"illegitimum non carborundum"
Legless Blog - Ian Reed / John McMiken
Legless blog archive for August 2008
For my current Blog click here!
British expat amputee in Thailand
'Let it be'
Legless Blog -I first decided to create this blog page after seeing all of the bad publicity given to and constant hounding of my fellow legless celebrity, Heather Mills on many other websites and in the media in general. This page I created as a place where I can state my personal opinions, thoughts and musings openly, and just share my views and feelings with the Internet World.
This is my legless website, I pay for it and I am the manager, owner/boss/ruler of it, so 'legless or not', as 'freedom of speech' is still a basic human right in true democratic countries where you can view this blog, then I feel that this is somewhere that I can speak my mind without recourse. This is not a commercial page, it is just my own social media page. Nobody has forced any of you to come here and nobody is holding you here, so if you don't agree or like what you are reading here, then please feel free to leave at anytime!
As someone who has exactly the same physical injuries that I have, I find that the hounding of Heather Mills by the media is disgusting. I now see how celebrities, legless or not, can never have a normal life, because they never have time to themselves without someone from the media trying to drag up any kind of dirt from what would just be a normal everyday incident to anyone else, but in Heather's case any normal incident gets sensationalised by the media. Heather's physical disability seems to incite them more, and being honest, if I personally was hounded the way that Heather is, then some of these media personnel would consider being only 'legless' a bonus after the physical injuries that I would personally inflict upon them. I am thoroughly disgusted at the treatment of Heather, I suppose you could call it a feeling of 'Legless unity', so if any of the media responsible are reading this blog, then in Paul McCartney's own words "Let it be". Listen to the music.
We are both legless!
****
You can email me anytime at: blog@leglessfool.com
'The Legless Blog September 2008 by The Legless Fool'
Sorry about the lack of posts at the moment, I am still trying to compensate for what the stupid, irresponsible, useless web hosting, Fasthosts UK, did to me. Even though I have already corrected the obvious links on my other website main pages to point to leglessfool HQ instead of the now dead 'legless HQ website', but I have so many underlying pages and RSS feeds, that this is going to take me quite a long time to sort all of the links out properly. To build up these links and pages took me six months and they were wiped out in an instant by just the click of a mouse button by stupid, irresponsible, useless web hosting, Fasthosts UK, I just hope that it doesn't take me six months to repair it all again. A bit of good news here though, Google has indexed my new website quite quickly and it is now quite high on their search results pages for my normal keywords, the other major search engines are also following slowly, so hopefully this should all be sorted in a quite reasonable amount of time.
I did eventually get to my local 'The Pickled Liver' last night, but there were none of the regulars in there. I later found out from the landlord's sister, that Nick the landlord is away in the UK at the moment and that is probably why there was nobody in there that I knew last night. I know myself from experience as a pub landlord, that a good pub revolves around people, not just the establishment itself.
Cheers for now 
The legless fool looking for the missing link
A responsible and dependable web hosting company that I can recommend
After being away for so long in Penang and Hat Yai, I had missed my usual maintenance for this blog, so today I had to archive the blog for August and make this blog a bit more concise just for September and easier to load. I have to do the same for the RSS feed also, so I have my work cut out for me at the moment. I was hoping to visit my local 'The Pickled Liver' tonight, so hopefully I can get this maintenance finished in time to have an evening out in my legless local, something that I haven't done for a couple of weeks now.
Cheers for now
The legless fool looking forward to a night out
I arrived back from Penang two days ago, but I am feeling very tired after my trip this time and I have just been sleeping for a while. I shall get this blog going again soon, but I am still tired at the moment and I just needed to let you know that I am back home in Bangkok now. The trip to Penang this time was a little different, I shall tell you all about it in a new story I have planned, but that will probably be in a few days when I am feeling a little more energetic.
Stay tuned! I shall be up and running normally again soon.
Cheers for now
The legless fool feeling tired at the moment
Having been badly let down by my irresponsible website host Fasthosts, UK, I am now having to start again to try and get my 'Legless Headquarters' website back up in the high rankings with the search engines, that took me almost six months of hard work to attain. Even though the website name (title) is still the same, the URL or domain name is different http://www.leglessfool.com/ and this is what the search engines register, it will probably take me another six months to get back to the same level again. So six months of hard work with the search engines has gone down the drain by me trusting Fasthosts, UK and wrongly thinking that they were a responsible hosting company. Moving the website to the new URL is easy, but the SEO work and search engine rankings take a lot of time and hard work. At least this time from experience, I know that Namesco is a trusted website hosting company, I just don't understand why I made the mistake of trying a new company like Fasthosts, UK only to find out that they are useless and totally irresponsible, six months of work lost for the sake of them not just waiting a couple more days for a MASSIVE payment of £5.69, due to a bank hiccup.
