I finally got round to moving this site onto its brand new server (with an updated version of WordPress) so I can finally resume my ramblings!

Congratulations are due methinks to Barack Obama for becoming the next US President. I will be in Washington, DC for the inauguration in January, very much looking forward to that! 76 days and counting!

I promise I’ll keep my blog up to date this time, but then how many times have you heard that eh?

James

(Click to make bigger)

If you’re reading this message then we’re on our new server. Hooray!

Nothing but praise for BustedTees, they replied to my enquiries very quickly and were very polite (even said to have a good weekend!)

I went and bought “SHIFT Happens!!!1” and “Blow me“.

Very impressed with the T-shirts, and ’shift happens’ particulary caused a stir at work with clients saying it was very apt.

I’d recommend them to a friend, so go forth and purchase! I think there’s some kind of sale on too!

James.

“Although I was never officially affiliated with or worked at Dirty Microbe, I’m a personal friend of the founders.

After receiving a MySpace message from someone trying to track down Christian about an order, I did a Google search and found lists of complaints on blogs and forums, including this one.

Dirty Microbe has been going though severe financial trouble for a few months and has recently gone out of business and filed for bankruptcy. The founders are scrambling to liquidate the company’s assets to repay creditors, including outstanding orders. I’d advise anyone who is missing an order to do a chargeback as soon as possible.

Dirty Microbe was a very small company and unique in that they printed all shirts in house, by hand. I mean, so small that it was rare that more than two people were working at any given time in there. You can imagine the workload. Lack of manpower was one major reason they went under and I suspect the main reason for the silence now. It’s hard to imagine how much time it takes to go through the legalese for bankruptcy plus all the other stuff that has arisen from the situation. The owners have pretty much been slammed doing that, and they were already way backed up on orders and support requests.

Tens of thousands of dollars were invested in printing equipment, web store design, signing artists, affiliates, advertising, etc… and subsequently lost. There was no scam — believe it or not, order volume was relatively low and the value of all unshipped orders tiny compared to the investment. Many recall that Dirty Microbe shipped a lot of shirts before they went down.

I feel for anyone been burned by this, I’ve been shafted by buying stuff online before and I know it sucks. I’ve tried to advise the owners to make some sort of announcement so those looking for answers have some idea what happened, but they’ve been tough to get a hold of. I’m sure they’re just trying to get past what has been the most difficult time of their lives.

I’m going to cross-post this on a few of the other blogs in hopes of getting some word out to do a chargeback ASAP, as there is a time limit on those.”

So there you have it, probably the closest we’re going to get to an official repsonse to this.

There are now posts on tcritic, HideYourArms and T-Shirts Around the Internet.

Spread the word to the blogs people! And digg the article!

Over the weekend, my friends’ band, The Mondays, did their first “gig” at a street party on the Isle of Sheppey. To say they were nervous and their drummer was on holiday they sounded AWESOME.

Definitely a band  to keep an eye on in the future.

I have assumed the role of techie dude for them, so it’s down to me to make the website and deal with all the videos and styling side!

I’ve already started so check out….

• www.themondays.co.uk (Just a MySpace link at the moment)
• www.youtube.com/TheMondays07

Enjoy!
James.

UPDATE 2 (2nd August):
It seems people are having a slight amount of success contacting the owner, Christian von Kleist, on Facebook. I have sent him a message and I will update you with what he says.

Well, you know how they say good news travels fast but bad news travels faster? In that case, this should travel at about warp 9.

This Gordon Ramsay esque sentence should sum up the rest of my post:
Order T-shirt. Wait a month. Enquire. Hear nothing. Wait another month. Enquire again. STILL nothing. Pissed off.

Now, to go over that in more detail, back in May of this year (the 19th to be exact), I ordered a t-shirt from Dirty Microbe, as I found the shirt quite amusing (which I still do).

Now, their site said they were receiving an unusually large amount of orders, so would take a bit longer to ship (I was given a date of 9th June). Fair enough I thought.

What I didn’t expect was the fact it’s now 2 months tomorrow that I ordered the shirt and I STILL have nothing from them except from an order confirmation and automated repsonses from their “support ninjas” that they will reply to my query within 2 business days.

Put quite simply, this is NOT acceptable conduct for a business, and it seems I am not the only one experiencing this problem.

So until I hear otherwise, I offer you my advice:

Do not buy from Dirty Microbe. Do not buy from Dirty Microbe. Do not buy from Dirty Microbe.

Done.

Yes, no-one cares.

Yes, I’m going to start blogging again. Starting when something interesting happens. I’ll post tomorrow about my experiences with Forza Motorsport 2, as it’s an awesome game!

James.

Weiran says:
lol i confuse myself

Sums it up really. Haha

NB: This is quite long, and it took me ages to write, so go on, read it as I put a lot of effort in!

Thursday, 11th January 2007

The day started relatively normally, with work until 5.30.

On the way to my mums, I had to use all the backroads I knew to avoid Operation Stack^W on the M20 motorway^W which was causing, to quote the Orange travel line: “15 miles of stationery traffic. Severe delays. Avoid.” and also causing knock-on effects to the A249 and pretty much any major road around. To my joy, it only took me an hour to get back, which is about on-par with a journey in normal traffic on the main roads.

