum sat firm, keys in ignition, with no intent to turn them. “I don’t think so!” she bellowed. More smoke emanated from her ears. More beeping. More pouting. Finally, I instructed Mr and Ms Trash to find an alternate car park. And as we drove past, around two minutes later after gently and calming reversing out of the park, we noticed the Fake Rolex-mobile…. 100 metres away in a large alternate car park.

So, if you see a Ford Falcon in a fake Rolex beige gold, number plate RGR 170, please don’t do anything – including giving them your car park. They’re obviously not from Geelong

CeBIT is a 3-day conference which focuses on business technology and IT solutions, and is held every year in Australia. Companies exhibit at CeBIT, hoping to build brand awareness and promote their service offerings. This year, Australian domain name registration and web hosting company Netregistry tried a slightly different marketing tactic – and it’s one that’s making me sick.

Using a ‘medical’ theme to promote their web site health check service, Netregistry dressed female staff in quasi-nurse uniforms, and had them ask CeBIT attendees about the health of their websites. According to this article by ZDNet, Netregistry CEO Larry Bloch (@larrybloch on Twitter) has stated that

“There would have been female doctors if any of our sales people were female — but they’re not”

This is appalling on three levels;

Representation of women in ICT: Instead of having female consultants and sales staff with (presumably) the technical and interpersonal skills to analyse the health of a client’s website, instead models (employed for their looks, not for their intellectual capital) are used engage the (predominantly male) attendees of CeBIT.

Representation of the nursing profession: The nursing profession has worked long and hard to build an image of nurses built on trust, integrity and professional deportment. Placing women in nurses’ uniforms to sell website ‘health checks’ detracts not only from the image of women, but also from the image of nurses and the nursing profession.

Lack of female representation in sales roles: The question everyone is forgetting to ask is why there are no female sales staff at Netregistry? Oh woops, my bad – as a female why would I want to work for an organisation that so obviously doesn’t see women as professional and intelligent, but as eye candy to sell a service. Recruit me now.

No wonder I moved away from Netregistry for my web hosting some time ago. They were appalling then and things it seems haven’t changed.

If you’re as angry as I am about this, send @larrybloch or @Netregistry a Tweet.

Disclaimer: I wasn’t at CeBIT, I didn’t see the ‘nurses’ in question. But I didn’t have to…

I have 9000 days left to live.

Well, thereabouts anyway. How did I calculate this? By averaging the ages of death back a couple of generations on either side, factoring in underlying medical conditions, risky behaviour etc etc. It’s not a perfect model. In short, I’m 29 turning 30 in two months, and there’s good money on me kicking up my heels between 60 and 65.

Sure, there’s some things I can do that might change that outcome. But they might not either. Or I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.

So the big question is what am I going to do for the next 9000 days? Thinking about this in terms of days rather than years or decades helps to put this sense of purpose into perspective. I reflected on how my hours are currently spent. There are 168 hours in a week. Of these;

• 45 hours (27%) are spent at work
• 56 hours (33%) are spent sleeping (based on 7.5 hours per night)
• 2.5 hours (1.5%)  are spent travelling to and from work
• 12 hours (7.1%) are spent doing housework or gardening
• 5 hours (3%) are spent in the gym, walking or in the pool
• 8 hours (4.8%) are spent cooking, eating or preparing food
• 5 hours (3%) are spent socialising – talking on the phone, going out etc
• 4 hours (2.4%) are spent showering, washing hair, getting dressed etc
• 2 hours (1.2%) are spent grocery shopping, clothes shopping or other shopping

The remaining time – around 28 hours (17%) is my free time – to write on my blog, do things like play with HDTV, knitting, run my web development business, do volunteer work, watch television and generally chill out. This seems like a lot, but when you average it out, it’s around 4 hours a day. Is this enough time to do what I really want to do?

No.

This means that the other time percentages need to be changed.

First of all, can I get away with a few minutes less sleep each day? Probably – although nothing too severe otherwise there’s a risk of getting run down, sick and therefore being unable to use that free time. There’s say 3 and a half hours a week back if I sleep seven and a half hours a day rather than eight. What about house work? What a useless waste of time! Get a cleaner in and I get back two hours a week. Awesome. Do I want to cut back on exercise time? Not really. It’s something I need to be doing more of rather than less.

Now, for work. I’m pretty lucky in that it only takes me about fifteen minutes each way to and from work. However the time that would otherwise be spent commuting seems to be going into some reasonably long hours. Is this something I can control. Well, frankly, yes. I reckon if I started to say ‘No’ a bit more often to taking on work that would save me at least 3, maybe 5 hours a week.

Now we’re starting to get somewhere. Already there’s at least 8 and a half hours back for me to do what I want. Average this over 30 years and whammo! 552 days back. I can live with that.

So what other changes will I be making to get the most out of the next 9000 days?

Well…

• Spend more time doing things I enjoy doing, and less time doing things I have to do (like housework)
• Spend more time with the people I like and respect, and less time with those I don’t
• Understanding that you never know what is around the corner – and that to get the most out of the time we have left.

I often rant express poor customer service experiences in this blog, so thought it was only fair to put on record a very positive customer service experience. I hold two domains with two separate providers (in case one provider is down), and one of those domains is hosted by Servers Australia. One of their support staff, Jared Hirst, takes most of my support calls and he is consistently courteous, polite and helpful – and an asset to his company.