Well, the one good thing that has come out of all of this is that I can now delete Fasthosts, UK from my list of hosts for any future websites that I have planned.
Cheers for now
The legless fool with more months of hard work ahead
Well, this week certainly has had many surprises, not least of all, my website being shut down, but today, I phoned the Thai train information office and I was told that the train that I am booked on to Butterworth tomorrow is not operating. I asked them when it would be operating again and they could not give me a straight answer, they didn't know. So tomorrow I have to go to Hualumpong railway station and try and sort this out, I only have one week left to go on my last visa and this could be a problem for me, I am already making contingency plans, just in case they still are not running in one weeks time, but hopefully they will be, I am looking forward to my next trip to Penang, it would be a good break for me.
Cheers for now
The legless fool going nowhere
With the unexpected closedown of my leglesshq website by Fasthosts UK, I could not just let five months of my work disappear from the web at the click of some stupid host's mouse, so today I contacted my reliable host http://www.names.co.uk and asked them to transfer leglesshq.com to them, but they informed me that the name was still locked by the previous hosts and I would have to get them to release it. This was obviously going to take some time and I now have no interest in communicating with people that are totally irresponsible and not service oriented. So using my logic, I came up with a new idea, I have a registered domain name of www.leglessfool.com with Namesco which I have had for a while, but I just had it parked and redirected to leglesshq, so today I got Namesco to setup a new hosting package, which unlike Fasthosts UK, they quickly setup and took payment for in ten minutes. I then proceded to upload all of my leglesshq website to www.leglessfool.com all 170 MB of it and it is now running, the links are going to take quite a lot of time to get right again and it will take some time for the search engines to register this domain, but at least it is visible again now so I feel that my hard work has not been totally in vain and I can trust Namesco as a host to act responsibly.
I had to do this today, because I am leaving for Penang again on Saturday and I needed this problem sorted out before I go, so that I don't have to worry about things too much whilst I am away. Thank you Namesco!
Cheers for now
The legless fool with his new domain
My monthly pension was paid into my bank account last Friday, so I thought that I should take out enough money to cover my accommodation and upcoming Penang trip. I had just about £400 in the bank and I thought that £300 should cover everything nicely. I went to a local ATM machine here in Thailand and attempted to take out what I thought was the local equivalent of £300, but it wouldn't accept it, so I went to another ATM machine and I got the same result. I then tried to get what I thought was the equivalent of £150 and it paid out. So I tried for £150 again and it would not accept it . I had to pay £100 for my accommodation and the £50 that would be left, would be nowhere near enough for me to travel to Penang with. So I decided to try one more time to get another £100 out and it paid out. So just out of curiosity, I tried to get a further £50 out and I got the message 'Transaction cancelled contact issuing bank'. Then I thought that maybe this was due to a daily limit on my card, so I didn't try again that day.
The next day I tried to get money out again from an ATM machine and I got the message 'Transaction cancelled contact issuing bank' again, for any amount that I tried to get. It was then weekend, so I thought that trying to contact the bank directly would be fruitless, but I decided to send them a message through their online banking system asking them what the problem was. I got a reply yesterday from the bank telling me that a 'Fraud marker' had been placed on my card and they gave me a UK telephone number to ring to try and sort it out. So I rang the number and I was informed that the marker had been placed because the card had been used to try and access more than my daily limit of £300, up until then, I did not know that I had a limit, I just thought that it had to be less than my bank balance and the reason that I had tried to access more than £300 was due to fluctuations in the currency exchange rates. They then lifted the marker off my card and assured me that it would work again now and just to be sure, I got them to assure me that it would work in Penang too.
Today I received an email from the hosting company that hosts http://www.leglesshq.com named 'Fasthosts UK' and they were very threatening, stating that my services with them would be suspended because of a missed payment, which they had tried to get when my card was blocked. I went to their website and when I logged in to my control page, they had an announcement for me stating that I owed them money for one month hosting £5.69 and that the normal control was not accessible, so using the 'feedback form' on there, I told them that a problem with my bank card had just been cleared yesterday and I asked them to be patient and they would receive their payment when they next applied for it. I do have another UK host for my other websites http://www.names.co.uk and even though I have been with them for three years, I thought five months ago, that I would try Fasthosts for my new domain http://www.leglesshq.com, because they seem to have a few advantages and they were very slightly cheaper. I then thought that that would be the end of it and that they would get their money in the next few days. But tonight! I started my normal SEO and page ranking work with the search engines and when I was due to display http://www.leglesshq.com from a link from the search engines, all that I got was an error message on my browser stating:
The web page at null might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address
I tried many times with the same result, so this company has pulled the plug on me completely, I have been working on my new website http://www.leglesshq.com everyday for the last five months, so now, for the sake of waiting for a couple of days for payment of an outstanding amount of £5.69, 'Fasthosts UK' without any warning, have this evening just removed five months of my legless hard work from the web/internet, are they bad or what?
