Long Street, I'll be back soon, I promise...

Dear Diary,

Kisses,
Rox

No really, I knew I had made a stupid decision to not take the whole week off as soon as I opened my eyes this morning and tried to get out of bed. The colder it gets, the more awesome my feather duvet gets (trust me, even the cat agrees with me on this one), and the more grumpy and bleary I am in the mornings. Going back to work today was not much fun, nor was clearing out my inbox. Even though it dragged on like no-one’s business, finally it was 5pm. Phew.

Despite the pity party and mehs, a few positive thoughts have shone through…

* The most heavenly roast veg and feta tarts at Caramello’s for lunch.
* Difficult client finally signing off on content (only after the 6th version!)
* Starting a great new project which is totally my kinda client… beauty products, w00t.
* Endless cups of green tea (but no espresso today, sucks).
* Some fun betting and typical mayhem with the copy team.
* My lovely white coat (seriously the best thing I’ve gotten this winter so far).
* Brie and avo on rye for dinner tonight (because I can).
* Krone and chocolates (again, because I can).
* A looooong bubble bath (as soon as I publish this post).
* Saturday rugby mayhem with Holly (half price drinks all day, unlikely they have Patron but you never know!)
* Friday tomorrow, can I get a whoop, whoop!

Of course, I still need to get through a somewhat fair sized pile of work this evening. Don’t think my brain is quite ready for the challenge, but perhaps after some seriaas self-indulgent wallowing in bubble bath I might be ready to tackle the workload.

One last hurdle and it’s the weekend. I can do this!

Hi,

I work for xxx, a leading broker of online advertising, dealing with thousands of independent webmasters like yourself, worldwide.

I’ve had a look at your site and think Roxilla.co.za would be a good match for our client, whose target demographic is similar to your own. We’re working on their behalf to acquire advertising from sites such as yours.

We would be interested in purchasing advertising in the form of a text-based advert on your site. We pay you a fixed annual fee for our advertisements. Once the ad has been placed, we make payments via by PayPal or Moneybookers.

If you are interested, please get back to me with your rates etc. I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,
*Mister Man*

I’m sure we all get a bazilion of these emails in our junkboxes each day, and occasionally like tonight, they even slip past into our inboxes. These are annoying for many reasons, but in my line of work it seriously irks me to see things like this done so, so wrong.

Before I became a web copywriter, I was in Public Relations, and it is this that taught me the basics of communication. Without effective communication or know-how, e-marketing is just spam. But done right, you have the power to reach your target audience directly, without alienating them in the process and without bulking up their junkmail folders.

Of course, most of these emails are sent out by the thousand, through an automated system that leaves no room for personalisation, relevance, targeting or much else – but how is anyone meant to bite, when they are fishing in a massive sea, with just a vague allure and no real direction at all?

I am always tempted to reply asking why they think it’s a good fit, and what they know about my site at all. The one time I was duped into doing a link swap with these people, they weren’t able to even remember what my blog was called though – honestly I think they are surprised when they do get a response.

Argh, it just really does annoy me… with a bit of research and thought, they could have huge results and yet they would rather just carry on with their hit and miss approach. So many e-marketing companies are taking this route, and this is what gives the industry a bad name.

For any spammer types who still think this method works, time to splash some reality on your faces and realise that effective online marketing is EVERYTHING to do with communication and NOTHING to do with generalised mailbox flooding.

sigh...

There are few things more pitiful than being sick over a weekend. The cold I have been trying to avoid finally caught up with me on Thursday though, and I ended up going home at lunchtime and staying home on Friday. Waking up on Friday morning was brutal, slept the entire day away and roused myself only when my wonderful mom came to drop off food and orange juice (bless her). The last two days haven’t been much different, except on Saturday I had to force myself from my sickbed to go to the shops for cat food – not a pleasant experience in yesterday’s heat.

Still, despite feeling rather sick and more than a little bleak, there have been a few highlights…

* This kitten is just too cute for words. I heart him so much it’s ridiculous, and while trying to stay in a cozy coma on your deathbed is a little challenging when your hair is getting chewed, head is being stood on and any body part not under the duvet is being attacked, when the little bugger eventually chills, it’s been so nice having his warm, furry, purring presence around.

* I have forgotten how good it is to sleep this much. Sleeping most of the day away, I have had the weirdest dreams, but there is nothing like sleep to make you slowly get back on the mend. My bed has also been so much more luxurious and comfortable than usual, sigh…!

