So here’s me, innocently heading out of the office at just before 1pm to go and install a router in the DEG facility on the Nangor Road (for non dubs, this is about ten miles from the city centre, and at least 40 minutes in a car if you’re lucky). This is fairly okay – plug router in, plug link from other place in, not working. Bugger. Try lots of things to make sure its not me, and then ring $TELCO and ask them to fix it. Spend afternoon in data centre bored out of my tree, waiting for them to do their test it, fix it, routine etc. etc….
Anyway, about five o’clock it becomes apparent that $TELCO aren’t going to get this fixed (its clearly getting to the send engineers on site to test stage, and the other end closes at 5:30 and its not urgent enough to justify paying for it to be kept open). So I decide to ring a taxi, as I have a very important (to me) appointment in the city centre at 6. We ring four taxi firms – best we can do when we reach the fourth is an hour. Decide said appointment will have to be cancelled.
BUT WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? Every single time I get into a taxi the driver when asked will tell you there are too many taxis on the road? Really? So why is it when I’m in one of the remaining large data centres in the so called Digital Hub that I can’t get a taxi for an hour? This isn’t New Year, this isn’t Christmas. This isn’t even three o’clock on a Saturday morning when the night clubs close. This is a comparatively normal Thursday evening and I’m sitting in whats left of Ireland’s Digital Hub. Woe betide the next taxi driver that says there are too many taxis on the road – there clearly aren’t enough.