Century Travel "Where does your world end"

Great travel ad...
Rather truthful though, there are definitely parts of Dublin like this for me.

Anything you can do I can do better

Execupundit alerts us to a publication by author Arthur C Brooks on "What Really Buys Happiness".

In one study, two-thirds of subjects said that they would be happier at a company where they earned $33,000 while their colleagues earned $30,000 than at one where they earned $35,000 while their colleagues earned $38,000. In another, 56 percent of participants chose a job paying $50,000 per year while everyone else earned $25,000, rather than a job paying $100,000 per year while others made $200,000—forgoing $50,000 per year simply to maintain a position of relative affluence.

It hurts my brain to see that alot of the time people are solely motivated in being better than their peers rather than concentrating on being/getting the best possible for themselves. Sillyness I tells ya

Sweet Home Topeka

From wiki...
Fred Waldron Phelps, Sr. (born November 13, 1929) is the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), an independent Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas.

Since I started this blog nearly half a year ago I have recieved a total of ZERO hits from Topeka, Since my las post yesterday..7 all linking to my article on http://www.godhatesireland.com/ (worst.site.ever) ... perhaps im being tracked by the Phelps? or worse yet....GOD

I'm going to have to set Richard Dawkins and his god the flying spaghetti monster on them!

Fred you are NOT cool

www.GodHatesIreland.com - maybe just a tad crazy?

Well who would have thought it, from the church that brought you www.godhatesfags.com, protests at US soldiers funerals (who are all dying because of Americas lax attitude towards gays apparently) and irrational hatred comes possibly the strangest site I have ever seen - http://www.godhatesireland.com/

I really thought most people liked Ireland, especially Americans, but supposedly God has it in for us big time! The church which consists almost entirely of the Phelps family and has dozens of followers, is headed by a nice man named Fred Phelps (pictured above), who claims that some students from my very own University had a plot to ambush him.

It begins to look like the fags and fag-enablers of the Literary & Historical Society of the University College Dublin have devised devices against me – phrased another way – they have contrived a plot – or conspiracy – to lure me to Dublin, Ireland, to speak at their 153rd Session on the subject of “Gay Adoption” – and then to arrest me for the crime of violating their law entitled, The Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act. That Act is a draconian, antichristic cup of Satan’s slimy vomit straight from the maw of Hell. They know exactly what I will say on the subject of Gay Adoption. And they know that what I will say from the Bible about sodomites will land me in an Irish jail for two and maybe 10 years

And please don’t try to lure me into your vile, sodomite country, so you can arrest and jail me for doing the job God Almighty called me to do. And do you think it’s good to let these vile beasts adopt helpless little babies (called Gay Adoption Debate), to bring them up in a so-called “loving” home where sodomites eat each other’s feces

...Slightly Odd some might say

If you have time I HIGHLY recommend you watch this documentary where Louis Theroux of the BBC meets the phelps family for a week.

New York - Who needs repeat custom?

In my short time spent in New York, NY, I noticed a lot of odd things, many of which were the way they did "business" around there parts.

I liked the spicy hotdog ploy because it was at the very least quite sneaky, subtle and clever, However my encounter with the rapper 5mics in Times Square was a great example of why you don't always have to be subtle, you can just...bully people into buying your stuff.

America is a large country with a large (in many ways) population, point being that there are SO many people that to a certain extent you can just forget about repeat custom as being an issue, as long as there are enough people who will buy off you once, especially if operating on a small scale. Times Sq is a great example of this, Mr 5mics stands there all day "selling" his CD, by intimidating probably exclusively tourists/idiots(me)/people that don't like the idea of gang beatings, but so many people pass through there each day that will never return, whether they buy anything off him again is immaterial. Consider this if he gets 3 people an hour to pay his recommended retail price of 20 dollars..that's 60 dollars an hour ($480 if he worked 9 to 5...115,200 if he works the average working yr in hrs), and considering his cds are home made and printed I would guess his only overheads are paying his "crew" to be near by.

I think I'm going to start a rap group...anyone in?

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

These are some pictures I took not so long ago down the road from me in Sandycove

Anything good on?

