Laundry

Got a new laundry bin for the bedroom. Quite handily, it's separated into light and dark sections, which means I have to sort the laundry, saving my wife the job. All good.

Well, apart from the fact that both my better half and I are, or more accurately, used to be of the gothic persuasion. Which kinda leaves teh the "light" side of the bin a little empty, while the "dark" side is crammed like, well, like lots of very dark clothes crammed into a small place. I've always been crap with similes.

Another day, another ... well. We'll see.

Haven't even checked my email yet... Today is going to be a good day.

Oooh ooh ooh

I've got an idea. How about the entire team bar me goes to lunch at the same time. Then, I can take all the calls that come in, including yours, and then have your customers chasing me for results. Sound good to you? Yeah? Well go fuck yourselves, you bunch of self centered wankpots.

Yay

Happy birthday Roooooooooo!

See that kitten? That's me that is.

Little time to blog, too much work. Short story... too many arseholes, not enough engineers. Looking forward to home, family, food, WoW. Maybe even in that order too.

Still, there's nothin more infuriating that working your bollocks off only to be accused of not doing it properly. Apart from working your bollocks off while some slack bastard jokes about on the phone all day. Or updates his blog... whoops.

Later.

Adorable...

Ahhhh....

Weekend

...was good, went to the joust, saw bugger all jousting, but there were plenty of girlies in corsets. Not that I was looking, or anything. I just happened to notice. In passing, like.

Heh.

Roo and I had a few beers with Kem and Angels, talked crap over a pretty good chinese meal. Invented Spocksticks. Like chopsticks, but using fingers. In a Spockesque "Live long and prosper" stylee. Still doesn't help with rice though. Took a little video of one of the cats thieving a drink off the table, the little sod. I think it was Lilo. Stitch was under teh the table somewhere, searching for crispy-fried-shredded-beef fallout. Caught Conor dancing too. Blackmail material. Video phones we like.

Pinched a nerve in my neck this morning, somehow. Can't move my head properly. Taken some pink pill for it. Not working. Might have been a mint, but it tasted like shite.

Most amusing quote of the day so far: "I'm so gawth I fart bats and shit patchouli" - I_fart_bats
The upside being not having to buy air freshner for the khazi, the downside being its damn obvious who farted in the elevator.

Nothin else for now.

Old ToSser.

Congrats to Big Gareth and Ali on the birth of their lil boy!

Never underestimate...

Stupid people in any quantity. It seems the solo idiots are just as dangerous as the pack. Usually because they are steadfastly convinced that they are the one authority on everything, and if they were running the world it would all be just so, everything is so simple if you just look at it hte the right way.

Yeah. That's a special sort of naivety. The worst case of this brand of moron is the moron that calls you up, tells you precisely what the problem is, and then how they think it should be fixed. Never mind little rules like routing and subnetting... they're only guidelines, right? Yeah, guidelines... And of course they appreciate being told it won't work that way.

Why not? Because that's not how IP works... you run a network? Several? How? Which is about the time it all becomes my fault. Fortunately, I've got broad shoulders, and, to be honest, I delight in getting things working. Unfortunately for you, my dear webmonkey, I delight more in proving people wrong. So combining both is some form of workgasm, I spose the word is.

Here's the biter for most of the arrogant bastards. I'm polite as I do it. It's my little slap in the face for people who give me a really hard time, all sorts of grief, threats, abuse... I live for that little moment of clarity... when you can almost hear the click, as they realise they have been talking out of their arse for the last few days. For everything else, there's Mastercard.

While I'm ranting: if you need to talk to me, and your desk is less than twenty feet from mine, get off your arse and walk over here. Coz I'm not gonna be answering the phone. Caller ID sucks, eh? Oh, on the same subject, don't bloody call me for a phone number of the bloke sitting next to me. Either look it up on the intranet, or excercise a little logic, maybe even going as far as to try the next number up or down from my extension.

Lazy people irritate me.

Lighthearted update rescheduled for tomorrow. Heh.

Joust!

I'm going to see people knock other people off horses with big sticks this weekend. Should be a lot of fun. Oh, and then there's mead too. Yay for honey flavoured hangovers.

Todays randomness

Why have a firewall if you're going to blow an all ports, all protocols hole through it?

Why can a mobile/cellular handsfree kit pick up the piercing whine of a two-year-old with an axe to grind at five hundred yards, but not the person who is trying to talk into it?

I don't want to take it with me. I don't want to go.

Will people ever look at what they're buying? I swear I'm gonna quit work to sell paperclips as document retention assemblies, at about four quid a pop. Three for a tenner, guvnor, cos I like the look of ya.

Cars need bonnet/hood-mounted chain cannons. Only front facing weaponry though. So when you, Mister-Carvy-Bastard, cut me up driving through Arundel because you are an arse, I get to spray the back of your car with heavy arms fire. And people wonder why firearms are illegal in this coutry. Me, that's why. There's nothing more that you're average tech support wants to do after a day in the trenches than to find some twat in a company beemer and riddle it with bullets.

I like cats.

Cats, however, seem indifferent to me. And the rest of the world, come to think of it. Well, the rest of the world that's not catnip.

