I’m frankly baffled. We are in the run up to a General Election here in Ireland. All the media pundits are quoting 24th May as the date of the (as yet unannounced) election. This would require our parliament to be dissolved at the latest next week. Ireland runs a Proportional Representation/Single Transferable Vote system. It …
What the…? – Irish Political coverage ignores the Elephant in the room Read More »
The Register has this story about a fault in Dell Laptops. What is interesting about the problem is that it seems to expose some ‘failures’ in the passing of information internally within Dell, not least about their Direct2Dell website. Some interesting comments are made about UK trading standards. I’m hoping to have a post up …
Deary me. Life with Dell just gets better and better. Not 2 hours after I finish writing up my experiences for the IAIDQ Q2 Newsletter then I find myself on the phone to a nice guy from Dell who is asking me about my DVD drive issues (phone call at 15:25 today approx). I had …
The DobBlog is 1 year old today. What have we achieved? Well, about 50,000 words on the state of the Irish Electoral Register, syndicated publication of an article based on those words in two International newsletters for IT/Business Intelligence professionals and a wordpress template I’m finally not unhappy with. The electoral register is still buggered …
First Post Anniversary… Electoral Register Processes Still Broken Read More »
Right… just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water…. Regular readers of the DoBlog will know that I recently bought a world of pain and torment a laptop from Dell. The very first problem I had was with the graphics card – it was not what I had ordered. After …
The DVD drive on my Dell laptop failed (again) over the weekend so I requested a replacement as per their warranty. The technician requested my address and an alternate delivery address and also asked for details of my availablility over the 48hr period from Tuesday. I provided my home address (Wexford) and the address of …
There is a bit of a bru-hahah brewing over yonder at McGarr Solicitors. It appears that their offices are acting for Finian McGrath and Catherine Murphy in their challenge to the Constitutionality of the forthcoming (but still to be announced) General Election. What baffles me is that in September of last year there was strong …
Last night I was doing some housekeeping on the site and I noticed that the year-ometer on the DoBlog is about to turn over. The first post on www.obriend.com (as it was then) was on 18th April 2006. It was about the Electoral Register. With an Election looming in the next few weeks it is …
There’s an interesting post on Tuppenceworth from Fergal reviewing “Inside the Emerald City”, which is an expose of the shenanigans in the Green Zone in Iraq. I like the term “Green Zone”. It reminds me of of the recorded PA you often hear in US airports: “The White Zone is for loading and unloading.” I …
Occasionally I find time to read a good book. Unfortunately I don’t often know it is a good book until I’ve started reading it, at which time I’ve invested the effort in opening the book and ignoring the phone that I plough on regardless. Three books that I read recently that gave me more than …