This was on the Economist website today... so I stole it.
The US is cruising out in front by an impressive margin, but really, who has THAT MUCH spare time?

Champagne lifestyle

I was at a restaurant yesterday in the City center with the crew from my new job and was leafing through the wine list for a bit of a laugh. Seems that if one was so inclined they could purchase themselves a bottle of €3500 bottle of champagne....Who buys that stuff...and more importantly WHY.
I know part of the reason is that it make them feel good because they can then show everyone how great (they think) they are, but when you think of what that money could do, especially for someone who needs it (think famine victims) surely it just isn't right.

Wearing my business hat, I must say the profit margins for the producer must be quite high, last time i checked grapes weren't all that expensive.

New York - Hot dog SHAZAAAAM

I’m usually not a huge fan of buying meat products off people on the side of the street, especially from a dingy little shiny box (did it once in Spain, my stomach didn’t thank me for it), but there was something about the humble hotdog stands in Manhattan that proved irresistible. In my five days in the big apple, I developed somewhat of an addiction to hotdogs and all the strange ingredients within.

Over those few days of munching my way through those hotdogs I developed a certain amount of respect for them in a business sense, it seems they had developed one of the most ingenious business plans for maximising sales EVER (might be exaggerating)

The first part of their plan was to just be…EVERYWHERE, you might avoid one or two stands, but after a few blocks of walking the smell would take hold and you would have to buy one, after all it is just there on the side of the street right?, how convenient

The second part of their killer plan was the product itself. The first time I went to a hotdog stand was with my friend Alex, he bought one dog, then enjoyed it so much he bought another, this time though as a reward they gave him an extra big one (perhaps a reward for his loyalty?), the second dog was however, spicier than a spice girl and within seconds Alex was forced to buy a coke or else his mouth would probably implode…BRAVO.
They might seem like innocent weiner men…but you must beware, they all hold MBAs from Harvard business school.

Recruit this!

A wise man once said...

Allow me to let you in on a little secret here - employers H-A-T-E hiring. It is a difficult, time-consuming and expensive pain in the ass, and it rarely results in the perfect appointment

When I heard this, I thought it must be a slight over exaggerate and that surely they don't mind it THAT much. On my first day at my internship they gave us various presentations on various aspects of the company. One of the bits that proved me wrong was their policy on referrals.

If you refer someone to the company and they are deemed good enough to be employed you get €2,500 and if you were a manager you get €5,000...That is A LOT of dough for the sake of avoiding the recruitment process...I stand corrected
Although I would imagine this could get a bit dangerous if the managers near the top hold a lot of power in the recruitment process and might look to rush THEIR referrals through so as to get the bounty

Exercise your Power

My grandfather used to love gadgets and whorded them accordingly, although having been born in Ireland in the 1920s the word gadget probably had a much broader meaning than it does now, I suppose back then a ballpoint pen probably constituted an exciting new gadget. I was in the old Fidgeon residence a few weeks ago and came across a gadget that even I thought was really quite impressive. It was a radio...that you wind up, with 30 seconds worth of crank, the radio worked through a pretty loud speaker for 10 mins! Now that is pretty impressive.
More recently this type of basic power generation has been tested on the "$100 laptop scheme" that aims to bring laptops to the worlds poorest people in areas where electricity may not be available and will be available as an external periphary for the machine.

I think that this from of manual power generation is fantastic idea and to be honest should be rolled out on a much grander scale.

Take a quick peek inside any regular gym you come across and you will see dozens of people cycling on excercise bikes and running on cross trainers on a road to know where, with the aim of just expending energy (calories), both of these activities require manual exertion to a much greater degree than the simple cranking of a radio, my idea...rather than just waste the energy, hook them up to batteries and use the energy generated to power the gym or store the energy and bring it home. If one person cranking a little radio for 30 seconds can power it for ten mins, I would assume that the amount of energy generated from a 30 min cycle on a machine modified to store it would be imense.

I am not saying that it is feasble that someday our entire grid will be powered by fitness fanatics, but even the small contributions can help make a difference and at the very least it will get some of Irelands overweight people on excersise bikes killing two birds with one stone.