* Long hot baths with essential oils and yummy bath goodies seriously kick ass. Maybe it’s the comfort of hot water, or the steam, or just being able to lie still and not think for a bit. Or all of these, I don’t know.

* MedLemon, orange juice and… left over Easter eggs. I made the transition from my yummy but not quite fully effective Hot Toddy sachets to MedLemon on Saturday, and am very glad. Sometimes herbal just doesn’t cut it, and right now, I need the heavy stuff – and Sinex so I can breath. OJ is also good, and chocolate is a no brainer (even if the only stuff I have left is not exactly Lindt).

* Thoughts of the week ahead. This is going to be a great one for so many reasons, not least because I finally get my phone upgrade on Thursday. I plan to get a Blackberry, thinking the Curve 8900 but shall see. Also, we have an interdepartmental bowling thing that should be loads of fun (even if I am the worst bowler like ever). Then on Saturday, will be fetching my sister to bring her down for her birthday… psyched.

Have finally gotten all the over-due work I had out of the way, now can finish watching this National Geographic thing on crocodiles and give this beast of a kitten my undivided attention. Some tea and chocolate *may* just be in order too.

And some Sinex, megh.

Short story, phone is pretty much kaput… less than three weeks before my Blackberry is due. Ugh. This means I am going to have to mission down to Gardens Centre in search of an el cheapo stand-in phone – bloody Vodashop in Lifestyles being closed on weekends.

To top off my grouchy mood, this headache is still here, my foot was just attacked and the milk I put in my coffee is a bit off.

So hard to be mad at this cuteness though…

playing...

so much fun...

especially in the sun!

Sigh… ah well, must give this little monster a bit of play time and attention, then I need to haul ass to Gardens Centre in search of a new phone. (seriously wish they could just let me upgrade a bit early but fat chance of that!)

*deep breaths*

dicing to the death

The interwebs and radio have been flooded with reports of the fatal drag race in Soweto yesterday, where two out of control Mini Coopers plowed into a group of kids walking home from school – killing all four of them.

One of the drivers involved was local kwaito star JubJub (who is sadly rather talented, talk about a waste) who was allegedly pretty trashed on booze and cocaine. To add to the shit that this guy has caused, he is apparently not able to appear in court as he has been hospitalised.

I don’t even know what to say… drunk driving is bad enough on its own, but dicing is just plain retarded. Men in particular, especially after a few drinks, tend to have the attitude that they can get away with anything and live to tell the tale. The tragic part is that all the drivers came out of this alive, and the innocent high school kids they plowed into are the ones who had to pay the price of their stupidity. One of the boys was apparently a huge JubJub fan, which makes it all the more sad. Shleb or not, they should lock him and his buddies up and make an example out of them. Assholes should not be allowed to own cars.

And for those who still think it’s ok to drive after a few, maybe this will make you think. Designated drivers may not be the ‘cool’ thing to do, but it’s still better than killing someone by risking getting into your car after having a few beers.

Like most people who live in the city, I never drive drunk – in fact I seldom drive sober either. We catch cabs when we go out, or if it’s nice out and there are guys with us, we shlep up the hill – heels and all. Paying R20 to get to your destination is a very small price to avoid winding up like JubJub… something to think about next time you’re planning a big one.

hot hot hot

Watch, just as I finally get used to the heat in Cape Town, it’s going to ease and stop being so hot. I hope it at least carries on through the weekend, from here on out we will begin the descent into autumn and I want to max out my summer as much as I can.

Today has been a bit of a blur, very busy and what with lunchtime missions, various proposals and meetings, lots of writing and proofing and time whizzing by, it’s all just gone past rather quickly. It was hot when I went to work, hot at lunchtime and hot on my way home. With freshly washed and wet hair, and the fan on full, it’s bearable, just about. I just wish I could focus, lots to do tonight.

One more sleep and one more day of work, and I can be sipping on a cold pina colada and getting my Friday on. Can’t friggin wait.

Cool but not ayoba?

The copy team decided to do our occasional lunch mission today, and after a hugely awesome experience at Hudson’s Burger Joint on Kloof last year sometime, we decided to go the gourmet burger route. As it turns out, we should have maybe gone to Cactus, which was not only much closer but also could have saved us from the rather not ayoba service we got to enjoy.

