• Excellent thanks

Dreadful

• The limo picked me up at the airport and delivered me very smoothly.
  

The shuttle bus wasn't running, so I had to persuade a taxi driver to take me the two miles after he had been in the queue for half an hour and he bloody nearly killed me.

• Your special checkin was fast and efficient - just what I needed after a long hard day.

(Actually the best ever was Dunk Island - the arrivals hall at the airport / resort is a bar, and as you arrive they serve you a drink and whisk your luggage off to the room)

I had to stand in line for bloody hours waiting for you to take a set of information from me that you already know - hopeless.

• The room was beautifuuly furnished, the desk was big enough for my laptop with a plug and free wireless internet connection.
  

I don't know how you managed to design a room with 10 lights and still everywhere is too dark to read. The TV is set at such an awkward angle that you can't watch it comfortably from either the chair or the bed, and by the way it doesn't work. 20€ a day for an Internet connection is daylight robbery, and where is the cable? 

• The bar and restaurant were excellent, and the executive lounge was a delightful haven.

Last week in the your hotel in Warsaw you invited me to the Executive Lounge as I am a silver/golf/platinum member. This week, you tell me I can't use it!?!? So I wandered down to your bar, which was full of loud drunks, smoking their brains out. The restaurant was totally dead and the menu was about as appealing as a vasectomy reversal.

• The bedroom was beautifully quiet and I slept like a log.

Strangely enough, listening to to the couple next door have a flaming row, accompanied by an air-conditioning unit that was gasping its last breath didn't lead to a good night's sleep. The pillow appears to have been stuffed with ball bearings.

• A beautiful bathroom with everything I needed.

The shower was designed by an idiot, so that you couldn't turn it on without getting covered in ice-cold water. The shampoo and soap were impossible to open with wet hands and the shower poured all over the floor of the bathroom. Where was the hair-drier? Oh yes, miles from any mirror - bright. The shaving mirror? Designed for extremely vertically challenged people. Did anyone ever try the room out?

• One of the best breakfast buffets I have ever seen.

A sad collection of unappetising food, for which you wanted to charge me an unmitigated fortune when all I wanted was a cup of tea and a roll.

• A modern gym, a swimming pool and a golf course - magic.

A smelly little box room with a broken bike - yuck.

• The staff were extremely courteous and helpful.

I object to some rude git asking me for a tip every time I appear.

• Checkout - perfect, did it from my room and am already on my way.

I'm still standing here waiting to throw this at you, because it appears to be beyond your comprehension that lots of people will want to check out at the same time. There would be even more of us standing in the queue here, if the lifts worked.

• Went to a thing called the Eden Project down in Cornwall. Basically a bunch of gardeners have taken a barren, exhausted china clay pit and created a mega "garden" with two massive Biomes (one of which is the biggest greenhouse in the world) and millions of plants. Technically brilliant, but no-one told me what was going on / the only explanations were in such small writing and such detail that you couldn't be bothered to read them. In other words, just like most IT systems from the business point of view, bloody clever but what's it do, and could I have the reports in a language I understand please?
• Had dinner/lunch with CIOs in Brussels, Warsaw and Frankfurt. We talked about issues like Time to Market and Aligining IT and business, because we recently commissioned a couple of independent reports, and we wanted to see customers' reactions. Here's one of them, I'll stick the URL in for the other one when it's finalised.  I've always been of the opinion that European IT managers try to squeeze every last drop out of their investments, whereas the US culture is a little more towards technology being the solution to verything in the world. Agree / disagree?
• Great new word I learnt - emetophobia - sufferers will go to any length to avoid encountering something that might cause them to be sick. In my case Big Brother, any TV soap, rotten service etc.
• I get very confused nowadays by what is politically correct and what isn't. For instance, I read that failure is incorrect - now it's a deferred success! Try that one with your boss / the business / the customer!!
  

• digg it

Anyway, as it also appears to support Java, I thought I would try checking in for my flight back to the UK from Lisbon. First few page were fine, but then unfortunately when I clicked the "check in now" box it just died completely. So I went to the nearest laptop in the Internet Cafe here at UserWorld and checked in there.

