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I’ll be travelling a lot in the next few weeks and one piece of kit i definately wont be using is my 3G card. Last month a co-worker got a wopping 216 Euro charge for checking 12mb of E-mails simply for being over the boarder between the republic and northern Ireland.

This really makes my blood boil since it was using the same network – Vodafone (grrrr – their very much in my bad books lately) and there is no possible way they can justify 216Euro’s to use existing infastructure. Its a Ripp off plain and simple… The guy in question put it perfectly himself – “if i had known it’d cost that much i would have driven back down the road and checked my email for free!”

Signed up today for the Simon Fun Run to raise funds for the Simon community which does great work for the homeless here in Ireland.

Running with me is Steve Cooper (Q102), Ray Shah (ex Big Brother and nightclub DJ), and Alan McQuillan (2fm). If you wanna join us or make a donation feel free to get in touch the more the merrier. And if we Die before the finnish line we’ll refund your money. Come on its for a good cause.

Odiogo which turns Blogs into Podcasting and i think it’s just awesome. I’m using this concept to create extra hours in my week by multitasking.

You gotta watch these guys like a hawk.

Having sent an E-mail to my account manager some time ago asking for our entitled EU roaming rates, i assumed we had them.

Then i spend this last week trying to ring “my business account manager” who wouldn’t answer his phone about another matter (being overcharged!!). So i rang the general number for business queries and i’m delighted to report i got through straight away to a very professional & friendly rep (Vodafone promote “Emma” for excellence in customer service). Anyway back to point, “my business account manager” left the company and at no point did they think it was important to tell me as a client. Nore was a simple voice message left on his phone or an automated e-mail response sent when i e-mailed. How can a multimillion euro business get customer satisfaction so wrong???

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Follow up – Said Business manager has not left the company as he called me yesterday… Still not resolved my problems.

Had a bit of a Satori moment today, which has me feeling like i just added a few (desperately needed) hours to my week. Ok so there’s nothing new skool about this at all, its just a bunch of old technologies that i’m using in a new way.

Here’s the concept in brief – PDF on computer in the car, engage voice function, connect to car radio via bluetooth and walla multi-task! I just created four extra hours in my life per week!! Highly Productive multitasking and simplicity at its very best.

I’m now gonna use this concept on all my long journeys to read loads of e-book which i’ve been promising myself i’d get around to. This is gonna replace my Audio Book problem of not being able to get enough material.

Here’s the story behind the idea:

First of all i should mention i’m dyslexic and a slow reader before everyone posts that you can read way fast than listen, point taken; but i drive two hours every Thursday and Friday to and from a gig I DJ at so this is the handiest way to get info into my head.

I had a large PDF document to go over for tomorrow, its a proposal i needed to go over for work – but as usual i’ve a thousand things to do and not enough time. The idea originated while reading Moshe Maeir’s blog and discovered the “listen now” button from Odiogo which turns Blogs into Podcasting! Savage piece of technology. Anyway i decided i’d listen to Moshe’s blog in the car on the way home using my 3G wireless broadband, to test it out and try save time – it worked impressively well. So when i arrived home i hooked up the cars bluetooth to the Laptop and now my mobile university just got a massive extension!

Now i’m thinking that i can have PDF’s on my N95 phone… I’ll test that theory later…

Read this on Pat Phelan’s Blog.

The very basics of business, in fact life, state that NOONE cares what you want in life. They’re all to busy thinking about what they want. If you want someone to do something for you – you’ve gotta give them the WIIFM (Whats-In-It-For-Me) factor. Instead this guy sent a ‘Here’s what i want or else!’ type e-mail that has me and i’d say quite a few others laughing at him.

If i was still teaching in UCD (University College Dublin) i’d be taking this into my class as a text book example of shooting yourself in the foot!

Does this trade look dodgy to you?? I’m suspicious.

Yesterday under advice of a broker i was told to go into an “out right buy” which at the time i thought seemed like a good idea. The trade executed below the discussed / agreed value, which really pissed me off, since the shares hadn’t been traded in over a week on the open market, and it was within market size, so he should have been able to have accurate prices. Then i notice that there was another purchase of the same number of shares at the same price, same time (i’m thinking not by the market maker). Which makes me think this was a bit off a fiddle in the sense that the broker had someone trading out of the stock and sold it on, regarless of best interest – keeping the spread. I’ve read about this happening, but thought it wasn’t legal to instigate??

Considering if he was pushing the same trade to other clients then there would have been more trades over the past or next few days. I did chat with him about the trade after it went through, but am not at all satisfied with his response.

Any advice or comments appreciated.

CheapChat.ie lines are down at the moment, not sure exactly whats going on but will let you know when its fixed. At the moment you will get an engaged tone some of the time when accessing our cheap international calls access numbers. Apologies to all our users.

+++++++++ Update ++++++++

Problem resolved, everythings back up and running