The world adores matt hayward

Tonight was the big night. I’ve made the move from ADSL 1 with iiNet to ADSL 2+ with TPG. Fingers crossed, I hope they keep up the good work. So basically I’ve churned to TPG for free (on an 18 month contract) and the speed is blindingly quick so far.

Oh yeah, and I’ve gone from 20 gig a month (10 gig peak, 10 gig off peak) to 150 gig (40 gig peak, 110 gig off peak) for $70. So yeah, save $120 bucks a year and get 144 bonus gig of downloads. You don’t have to read between the lines for this one….

With iiNet, the support used to be brilliant 18 months ago. As you can tell by my last post, you’re going to spend a minimum of 20-60 minutes waiting for an operator to answer. I’ve made about 5 phone calls so far to TPG, every one has been answered well within 5 minutes - well within! Admitedly they use Indian call centres, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The quality is quite good. And that’s what’s really important to me, the quality not the nationality.

No doubt there will be more news to come, so watch this space. I’d also love to hear what anyone who’s on iiNet or has recently changed from iiNet to another ISP has to say. So please, leave your comments. But if you are having second thougts about second rate service, don’t waste any time. It’s clearly not worth it.

Well iiNET are very proactive after you call them. So much so after you call help desk, they send you an email that goes  like this.

Thank you for your call this morning,

Skye spoke to you this morning at ##:## AM WST regarding your enquiry. We
understand that you may be midway through this transaction at present;
however to enable us to improve and provide specific guidance and feedback
to Skye, we would like you to fill out a very short survey. 

To complete the survey, please click on the following link:

[insert link here] 

If you do not wish to participate in any more of these surveys,
you can unsubscribe by modifying your mail settings on the iiNet
toolbox available at https://toolbox.iinet.net.au

Normally, I wouldn’t bother with a reply. But given that I had spent almost enough time on the phone to watch most of an average B-grade movie,  there was plenty to talk about. So I provided them with this reply in their little survey. This went in the ‘free text’ field of their response.

It took approx 65 minutes to answer the phone. [operator name] was lovely and I have absolutely no complaints about her demeanour or level of diligence; she was truly the only hope you guys would have in organising a dance number in a Bollywood movie, let alone fornication in a brothel. Hats off to her.

What I do wish to complain about in no uncertain terms is that when I’ve clearly identified myself as a broadband customer using the IVR, I’m forced to listen to the same dial up customer announcements on rotation for 65 minutes. Why would I be interested in a dial up accelerator when I am clearly a broadband customer? Unlike the location of most of your call centres, the quality of your customer service has seriously gone south in the 18 odd months I’ve been using your service. Can I suggest convergence into other industries where you could promote bacon on a Kosher butcher’s IVR, beef to Hindus perhaps? It’s equally futile and about as annoying.

Furthermore, please inform me where to send the invoice for my time waisted to iiNet. Otherwise if you did want to make amends for the truly below par customer experience, please follow these directions:

1. Print this message off, preferably on A3 paper or larger
2. Make a bull’s eye like target in the centre of the paper. Make it fairly large
3. Go to the bathroom and make yourself comfortable over the target.
4. Stimulate your tummy until the target you drew earlier is covered with your fresh stool sample. If you’re having trouble, simply call 13 22 58
5. starting from the outside in, roll up the printed email into a neat bag
6. proceed to your manager’s office
7. get your manager to hold the bag at just below shoulder height
8. punch it

Tell your manager if he wants to know who the message is from, unwrap the bag and tell him I send my regards.

The above nine steps should go some way in providing some sort of empathy for the futility of your customer service that as a former customer, I had been repeatedly subjected to. Although I will be recommending your services to my de facto mother in law. Frankly, you two deserve each other. Hopefully you will both null each other out, and the world will yet again be free of persistent, nagging annoyances.

P.S. 65 minutes is a really long time to spend on the phone. I like ending letters in moot points.

On average, you’d be lucky to spend only 20 minutes on the phone waiting for iiNet - for sales or tech support enquiries.
It does also highlight the fact that why do companies ask questions in their Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems, e.g. ‘press 1 for voice, press 2 for data services’ if they don’t inform staff what you’ve entered.