The airline I fly with allows me to check in 24 hours before departure. So you click on the "Departing in next 24 hours? Click here to check in" button and you would think it was intelligent enough to look up which flight you had booked with them in the next 24 hours and take you there. NO, sorry, it actually gives you a list of every flight you have booked (in my case, quite a few) going out over the next few weeks / months and has a "Check in now" button against each of them. Clicking on any of these apart form the flight you want gives you a message saying that it is longer than 24 hours away, and hence you can't check in yet. So, why give me the option then you idiots?

I also buy tickets on this website every month, but it still asks me every time what my address is, and what my credit card details are. DOOH! A CIO of a large Insurance company once said to me "Peter, I will give you data once and never again - I expect your systems to remember it." Spot on. 

Why doesn't someone tell the old wrinklies that they can't sing any more. Sinatra was painful at the end. Elton John - ouch. Pink Floyd - never could sing in the first place, but Gilmour still plays sublime guitar, so they are forgiven. Etcetera, etcetera.

Made me think about old bits of hardware and software you have lying around. Should we keep using them, or is it time for them to retire gracefully? All depends on whether they still do a good job or not, and what the replacement would cost of course. I still love mainframes, and I asked myself whether this was nostalgia or stupidity, but then I looked at what is going in the world of IT with virtualisation, and the parlous state of modern oeprating systems and then I realised they are still wonderful, and definitely have a vital role to play in today's data centre.

First off, to help you with your choice of suitable present for me, here is a list of the things I definitely do not want:

• A copy of Cherie Blair's book 
• A copy of John Prescott's book
• A copy of Lord Levy's book
• Anything endorsed by, or written by a celebrity
• Anything non-alcoholic!

Hope to see you here at UserWorld over the next few days!

Actually the GPS is rather clever, now I've worked out how it works. I asked it to tell me where I was and it was spot on. Looking at the options, there was a "local search", so I typed in "pub" not expecting it to be intelligent enough to recognise anything quite so useful. Gosh, it came back with a list of the ten nearest (seven within less than a mile - this is England) and it shows me where they are on the map. I am almost impressed. 

Of course, being a geocacher I actually want to put in some coordinates and be directed to that place, so I have investigated bits of GPS software for exploiting the built-in GPS. Unfortunately the ones I have found so far assume that I live in the colony the other side of the pond. They also, as far as I can make out, lack that nice simple function - tell me where I am and let me enter some coordinates of a place I want to go to. Doesn't seem a lot to ask? If anyone knows of a simple, intelligent, useful, non-monthly subscription piece of GPS/geocaching software for the BB, please let me know.

The other problem is that it doesn't work! Emails are fine, but appointments are useless. If I set up synchrnoisation to Outlook I get a message about the appointment, but no option to accept/decline/tentative or whatever and it only synchronises when I attach it to the laptop - useless. When I choose wireless BB sync, I get the entries in the diary but no invites and option to accept/decline etc. What am I doing wrong? Or rather what are the manufacturers doing wrong? 

Last but not least, just read an article about people using BBs, phones, laptops etc. when someone is presenting. Should this be banned, or do I simply assume that because I am such an incredibly engaging, fantastic speaker than the problem won't arise?!

Again, for those of you, who have spent the last few months on the Northern slopes of Mount Everest, we run a big event for our users twice a year - once in the land we colonised across the pond many moons ago (and then you chucked us out, and our tea in the harbour, which I thought was a bit rude, and frankly your teabags have been pretty rubbish ever since!) and once over the other side of the Channel in a place they call Europe. 

We have now got the vast majority of the sessions sorted out for you, so that you can plan your schedule, and I am very glad to say that we have 3 times the number of customer sessions we had in Prague last year (up from 11 to 33) and the number of external speakers has also gone up from 17 to 42. Our intention is for you to hear from your peers about the business issues they had and how they went about solving them, plus sessions on burning issues like Virtualisation, Data Centre Automation, Green IT, Best Practices like ITIL, CobIT and ISO 20000, and of course the latest details of the solutions you have kindly bought from us, with an opportunity to meet the guys who designed them and wrote them.

Shout if there is anything you'd like to know. Hope to see you there.

Being an experienced traveller, I assume that planes will be delayed, luggage will go missing etc. and treat it as a bonus when things actually go right! However, T5 has been a bit beyond that so I took hand luggage only on this trip. The Terminal itself is frankly a terminal, or to put it accurately a shopping mall with planes attached. The surprise was that it was actually two buildings joined by a little transit train, which means it takes ages to get to your gate - be warned. Being positive, security was amazingly fast and I was through in two minutes, which must be a record and the lounge was very comfortable.