Air Canada

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Canada and all the friendly Canucks that live there, but I read some news today that makes me think that they might not be as intellectually gifted as I had once thought.

It seems that the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority deemed it necessary to issue a bulletin to security officers at airports throughout the country, advising that they soften up on their policies on jokes about terrorism. A spokesperson stated that "screening officers were not discerning the context in which the declaration or the statement was made. And they were a little bit too quick on the trigger."

The act advises that staff should more carefully make the distinction between what would be considered a “false claim” which is illegal, and a "careless statement".
In case there was any confusion as to the difference between the two, they even released a few examples of what would and wouldn’t be acceptable…

"I am going to set fire to the airplane with this blowtorch" (false declaration) : (
"What do you think I look like, a terrorist?" (careless or inflammatory). : )

"He is going to hijack the aircraft" (false declaration): (
"Hi Jack!" (careless or inflammatory). : )

To date 117 people have been detained for “false claims” and have face penalties of up to $5000. One such person convicted under the CATA law was an Iranian professor who told an Air Canada host that his briefcase might explode if she tried to push it under the seat…classic

Dick "shooter" Cheney

I realise I seem to be picking on the US a bit recently but some of the stuff is just to good to let go... today on the ch0pping board - Dick Cheney

Mr. Dick Cheney has been the Vice president of the US in recent years under the great George Bush, not the brightest spark we have seen command the great ship America. As a result many people claim that he is the real decision maker behind the government and has exercised the most power of any VP in the history of the US.

Cheney has had his fair share of troubles though, having been caught drink driving as a young man on two occasions, however more recently he got in trouble… and very publicly, for….SHOOTING HIS FRIEND IN THE FACE.

While out hunting Cheney accidentally shot his hunting partner and long time contributor to the Republican Party Harry Whittington, in the chest and face causing scarring and a minor heart attack. Perhaps my favourite bit about this story is the odd turn the story takes soon after the shooting, three days later the victim Mr Harry Whittington obviously a fan of the Republican Party, APOLOGISED TO DICK CHENEY! He announced that

"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his
family have had to go through this week,"

...too weird, also the fact they were hunting for QUAIL(different spelling I know) made me chuckle

7eleven/Kwik-E-Mart?

To coincide with the stateside launch of the much heralded “The Simpsons movie”, the convenience store chain 7eleven has launched a superb publicity campaign, rigging out their stores to look just like the fictional Kwik-E-Mart from the cartoon series, complete with products from the popular show including squishees and “Krusty O” cereal available on the shelves.

The above picture is a branch located in Burbank, California, and actually gives an eerily similar replication of the cartoon equivalent. I must admit if I was in the US right now, the Simpsons nerd within me would have at the store straight away taking many hundreds of photos, but alas I must make do with Spar.

Dan "potatoE" Quayle

Dan “potatoE” Quayle
Dan Quayle was the Vice President between 1988 and 1993 under George Bush snr. Not the smartest man, he made an unusually regular habit of displaying his intellectual feebleness to the nation. Many great quotes can be attributed to him such as “quite frankly teachers are the only profession that teach our children”, and addressing nasa staff as “fellow astronauts” more hilarious ones in the video below!
As a result of his seeming incompetence at life the entire nation prayed for the health of the aging Bush Snr as they most certainly did not want to seem Quayle at the helm of the country.

Quayle left behind a legacy that included being slagged of in Ms. Doubtfire, the Simpsons and numerous other sources. And in the game Civilisation the lowest rank achievable is Dan Quayle, higher up the list is Augustus Caesar.
The one moment that can encapsulate Dan Quayle was during an elementary school spelling competition when he corrected a child who had spelled potato correctly, informing him he had left out the E that is usually at the end of the word...

Who let him get that far, was everyone to embarassed to tap big George on the shoulder and say get rid of him?

Taxing on the brain

My buddy who is currently in San Diego wrote the other day about his dislike for the American way of incorporating sales tax into their prices...they just don't.

For example if you go into a shop and see a nice deal like "coffee + muffin = $2" (which I did) guess what, its not two American dollars. Once you get to the till, they will give you the price with tax added AFTER the display price. (when quizzed about it the sales assistant told me "we dont display the full price becasue if we did no one would buy it")
In fact the only place I found that were decent enough to add in tax were the hotdog stands by the side of the road in New York, god bless those weiner men.