It’s good to know that not only are iiNet completely under resourced, they’re being incredibly useless with their processes as well. Given that I was calling to cancel the service, you’d think they’d at least know I was a broadband customer and tell me some compelling reason to stay with them. Oh no, you just keep hearing the same ‘ask us about the dial-up accelerator’ announcement 50 times. With all the time and resources they put into their post call survey, why not make the IVR service more intelligent? Or put the money into more staff!?

Anyways, rant dies here. Interestingly, when I joined iiNet at least 18 months ago, the service was phenomenal. But given that help desk makes up so much of what you pay for with DSL, it’s not even worth mentioning whether the broadband was good or not.  As it turns out it was like when Shannon Doherty in the movie Mall Rats describes her ex-lovers appendage as a ‘decent size’. That’s about the nicest thing you can say really.

Man I have been overdosing lately on crazy docos. And this one is by far the most bizarre. Have you ever seen two nerds in high school take each other to task in a presentation. Ripping each other to pieces with bane minutia, footnotes and factoids to try and find wholes in the other’s argument? The teacher shirked, gives both students an A and you can hear the girls’ legs close forever for the two learned nerds who will now have to take their virginity well into university (or college for you yanks!). Pathetic isn’t it.

Well picture that scenario with video games. That’s what The King of Kong - a Fistful of Quarters is all about. Picture high school nerds trying to set the world record on the 1980s Donkey Kong arcade game.

One bloke Billy Mitchell is a nerd that learnt how to play the game. Sure he had the joystick skills, but he got himself the stick on smile, pearly white teeth and the all American boy image, complete with a USA flag tie. Oh yeah, and he’s craftier than a shit house rat.

That doesn’t make Billy different to any other leading character. He’s forged himself a reputation and set his record in the eighties in front of an adoring live audience. But decades have passed and no one has come close till now. Enter Steve Weibe, the David in the Goliath equation. He’s a relatively good bloke that actually has a life, instead of several cats in an small apartment and his mum on speed dial. He’s just clearly obsessive compulsive, but keeps it together.

So the trouble starts when Weibe sends in a video tape of a Donkey Kong high score that blew Mitchell’s score into the water. The tape goes to a high score moderator that is clearly an old boys club that looks after its own. This is where things start getting weird. Suddenly people are accusing Weibe of machine tampering, hanging out with the wrong crowd and demanding a showdown with their beloved hero Mitchell.

By this stage, Revenge of the Nerds is looking like Beverly Hills 90210 by comparison. A bevvy of meddling nerds like Brian Kuh, who has held the second highest Donkey Kong score, enter the fray all loyal to Mitchell. Kuh is clearly a successful but tragic man. He’s retired at thirty, but instead of letting his hair down in a yacht and a Porsche, he sets up a showdown for Weibe in Florida somewhere. Following Weibe around everywhere, monitoring his every score and bowel movement over the mobile to Mitchell.

Despite the great not showing up to the showdown, Weibe plays on and exceeds all expectations, setting an unprecedented high score in front of an indisputable audience.  The look on Kuh’s face is priceless, as well as some other baldy guy who looks like Red Green from the Red Green Show. Clearly this wasn’t meant to happen and the king throws a spanner in the works via his many henchmen. A nerd melee ensues erupting in a showdown with a Guinness Book of Records attempt to up the ante.

What this doco is all about is asking whether being the better man and giving in better than having questionable personal hygiene and a world title. It also proves that money can never take the nerd out of a man, or give him valour. Frankly, this is a hilarious glimpse into a very esoteric nerdy world and the social wet blankets that made it for themselves. How some blokes will have to the best at something ANYTHING at all costs. All in all, the strength of character and perseverance of individuals that make this movie interesting. Not the nerds. Your more laughing at them, not with them.

Four out of five.

Watching the news just now on Australian Channel Ten, I was simply flabbergasted at how a report on anti-whaling protesters completely missed the point. Apparently one of the Sea Shepherd crew was shot by a Japanese  ’scientist’. What really amazed me is that the bullet was lodged in one of the protester’s “Kevlar”. Now this can only mean one thing. Kevlar body armour.