The classic cock-up came on the return journey. As an aside, I detest compact digital cameras with just a screen on the back and no viewfinder. I cannot see any joy in trying to compose a picture by staring at a screen, which you can't see in daylight - seems a fundamental design flaw to me. Well, some brilliant spark has done exactly the same on the payment machines for the car park - you insert your ticket and are then presented with a screen, which appears to have black text on a dark grey background - DUUUUUH! In fact, every time a car drives out, someone comes out to help! Now there's a brilliant use of technology. 

We have now run the Index in the Asia Pacific region, and in this podcast you will hear me discussing the results with Professor Adrian Payne from the Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. You can find the podcast here. Hope you enjoy it.

Anyone know an agent?

The book as I have said before is based round geocaching, a hobby to which I introduced some of our Bulgarina partners last week. I don't think they quite believed that a grown man walked round the streets looking for little plastic boxes, and then when I found one there was a fight to see who could find the next one!

Reminds me of that first ITIL project!

----------------------------------------------------------------------
On another occasion, a man making heavy breathing sounds from a phone box told a worried operator:"I haven't got a pen, so I'm steaming up the window to write the number on."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tech Support:      "I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop."
Customer:             "OK."
Tech Support:      "Did you get a pop-up menu?"
Customer:             "No."
Tech Support:      "OK. Right-Click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?"
Customer:             "No."
Tech Support:      "OK, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?"
Customer:            "Sure. You told me to write 'click' and I wrote 'click'." 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tech Support:          "OK. In the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you see the 'OK' button displayed?"
Customer:                "Wow. How can you see my screen from there?"

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Caller:  "I deleted a file from my PC last week and I have just realised that I need it.If I turn my system clock back two weeks will I have my file back again?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Caller:          "Does your European Breakdown Policy cover me when I am travelling in Australia?"
Operator:    " Doesn't the product give you a clue?" 
----------------------------------------------------------------------   
Caller (enquiring about legal requirements while travelling in France )"If I register my car in France , do I have to change the steering wheel to the other side of the car? 
----------------------------------------------------------------------   
Directory Enquiries
Caller:               "I'd like the number of the Argoed Fish Bar in Cardiff please."
Operator:          "I'm sorry, there's no listing. Is the spelling correct?"
Caller:               "Well, it used to be called the Bargoed Fish Bar but the 'B' fell off."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Then there was the caller who asked for a knitwear company in Woven.
Operator:        "Woven? Are you sure?"
Caller:             "Yes. That's what it says on the label; Woven in Scotland." 
----------------------------------------------------------------------   

Magic

Customer:     "I've been ringing 0700 2300 for two days and can't get through to enquiries, can you help?"
Operator:     "Where did you get that number from, sir?"
Customer:     "It was on the door to the Travel Centre."
Operator:     "Sir, they are our opening hours."

Caller:          "Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?"
Operator:     "I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand who you are talking about."
Caller:          "On page 1, section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that I need to unplug the faxmachine from the AC wall socket and telephone Jack before cleaning. Now, can you give me the number for Jack?"
Operator:     "I think you mean the telephone point on the wall."

• Apparently they are getting very close now to allowing the use of mobile phones (what you Americans call cell phones, although they probably wouldn't work in jail) on aeroplanes. Now that is my vision of hell - stuck for ten hours next to some tedious git , who spends the whole time shouting down his phone. In the Far East I have noticed that they put their hand over the phone and try not to disturb you. How kind. Over here, unfortunately it seems to be a desperate bid to annoy as many people as possible with inane useless conversations, that are meant to show me how important you are. Nope, wrong. Just shows how stupid and selfish you are.
• There is also apparently a new disease called Nomophobia, which means you can't stand to be without your mobile phone. 13 million Britibns fear being out of mobile phone reach. Hey, just lean out the window - you'll hear the other bloke shouting anyway! One in ten say they need to be contactable at all times because of their jobs. This is true of a few truly important people. The rest - get real.

Which all raises the question in my mind about what is actually important and what isn't. Sit back and think about your life and decide. In my case, family and health come way ahead of anything else (except perhaps my golf swing?) Now do the same thing for your business services. Might change the way people view you if you get your priorities right.   