I definitely would not recommend 'Fasthosts UK' for anyone to host their website with, they are totally irresponsible and have no idea about customer relations or service.
Below is my last communication with Fasthosts UK:
Dear Sir or Madam,
Quite obviously now, you are proving to me over this temporary banking hiccup, that you are a very childish company and not worth even bothering with and I shall be stating the same on my blog tonight. To close my website down over a mishap with my bank, shows that you are purely money oriented and have no idea whatsoever about customer relations or service. I came to you five months ago because I thought that you had some advantages, but now I see that it was a total mistake. I do have another host 'Namesco' that I use for my other websites and BLOG and in more than three years, I have never had any problems with them, despite banking hiccups, so I shall be moving http://www.leglesshq.com just as soon as I can, to somebody 1,000% more reliable than you.
Best regards
Ian Reed (a very dissatisfied customer)
P.S. All communication recorded and logged for my UK blog.
(No reply yet)
Cheers for now
The legless fool extremely annoyed
As I was passing by the area yesterday at about 5 pm, I decided to call in my new local 'The Pickled Liver' and have a couple of pints and a chat with some of the regulars there and also with Nick the owner/landlord, who is a great character. The pub soon filled up yesterday evening, there were plenty of people to talk with and it was very enjoyable. The main attraction yesterday was that England were playing Andorra at football at thirty minutes after midnight Bangkok time and with three large flat screen TVs around the room it is a great place to watch sport. I was really enjoying myself and lots of friends were buying me beers, so I stayed much longer than I expected and I was quite surprised at just how long I did spend there. Everyone eventually left and the pub was closed at 5 am this morning so I had spent twelve hours in the pub last night. As I said in my previous post, the problem with this pub is that it has too good an atmosphere and attracts me whenever I am nearby or even when I am far away. 
Cheers for now
The legless fool getting his liver pickled in Bangkok
Now that I am back in Bangkok again, I have met friends here that I had when I lived in Bangkok before. One of my friends who has a travel agency and hotel reservation company, Peter, invited me out for a drink and introduced me to a relatively new British pub in Bangkok and I found it to be a very good pub with a good atmosphere and friendly staff, the beer and food is also very reasonably priced and it has quickly become my new 'local' in Bangkok. The name of this pub is 'The pickled liver' and as it's logo it sports a picture of the late and great footballer George Best. As I said before, the atmosphere in this pub is excellent and I have very quickly made many new friends from the regular customers in there. The only problem that I have with the pub, is that it is too inviting for me and being on a limited budget now I have to be very careful with my money, so I am trying to limit my visits to this new local to just two nights a week. 
The pub has it's own website and for anyone who is interested in seeing this great British pub in Bangkok, then just click on this higlighted text to go to the pickled liver website
Cheers for now
The legless fool getting his liver pickled in Bangkok
I am gradually getting settled in to my new residence, but like anywhere new, it takes time to get things how you want them and to get into a new routine. My new room is a good size for me, the huge double bed takes up about fifty per cent of the area, but I am using that to my advantage. On one side of my bed I have placed my computer and on the other side I have placed some cooking facilities and the fridge with my beer in it . So my room is now a truly 'legless abode', when I go into my room, I sit on my bed, take my leg off and never have to put it on again until I decide to go out somewhere. I can just sit on my bed legless and roll from one side to the other to get anything that I want. This computer is now permanently connected to the internet and when I get tired at the computer and need to sleep, I just have to fall sideways onto my pillows, I few beers helps with this too.
Cheers for now
The legless fool getting organised in Bangkok
To my blog Archive for August 2008
For my Current Blog click here!
To my Legless Fool Headquarters site
P.S. "I don't remember reading the small print when I signed on for this life, in fact, I don't remember signing on at all, I was probably legless then too! So seeing as you wont let me resign, can we renegotiate the contract please?"
My first published book - Legless in Thailand
My other blog at the St Helens Star newpaper, UK
My home town St Helens, UK and their famous rugby team
Some of my short stories HERE
Biography of author John McMiken
MSN AOL Google Yahoo Netster Dogpile Excite Lycos
 |
Username: siamease Check out my CNET Profile |
