Happy St.Patricks Day

This will probably be my last post for a while as heading for for a lovely two week holiday.

Wishing you all a Happy St.Patrick's Day and to celebrate why not make your own Leprechaun (not pronounced Le-pre-shen but Lep-ra-con).

My Cheltenham Tips, Friday 16th March

Bad, bad week for the nags for me. This is always a hard festival to call but at least, after talking to some friends, I didn't do as bad as them. So here is what happened on the last day, Gold Cup Day.

My Accum for today was:
Lounaos, Wichita Lineman, Kauto Star and Saintsaire on an each-way bet.

Lounaos didnt finish in the places, Wichita and Kauto won

My single bets were:
14:00 Mobaasher (each way)
14:35 Black Harry (straight), Mr.Strachan (each way)
15:15 Exotic Dancer (straight), Bob Bob Bobbin & Monkerhostin (eacy way)
16:00 Bica (straight), Folly Pleasant (each way)
16:40 Tysou & Jacks Craic (each way)
17:20 Ouninpohja (straight), Made in Japan & Arcalis (each way)

Mobaasher placed which was nice.
Next race nothing
Exotic Dancer finished second (no money though) and the others nothing.
Nothing in the next two...

Not sure about the last race but will update when I know the result

The undocumented Irish

I was listening to the news this morning and they mentioned that Bertie is using his annual Paddy's Day trip to the US to campaign on the behalf of the undocumented Irish over there. These people have taken on a greater signifigance after 9/11.

The figure this morning on the news stated that there are around 30,000 undocumented Irish.

My question is....if they are undocumented how do we know there are 30,000?

My Cheltenham Tips, Thursday 15th March

Wednesday was nearly as bad as Tuesday so thought that I would at least one decent day. Here is what I done for Thursday:

First an accumulator of:
Kings Advocate, Monets Garden (heavily fancied), Mighty Man and Opera Mundi.

Dont know where Kings Advocate came and Monets Garden was 4th I think.

Then the single bets are:
14:00 Rasharrow (each way)
14:35 Crozan (each way)
15:15 Fire Dragon (each way), Mighty Man (straight)
16:00 Tikram (each way), Opera Mindi (straight)
16:40 Nine De Sivola (each way), Gungadu (straight)
17:20 Desert Tommy (each way)

Rasharrow came in 4th.
Crozan fell at the 2nd last fence after leading the whole race.
Fire Dragon led for a while and faded into I dont know where and Mighty Man came 2nd.
Next two done nothing and neither did any of the others..

Another bad day

My Cheltenham Tips, Wednesday 14th March

Following on from Tuesday debacle I thought I couldn't do any worse...but I nearly did. Here is how Wednesday panned out:

I placed an accumulator on then following (each way) - this is where the horses all have to at least finish in a place:
Catch Me, Gazzas Girl, Dempsey, The Spoonplayer.
Catch me and Dempsey placed. Gazzas Girl was 5th and The Spoonplayer is still running.

For other bets I done:
14:00 Imperial Commander (each way)
14:35 Snowy Morning (each way)
15:15 Justified (each way), Newmill (straight)
16:00 Emotional Moment (each way), Copsdale Lad (straight)
16:40 Maletton (each way), Oodachee & Liberthine (straight)
17:20 Cork All Star & Ravens Run (each way)

Snowy Morning places and Cork All Star won so got 2 bets in. Didnt quite meet the outlay though.

My Cheltenham Tips, Tuesday 13th March

Everyone else is betting on the GG's so why can't I?
Here are the nags I backed today...

14:00 Kalderon e/w @ 25/1
- Lost
14:35 Dont Push It e/w @ 4/1
- Lost
15:15 Brave Inca @ 7/2
- Lost
16:00 Rambling Minster e/w @ 10/1
- Lost
16:40 Royal Auclair e/w @ 9/1
- Lost
17:20 Pouvoir e/w @ 11/2
- Lost

I will update with the results when I get them

(Updated on 15th March with results)

The Number 23

With the new Jim Carrey movie coming about called "The Number 23" it got me to thinking about this number. It had never occurred to me that numbers possess any sort of power (other than the numbers I see in my payslip and bank account each month). It was really when David Beckham moved to Real Madrid that I first heard about it. He insisted on getting the number 23 jersey due to its powers, but this was also his wife pushing him - and when you see what he has won since I wonder if it has done anything for him.

From what I had read it is supposed to have mystical powers and that was also one of the reasons why Michael Jordan chose it.

So lets have a look.

- 23 is the ninth prime number, the smallest odd prime which is not a twin prime.
- Human sex cells have 23 chromosomes. Other human cells have 2 sets of 23 chromosomes (23 from the father and 23 from the mother)
- Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd, is the most quoted psalm.
- In the Discordianism religion 23 is a holy number.
- In Islam, the holy book Quran was revealed in a total of 23 years to Prophet Muhammad.
- It is the number of the Illuminati
- A federal grand jury in the United States consists of 23 members.
- It is one of the lost numbers in the TV show "Lost"

Here is more of the same.

