April 2008

posted from iPhoneSlide.com

Since my 3 year old Xbox 360 developed the Red Ring of Death I have logged the call with Microsoft to get it fixed (for free) under warranty 4 times!

It wasn’t that they refused to fix it or anything. It was just the fact that I am a procrastinator by heart and didn’t get round to boxing it up and arranging for the item to be collected by UPS.

They only allow you a 10 day window to get the item packed and collected and I failed to even get round to ringing them each time!

So - I went and bought a new console instead! Yay!

I opted for the new Xbox 360 Elite model with the spanky 120gb hard drive and HDMI goodness. I also went for the Guitar Hero 3 bundle and rocked out a 96% complete version of Slow Ride by Foghat on my first turn. Even my beautiful wife and darling children had a go too! It’s another one of those games that I liked the look of but never really thought I would like - but it is really great!

I am still getting the old console repaired and will then sell it with the games I don’t want. I have logged another repair request with Microsoft - and I have a box in the boot of my car to package it up in. So there is no excuse this time.

Hi my name is Tao. My gamertag is Taoski - See you online!

The company that I work (contract) for have just been told that the main customer they provide support for has potentially awarded the work to someone else.

The winner of the contract is a large, global IT provider specialising in different “business strands” including manufacturing, government and automotive. They have over 289 thousand employees in more than 80 countries and have an annual revenues of over $28 billion.

They also are based from and have a large Service Desk presence in India too….

I’m sure this all seems very familiar to me and other people that know me.

Still - at least as a contractor I feel obliged to spread the message of doom and gloom to all without fear of corporate repercussions. Already people are saying how great it will be to work for a “big company” if they get TUPE’ed over with the work.

What they don’t realise is that working for a big company also means you become only one of those 289 thousand employees. And to the people sitting at the top of the tree, the 289,001th person is just a cost to them - nothing more than that. Operational need, expertise, past work history and performance mean nothing to them.

You are just a number…