Anyway, managed to get someone on the end of the 'phone, who spoke English and I signed up for the new combo as it gives me much faster broadband, one of these V+ boxes (Tivo in US I think is what you call it - anyway a hard disk recorder thing) and a second set-top box for upstairs for "free". Of course, there is no such thing as free, but let's just say "at no additional charge".

The V+ box is magic. I thought I would hardly use it as we haven't recorded anything on the old VCR in years, as it is such a pain. Amazing what a simple user interface will do to change your mind. Recording is a doddle - even does it for you automatically on the one you are watching so you can go back and check out bits you didn't hear properly or whatever. Neat. Gosh a piece of technology designed with the end-user in mind - can it really be true?

Well, there is of course one strange thing about it. Every time we want to watch one of the movie channels, which we have already paid for, it asks for our PIN number. WHY? I called them and asked. It is for your security they said. Balderdash, it's for my annoyance I replied, but as the person on the phone this time did not understand irony or English, that was rather wasted on them.

Which leads me to the programme I recorded last week - Phone Rage - all about call centres and how / how not to run them. All too predictable I am afraid, but should be compulsory viewing for anyone working in a company that has a service desk.

Guess what, if your service is rubbish, the customer hates you and goes elsewhere - amazing!

Seems apt, as several things have come together recently. Firstly, apologies for lack of blogging recently, but I have been running round in  circles.

• I am helping put together the agenda for our Userworld in Lisbon. I missed last year's in Prague, which annoyed me intensely, so am looking forwards to this one - even if it does clash with my birthday! Hope to see you there. We are putting together an agenda driven by customers, which is why we have included tracks on best practices and industry focus, key areas like virtualisation and data centre automation as well as tracks dealing with "the normal agenda items" you would expect.
• I am reading a fascinating book called Bad Lands, written by the founder of Lonely Planet. He visits places like Afghanistan, Iraq and North Korea as a tourist, and blows away many of your misconceptions on parts of the world, about which most of us are woefully ignorant. 
• I was in the South of France last week - someone has to do it. I used to live down there in a little village called Valbonne. Beautiful part of the world, and if you ever go there, please venture away for the coast and explore the countryside. You will find it very worthwhile, with some stunning landscapes like the Gorges du Verdun, Gourdon, St Paul de Vence etc. Anyway, we were there for the first VMWorld in Europe - a staggeringly big event with over 4000 people attending to discuss the wonders of virtualisation. My take is that virtualisation is going to happen in a big way, for all sorts of reasons

However, the move to mission-critical production doesn't seem to be happening yet because of concerns over licensing, culture, and above all control. If you are going to work towards the data centre of the future with a dynamic infrastructure responding to demand, then you had better have a thorough understanding of how it all hangs together, rigid change and configuration processes, a high degree of automation, a resurrection of correct capacity management, and last but not least it should all be driven from a business point of view rather than a love-in with the latest whizzy piece of technology.

In fact, a lot of people were talking to me about server consolidation in a centralised data centre, with ultra-thin clients. Sounded very familiar. Then IBM announced the z10 with 4000 virtual Linux servers. Reminded me of the book I talked about up above and trying to remove peoples' misconceptions. Now if the mainframe just ran virtual Windows servers? 

COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT
ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: No, the name's Lou.
ABBOTT: Your computer?
COSTELLO: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou.
ABBOTT: What about Windows?
COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?
ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?
COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I look at the windows?
ABBOTT: Wallpaper.
COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.
ABBOTT: Software for Windows?
COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Office.
COSTELLO:! Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?
ABBOTT: I just did.
COSTELLO: You just did what?
ABBOTT: Recommend something.
COSTELLO: You recommended something?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: For my office?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?
ABBOTT: Office.
COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!
ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Windows.
COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, let's just say I'm sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?
ABBOTT: Word.
COSTELLO: What word?
ABBOTT: Word in Office.
COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.
ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.
COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?
ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue "W".
COSTELLO: I'm going to click your blue "w" if you don't start with some straight answers. What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?
ABBOT T: Money.
COSTELLO: That's right. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?
ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer.
COSTELLO: What's bundled with my computer?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?
ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.
COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?
ABBOTT: One copy.
COSTELLO: Isn't it illegal to copy money?
ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.
COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?
ABBOTT: Why not? THEY OWN IT!