The practice of not factoring tax into the display price strikes me as being particularly and inexcusably lazy. In Ireland for example, when determining the sale price of a product, the retailer has to be aware of how much revenue will actually be made by the sale of the unit, a €1.50 bottle of coke will only really give them €1.18. In our system the retailer takes on the burden of factoring the tax into pricing, Seems in America most retailers are happy to leave the confusion, effort and inconvenience on the customers side...nice.

The Tipping Point

While in conversation with one of my friends the other night regarding jobs, we touched upon the subject of tipping in the workplace and our conflicting attitudes towards it. My friend was of the opinion that if he provided good service to the customer at the bar, he deserves a tip, simple as that, and that is he didn’t the customer was “rude”.

My own opinion is that tipping is a complete load of nonsense and a totally unfair practice.

My first major qualm with tipping is that it is almost completely industry specific, if you work in the bar or hotel industry, it seems quite acceptable to expect a tip and be rather peeved off about it if you weren’t to get one. However, if you provide great service in another area of business/life you don’t get a tip…because you just don’t. An example that I have witnessed recently springs to mind, in a supermarket where I used to work, a sales assistant brought a rather confused lady around the shop and helped her with her shopping upon request, then proceeded to walk down the road and bring the multitude of bags to her car for her (as opposed to walking from the bar to the table about 12 ft away ohhhh the exertion), did he get a tip, no, did he want or expect one, no.

My second issue is I find the idea that because you provided good service you deserve money on top of your wage slightly socially criminal, it is part of your job to perform to the best level you can, but equally your social responsibility to be as nice and helpful to everyone financial incentive or not. In a way it holds the general public ransom, either give me a tip, or expect crap service next time.

I know people try to defend tipping by saying they are going “above and beyond their job”, the fact remains you have chosen to pursue employment in the SERVICE industry, therefore a requirement of the job is just that…service, and guess what, you are already being paid for it, its called your wages.

I admit that if someone finds that they have received truly admirable service and would like to reward the barman, hotel porter etc they should go right ahead and do it, but to have this unspoken rule and pressure of the norm almost forcing you to do so is just not fair and doesn’t make any sense. And just to make things fair, next time a policeman is particularly nice to you, or a nurse in a hospital gives you great attention, or a fireman decides that he will save your life for his basic wage, or teacher decides to teach you with enthusiasm and a smile on their face(both optional extras)….throw them a few extra euro.

UCD in the "summer"

I was bringing in my lovely broken Dell laptop to the business school (last 2 pics) tech support office earlier in the week and thought it would be nice to take a few pics of the good aul college during this lovely "summer" weather we are enjoying...go team rain!I'm sure this will bring back loving memories to students past and present...

Traveller death rates

On Politics.ie today I read the shocking figures that have come from the new book Travellers' Last Rights: Responding to Death in a Cultural Context, A study which has analysed health statistics from the last 2 decades. The figures show that the death rate among the travelling community is on par with the general population....back in the 1940's

Some of the more shocking figures were

1. 50 per cent of Travellers die before their 39th birthday and some 70 per cent fail to live past the age of 59.


2. 10 per cent of Traveller children die before their second birthday, compared to just 1 per cent of the general population


3. 2.6 per cent of all deaths in the total population were for people aged under 25 versus 32 per cent in the Traveller data.


4. Men exclusively accounted for all suicide deaths among Travellers, over three-quarters of whom were aged less than 39 years

Rest, Relaxation and Recycling

It may be the tinge of green running throught the government now, but I found myself mildly amazed by some of the figures on recycling that I read last night. These figures are somewhat vague in terms of how they calculate them, but interesting none the less.

1. The energy saved from recycling a glass blottle rather than making a new one can run a 100watt lightbulb for 4 hrs.

2. Recycling 15 two litre plastic bottles can be used to make 1sq foot of carpet, an XL t-shirt AND filliing for a ski jacket.

