updates on recent things

Apocryphally, someone (not necessarily RSF) organised the rioting in Dublin. Interesting second-hand stories about well-dressed guys with bluetooth headsets directing the ebb and flow of the rioters from somewhere behind the line. Jeffery Donaldson on the radio, responding to a caller who said it was "a bunch of northsiders who came out of the pubs to join the riots", responding that if northsiders generally went drinking carrying tricolours and fireworks, he'd not be drinking on the northside any time soon (Good comeback, Jeffery, and wholly without malice I'd suggest you'd not get an entirely pleasant reception on the northside or the southside anyway.) My own suggestion, that the rioters had raided Carroll's (a purveyor of many, many Oirish tourist gimmicks who were offended when I asked if they sold "cheap-ass sunglasses") prior to or during the rioting in order to stock up on "Irish" paraphenalia (made in $cheapest_location_available, of course). Some idiots headed to Lansdowne Road on Wednesday for the Ireland/Sweden friendly chanting pro-IRA slogans on the platform. No, seriously, you are assholes, if only for equating the Irish soccer team with a bunch of (actual, as opposed to Bushian) terrorists. I missed said match due to it not being free-to-air, i.e. the Irish soccer association having sold the rights exclusively to a pay-for channel based in the UK. How is it the alleged nationalists aren't up in arms over that? I caught the highlights of the match; Ireland's first goal was a typically Irish fluke: a lone striker keeps the ball to himself, takes a shot, and it bounces off the opposition into the opposition's goal. This is how we fumble our way to victory, except that the third goal was an absolute stunner. Which makes it all the more inexplicable why one of the freesheet tabloids the following day had a big headline crediting Duff (goal 1) and Keane (goal 2) but making no mention of Miller (goal 3, and the only decent goal scored). German coworker asked in jest if this meant we take Sweden's place in the World Cup.

No link from there to here: no sooner do I post about running when the weather takes a turn for the colder (apparently including the coldest night in ten years; temperatures somewhere down to -15°C) which meant I wasn't even inclined to leave the warmth of the front room, much less the house.

I think that about covers everything. Time for bed.

in which I lay off Cory for about thirty seconds

WTF?

Banks are unhelpful, period. I can say that without feeling like I'm overgeneralising. And yet, here, the customer got a name and reference number for the person they were talking to; got a clear explanation of the problem; got an agreement that yes, it's odd that it's not more public, and on the whole my reading of this is that the customer service person was more helpful than most custsrv I've ever encountered myself. In agreeing that this is a big deal the custsrv is most likely not just stepping outside the bounds of three-ring-binderdom, but more likely breaking with what information she's supposed to discuss with the customer as dictated by the bank.

And the boingboing take on it is to mock the customer service person. Well, fuck you, guys, I'm glad you're all so secure in your jobs that you don't need to worry that anything you say may be recorded and used for your dismissal. Sure, the bank's response isn't helpful, but are you seriously going to blame that on the frontline customer support people who have to pass that on to the customers?