(A few days later)

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?
ABBOTT: Click on "START"............. 

Hell:

Heaven:

Feel free to add your own.

Well, my colleagues in Asia Pacific have just run the latest survey, and unfortunately it tells the same story - treat us badly and we go elsewhere. Pretty obvious really.

What they also sent me for review includes the findings from recent research by Nielsen Global. What this research shows is that trust in marketing messages declines with age to the point that it is negligible by the age of 40.

In my case, it is probably negative!

However in marked contrast, the research also shows that consumers trust each other and that therefore personal recommendations (or word of mouth) are of vital importance.

In other words, a service failure may not just lose a customer, but can also significantly impact the recommendability of your organisation. Service delivery processes MUST be capable of exceeding customer expectations if they are to deliver a sustainable and growing business. Again pretty bloody obvious - amazing how many people choose to ignore it though.

• The Americans had a sporting event at the weekend. Apparently it is the most watched sporting event in the world. I, of course, didn't watch it as it was on very late and I don't understand a game where they chuck the ball the wrong way!! Anyway, well done the Giants. I've just read the BBC website for the result and it says Manning was named MVP - Most Valued Player? - and quarterback Tom Brady was sacked five times - strange, over here you get sacked once from a job? The point I am making, badly, is that jargon that is meaningful to you may be totatlly incomprehensible to the person you are talking to. That's why business has no idea what IT are talking about most of the time.
• We, of course, over here are so incompetent that we can't even find an Englishman to run the English football team. We had the Swede with th ebad teeth, and now we have an Italian chap, who seems very competent. The first time he was interviewed, he apologised for his English and promised he would learn it in four weeks. However, as some of our players probably only have a vocabulary of 10 words, that shouldn't be too tricky! Can I suggest "Learn how to take a penalty, you overpaid prat" as one of the first phrases to master? 
• Today is super Tuesday in the US. In the UK it is pancake day. Think I prefer ours. Anyway, the US has its next day in the run-up to the Presidential election, which I believe is in November. You poor things, months and months of this stuff. Now don't get me wrong, electing a President is mega important, but I get so bored with the build up to all these things on TV that I want to get a Leonard Cohen (Richard Ashcroft for younger readers) album out and slit my wrists. Let's have election campaigns round the world with zero budget. Anyway, enough politics, the point is imagine an IT system which went, "and the answer is   ............................................................................................. wait for it , ............................................................................................., yes it's $42 including post and packing! How long would you put up with that?

I then asked some questions like:

• Would you read it, if I hadn't written it?
• Do you want to read more?
• Would you pay for it as a book?
• Would you recommend it to others?

We often tell people their service is lovely, or their system works really well, when we actually think it's crap. Fortunately my family and frends know I would rather hear it's crap, as opposed to some well-meant but useless praise. Also, I'm glad to say they liked it, but they also pointed out some areas that were weak and some bits where I hadn't got the emotions of the characters right - all good constructive criticism.

Let's have constructive criticism in life, and then the service will probably improve.

• "You  can't have a child losing, it is bad for them." Total rubbish - they've got to learn some day, so get on with it and teach them real life.
• "We don't have the time or the training." They had the time in my day, and how difficult is it ro run round a pitch blowing a whistle?
• "They might hurt themselves." The crux of the problem. The UK is now run by a bunch of mindless morons, called Health and Safety - the other tedious bunch are called Human Rights. These useless individuals probably started with some good intentions, but have now reduced us all to a state, where we are terrified to allow children to do anything that might harm them, and if they are hurt we are of course not allowed to touch them, as we are then deemed to be paedophiles. Get real. I didn't sue my parents when I fell out of a tree or fell off my bike or got knocked sideways on the rugby pitch - it was my own stupid fault and I learnt how to do it right next time. If we bring up a generation of mollycoddled children, who are bored out of their brains, don't be surprised if you end up with a load of fat, socilaly inept kids who resort to alcohol and drugs for entertainment and whose sole skill is the ability to play computer games or name every "celebrity" in Big Brother.

Basically, blog-tagging is a harmless chain letter (unlike those ones that promise you untold wealth and health unless you stop them - load of tosh), which is slowly but surely spreading round the blogosphere The way it works, when you are tagged by another blogger, you have to write a blog posting about yourself, with 5 things that others might not know. . . and then tag 5 other bloggers. Craig says 8, but the original one says 5!

