Life is grand

I decided to stop procrastinating and shift my journal (blog) over to here. Now with a nicer address; paulmwatson.com/journal. This will be the permanent address for as long as I keep an online journal.

Fear of failure… If you flunk a calculus exam, better to loudly blame it on the half-hour study blitz, than admit to yourself that you could have used a tutor the entire semester.

Perfectionism… These people fret that “No one will love me if everything I do isn’t utter genius.” Such perfectionism is at the heart of many an unfinished novel.

Stand and Deliver

Originally uploaded by * Honest *.

What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, ‘This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!’ Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, ‘Never have I heard anything more divine?

- Friedrich Nietzsche

€14,200 later and they give you a fob of plastic and metal… oh, and a car. Wooooooooohooooooooooo!

In this article about MySpace the owners are finding it tough to advertise on a large enough scale (they get nearly a billion page-views per day) without pushing away their users. One thing they want to do is get MySpace kids to put adverts on their profiles. How about the incentivise the users? You put an ad on your profile and you get a few cents everytime someone clicks through it. That way whoever is viewing the profile won’t feel “a corporate put that ad there.”

Bank: Oh, look, a fax

Bank: We haven’t received the new invoice
Dealer: I sent the invoice
Bank: No new invoice
Dealer: It went through
Bank: Nope
Dealer: I have every incentive to get that invoice to you
Bank: Yeah, but we still don’t have it

So who is bullshitting here? The bank or the dealer?

It just goes to show that incompetence with money and documents is a world-wide problem.

Over the past few days I have been getting my ducks in a row for car finance. AIB were quick to quote but then failed to tell me a few important steps and so the process was slowed down. The dealer has had the car ready since Wednesday morning but can’t give it to me until I have signed the car finance papers.

So this morning the bank tells me that the papers are ready and they will fax them to my nearest branch. I take a €10 taxi down to the branch to find out the papers haven’t been faxed. 15 minutes later, after phoning the car finance division, the papers are faxed. I sit down to sign them but thankfully before I do I notice the total finance amount is wrong. It says €14,950 when my deal with the dealership is €14,200. The original price of the car was €14,950 but the dealer discounted it by €750 to reach €14,200. The bank says the invoice lists the discount as a deposit. The dealer says the €750 amount on the invoice is clearly marked as a discount.

One hour later and another €10 taxi ride I am back at work and have accomplished zero. The dealer has to send a new invoice, the bank has to reprocess the forms and I have to go back to the bank this afternoon to sign the papers I was supposed to sign this morning.

I don’t know whether AIB is incompetent or whether the dealer was trying to screw me over. I’ll get ahold of that original invoice and then have a nice long chat with whoever was responsible.

The Web2Ireland event went down in Dublin yesterday . The speakers focused on the business opportunities of Web 2.0 and all in all it was a good event to be at. Most importantly I got to see and meet the Web 2.0 community in Ireland which is bigger and livelier than I thought.

Marc Canter (Broadband Mechanics) spoke in his usual operatic voice about love, peace, free-markets, George Bush and media while Jeff Clavier (Software Only), Judy Gibbons (Accel), Daniel Waterhouse (3i) and Nasse Batley (Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein) spoke on the investment opportunities.

The slides should be available on Web2Ireland soon. I’ll post them when they are.

Web2Ireland

I’ll be up in Dublin tomorrow at the Web2Ireland event. Text me for a pint.