Some pointers for Sky salespeople

A COUPLE of weeks ago some salesperson from Sky cable called to my house, three times in one evening, trying to sell me a Sky package. During their first call to the house I asked them to call back as it wasn't a good time, I did not expect them back two more times that evening, so finally I told them that I wasn't interested. This was probably more to do with the three calls in one evening more than anything else.

Then on Friday night past, during Coronation Street, another salesperson called to our door asking did I want Sky and once again, as I was in the middle of a heap of things, I asked them to come back again. He did an hour later...

As Ellybabes and Rabble Muse were expected any minute I told the Sky Guy that I wasn't interested. And ooohhhh he was not impressed in the slightest and told me that it was a pity as he could have saved me a load of money.

Might I suggest a couple of things to Sky:

Firstly my home time is incredibly precious to me and I am not happy answering the door in my pjs on a Friday evening after a busy week in work to pushy salespeople no matter how wonderful your deal is.

Secondly have some literature which details how you can save me money, recognise when someone cannot talk to you (or indeed does not want to talk to you) and give them the details. I will look at it. Calling repeatedly back to my house will see me say an outright NO. I am not trying to waste your time, I am trying to preserve my own. Oh yeah and don't be narky with them when they say no, thats our choice as consumers. Being narky with me, a potential customer, does not endear me to your company in the slightest.

Thirdly I am not at all comfortable answering my front door at night to strange men. I imagine I am far from being alone in this and I do find it mad, that a company such as Sky, would adopt such a sales method.

Fourthly drop the aggressive salespitch, that will turn me off straight away and I will say NO.

Finally if you cover an area one time, its probably best to wait a decent amount of time before hitting it again, ie a lot longer than a matter of weeks.

Ireland's Grand Slam - 365

I HADN'T intended to watch the rugby today but having checked into Twitter at one stage this afternoon I couldn't help but tune in given the excitement in the tweets. AND my god what an ending, heart-stoppingly brilliant. I'm not going to say more and show my complete ignorance of rugby but well done to the team for their first Grand Slam since 1948 and I hope everyone is having a great time today. Oh yeah and well done to the twitterers too.





So these are for my 365 today (I have more on Pixie), and while not actual photographs, they are screengrabs of the coverage on RTE and given the day in it they are not cheating in my book :)

God has caused - 365

I SPOTTED this man outside the Dail with his sign. We chatted briefly and he allowed me to take his pic. His sign reads 'God has caused the economy to fail to get your attention'.

(March 19th - 365)

Ray of Light - 365

(March 18th - 365)

St Patrick's Day - 365

This was taken from the second floor of the Guinness Storehouse at the Pixie Party which was great craic altogether from the parade to the evening do. You can check out the rest of my pics on Pixie and everyone else's also on Pixie. I also wrote a bit more about St Patrick's Day on Dublin Blog.

Yarden clean up - 365

WITH all the recent good weather and with lots of planting to do I got out into the yarden last Monday evening.



It's mad how much stuff gathers over the winter months and given that I have lots of little bulbs coming up here and there it was more than time that I made it presentable. So I emptied all the dead plants and sorted out all my pots and bits and pieces, brushed up, pulled off dead leaves, hung up my hanging basket of daffodils, tulips and grape hyacinths - not your normal hanging basket but it looks great.

The strawberry plants are coming back but I might add to them, as they are tiny, with more plants. I decided not to bother growing tomato plants from seed, so bought four lovely plants and hopefully this year I will get more than one tiny tomato. I have already planted some sugar snap peas again which were brilliant last year and will plant more. And I also intend to get runner beans, courgettes, salads and other things going.

Unfortunately I had to replace the plastic on my green house thanks to next door's cat who was lucky not to impail itself on the stakes inside pots in the greenhouse. So I have put stuff on the ledge on the yard wall in a probably vain attempt to stop it coming this way again.

I also noticed little white and green fly enjoying my spring flowers, wee buggers and hopefully not a sign of things to come, I was beseiged by all sorts last summer. I've been spraying them with soapy water but it doesn't seem to be bothering them in the slightest.

Once I manage to get rid of the rubbish bags, I'll take another pic to give you an idea of how it looks. I can't wait for warmer weather to get out there and chill.



(365 - March 16th)

Do you come here often? - 365

(O'Donoghue's - March 15th)

De gang - 365

JUST doing some more catching up on my 365. Here's a pic from last weekend taken while shopping. (March 14th)

March 9th catch-up - 365

HONEY loves apples, and carrots, and green beans and wine corks.

Big DOH missed a 365 day

YOU SEE thats what you get when you don't post your 365 project pics for a week, particularly a week with a lot of different photography jobs in it, you lose a day, March 9th actually. I actually have a pic from that day and somehow didn't upload it and have missed it in the proper order of posting. This is despite writing an order list so I wouldn't get mixed up last night and somehow I did. Anyway I am not strict with the rules on this or I wouldn't complete it at all, so I'll hunt it out now and correct that in the next post. Big DOH. Then I'll try to catch up on the last couple of days which should not be as difficult seeing as how they are mostly related to St Patrick's Festival festivities.