So here goes:

• You know I play golf and music. I actually compose and arrange music, and have one keyboard, 3 synthesizers and two music PCs within 6 feet of me as I write this. In a room nearby are two guitars and a Midi Guitar Synth. I use Band-in-the-Box and Cubase mainly.
• I have got back into photography again and am scanning every negative I own, moving on to slides hopefully later this year. I had already digitised all my music, so time to do the photos I thought! I use Photoshop with various plugins, Photovista Panorama for guess what panoramas, and Photomatix Pro for HDR as my basic setup. I shoot exclusivley in RAW. When Canon announce the EOS 50D I will upgrade my camera!
• I only work 3 days a week now. The travel, especially the long-haul flights was doing my body no good; in fact the only happy person was the chiropractor!
• I normally avoid talking about sex, religion and politics on here, but can I just say I can't think of a single politician I would willingly vote for, and I feel religion has lost its way - can we bring back peace, love and harmony please? I can go on about both of these at length!
• I am planning to write a novel based round some of my hobbies. The plot is mapped out, and it will be a thirller with codes and puzzles along the way.

OK, now to tag some people I respect: James Governor, Ken Turbitt, Ynema Mangum, Tom Bishop and Atwell Williams. 

The women's championship has lots of people called Gruntalot, Bashitova, Beltitova, Smackitova and Thumpitova. The final will probably be won by someone ending in Ova, who grunts a lot. 

The mens' final will probably be won by Federer.

Not sure where the golf is at - haven't watched any recently.

Reason for mentioning both sports is that they have changed dramatically in recent years due to the introduction of new technology. I could rabbit on for hours here about whether the new equipment is good or bad - personally think that the finesse has gone out of both games especially in golf and it all seems to be down to power nowadays. For me it is interesting to watch tennis players on an unfamiliar surface - grass - and golf players on a proper golf course - links.

Anyway, what has all that got to do with computing. Well, I sit here wondering whether people get too excited about new technology and simply replace things for the sake of it, rather than seriously considering the merits of new vs old?  

Dear Customer,

Thank you to all of you who participated in the xxx January Sale.

Over 100,000 people logged onto our site at the same time this morning.  An unprecedented number for which we could not prepare.

Due to the high volume of orders we have had to turn the sale off and will advise you when and if we are in a position to relaunch the sale.

A large number of people were unable to complete their order since a negative total came up for payment.   All these orders are registered as “incomplete” on our system – meaning that we do have details of the order and the time it was placed.

We will be in touch with all customers who placed a completed or an incompleted order during the course of the next few days and all stocks will be allocated to customers – as advised on the site – on a first come, first serve basis.   Please note that we have received well order 1000 orders and so it will take some time to process all of these.

Thank you for your understanding and thank you for visiting our website this morning.

Kind Regards

1. Party political broadcast (for non-UK people, a series of cleverly presented lies, designed to make you vote for them - hence most of us just turn them off or make a cup of tea)
2. Spice Girls Reunion - couldn't sing first time round, spare me
3. Any Leonard Cohen track - music to top yourself by
   
4. Team Building Exercise - some load of psychobabble, normally associated with some activity that I would normally pay not to do

Anyway, the serious point is about what we can learn from each other, how we can exploit 30 years of experience in running production systems through best practices like ITIL, what we can do about us all getting older, how we can combine forces to give better service etc.

Link is here. Hope you enjoy it. And there's a whitepaper I wrote to go with it.

• Has any other country got anything like this?
• Why can't we have this in the UK please?

They also have real-time banking, as opposed to the 3-5 days it takes to move money between banks here in the UK. In today's world of computers and the Internet, it really is crazy that it takes days to clear a transaction between banks.

Also here in the UK I cannot transfer money to a foreign account without paying extortionate fees and filling out boring forms - should be a simple online option.

• How long do inter-bank transactions take where you live?
• Can you easily transfer to a foreign acccount in a different currency?

Time to rise up and kick the banks I think.

As reported a couple of entries ago, my laptop was performing like a dog. This is just a quick public thanks to the splendid IS people we have, who have got the whole thing running at a much faster rate of knots - briliant.

