Fitzpatricks Hotels "Joy of Summer" Competition

First off, full disclosure, although I work in the Travel trade I am in no way associated with Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel. To be honest, after seeing their latest marketing ploy make its way to my inbox I wouldn't want to be either.



The above image was attached to the following email:

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel has great news for you...

To celebrate the launch of its wonderful Summer Break Packages, we would like to treat you to a wonderful weekend of luxury.

You and a friend will enjoy :

- a 2 night stay in a Luxurious Suite

- wine & chocolates on arrival

- a sumptuous dinner in one of Fitzpatricks Award-Winning restaurants

And

- a wonderful relaxtion treatment of choice in our Treatment Rooms

To indulge yourself in this weekend away, all you have to do is:

Simply send this email to 8 friends and cc competition@fitzpatricks.com by Monday, June 15th for your chance to enjoy a relaxing weekend away.

Please see our Summer Break Packagesn Attached to forward to your 8 friends"

Essentially what they've done is ask 1 person to give up 9 email addresses in order to win a competition. So what do they do with the email addresses after that? I can guess, I'm sure you can too.

I suppose this just gives them more publicity though, doesn't it... *sigh*

Sons of Anarchy

I saw the ad for Sons of Anarchy while watching TV there a few weeks ago. Ron Perlman, bikes... it looked good to me. Not in an assless leather chaps sense but in a biker gang sort of way. MCs have always interested me. Usually the only exposure regular people would get to them is seeing them pass on the road or maybe the odd Discovery Channel documentary about them.

From reading a few biker forums I'm a member of I had heard good things. One comment even compared the first season to season's 1 - 4 of Lost. I'm a big Lost fan so I expected good things!

I'll say this... Having watched the pilot I was in no way disappointed! It had it all: Ron Perlman, bikes, guns, gratutious violence, an interesting sub-plot and best/worst of all (I can't decide whether it's a good or bad thing...) unanswered questions to get you to tune in next week.

Definitely looking forward to watching the full season. Hopefully it's not another Prison Break. That show should have ended after the first season.

How I started listening to Dillenger Escape Plan

I woke up on Saturday morning with Aphex Twin's Come to Daddy going through my head. Sung it in the shower too!

It reminded me of college, some of the people I used to know and ultimately one of them who during a drunken conversation mentioned a cover version of Come to Daddy he had heard by "some metal band".

Through the wonder of Google and YouTube I came upon Dillenger Escape Plan. After listening to their cover a few times (read repeatedly clicking 'Replay' when the tune finished) I started to listen to some of their other stuff. Have to say, I haven't looked back since then. I've got three of their albums, even when they cost 22 euro in the "sales" (how come nothing you ever really *want* is on sale).

The whole concept of mathcore is pretty interesting to me also. A topic for another day perhaps...

The Recession Jar

I've been working as a professional for a few years now. I was until mid-way through last year doing a lot of contracting for Architectural firms in Dublin and had been hearing of 'cut-backs', 'economic uncertainty', the 'downturn' and many other phrases like that since January of 2008.

Even in my current workplace you hear those words a lot and you see things like KPIs, Cost Cutting exercises and the rest being used like they were going out of fashion.

So here's my proposal: a swear jar, only the swear words are recession related! 20 cent a 'swear'. The money could be used within the office (or home or wherever) or to make it really hurt could be donated to charity. My guess is if it was the latter the amount of swearing would really decline. People would be much more likely to curb it if they knew they wouldn't be getting something back...

I'm back!

Well, I've a bit more free time at the moment so I can start posting (albeit erratically) to this weblog.

I'm thinking I might post some of my recession beating tips soon. I'm also toying with the idea of publishing my ideas books. Maybe something I've thought over the last few years will spark someones imagination... or maybe they won't. I dunno.

I've Moved...

I'll no longer be posting to this weblog, however, since you can never really delete something from the internet that's already been published (Archive.org, Google cache etc), I'll leave the posts here, albeit with strikethrough...

If you want to follow my progress, visit http://shaneryan.info

I thought this was funny...

Categories: Bird Flu|Funny|Images

Bank of Ireland Credit Card charges

So I'm looking at my credit card bill last month wondering 'How the hell did it get to be that much again?' and I'm about to throw out the insert that the bank sent with it... (which I usually do, they're always sending some crap advertisements with the bill) but this time I don't. For some reason, my roving eye has seen the words 'Charges' and '1st March 2007'.

So I read the leaflet, which is ambiguous at best, but seems to intimate to me (as much as an inanimate piece of paper can...) that I will be charged €3.80 for the first sheet and €2.50 for each subsequent sheet for my credit cards bills from 1st March 2007. '€3.80,' I said to myself, 'Are they high?'

So I rang Card Services (1890 251 251) to find out what the deal was. Turns out, the charge isn't for monthly Credit Card bills, but only for reprints... Niceone.

As for the other thing (huge cc bills), I'm going to pull an Eddie Hobbs on the thing: Take it out of my wallet and only use for essential purchases. We'll see how much of a bill there is next month ;)

Categories: Finance|Banking|Charges|Money|Eddie Hobbs

Ryan's Rules

Rule Number Twenty-Five: If you're not passionate about your work, find the type of work you are passionate about, you'll be a lot happier.

(Read this to find your passion..)

Categories: Ryan's Rules|passion|work