Kevlar is strong enough to make ship hulls out of. So you can be damn sure it wasn’t thermal underwear the protester was wearing. You don’t have to be a security expert to realise that this is getting a bit bloody serious. Military Kevlar vests weigh approximately 20-30 kilos as well so you  wear them because your life’s in danger, not to pull chicks. Furthermore one or two of the Japanese coast guards (surely just a little bit out of their jurisdiction) were wearing full riot gear sans shields and weapons.  Apparently we’re not in Kansas anymore Dorothy.

SBS coverage was a little more interesting. Announcements in English from the Japanese ship’s bullhorn threatened the protesters with arrest under Japanese law. Now again, I ain’t no lawyer but aren’t they in Japanese waters?
Yes this is the clandestine side of what are genuine cultural differences. Like bulls to the Spanish, our Asian brethren tend to think you eat meat or you don’t. So once you cross that divide, there’s no difference between a cow and a whale, an abalone and a sardine; if you’re eating meat, you accept the cruelty and get on with it. An attitude definitely backed up by long time friend and Japanese host brother.

Sure most of us whitey’s are a little less black and white. If somethings endangered, you do something about it; the beauty of grey persists. Often we’ll put animal welfare before that of refugees, the homeless, even extended family. I don’t really buy into that.

While I adore protest and support it wholeheartedly, it just makes the whole thing stink. What is going on! Of all the Military bases in Antarctica e.g. those of Argentina, Australia, US and Chile(?), why can’t the be called upon to get both parties the hell out of Dodge? After all if they really love warm furry animals, they’d be really giving them the shits with all that noise? Secondly, I plead my naiveté to the issue here, but why doesn’t anyone persist on the Japanese publishing some findings or data on the issue [perhaps they have. This is a rant not an essay!]?

And finally, can someone just outline how stupid hunting these animals is!!! The animal is bloody useless and apparently quite salty! How can they justify the expense of killing the things? How can the justify the cultural connection to the Japanese people without a PR firm? It’s not as if there intuits or Scandinavians which still probably give it a red hot go - as they always have.

Anyways, someone should ‘bitchslap’ both parties hard ‘upside the head’ and remind them how bloody petulant the whole exercise is. Here we are living in a quasi-fascist, one state world and we can’t get our act together over a few blubbering whales?

On the lighter side, the Japanese are apparently threatening to use tear gas in their defense. Now again, I ain’t no munitions or combat expert, but this sounds preposterous to me. How is the gas going to ‘hang around’ on the deck of the protesters’ ship? No doubt it can be used but it sounds like a ridiculous tactic. Would love to hear if it is plausible to use tear gas on the water! It sounds like threatening to nag your wife or partner: you know it’s futile so why try?

A matter of opinion all too quickly becomes a war. Can’t we be more cunning in getting the Japanese to see the grey side of the argument rather than pushing time and resources into military action? What a waste of time.

Well I’m flabbergasted. The Melbourne Motorshow was actually bloody fantastic! A little something for everyone. If you want a highlight, it has to be the Bolwell Nagari. Why? Because it’s an Aussie kit car with true heritage and unlike the Evo Rex brigade, it may not be around for long. It has absolute classic potential. So I was sure to grab a brochure for future eBay investment. Not that you would want it to die, it looked fantastic - truly.

Second bigbest highlight had to be the Ford stand. I’m loathed to admit I’m a bit of a Ford man and you couldn’t pick a better year to go if you are. All the new XRs, G series Fords and Mondeos are on display and you can have a sit. Oh yeah and the FPVs. Especially the FPVs were a highlight to have a sit in. Oh what a great year for Fords. Seriously, they’re great looking cars. Although it looks like Ford haven’t resolved the driver’s seating positioning problems in the FG. But we won’t truly know until it can be driven.

Stands you can walk straight past are the Holden and BMW stands. Don’t think you missed the Mercedes stand, because this year they couldn’t be bothered. Truly, they couldn’t give a rat’s arse about Melbourne, so neither should you about Mercedes. The other two are basically shopping centre car parks, full of shapes and colours you’re already pretty familiar with.

You can sit in most of the Audi range and the R8 is on display too, which would’ve been an even bigger highlight if there wasn’t one parked on the street the other day. Perks of inner city living! The A5 is there too and that is truly breathtaking enough. Oh that V10 wagon is there somewhere too. Also had a sit in five, count ‘em FIVE Alfa Romeos. Awesome.