Having booked our table for six an hour or so before 1pm, we arrived a minute or two after to find our table outside not ready. This was quickly fixed and soon we could order cold drinks. Despite running low on ice (hey, we’re having a heatwave after all) things were all good. Then we placed our orders. One girl doesn’t do carbs at lunch, so she requested her burger without buns. Another girl has a chili allergy, so she requested hers without chili. Also, while previously Hudson’s used to include a choice or side salad or chips, they have now changed this so that the side order is separate and charged as such. I only knew this from scrutinizing the menu – four of the six of us assumed it was included, and only believed me that it wasn’t when the bill came.

When the food arrived, not only was the anti-carb girl’s bun on the burger, but the girl with the chili allergy discovered that her burger had chili on it. Her burger was taken away and replaced. Her allergy luckily wasn’t severe, and she noticed the chili after taking the onion rings off the top, but if she had not noticed and had a severe allergy, this may not have been such a happy ending.

At bill time we had the usual phaffing and frantic working out of prices – individual prices aren’t listed, which makes it a bit more of a mission, and being a team of copywriters maths isn’t out strong point, obviaas. Nevertheless, we managed to get it all sorted, or so we thought. Shortly after returning to the office, the guy who’d made the booking got a call from the manager, telling us the included tip was R20 short. I have not idea how this happened, it may well have been from us being useless at working stuff out but we had covered the bill. Having not exactly had even average service, we also had to point out to the manager that things had been a bit swak right from the moment we arrived. He was very cool about it, even apologised and told us not to worry.

The thing is, Hudson’s is cool, there is no doubt about that. They play awesome old skool rock, the decor is great, the vibe is cool and it’s on Kloof Street. The manager is really great too, friendly and always on the ball and the burgers are pretty good too. But when service is below standard, that makes all the cool things suddenly not cool enough. With FIFA just a few months away, restaurants are going to have to up their game considerably because tourists are not going to put up with shit like this.

Overall, while Hudson’s is not a bad place through and through, I just don’t know if I’m all that keen to go back again after this lunch fail. Having done a bit of research online later this afternoon, service issues are not a new thing there either.

My verdict? Royale has been around for longer and it’s a sure bet. Neighbourhood also do a good veggie burger, and while the burgers are pretty good at Hudson’s, that alone just isn’t enough to keep people coming back if you can’t back it up with good service.

After being offline at home since Tuesday last week, and spending far too much time, airtime, energy and stress having to chase up this issue to get it sorted, finally this evening I am back online.

The problem started when I got home from work last Tuesday to try and get online, only to get an error 691 (unauthorised access) message stating that my logins were not permitted on the iBurst domain. After calling support, I was told that it was a network issue and having heard that there were widespread issues, I took their advice to try again the following day. Wednesday, I got home to find that I was still offline. This time, after waiting over 20 minutes to get through to support, I first had to go through the pain of re-connecting my network connection (which was done slowly because the poor girl I dealt with had no idea what she was doing and couldn’t keep up with me) only to then be told yet again that it was a network issue, and to try again later to see if it came back up.

Thursday came around, and by this point my patience was going. I tried to log a complaint on their website, which got me a nice error message stating that the website is bust (what a surprise). I emailed iBurst at their accounts, support AND info addresses and to this day have had no reply. I tried getting hold of @iBurst on Twitter, a number of times at that – still nothing. Eventually when I got home to find that I was STILL offline, I had to go through the long and frustrating process of calling support. I spoke to one of the few decent support people there (thank you Adrien for at least showing some sort of concern!) who then told me that actually it was not a network issue, someone my account had been messed up and all my bandwidth balances were set at zero. Considering it was only the fourth of the month and my internet had gone down on the second, not to mention the fact that my cap is currently at 5GB, this was rather interesting. A ticket was logged with their special support team, I was told that it would be resolved within 2-72 hours, and I was told that someone would get back to be the next day.

On Friday morning I was called by special support who told me to call back later that day. Friday afternoon when I called, they told me that my balances were set right again, and they refreshed the account on their side… but still nothing. They told me that uber support were still busy, and that I would be called soon. Nothing over the weekend of course, and it was only this evening that things have finally come right. But no one has bothered calling me to find out if this has been resolved, not support or ultra support or customer services.

This doesn’t really surprise me of course, you only need do go onto Hello Peter to find out what kind of ’service’ iBurst is most famous for, and being a company who doesn’t respond says it all. I am beyond irate with the fact that this could happen at all, let alone the fact that their customer relations department just doesn’t seem to care much about their customers at all.