So, make up your own mind? For me, I have been told that 1 and 7 are my lucky numbers but they haven't helped me win the lottery.

And 23 is the number that a legend wore on his back and still does - Jamie "23 Carra Gold" Carragher.

It was also the first number that Robbie "God" Fowler had and since changing has not really had much luck with injuries...mmmmmm.

How best to end a lovely day.

Imagine the scene.

You move to a new place to work and live. You are staying outside of the city centre but want to go in and explore. You get the train in to the city centre. You have a lovely day shopping, strolling around, having lunch and just generally chilling out.

You head home after your lovely day and go to the train station at least 5 mins before departure time. However, upon entering the station you realize that there is no board to show departures, no clock to show what time THEY say it is and, after walking around, no signs anywhere to show which train is for which location or which platform is which (there are 5 platforms).

You are worrying as departure time is near and you see a conductor. Someone who must, ahem, know which train is which.

"Excuse me, ca.." is all you get out.

"Sorry, just hang on for one moment" and off he walks.

After a few moments you are really worried now as on your watch time is showing that the train is leaving now. The conductor returns.

"Now, what can I do for you"

"Can you tell me where the Cobh train is leaving from?"

"I just waved it off, sorry"

And off the cunt walks. One fuckin hour and twenty fuckin minutes to the next train. You can imagine my sister was fuckin livid when this happened. Welcome to Cork. Welcome back to Ireland. Welcome to Irish fuckin Rail the marvelous people.

So much for a lovely day.

New Job

While at lunch yesterday I decided that I needed to change job and career. "But to what" was the question I kept getting. So I asked a colleague would she care to join me in business.

"Yes, anything else please" was the reply.

"OK, what will we do?"

"I dunno, anything" came the answer.

Next thing we knew we needed a business quick sharp as I had recruited two staff members (against this will, but they had no choice) and no means for paying them. Forget about the fact that the business didn't exist and we didn't even know what we were going to do.

We decided on a curry house as we loves our curries and most people like a good curry nosh.

Next it was a location and that was decided without the owners permission (they will agree though).

Finally the name. Now, getting a name for a business is a tricky affair. It has to be good, catchy and get the publics imagination. I mean, you couldn't call a pub 'Bad Beer' and expect much custom could you? Or would you eat in a Chinese called "Mr. Choo's Kitty Palace"? See, its so important. We agreed on a name. And then the pièce de résistance. We got someone to go around the pubs at night selling takeaways - genius !

So here is the name. Will you come and eat here?

People who are fuckers No.6 - The Civil Service

Because they are useless.....

Tax Office
Motor Tax Office

Any civil service office in Ireland (they are far from civil and they offer no service)

Don't need to say anymore really. Wankers.

An old one, but a good one.

I received this recently and thought I would share as I think its great (its the semi-nerdy side coming out).....

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash........Twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable,five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.I love the next one!!!

10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.

And so the Irish Rail saga ends...

On Jan 18th I last posted about my Irish Rail saga and predictibly enough I never really got any sort of acceptable response from the Cork station master (I got the basic rubbish). Jan 18th was day 31 of the saga.

On Monday 22nd, day 35, I had a missed call from Hilary but didnt get a chance to call back. I tried to call on Tuesday 23rd but the phone rang out. On Wednesday 24th I recevied the following email:

--------------------
Steve,
Thank You for e-mail, I appreciate that you are not entirely satisfied with my last e-mail. With regards to the Conductor In question he has being spoken to and is currently being monitored.

On the evening in question the train that you were trying to board was in fact late leaving and therefore couldn't have being held for any longer. As for your complaint being delayed in getting to me, the reason for that is that I am not long in this position and it was quite possibly sent to>the previous postion holder who no longer works here, in error.

I have tried to phone you but was unable to make contact and I would have preferred to speak to you in person.

Regards
Hilary Twomey
--------------------

That was day 37. I tried to call a few times since but each time the phone rang out. I decided today to end this as I really will not get any sort of a decent answer. Here is my final email back:
--------------------
Hilary,
I do apologize for not responding to this earlier. I missed your one call on the day in question and I tried to call back several times in the ensues weeks afterwards but the phone rang out each time. Therefore I feel that this email will suffice as I would not like to take this any further as I feel that nothing will happen anyway.

With regards to the conductor, I thank you for speaking to him. If my complaint prevents any other customers from having to deal with his inexcusable behavior then I feel it was worth raising the issue.

With regards to the train being late then I have to absolutely refute this. At the time, there was no clock in the station to display the time and nor was there a board to display the platforms or time for customers. On my watch, I had at least 1 minute before departure and I know that another customer also was pointing to their watch to bring this to the conductors attention. Alas, to no avail. If indeed the train was late then I ask why the conductor did not wave the train off earlier as his speaking on the phone surely delayed the train even further. At this stage it is an argument or our words against yours/his with regards to the train departure time. If it was late then surely you as station master must be asking why and how can trains leave at said time? In this case you must be asking who your conductor was speaking to and why he did not wave of the train at the correct time? Is punctuality not important?

