“Oh, but it was only the €6 the last time I posted this. Has the price gone gone up?”

Cue explanation that the parcel was above 1kg in weight and it would therefore cost €7.50. The counter assistant offered the explanation that “maybe there is more paper wrapping which has pushed the weight up” and then the staggering line “you’re better off paying the extra anyway – the country needs all the money it can get at the moment”.

I can only presume the parcel was a teeny tiny bit over the 1kg weight, but I guess An Post employees/franchise holders(?) aren’t given any discretion when these situations occur.

In response to the continued questions about the difference in postal price, the counter assistant put the item on the scales again. “Oh, it’s below 1kg now.. Hmm. Let me try that again. Hmm. Now it’s over 1kg”.

Another post office guys goes over to look at the scales and notices a pile of papers stacked behind the scales which must have been causing the innacurate reading. The parcel was accurately weighed at under 1kg saving an overcharge of €1.50. Counter assistant then says to her colleague: “I’ve had some parcels today over 2kg, if only I’d known.”

Made me wonder how many people had been overcharged and might continue to be overcharged if the stray bits of paper find their way back behind the scales again.

I had 2 similar incidents where a parcel I was posting was judged to a packet rather than a large envelope. Only when I pointed out that it was within thickness guidelines did I get the proper postal rate, thereby ensuring I was not overcharged by €1.95.

Check your postal rates here BEFORE going to the post office. Measure and weigh your item so that some dodgy scales or other variable doesn’t leave your pocket lighter than it should be.

Makes me wonder if the NSAI should be checking An Post equipment to ensure customers aren’t overcharged.

It brings to mind another article on the Independent.ie website in April 2011 which was brought to my attention after some kneejerk reactions on Twitter along the lines of “what a waste of money”.

Ian O’Doherty reported that Fás were spending:

“nearly 80 grand on a course — that teaches people from the Roma community about Irish Travellers.”

O’Doherty spouts on for a couple of paragraphs and finishes off his piece :

“Also, you might be forgiven for wondering if the money would be better spent buying one-way tickets back to Romania and Bulgaria for those Roma who have never worked here and are claiming social welfare.

OK — all complaints for the above sentiment can be sent to the Press Council. “

After reading it and some of the Twitter reaction, I contacted Fás to get information on the course. Here is the course O’Doherty wrote about.

The course is “to provide participants, representatives of the local travelling community, with a forum for understanding and learning, with a view to integrating marginalised members of the community more fully into local life and with the skills to access further training and or employment opportunities.”

That’s very different from what O’Doherty riled up his readers about. Don’t know about you, but anything which helps marginalised members of a community with a voice and an opportunity for further training with a view to getting a job is a good thing. Certainly not something to misrepresent in such a deliberate way and he has no excuse of there being anything “lost in translation”.

It’s called ‘The Line King’ and it sets out to solve a problem for accountancy and business students in Ireland (and presumably further afield as well).

Here it is :

It’s a stencil that a student can use to turn any standard lined page into an accountancy record book, thereby saving money that would otherwise be spent on buying pre lined accountancy books. I know from my school days that I would spend ages ruling pages with a standard ruler and making a bit of mess of it in the process. All a student has to do now is take the Line King stencil, place it on the page, and run a pen through the lines to create their accounting book page. I’d say it would take all of 10 seconds to line the perfect page like the one below.

There are 3 different stencils available, one for each of the accounting record books. I would LOVE to have had something like this back in the day. It’s one of those ideas that make you wonder why no one has thought of it before. Great to see students coming up with ideas like this and I hope it sells well for them.

Links

The Line King Facebook page

@accountingking (The Line King Twitter)

Update : 21st December 2011. The app is now available. Search for RTE Player in the App store. Worth the wait.

I rarely watch TV programmes at their scheduled broadcast time. I guess most people are the same. Sky+ , web catchup services and iPad/iPhone/Android apps have totally changed the broadcasting landscape. As an Apple device owner, I miss the ability of being able to catch up on RTE programmes due to the lack of Adobe Flash support on the device.

To a collective “hurray” from iPad and iPhone owners, RTE today announced they will launch a Player app for Apple devices “before Christmas”. An Android version is also planned.

One really nice feature of the app (as explained in the video above) is an Amazon Kindle like feature of syncing what you are watching between devices. Start watching an episode of Mad Men on your iPhone on the way home from work, you can pick up where you left off on your laptop when you get home. Some other nice features for sharing content are discussed in the video as well and it will be interesting to see how they work.

The ridiculously over the top “outrage” about RTE wanting to deprive bloggers of revenue annoyed me. So I set up an Irish Fashion and Beauty aggregator to show how ridiculous the whole thing is/was.

Note the little extract of blog posts that appear on the page. Can anyone, hand on heart, say that this would stop a visitor from clicking through. The beaut.ie accusation was that RTE wanted to rip off content.

Read more about it on the about page of Yeronlymassive

Went to the live screening of Phantom of The Opera last night at the cinema. It was a special 25th Anniversary performance of the show and to say it was spectacular is an understatement.

I saw the show a couple of years ago on Broadway and thoroughly enjoyed it. This was despite the constant, loud snoring of a man beside me and seats that were so high up binoculars (if provided) would have been very welcome.

Whilst I’d love to have been in the audience at the Royal Albert, the cinema experience was actually a better way to experience this show. Being able to see the action on stage and getting close ups of the actors faces added immensely to the enjoyment. Only thing missing was the electric atmosphere and buzz of being in a hall with 5,000 people. That, and clapping. Myself, mrslecraic and two other people beside us were the only ones who made an effort at a bit of a clap.

This staging of Phantom has Cameron Mackintosh as producer, and it will start touring in March 2012 and it looks like The Grand Canal Theatre will host it some time after that (guessing May or June). Nothing on GCT website as yet, but keep an eye out as I’m sure tickets will sell out fast.

The Presidential Lorem Ipsum generator, Áras Ipsum, is now live.

Enjoy.

Westlife playing a concert in Indonesia (home of the YouTube smoking toddler sensation).

The Irish Cancer Society Facebook page says:

Teen-friendly popular Irish boy band Westlife are playing a tobacco sponsored concert in Indonesia on 5 October. The brand is Clas Mild, designed with young people as the target market. Westlife do some amazing work to support young people and cancer charities, among others. Please ask them to say no to tobacco sponsorship www.facebook.com/Westlife or on Twitter @westlifemusic @kianeganwl @markusfeehily @nickybyrneoffic @ShaneFilan79

Indonesia has little or no control on the sale of cigarettes, never mind advertising. Disappointing that Westlife allowed themselves to be part of a huge problem over there. Let’s see Louis Walsh spin this one.

Have made an enquiry about it. See below….

damienrte

(Damien Tiernan)

Being from the state broadcaster, you wouldn’t want to be saying Duck’s arse in a tweet. Mouse’s ear sounds quite cute so I had to look it up.

From Urbandictionary.com

Mouse’s ear:

tight pussy

she was tight as a mouse’s ear

and

The plural, mouse’s ears, is used to describe the position a stripper gets in when she is crawling slowly towards you and her ass cheeks appear to be on top of her head like those of the beloved Disney critter.

Also, the name of a great strip club in Johnson City, TN

Learn something new every day. Thank you, RTE man.