Now - here's a hypothetical situation - every time you pick up the paper you are greeted with a picture of X falling out of a nightclub having spent some ridiculous amount on alcohol (hopefully not my tax money). You are told that X is young, does not have a lot of brain cells, comes from a dysfunctional family, has no parental control, has pots of money and is bored rigid; but it's not exactly the way to gain respect is it? So your reaction, I am guessing, is to tell X to get off his ****, and do something with his life that his mother/country would be proud of.

Right, what's that got to with Service Management? Well, I think those in positions of responsibility in commerce or public life or whatever should have SLAs, and to me X (and many others) are frequently if not permanently missing their targets.  To me an SLA is not about whether a lump of boring hardware is working - it is about delivering a worthwhile service to those that have signed up (and probably paid) for it, at an appropriate cost.  

• Who decides what is correct/incorrect nowadays? Is there a handy website listing words I can't use, because I get very confused? What if someone says the performance of IT stinks? What if they say the service desk is a pile of ****? Will they get forced to leave the company? Hopefully not! I never actively set out to offend people (some may be surprised by that!), but I do believe we should be able to say what we think.
  
• I came up with an idea for a TV programme a while back. The name was Eviction. Basically each week the country would vote for the top 10 people who should be chucked out (virtually chucked out, not really chucked out unfortunately). My list started with Tony Blair, Alastrair Campbell, anyone who had ever been on a reality TV programme and Posh Spice (unless she promised never to sing again). Anyone else want to join in with their list? By the way the idea is documented and registered with my lawyers so you can't steal it.
  
• The business lounge at the airport used to be a quiet haven. Now it is a sea of tedious people shouting down their mobile phones. It may be that we pick up certain intonations more rapidly than others, but there certainly are some accents that grate and seem to stand out. In the Far East people tend to put their hand over the phone and their mouth and talk quietly - wish people over here had as much respect for others round them. Oh yes, and the loudest peole have the most annoying ringtones too, and take ages to answer the bloody thing.
• Anyone parked at Pink Elephant at Heathrow? Apart from being a rip-off, when you come to pay at the exit, the machine to take your ticket and credit card is excellent. However, the person who designed it thought that receipt might get wet / blown away so he/she makes it come out in a little enclosed plastic hood, which means you can't get at it!! Do these people never try their designs out?
• And finally some good news/bad news. As I landed in Poland on Monday I got a phone call from Goldfish (one of my credit cards). Mr Armstrong did you make the following purchases? Yes to some, no to others. Appears I am the victim somehow of identity theft. Well done Goldfish for catching on straight away, getting hold of me immediately and blocking the card. That is good service. Now if they could just give me the address of the ****** who stole my number so I can go round there with a large baseball bat for a chat?
  

2.Tried out some of the TV channels on the flight home. Wanted some amusement so tried the comedy stuff. Everybody Loves Raymond - no they don't. Everybody Hates Chris - true. Till Death - hopefully very soon. What happened to decent comedy? Please don't tell me I should watch The Office - any intelligent person would have shot the boss after 20 seconds - or Little Britain - even worse. Must be getting old.

Then this morning a highly entertaining speaker who showed us the wrong way to use Powerpoint - excellent and so true - and discussed the meaning of many of the terms and acronyms we use every day. My favourite was CMDB - Britney Spears trying to recite the alphabet. Classic.

To those in Europe who couldn't make it over here, the next European Userworld is May 19th to 22nd in Lisbon. Hope to see you there.

Also just met two customers at lunch, who wandered up and said "I think we have something in common" - no, not members of the drink the European wine lake dry club, but actually another couple of geocachers. Think I'll set up a cache meeting and a couple of caches at next year's Userworld, which is in Miami in October from memory.   

Yesterday was our Executive Summit, which is always enjoyable for me as I get to sit back and listen to customers talk about our stuff rather than having to stand up and talk about it myself. As I have said in this blog before, to see the BMC vision turn into reality and then have people stand up and tell you how they have saved millions of dollars using it makes it all rather worthwhile. I did hit the stage for a short time, of course, with fellow members of the Thought Leadership Council, and I got to pick their brains on a range of subjects round BSM today and tomorrow.

Today I was on stage with Dr Thomas Mendel of Forrester, having a fireside chat about business and IT, BSM, ITIL V3, the future of the big 4 vendors etc. I know they were filiming the sessions - if I find a link I will publish it later.

Oh yes, and I have also found 4 geocaches nearby so far!