Tourism office - 365

Property of NASA - 365

Kildare Street - 365

O'Connell Bridge - 365

View from the backdoor - 365

THIS is the view from our backdoor and I love it. I'll put my new lens to use and take this view again with more of the yarden in it now that it is cleaned up and once the bin bags are cleared :)

Windowsill - 365

I LOVE these flowers, I have them all over my yarden planted from bulbs before Christmas, as well as some forgotten ones from last year. I also found out last year on the blog they are called grape hyacinths and they are absolutely gorgeous, almost like little fairy hats. I bought this batch in Lidl or Aldi and they have had a short but lovely life on my windowsill, they really do fare better outside. However this was taken last week and they are still going.

Trinity - 365

RIGHT I am going to attempt to do a mega catch-up on my 365 project. I may stop doing thes ecatchup posts because it is very easy to lose photographs given the amount I can take in a week between work and my own stuff. Take the last weekend as an example, I took at a rough guess about 1500 pics all of which have to be processed and that would be fair enough if it was my full time job. As it isn't I have to process as I can; even with work photographs there are only so many I can do when the phones are ringing, emails have to be responded to and acted upon and things are generally busy.

Anyway I am resolving to get back to posting this series as quickly as I can, home and work permitting. Thats the plan and I *ahem* hope to stick to it :)

First up is from March 6th and was taken in Trinity. I must also change my way home to vary the pics a little, though I am delighted with the brighter evenings coming in, it technically should make things a little easier.

Bus Aras

Dublin from Liberty Hall - 365

THIS is the first pic posted taken with my new camera, a Nikon D700, a beautiful machine which I will post about using shortly (or should I say intend to post about). This was taken from the top of Liberty Hall using my new wide angle lens, drool. I am in love.



(Thursday, March 5th)

Ornate door - 365

THIS is from a restaurant in town, it reminded me of a Hammer House of Horror movie about a spooky door/portal to another time/place/spookiness.



(Wednesday, March 4th)

Tax dodging - 365

(Tuesday, March 3rd)

Stickers - 365

I FOUND this sticker during the blog awards and hoped I would meet herself (I don't think I did - though given the night in it, it is entirely possible that I bent her ear and am completely oblivious to that fact). But I stuck it on my purse and it stayed there for a week, which is verified by the sticker's dirty dog ears. There was a fair bit of sticker swapping over the weekend, I was Cian from Irish Election at one point :)

Fighter daffodils - 365

THIS little daffodil is a fighter, it's bulb was discarded following a planting I did before Christmas. And I was amazed to see this sprout, even though its not planted and there isn't any soil other than a small scattering in this container. Its all open now, I should get a pic of it before it keels over :)



(Sunday, March 1st)

Sunshine and storm - 365

I KNOW I said I would resist posting more images of this view, but I lied. I couldn't resist this.



(Saturday, February 28th)

Out the window - 365

I WAS in Limerick recently and stitched this together from about seven individual shots, you can see it large here and really large here.



(Friday, February 27)

The School Run - 365

(Thursday, February 26th)

Second glances - 365

THIS mannequin was causing some second glances during the morning rush hour.



(Wednesday, February 25th)

Move - no way - 365

'You expect me to move.'

Homework - 365

(Monday 23rd February)

Bride and Groom - 365

I CAN'T believe it has taken me this long to take my 365 updated. I have pics from most of the days (stressing most days) and am attempting to find each day's contribution which isn't easy considering I have literally thousands of pics taken since the blog awards, which was the last time I updated.

Anyway I will try to get them up in the next while and here's the first one, from Sunday, February 22nd, the day after the blog awards. I took this at the airport when this couple where also making their way home after the hen weekend. You should have seen the groom trying to get out of the taxi!

Pixie party on St Patrick's Day - are you in?

WHAT a week I've had, saying I have been mad busy in work would be an understatement. While I have been keeping up with my 365 project (bar Monday or was it Tuesday when I had to buy a replacement lens following a mishap at last weekend's Irish Blog Awards Photomeet), I have not found time to actually post about the awards, the wonderful hotel , the wonderful staff at the wonderful hotel, the photowalk, etc etc; all of those will be done to some degree in the coming days.

But I had to post this evening about Pixie's big St Patrick's Day goings-on.

Marcus from Pixie has managed to get some amazing things together for bloggers and photobloggers on St Patrick's Day (Dublin), check this list out.

* 20 bloggers and photobloggers will be invited to watch the St Patrick's Festival parade from a vetted viewing area. Each will be given an official wristband to gain access to this exclusive VIP area.
* 4 bloggers and photobloggers will be invited to watch the parade from the Festival Grandstand.
* 2 photobloggers will be invited to join the world media and take photos of the parade from the elevated position from the official open topped Media Bus which is positioned on the parade route.
* 2 Pixie users will chosen (subject to a security check) and given a Golden Pass which provides exclusive access to the parade route on the day. Only 12 Golden Passes will be issued this year to the international media and this is the first time photographers outside of the national and international media have been invited on into the parade route. This is HUGE.

This is HUGE, absolutely massive in fact and all you have to do to be in with a chance of getting seriously up close and personal shots of the parade without a gaggle of people in front of you is to blog about it (and link to the Pixie blog post on the big day), tweet about it or retweet @stpatricksfest.

After all the fun of the day those taking part are being invited to "continue the Pixie Party after the parade and join in the fun at the Guinness Storehouse's annual Paddy's Day festival". As well as that there are also prizes for the photographs that best capture the spirit of the festival (sponsored kindly by Canon).

You can count me in, it certainly beats trying to take pics past grown men who manage to squeeze their way past children to the front ;) Well done to Marcus, this is brilliant.