Does anyone else think that people are getting a little too upset about the new Olympic Games logo?

I just… I just don’t get it. I’ve been reading through various web sites, blogs and comments and have been astounded by the amount of fury in response to the logo.

Ok, ok, it’s not a traditional Olympics logo and, well, it’s rather garish and, well, bloody odd. I’ll grant you that. However, I think that people who immediately react with a “GAAH! IT’S HORRENDOUS! I’M EMBARRASSED TO BE BRITISH!” are missing the point a bit:

Firstly, we have a great deal of time to get used to it. There are many songs that I’ve heard and despised immediately, only to have them grow on me over time and end up as songs that I would turn up on hearing, rather than switch off. Is it impossible to imagine that this could be the case with this logo?

Secondly, it’s bloody unique. If you catch a slight glimpse of it, you know exactly what it is. There’s nothing similar to that logo in any of the big brands out there, so that’s got to be a good thing, right?

Thirdly, it’s just a fecking logo for a sports competition. Get over it.

I dunno, maybe it’s that when I saw it I was actually quite impressed that they’d gone for something “out there”, something that deliberately DIDN’T fit in with what I would consider “today’s style”.

It’s a risk, yes, but I’m willing to bet that the British will come to hold the design close to their hearts in 5 years’ time.

That’s my tuppence anyway.

Pat

Well, following various emails and a few phone calls from my Dad (thanks Dad!), Fasthosts’ve finally got their fingers out of their arses and reactivated lionskull.co.uk, two weeks after I paid for the service. Which is nice.

They also sent me an email to let me know that, due to my original payment being over two weeks late, they’re charging me an additional 20GBP fee.

I’m very happy. So much so that I’m going to provide Fasthosts some free mentions in Google:

I think Fasthosts are rubbish. I believe Fasthosts are shit. In my experience Fasthosts are bad. I’ve found that Fasthosts have terrible customer serivce. I would not recommend using Fasthosts. I don’t like Fashosts. Fasthosts smell of old women and eggs. I think Fashosts suck more than a prototype, EU-Maximum Suction Limits-breaking Dyson vacuum cleaner. Fashosts are great! Only joking, Fasthosts are actually shite. “Tell Me Why? I Don’t Like Fasthosts”. “I Hate Fasthosts So Much Right Now”. Strewth – A Fashosts ate my baby! The Good, The Fasthosts And The Ugly. The Fast(hosts) And The Furious (Customers). 2 (Much Crap Support From) Fasthosts (Will Leave Me) 2 Furious (For Words).

Ok, that’s my utterly ineffectual “sticking it to the man” session done, I’m off to get some dinner.

Bye!!

Pat

Yes, I write to you from the other side of the world, in a lovely sunny city by the ocean, having just done two awesome Minjin Jungle Swings, to write a rant about a web hosting company.

Nothing to do with the Big Adventure really, but seeing as the site I used to blog before travelling is the one that is hosted on Fasthosts I don’t have much of an option.

A Bit Of History
Another domain I’ve got (lionskull.co.uk) is used for my General Stuff ™ website for such things as Most Of My (and others-close-to-me’s) Email ™. I use Fasthosts to do the hosting – mostly out of laziness nowadays as I host other domains (such as Squage.com) with better companies.

At the end of March my one year web-and-email hosting period expired, so they tried to charge me for another year so as to keep it running – but the card details they had in their possession had expired.

So they emailed me. Probably. On an email address I’d forgotten about that forwards to a full account and probably just rejected. Oops. They may have phoned my UK number too. I didn’t check. Oops.

Luckily I noticed that they’d disabled the web component of lionskull.co.uk about 2 weeks ago and so I managed to log on to the Fasthosts Control Panel, enter my new card details and pay my year’s subscription to a) reactivate the web component and b) prevent the emails et al being suspended.

I got a reciept from them confirming that all payments had been made. Problem solved.

Or so I thought…

“You Still Owe Us Nothing!”
A day after paying, I checked lionskull.co.uk to find that its web components were still disabled. On going back to the control panel I was told that I still had payments outstanding. I went to the payment screen to be shown this:

Oh shit! I’d best pay that 0.00GBP straight away!

“Ok”, I figured, “this’ll resolve itself in a day or so” then forgot about it and got on with enjoying my travels. Yesterday night I found that this was STILL the case. This afternoon I received a text from home saying “Emails aren’t working – can you help?

Attempting to Get Customer Support
This morning I decided I needed to get this sorted out – there seemed to be no way to get my account activated via Fasthosts’ Control Panel – as every single option available to me just brought me back to the “Oi! You owe us money!” page (well, that’s a lie – if I was on the payment page and attempted to navigate using the page’s menus, it would just throw up errors as somehow it would try to access httpss://control.fasthosts.co.uk… genius).

I sent a detailed email describing my situation to the accounts department. I also mentioned that, whilst I could provide my account number, I could not provide my account “pin” as in order to get to this I needed to check my Fashosts Control Panel… which was locked out.

This afternoon I recieved the automated reply:

This is an automated reply and your query has not been seen by our Support Team.

Please re-send your request, including your account number and PIN in the first two lines of your email, remembering to include the “n” in your account number.

Brilliant. Fortunately the email suggested visiting a special page to have my details sent to me. I went there – and it worked! Sort of. The email I recieved pointed me to ANOTHER web page to grab my pin from.

Good news – from there I could email my account number and pin! Thing is… I did that 15 minutes ago and have received nothing.

In the mean time I’ve emailed Sales@. Then it’s onto POWER EMAILING.

Remind me in September to transfer everything away from Fasthosts, will you? Ta.

Pat

[UPDATE]
15 minutes later and they’ve now emailed the pin. I’ve emailed support again and this time I’ve been given a case number etc. Hopefully things should be on the mend now!

(Oh and I got a reply from the Sales Team. What was their advice? “Contact Customer Support, including your account number and Pin.” Awesome.

Here’s a text message I just recieved from my Aussie mobile phone operator Optus:

“To get a free ringtone, call 966 and select 9 after the greeting. Call costs 30c/30secs, download charges apply, expires 30/04/07.”

Now I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t sound entirely free to me.

Pat

P.S. Hello! I’m back in Perth after a 5 day tour to Albany, Margaret River, Esperance and other places. It was ace! I’m off on the Broome tour on Saturday (not today as originally intended) so have 4 days here to relax and see the sights *

* And spend about 10 hours blogging, photo uploading, catching up on emails and booking stuff…

Australian movie goers have. In their hundreds of thousands.

‘Norbit’ climbs to top spot in Oz box office

I’m getting the next flight home. This place isn’t what I thought it was.

Pat

EMERGENCY UPDATE
It appears that through circumstances beyond my control, some of my friends believe I’ve actually been to see this God-foresaken heap of arse. Allow me to clarify: I HAVE NOT SEEN AND WILL NEVER SEE THIS FILM.

N.B. No he doesn’t. No he isn’t. No I won’t.

(N.B. I’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth twice now. It’s fecking awesome. So long as you don’t mind reading subtitles – the film’s in Spanish – and don’t mind some rather grim violence – there’s a bit of that too.)

Toodles :-)

Pat

Dear oh dear. The pub by our office no longer has spotted dick on its menu. It now has:

“Spotted Richard”

Here’s a question for you: is it PC gone mad or is it actually the real name of the dessert and I’m just ignorant?

Yours befuddledly,

Pat

A nice little picture upload test :-)