12 April, 2005

Sundeep/Katie Burning

As you all know, Bryn’s nemesis and everybody’s favourite pseudolesbian are having a birthday burning and unchristmas party on the beach tonight. More details here, here, and here (can you tell they’ve been planning this awhile?).

Anyway; in order to make sure that people know, I’ll post this message here: I’ll bring all the barbeques you can eat, and people (by which I inevitably mean ‘me’) can cook things on them. If I can get the help of one or more people with cars, I can also arrange for a large quantity of burnable wood to be deposited on the beach, too, which is always a good thing.

Hope to see you there.

GMail Accounts

People have asked me for GMail invites again, but one of these people’s @aber.ac.uk e-mail address doesn’t seem to be working, says GMail, so here are some “ready to pick up”:

Invite 1 (used)
Invite 2 (used)
Invite 3 (used)
Invite 4 (used)
Invite 5
Invite 6
Invite 7
Invite 8
Invite 9
Invite 10

Get ’em while they’re hot. If one doesn’t work, try another. If they all don’t work, leave a comment (and pull your finger out next time).

SmartData’s Almost-Free Pens

I’ve just seen haggling taken to a new level. A marketing company called us up and offered us 100 executive-type pens, branded with our company information, with no commitment to buy. They delivered them, and they’re… okay… but they really don’t fit the company image. The total value of the pens is £290, and we’re not paying that much for a design that doesn’t suit us. But the marketing company knows that they can’t re-print the pens, and they want to make some money on them (or, at least, lose as little as possible… and it would cost them money to have their courier pick them up). And so, over several phone calls, co-worker Gareth haggled with them, as follows:

Them: £290?
Gareth: free.
Them: £150?
Gareth: free.
Them: £100?
Gareth: free.
Them: £75?
Gareth: free.
Them: Really, we can’t possibly give them to you for less than £75.
Gareth: Okay then, you’ll have to send a courier to pick them up. (I’d suggested that he also say that our office hours are 9am to 9:30am on Monday mornings only, unless it’s raining in which case it’s 4:30pm to 5pm) Wow… how much is that going to cost you, out here to the West coast of Wales?
Them: Look, go ask your director – £75?
Gareth: (background noise) free.
Gareth begins to get bored.
Gareth: Okay then, £40.
Them: £50.
Gareth: £45, and you can throw in a catalogue and we’ll read it.
Them: Done.

You’ve got to love any haggling where you start at ‘free’ and stay there for as long as possible. They’re not bad pens, but we’ll be using them here rather than giving them to people…

Hollywood Pizza And BT Online Billing

If only BT.com online billing provided an XML feed… we could integrate our Hollywood Pizza order call times and lengths into the Troma Night web site.

Probably not a good thing, actually.

Confusion

Don’t you hate it when you can’t draw the line in your memory between your dreams and waking life: I’m very hazy on last night, and can’t remember whether a conversation took place or if I just dreamt it.

I’m more certain, however, on a nightmare I had last night: Claire and I bought a villa in Cyprus and went to live there. But as we were moving in, we ended up arguing about the way that we would like to decorate the place, which turned nasty, and I ended up sleeping on the couch. I think it says a lot about you when nightmares of being chased by things are replaced with nightmares of domestic arguments. Ah well.

Watched the remainder of Blackadder last night with Claire, Ruth and JTA . And played some more Settlers Of Catan, in which JTA barely pipped me to the post… again! That’s the fourth time he’s just-barely-beaten-me, out of four games we’ve ever played together.