3. For every kg of paper recycled, if turned into newpaper it would save 1 kg of green house gasses.

4. Each tonne of paper recycled saves 17 trees, those 17 trees can absord 250 pounds of CO2 from the air.

5. Recycling one aluminium can saves enough energy to run a TV for 3 hrs. !00 million aluminium cans are sold in Ireland every year.

Very interseting food for thought, and if I hear the term Carbon footprint ONE MORE TIME....I will go crazy

A slow motion

According to the BBC show "working lunch" yesterday was international "slow day", a movement which began with the founding of the "slow food" organisation in protest to the takeover of the trend towards the McDonalds way of fast food.
This theory of slowing down can of course be applied to most aspects of life, no more so than your working life. In a world where people work 60 hour plus weeks in order to "beat the competition" and "lunch is for whimps" Carl Honore offers us three simple tips in order to improve our life by slowing down.

1. Work less - quite a simple concept to get your head around, work less, leave more time for yourself. Done by working smarter rather than harder, and putting quality over quantity

2. Turn it off - as great as technology is, sometimes it can become an over bearing burden and distraction, sometimes using the off button is your best option

3. Have fun - If you are not having fun in what you are doing...DONT DO IT

Coke - I still remember

I remember when I was but a young whippersnapper every summer would bring the Coca-Cola special offer. The offer would be that if you could collect 30 labels off the coke bottles you could redeem a "prize", upon mature reflection this prize tended to be fairly crappy, among them was

1. The Bug - an earpiece radio
2. Sunglasses - that were actually pretty good
3. Coke watches - which were also fairly usable.

The whole initiative really made a bti of a buzz around Coca-cola, and made people buy far more coke than they probably would have considered sane under normal conditions. (also helped create some addicts....*looks in mirror and cries*)

One of the methods I and some of my friends would use was to walk the streets lookig for empty bottles left on the side of the street, and other more daring friends would just walk straight into a shop, take the labels off, and walk straight out! Either way it created a talking point about the brand.

Todays offers on Coke bottles are pathetic in comparison, its all "text in to win" and to be honest, im pretty sure NO-ONE texts in, I DEMAND the reinstate the crappy prizes

Internet Observations

In the last week I have read two pretty interesting articles on the Internet, the first, based on a recent report compiled by Ofcom, showed that per capita Ireland and the UK have the greatest amount of Wi-Fi hotspots on the entire planet... just not really something you would expect.

The second was an article I read in The Irish Times about the possible adoption of a city wide..FREE..WI-FI Internet service implemented by the government. The first project of this type was pioneered in Norwich city center last year, when 200 Internet transmitting antennas were set up, effectively creating a hotspot that covered all areas of the city and gave Internet to the masses.
I must say that this would be an amazing idea, and would allow work, entertainment etc ANY time to ANY person with a computer for free. Although still in its pilot stage, the Norwich project cost a modest £1.1million so would not break the bank.

I wonder what current internet providers would make of all this though, those selling Internet to the average man, which most of them do, will be severely put out of business. TAKE THAT Irish Broadband!

www.Doodlenow.com

Today while looking through my usual list of blogs, The site "doodlenow" was brought to my attention by Mr David Pogue. And dear god it is pretty freaky, you can doodle on a white screen on your browser..but get this....other people are doing it too..in real time...on the same page.

this can lead to at times brilliant drawings, but invariably some idiot comes in and starts scribbling etc. Try this one out, there is something really fun about it.

Put your Money where your mouth is

Great ad!

"My Internet" vs "The Internet"

The Internet is full of great content and great websites but I have realised recently that I only really go to about 15-20 websites with any sort of regularity and probably about 30 overall, so "my internet" is considerably smaller than "the internet"

So for any readers of this blog, I ask that for the good of my brain, and anyone else who cares to look, that you suggest 2 or 3 decent sites you think are worthwhile.

My three
1. http://www.boards.ie/ -
basically forums on any issue you could imagine wanting to talk about, be it
your college, favorite sport, TV show etc

2. www.ted.com/tedtalks - videos from the
annual TED conference, had great videos from Richard Dawkins on Atheism to Jane
Goodall on chimps. Hours of real education

3. www.digg.com - A website that has blog entrys
from around the world on any subject you can think of, you can also post your
entrys on this site, and people from around the world will have access to your
posts in a relevent category.