Just to wrap up my wonderful experience, here are the biggest iBurst fails:

1. No internet for six days
2. Zero customer service whatsoever
3. No reply to my email or tweets
4. A grand total of one phone call from support
5. No clear explanation of why I was cut off for this long
6. Aside from one or two apologies from support staff, no feedback at all
7. Over R300 in cellphone airtime after having to call back almost every day
8. Delays in my freelance work from being offline almost a solid week
9. Internet cafe expenses for the week I was offline
10. Stress, frustration and anger at dealing with this issue all week

I am NOT going to spend more airtime trying to get hold of someone who can tell me how this happened, and I also think that they should give me this entire month at no charge – not least because of the money I have spent dealing with this fuck up, let alone the fact that I have lost work hours because iBurst has had yet another fail.

Of course this is iBurst we are talking about, and it will be pretty surprising if I get any sort of reply at all, let alone compensation for the week I was offline. At this point, I am just so relieved to be back online that a lot of fight has gone out of me… I will however be looking at changing my internet service provider fairly soon, because I just cannot risk another monumental stuff up like this again!

iBurst, if you really do want to keep your customers happy as you are trying so hard to make us believe, you may want to start with actual customer service rather than pats on the back at your increased social network presence.

I can’t speak for your other customers, but I for one have had it up to here!

* Please note that the views in this post are my own personal opinions. I accept no responsibility whatsoever for any reactions or views expressed in this post.

UPDATE: After about an hour or two online, I was cut off again. Half an hour on the phone, plenty of promises and apparently they will be calling back tonight. Meh!

Finding this Lark song (from their epic show at Assembly last year) was about the only good thing to come out of this blasted day. That and the fact that the wind has finally eased off in Cape Town. Otherwise, from around 2am this morning when I was woken up by my tummy bug, it’s been a pretty stereotyped Monday.

Lowlights included the following…

1. Post-awesome weekend slump, not helped by broken sleep
2. Meetings, issues, boss panics and dreariness
3. Epic torture session at the chiropractor (which has left me in considerable pain, vowing to never return)
4. Having to sit through the rest of the day after said torture session
5. Gloomy weather and gloomy co-workers and gloomy people in the street

At least this miserable day has finally almost come to an end. Being in too much pain and feeling too sorry for myself to make the dinner party I was meant to go to tonight I opted for painkillers, wine, chocolate, a long bubble bath, pampering Rooibos face mask and couch chillax. Can’t say the pain has gone, but I am at least feeling a little more comforted.

And as for the chiro and dry needling, it is seriously not working out for me anymore and I cannot go through this again. So think it’s time for Plan B – will see how it goes for a bit after this session, and then if it’s not right I’m trying body stress relief. NO MORE NEEDLES!

The movie focus on an elite group of FBI agents in the making, who are doing tests to become profilers. Christian Slater plays J.D, the team leader, and Val Kilmer is the FBI boss type who sends the team off to some godforsaken island for their final test. Soon after getting there, things start going pear shaped, and as they start being killed off one by one, they realise that they have a killer in their midst.

He dies first, not cool!

Things started to go pear shaped for me when they decided to kill Christian Slater off first. Of all the cast, I had at least hoped he would make it out alive, or at the very least survive long enough to keep him on the screen, but clearly the producers don’t share my long time appreciation for him. The next hottest guy at least had a bit more time. I dunno, the suspense was there and the intricate death traps and hard to figure out clues kept me guessing at least, but after a while it started getting a bit OTT.

At some point they start realising that the killer could only be one of them, and much suspicion and gun toting ensures. They lock up LL Cool J thinking it’s probably him, but then he proves himself and gets off the hook. More people die, the killer leaves more clues that they catch too late and eventually only three are left. This is where it really gets fun.

One of these peeps is the baddie (clue: it’s not LL)

Of course, there is much finger pointing and rolling around in hectic fights, etc etc. Having used my deductive powers of reasoning (this being that LL Cool J, bad as he may be, is always the hero, always!) I soon realised who the killer was. Except I was wrong. Nevertheless, there was at least enough of a twist for me to go, ‘Aah, ok – so that’s what happened’. LL got to do his thing and save the day, and all was well in the world again.

What is a homicidal maniac after super killer sharks?

All I can say is that I don’t know why ETV haven’t had an LL Cool J fest yet – bugger Steven Seagal and Van Damme, LL is the shiz! He always comes out the hero, he never dies and even better, sometimes he does killer soundtracks like Deepest Bluest.

But that aside, Mindhunters was kinda ok overall, all things considered.