I went up to Layzells at about 8.45pm with my brother to meet a bunch of mates, Weiran and Andy, Ollie, Cod to name a few. It was karaoke night. As the night progressed and the drinks began to flow, I got more confident, and FINALLY (after months of them not having it) I got to sing White and Nerdy by Weird Al Yankovic! Needless to say, I nailed it!

And what is a trip to Layzells karaoke without bustin’ out Nelly’s Grillz with Waz and Andy?

Friday, 12th January 2007

Happy birthday to meeee! Funny how 21 feels the same as 20, except if I was in America I could now legally get drunk! I WILL take advantage of this fact at some point ;).

I got all the presents on my previous post, along with a lovely silver bracelet thing from my brother, some lovely cufflinks from my gran and a bunch of cheques totalling £156 (I never realised how generous all my family were, time for thank you cards!). Chris and Jon at work also got me a card, which I wasn’t actually expecting, didn’t know you guys cared if you’re reading this!

Another surprise was the helium balloon (complete with ‘21′ shaped confetti) that arrived in a box in the latter half of the day, thanks mum!!

Then it was off to Gatwick to pick up Phil from the Micra Sports Club and his friend ready for tomorrow’s antics. I should explain at this point it was Phil’s 20th on the Saturday too, so it was like an uber-joint-party!

After this we spent the rest of the night playing Pro Evo Soccer 6 on my 360, and I found out Phil has some mad skills at that game. The challenge to beat him was on! More on that later, but for now we move on to…

Saturday, 13th January 2007

Happy birthday to Phiiiil! Hehe. I remember being 20, it felt so grown up to be leaving those teenage years behind, they’ve stuck with you since year 8 at school so it seems very much like the end of an era when within a minute they’re all gone.

Woke up at about midday after a late night Pro Evo session, had a shower, then played a load more Pro Evo. I was originally supposed to go to the Co-Operative bank in Croydon to deposit my cheques into my Smile.co.uk account but they’d closed by the time I was human! Damn. I still haven’t put them in!

More Pro Evo…. Until about 4pm when Andy and Weiran arrive… Then more Pro Evo! Oh, and more drinks (for them anyway, I’m driving us to Upper Warlingham train station!).

We set off for the train station at about 7.45pm 7.52pm, and miss the 8.00pm train we were supposed to catch to London, so we hang around until 8.30pm for the next one. Thanks for writing ‘cock’ in the steam in my car windows guys!

Arrive at Farringdon for about 9.30pm and bang straight into the Wetherspoons nearby for a quick half hour drinking session to prep us for the night (because drinks in Turnmills are criminally expensive - £4.80 for a Wkd!) 2 pitchers of vodka+Red Bull and 2 shots of Sambuca and we’re ready for Turnmills!

Now, what’s the best way to explain the next 8 hours of dancing, and the pinnacle of the whole weekend…

F * * K I N G A W E S O M E ! !

Right, moving on… No, not really! Although I won’t discuss the specifics of boogying for 8 hours (yes I said boogying Stevie B!) let’s just say the music was absolutely awesome, hats off to all the DJs!

An interesting thing I discovered while there too is that you can get Nitrous Oxide in balloon form, and it is quite interesting, basically you laugh at everything and your body goes all tingly for about a minute. Best £2 I ever spent. It’s legal by the way, it’s just dentists laughing gas!

Here’s the obligatory drunk, hazy photos that you expect from a club that provides a smoke machine in the main room…

All in all, an awesome night, and I want to go again very soon! Smartie Partie throw one hell of a Turnmills event!

Sunday, 14th January 2007

Set off from Turnmills at about 6am, only to learn that the tube station doesn’t open until 8am… Of course! It’s a Sunday! ****!

Luckily Weiran knew of a 24 hour diner, called Tinseltown that’s only about a 10 min walk from Farringdon Tube Station, I’d recommend checking it out, the food there is amazing! Huge portions too!

We then returned to the tube station, paid for our tickets, then wandered onto the platform, only to glance up at the monitor and discover that there would be “…no trains operating across London until 8.15am” and even then all trains would terminate and begin at London Blackfriars!!
So that prompted a 30 min walk to Blackfriars and then a 30 min wait for a train! Finally got on the train and got to East Croydon station only to discover the train to Upper Warlingham wouldn’t be arriving for another 40 minutes! So that prompted another wait in a freezing cold waiting room which for the latter half of we shared with some drunk guy whose first words upon spotting us was “You lot have been out on the piss then”. Charming! He then proceed to say all sorts of random, hilarious, racist things, such as asking Weiran for a number 51! And to top it all off, when Phil spoke (he’s from near Manchester) this guy went “Way aii man! You from Newcastle”. What a legend.

We finally got home at about 11am, slept for about 3 hours, played a bunch more Pro Evo, Weiran and Andy left, I took Phil and his mate to Gatwick and went to sleep.

There we go. If you’ve got this far down, then I’m very impressed, you must be a true friend, and I thank you for reading! If you want more like this, then come out on the 12th January 2008 for my 22nd!!

James

By the way, I did beat Phil at Pro Evo in the end, 2-0! Woohoo!!

Plus a fiver for entry with the special pass I managed to find, you really cannot go wrong!

I’ll leave you with the flyer, I’ll be taking my camera with me too so I’ll try and take as many pics as I can!

James