I recently bought a cheap USB Bluetooth dongle because my older Acer TravelMate 4070 came without Bluetooth support. Big mistake. The dongle (a Laser N1968) ships with BlueSoleil – a suite of Bluetooth drivers for windows. My Nokia 6110 Navigator and PC Suite simply hate BlueSoleil – after umpteen pairings and unpairings of the devices, driver installations and re-installations and checking all congifurations, I simply cannot get BlueSoleil to work properly with PC Suite. What a piece of rubbish! C’mon people, Bluetooth is all about interoperability!

• PC Suite version : 7.0.8.2
• BlueSoleil version: 2.1.2.1

Will try the Widcomm drivers as an alternative to BlueSoleil and see how they go…

As a follow up from the artice where I complained about a Woolworths Wish Gift Card that had expired, there is some good news!

This is the response from Woolworths Wish Gift Card customer service;

Dear Kathy,

I am writing in response to the correspondence you submitted via the
WISH Gift Card website on Friday 01st August 2008, in regards to the
funds on your expired Gift Card.

Please note that all WISH Gift Cards expire 12 months from the date of
purchase. This is stated in the terms and conditions printed both on the
back of your Card and on the cardboard carrier which the Cards are
attached to. Full terms and conditions are available from
WISHgiftcard.com.au

As a gesture of good will I have reactivated your Gift Card. The new
expiry date is 04th September 2008.

Please ensure that you use your Card prior to the new expiry date as no
further extensions will be offered.

Regards
[name removed for privacy]
Group Financial Services

Well, this is a partially positive outcome – at least now I get access to the funds that were still left on the card. But this doesn’t address the bigger issues of;

Gift cards expiring after a period of time (in this case 12 months). The value of money over time – or net present value – means that a gift card actually depreciates in value as soon as it’s bought. After 12 months, a $100 card will really only give you $95 worth of purchasing power. Sure, this doesn’t seem like a lot of money for one card, but multiply this by hundreds of thousands of Wish Gift Cards issued annually and the value soon starts to add up – in favour of Woolworths!

Card not showing the expiry date. In my case, the assistant who issued the card did not print the expiry date on the card – so how was I know it was to expire?

My advice – if you get a gift card, use it as soon as you can – and if you can avoid Wish Gift Cards, do so!

The saga continues. Here is a copy of the complaint I made to WishGiftCard.com.au:

Hi there,
I would like to make a formal complaint about the Wish Gift Card.

After being urged to purchase a Wish Gift Card at Safeway Newcomb last year, and with a not-insubstantial amount left on the card, I have hence been told by Big W in Geelong that the card has expired.

Checking the card against your site, it expired on 26 June 2008.

Point 1: I was never told that this card expires

Point 2: The card has no expiry date printed on it

Point 3: What happens to the leftover money? I assume that Woolworths simply absorbs this. At the current CPI, the $100 I “purchased” in 2006 would now be worth around $106, not to mention the fact that there’s still over $20 left on the card. Nice going – that’s a 26% return!

Obviously I will not be purchasing a Wish Gift Card again, and will be telling all of my friends about my poor experience.

Regards,
Kathy

Now, I don’t usually do rants. However, incensed at my recent woeful customer service experiences, an exception will be made.

Task number 1: Purchase digital photo frame at Big W

Result: Fail

Of the six models displayed, only two were in stock, and one of those was two and a half more times expensive than the other models. I was left wanting.

Task number 2: Purchase roll down Bonds Large yoga pants in size XL at Big W

Result: Fail

Now, the homework had been done on this one. I had contacted Bonds and asked their customer service department where I could purchase (using specific product codes) a pair of Bonds Large roll down yoga pants. Obviously my grammar and standard of English were subpar, because the response I got was little more than a rehash of the Bonds website (which any semi literate person could peruse). The response told me to go to Target, Big W or K-mart. Well, the original pair was from K-mart and they were sold out. So, next to Big W. Wrong! None there either.

The Bonds response told me to try the TSL website (keeping in mind I had specified the product I wanted). TSL doesn’t even stock the Bonds Large range. What the??

Task number 3: Use up Wish Card at Big W

Result: Epic Fail

This is the most worriesome and wicked part of the rant. Last year I purchased a Wish Card, promoted by Woolworths. It had $100 on it. The week before last at Big W, approximately $70 worth of the $100 card was used. It doesn’t take much effort to calculate that $30 is still on the card. So, after going to the register and trying to pay for goods using the Wish Card, the card is declined – apparently it’s expired! Who knew currency could expire so quickly!

After going Evil Kathy on the customer service lady, I paid using other methods and will follow up with Woolworths. Wonderful.

So here’s a warning: Think of the Wish Card as a You Wish Card – I’d like to pay for some goods with this card. You wish!

To be continued….

Today I got cash out via EFTPOS at a shop in Geelong. I asked for $100 in cash, which I received. It wasn’t until afterwards that it dawned on me that the amount that I had authorised was $100.01. So, where does the one cent go? Obviously not to me, and probably to the shop which was assuming I wouldn’t notice. I didn’t mention anything at the time – but I want to know whether this is standard practice or just a typo by the woman processing the transaction? Surely one cent is not worth it, but over hundreds or even thousands of transactions? Has anyone been diddled like this?