Lessons from basketball v2.0: job rotation

Playing basketball in secondary school under the great Conan Doyle taught me a lot of important lessons that can be applied in many areas of life. Through team sports things that you learn about teamwork, training and commitment not only serve you in terms of sports but also in the business world, and more importantly in life in general. One of these lessons I learnt was the concept of job/task rotation.

From an early stage in your basketball days, you tend to be set in a certain position “you are a point guard” and trained to be good at performing the tasks expected for that role. For example if you are the point guard, you become great at bringing the ball down the court, calling the plays and getting the right pass to the right player. If you are a post player, your job is to put yourself in the right position to get the ball and control the area around the basket. You eventually become so familiar with your role that you can get stuck in a rut where you view everything through the viewpoint of your position exclusively.

The major problem with this, is that the player in question often becomes totally ignorant as to what the other players on the court experience, usually leading to arguments over "why didn’t you make that pass", "why didn’t you get open" etc. One of the ways this can be easily countered is to switch around the roles on the court, for instance get a player who usually receives to bring the ball down the court etc and vice versa.

When you experience what the other party has to do on a regular basis, it increases your ability to understand the situation as a whole, rather than from your closed viewpoint, and can give you a much greater appreciation for your team-mates contribution.
Now the passer realises how hard it is for the player to make space for himself, and the receiver now understands that making that pinpoint pass really isn’t all that easy.

Michael wade of Execupundit offers a good example of this situation in a work environment
Prior to the job switching, there was a tendency to think, "I'm the only person who does serious work around here. My co-workers just cruise through the day."

After playing musical chairs for a while, however, each one confessed to a failure to appreciate the challenges faced by their co-workers. Not one expressed interest in a long stay in the other positions.

A good example that I have seen benefit from task rotation is fistfulofboomsick's own Matthew Kelly, a good friend and team-mate of mine in secondary school, Matt was set as a guard from a young age, more recently was forced to play an alternate position for a different team, and although at first he didn’t like it, he has become a much more versatile player, capable of filling many roles and has got a much deeper understanding of the game of basketball and other players’ on-court experience. So much so, that last year he was selected for the Irish u-20 team.
If you want a group of people who truly understand how your organisation/team works and appreciates other members contributions, rotation is where its at.

Big Brother Controversy

Today the Big Brother race saga continues, the contestant Emily Parr was seen to use a racial slur towards Charlie, a black contestant. And in the early hours of this morning, Emily was evicted from the house, and no doubt will be put to a trial by media.

My personal opinion on the matter is that, in something that bills itself as a REALITY program, any content that arises from the real situation should remain uncensored and as natural as possible, the only real point of the programme at all is to see how people react and relate to each other, and to take away the grittiness of real life is ridiculous.

The offening parts of the conversation were...(bare in mind only Emily was evicted

Emily: (referring to Charley dancing/pushing her hips forward) You pushing
it out you nigger.

but then....

Emily: Somebody has already used that word
in this house.

Charley: No way. (Pause) Yeah, me. I'm a nigger.

Insult to injury

I got a lovely message from Irish broadband today telling me they have had "problems with my payment" so i shall be internetless for a while, this on top of the fact I have injured my knee in a most inconvinient manner, leaving me on crutches and in bed mostly....
Fun times for all

I also had to miss my first day of work today so...i think there is some phrase about problems coming in groups..too injured to remember

When Steve met Bill

For those of you interested in computing in anyway shape or form, the recent joint interview at the "D: All things digital" between Mr. Apple, Steve Jobs and Mr. Microsoft, Bill Gates provides interesting viewing. Below is a compilation of the highlights form the interview, but the rest can be found on youtube.

I find the differences in personalities between the pioneers to be vast, Gates is a quiet and reserved well...nerd, and Jobs is a great speaker and storyteller, at one stage taking over a story being told by Gates half way, because he wasnt doing it justice.

Quizzed about the relationship between himself and Gates, Jobs recalls the line from a Beatles song

"You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead"