Taxi! Or why Brisbane Is Still A Laughing Stock

It's been a while, but as usual, something happened last night to make me want to write.

Now, first things first, I fully accept that should I have opted to do so, there would have been plenty of public transport to service my exit from Suncorp Stadium and Caxton Street on Saturday night. But obviously I chose not to. And one would think that in this day and age, alternative arrangements should be fairly easy to come by...

But no.

So about midnight we decide to leave Hotel LA, which is on the corner of Caxton Street and Petrie Terrace. For those of you who have NO idea about Brisbane, that's on a fairly main road. There's also a taxi rank there, which was solid and not moving. Closest alternative is in the CBD so we start walking.

An hour later, we're at the Casino and waiting in the taxi rank there. Thirty minutes after that, we're in a cab to the Valley. So 90 minutes of fucking about to move from one area to another. And my legs hurt.

Then 3am rolls round and I can't drink anymore so I have to go. Join another cab queue in the Valley that's one whole block long and wait almost 2 hours. Home at 5am.

So where does the problem lie?

Taxi drivers don't want to pick-up these fares? Probably not. The chances are that at 3am in a taxi you'll get a vomiter, a runner or an arsehole in your cab. It's probably just not worth it.

Lack of taxis? Without a doubt. Other than the ones that don't want the fairs, there's a general lack of cabs on the road anyway. And at the busy times, the capacity is over-stretched beyond belief.

And so, what is the solution?

Temporary taxi licenses for private drivers - limited to short 8 hour periods. If you try and throw more cabs in total, then during the slow times, the guys lose money. If you deregulate, then it's madness. But if people can drive part-time in their own cars, with specific insurance and a specific license.

Boring, eh? The break between blogs has softened my brain. Haha. I'll think up something better to rant about next time.

Beer vs. Petrol

I can buy a schooner of the same local beer at two different pubs, one down the road from each other. Whilst different in design, layout and food offering, both pubs are pretty much the same and the identical beer is poured into an identical glass and served at the same temperature at both venues. Each venue charges a different price for the beer and during the week, the price fluctuates depending on the day, and even depending on the time of day.

That’s beer. The same thing happens to a lettuce, a loaf of bread, a magazine, a can of fizzy drink, a cinema ticket and so on.

So why all the fuss with petrol?

Why do we as consumers, who consistently fail to put ourselves in a competitive position by buying bigger cars with bigger engines, ignoring public transport or even just using our own two feet, then complain when the petrol companies take advantage of our own stupidity?

Petrol is a commodity. If you want to pay less for it, use less of it.

I must have upset someone....

Saturday 16th Feb, 10.39pm...MD Webhosting has crashed again. My email and sites are down and the whole MD site has gone...cannot even connect to their front page.

Something must be up with my karma...I spent the afternoon trying to install WoW only for it to keep failing on the 4th CD. So everything I had to install up to the 4th before I'd find out it wasn't working...can you imagine how frustrating that is?

But serious MDWebhosting...I might even start a Facebook group for these guys...

Peru Riot Police go Robocop

These new uniforms by Peru’s anti riot police are truly awesome - they were seen parading yesterday for the first time and have been described as Judge Dread meets Batman.

read more | digg story

The webhosting dramas continue...

So very briefly the service resumed yesterday afternoon for a couple of hours, and then fell over again early last night about 8pm and hasn't been seen since. The phone line is permanently engaged and emails to the centre get a standard response. Even when you try to go into live chat you get this:

There are currently 15 chat request(s) before you in chat queue.
Please wait, an operator will be with you shortly.

Total and absolute shambles. NEVER EVER host with MD.

MD Webhosting: Failed AGAIN

And to make matters worse this time, the failure is obviously SO catastrophic, they've removed the 'help & support' and 'server status' pages are being hit with so much traffic, that they're failing too...

Anyway, here's the message from them:

Australian Servers: Current Downtime and Restoration of Client accounts
Posted By: Mark Galea On: 09 Feb 2008 10:31 AM

Details: Due to a hardware failure, multiple Australian servers are inactive currently. Client sites will be restoring to normal over the next 72 hours.
If you have any further queries or if there are any issues with you site restore please contact us support@mdwebhosting.com.au

Thank you for your patience and understanding with this matter.

What I like is the deliberate ambiguity. Servers are just 'inactive'. You'll get your site back in 72 hours. I mean, it's a farce isn't it? In a service-related business like this, how do companies survive? I'm thinking of starting some sort of MD Webhosting feedback site.

Anyway, it's now 8.14am - almost 48 hours since Mark Galea posted his note...I presume I still have 24 hours to wait...

100,000 views at last...

100,000 views at last...
Originally uploaded by Carbon Images

Well, it took a while, but the account is really starting to build some momentum...and I hit 100,000 at 8.56am this morning...

Now onwards to a million!!