Biggest surprise display was the Range Rover modifiers stand Long Horn(?) who have two utterly pimped out Range Rovers on display, one dumped on its guts! They seriously look like they should be in Ben Cousins’ driveway.

Biggest exploiters of bright, shiny objects this year were Toyota. They basically had nothing new to show you. So they brought along a drag car with a 2JZ GTE engine, massively turbo charged and the hybrid Supra concept. But apart from that, tampons would be more interesting quite frankly than most other product on their stand.

Most underwhelming were the GTR and the Evo. It’s hard to explain why, but the GTR somehow has lost its Skyline heritage and kind of looks like a Porsche. So you can guarantee it’s now squarely in the realm of accountants and dentists, not speed freaks and drug dealers.

Anyway every other Melbourne motor show I’ve been to in recent memory has absolutely sucked arse. This one is a real experience and well worth the price of admission.

I’ll keep this short and sweet. COAS is an absolute corker. They follow around 4 semi professional actors that impersonate super heroes on Hollywood boulevard, taking photos with tourists for a living. One is a compulsive and dedicated Superman; one a Clooney lookalike with a dirty past and a worse temper; one the perfect cheerleader dressed as Wonder Woman; finally a former homeless black guy dressing up has the hulk.

Capturing a moment in time when these ‘characters’ were being chastised by the police for harassing the public, COAS takes a very human look at all of these four characters.  It’s exceptionally well produced and flows seamlessly from start to finish. You really find yourself anticipating with baited breath what’s going to happen to each person next. Almost like they’re acting in their own life.

There’s plenty of highs and lows as they each chisel away each day at their dream of being a bona fide actor. Brilliant production and direction aside, what makes this doco so good is the humanity of it: it’s uncontrived, and at times brutally honest. In a sense, it’s reality TV at its finest.

Without doubt this is one of my favourite docos in a long time. And not in a Michael Moore ‘A Current Affair’ sense, a true doc. 5 out of 5.

Finally a doco that jumps off the shelves at you saying ‘buy me, buy me!’ With the graffitied uzi on the cover it delivers its fair share of gung ho violence. What it doesn’t truly delivery is the first class raconteuring the production company claim they excel at.

Firstly a bit of background. This is a doco about the so called warlords of cocaine in Miami in the mid 70s to late 80s. Primarily the American pilots and the ruthless Colombians that fought perilously for their share. So far so good.

In fact the first half of Cocaine Cowboys is a veritable ‘everything you ever wanted to know about smuggling cocaine in the seventies’ style affair, which is genuinely compelling. Two convicted transporters, or pilots, talk in depth about how they communicated with drug cartels, what air and sea craft was used and other methods of drug transportation. There’s also a bit said about the Medellin Cartel, and how Pablo Escobar was not the numero uno he’s potrayed to be. A bit of a narcotics Mythbusters if you will.

To some extent, it’s a history lesson in how sleepy Miami was in the early seventies. Also how hifalutin cocaine still was to the masses, until everyone really got organised. Then came the bloodshed.

From this moment on, the Scarface style Latino gang bosses come into the picture. Primarily one such felon interviewed in prison who was the head bodyguard for one such gang boss. At this point, it’s hard to maintain the interest. There’s a constant pastiche of Latino thugs, money and violence. The felon must’ve talked for about 45 minutes. It should be far more compelling, but sadly it just doesn’t flow well enough. Although worth the price of admission alone to find out that the most brutal, feared gang boss in town was in fact a Latina!

Towards the end though the movie takes a turn into the subjective. Here claiming that Republican presidents Reagan and George HW Bush played an instrumental role in cleaning up Miami. While this may be true, the drug problem in the US is clearly still of epidemic proportions.

Ending on a positive, the subjects claim that the drug money of the eighties made the glitzy Miami of today. Which is all believable but for the fact that if you look at Top Gear’s American episode and Aussie Francis Gittoes documentary Rampage, some things never change. There are some truly bad areas in Miami to this day.

Brownie points go to the production crew for finding classic TV news footage of Steven Tyler coked off of his nut talking about the ‘new’ post coke wars Miami. That is as funny as hell. But it falls short of a truly awesome doco by getting too stuck into the accounts from one prisoner.

3 out of 5.