Finally I really do find it hard to believe that my original email was not passed to you correctly as you are not in the position long. Is there not a standard "Cork Station Master" email address that you access for issues? Was a communication not sent out to the customer service department advising of your new position? If so then someone must be accountable for the mis-routing of my email and also I wonder to where it was sent to?

As I said I really do not want to take this any further as I feel that more and more excuses for this complete incompetence in Irish Rail will be given and it is just wasting all our times.

Thank you for entering my complaint but as you can see it has got neither of us anywhere.

Thanks,
Steve.
--------------------

It will be interesting to see what I get back but to be honest I dont give a shit.

We must have the only train service in the world that "cuts" the number of trains on weekends and the final train from Cork to Cobh at night is 10.30pm (you cant even stay in a pub until the old closing time).

They really are useless.

Well done

Following on from my previous post on Talk Talk I have to say that I am impressed by their response to my email last Friday - which was non too complementary I have to say.

I arrived in this morning to an email from their customer service dept (sent yesterday) stating that I would have my dosh back within 10 working days. I just received another email stating that the money will be put back on my CC shortly.

Well done for acknowledging my complaint AND acting on it. Now, if NTL could do that same??

Everyone else is doing it so why can't I?

I was up at the Irish Blog Awards on Saturday night and I have to say that it was a good laugh and great to put faces to blogs. Well done to all the winners on the night. Sinead Gleeson has a list of the winners on her blog so wont bother repeating here.

I think that a new category could be awarded next year - "Funniest moment of the previous award ceremony". For me it was when Twenty went up to get his first award and I don't think anyone (who had never met him before) believed it was him and also the revered "ooohhh" that was present when the nominee's where announced.

Well done to Damien for organizing this and also to Rick for presenting. Well done to everyone else involved also and here's to a bigger and better ceremony next year.

Interesting Statistic

Talk Talk are a shower of wankers

I tried to pay my phone bill the other day online via the Talk Talk website. I have never had an issue before paying and its been quite good. However, this time I got an "Administration" error and it stated to try again or call the customer service team. I tried again and got the same error. So I called the customer service number and tried to pay via their automated service. Again this resulted in an error and so I got transferred to an agent who was very helpful. I paid my bill via my Credit Card and left it at that.

Until today. I checked my Credit Card statement.

I was charged 4 times for my phone bill. Now you can imagine I was not the happiest bunny in the world and so I called their customer service centre. The one thing I will say is that as customer service centre's go they are one of the friendliest I have encountered and usually are spot on (unlike Eircom) with their information.

However, on this occasion I can say I aint happy at all. I stated what happened and she advised that yes my account was in credit. I asked for the money to be transferred back to me and was told (this is not an exact quote but fairly close):
"We advise our customers to leave their accounts in credit. This way you wont have to pay any bills for 2 months or more. It can take a long time to transfer back so its better to leave it".

I hung up. What a pile of stinking, rotten, odorous shite. Its takes a long time? What do you mean I wont have to pay any bills for 2 months or more? That's because I have already fucking paid !! Jesus H Christ on a stick with a little donkey. That's my money fuckers.

I'm thinking of emailing them to pay any interest charged on my credit card due to this.

In the words of Twenty Major, cunts.

People who are fuckers No.5 - Frank Fahey

Frank Fahey.

What a man. What a fuckin man. Really, what a total and utter gobshite of a man. This man has wasted, what for the normal folk in Ireland, would be a huge sum of money. This gobshite, when Marine Minister, overruled a decision for people to apply for a grant and instead awarded the money to build marina's for wealthy folk to "moor in Kerry loike".

What an asswipe. Total asswipe. Look at the smug head on him. And then to make matters worse he has come out and said he has a clear conscience that what he done was right.

This is why I hate politicians (do you think hate is strong enough? Maybe loathe? Or maybe really hate?? You decide). When they fuck up they don't admit it. Why not? When we fuck up in our job we have to say it but noooo, these don't.

Gobshites.

Where do you want me to go?

...ahhh, to the Blog Awards this Saturday !

As stated Ter from Linkmap has kindly produced a stunning visual graphic to display where said awards will be held.

A few weeks back Damien asked me to judge the "Best Political Blog" which must be the most ironic of things. See, the reason is I have a massive dislike and mistrust for politicians and also an even bigger dislike for politics in general. I think that it is one massive waste of space. To me its:

Person1 says something
Person2 from the other side says its shite
Person1 says its not and commissions a multi-million Euro survey to prove this - using their own staff.
Person1 says its not shite
Person2 argues again.
Money and time is wasted, we get no where. Then...

Person2 goes into power and says the same thing as person one but with one little difference.
Person1 says its shite
Person2 says its not and commissions a....you get the idea.

Anyways, so I rated the 5 nominees in the political blogs and to answer the inevitable questions that will arise:
1) Yes I was fair
2) Yes I rated you lower than the others
3) No I did not read your blog but instead rated you on (a) the title of your blog and (b) the title of your blog posts
4) No I don't like your blog.
5) Yes I want you to leave me alone or I will call security

If anyone wants to interview me this then I would be delighted. As long as its not a politician.