Badgers, on the other hand, I'm not so keen on. Whatever Beatrix Potter et al would have you believe about badgers is all bollocks. They're not friendly, wise old animals with a lot of time on their hands for helping out friends, when not cataloging a vast library of literary masterpieces. They're vicious minded little shits. With sharp teeth and really nasty claws.

Oh, and just so I fit in with almost every other blog/lj on the planet... HBP. HP fangasms.... OMG!!!! (number of exclamation marks may vary) must be the most over used expression on the 'net at the moment. All thanks to you J.K.R. Cheers. Well, at least the slashficfans have some new material to bastardise. Or sodomise, according to rumour.

There must be some sort of professional name for the inability to type the word "the". The slightest lapse in concentration and it turns into teh every time. Balls, now I need to spell check.

Warranty void if seal is broken. Doesn't say a damn thing about it being peeled back by carefully sliding a stanley blade underneath it though, does it?

I have, on my desk, a mug that bares teh the slogan "Smoking is my choice, so fuck off". Which strikes me as amusing now, as I quit over a month ago.

A lesson my colleague learned today: Honking, shouting at, and flipping off random cars is a no-no, particularly when said random car is an undercover copper. Before his morning donut. Oooh, a stereotype. Pardon me.

Later.

A nasty case of nuts

Education by abstinence is a bad thing.

Go Visit.

Addict.

No. More. WoW. Go. To. Bed. Dammit.

Seriously addictive game.

Idiocy to the power of n

The nursery group my son goes to decided today that they were not going to test his blood sugar levels until he had put his shoes and socks on. This is ok for ten minutes, but to delay his blood test by well over an hour is down right negligent. I'm off for a word with them tomorrow. I except they'll make up some bollocks excuse, I'll shout and rant a bit. That's usually a good starting point, and I'll play it by ear from there. Slappings will abound, then we'll all go home for tea and biscuits (with no sugar, of course). /Tangent... since my nipper was diagnosed with diabetes, I've drastically reduced my own sugar intake... and had the first two cavities/fillings of my life. Go figure.

In other news... WoW, so far, is teh win. Love it. It's pretty much recaptured the fun the original EQ had. Granted, I've not played a char over lvl 10 yet, but my Tauren warrior is a load of fun, and the undead warlock is cool to. The pet imp amuses me intensely. They've kept the Warcraft sense of humour in there.

Bai bai, SOE

No more EQ or EQ2 for me. I'm done with Sony's MMORPG's. Since adding UK servers, all they've done is split the customer base, with some people transferring account, and some staying. So those that moved, well got a half populated server, those that stayed got a server populated at US peak times, with even less Euro players than before. Eh, never mind. There's still Guildwars and WoW - which I'm just installing. Still, I'll miss the mates I met on Saryrn throughout the 4 and a half years I played there. Best of luck to you all, whatevah you're doing now. I know Llu is in Canada (heh, bloody should know it), Cor and Tel are playing WoW, Cuf, Krags and Ban are still running Titans ragged. Angels n Kem I'll see next weekend (and more than likely Gruff, Marna, Magg, Chipp et al). I imagine Ken and Weg are roaming about somewhere making fart jokes. And Rose too, wherever she went all those years ago. And of course, all those people that made Sodalisae what it was (too numerous to list, but lets start with Sven, Ox, Undaan, Bini, Eel, Lemb, Ullain, ...) . Shade of Hope, Denu of Sar, and The Gryphons were fun too, while they lasted.

WoW review later, I guess.

New fangled wotsit

We use a fax server. It uses OCR to scan faxes, filter all the crap out, attach the fax to an email message, and forward said message onto an email account. It's run off the back of an old Sportster 28.8kbps modem. I'm showing my age when I say people who had a 28.8kbps connection were just flash bastards, Imeanwhoneedsthatsortofbandwidthanyway? Back on topic. Occasionally, the modem drops off. I dunno if its the fax software, modem drivers, server or modem itself. I don't care, it only happens once a week at most.

I've just been the subject of a mini rant. The topic was how paper fax was better, more reliable, you got the finished article in your hand, it didn't break down, the worst that could happen was it would run out of ink/toner or paper, and how much better faxes used to be. Y'know, when all this was just bloody fields. Now, I'd accept this rant, if it had come from a set-in-his-ways old git. Like, say, me. The fact it came from a bloke that's a good few years younger than me, and often gets mistaken for being even younger, is what had me pissing myself from start to finish. Bloody kids today, eh?

Was I sarcastic? Nooooooo, not me.

Yacht, anyone?

Arriving at the train station today, I had a leaflet thrust into my hand. Not the usual Dianetics crap, or "Work from home and earn millions", or whatever. No.. today, I earned a mini copy of Yachting Monthly. What's even better, is if you turn it upside down, what shoud be the back cover is actually another magazine. Practical Boat Owner was now mine as well! Imagine the joy.

I can't help thinking, looking back at the population of platform 1, Chichester train station, that somehow, YM and PBO missed their target demographic. Unless they were aiming to make small children happy by giving them something to take the piss out of, then rip up.

On the upside, I know (as far as you can know anything from a mini-magazine article) how to strip and service the winch on a boat now, including maintenance for the gears, roller bearings and pawls. Maybe that'll come in useful one day.

Hee hee hee

Check out todays Sinfest. Love it. Permalink tomorrow.

Easy when you know how

Got a background image. No great feat, but I'm proud of myself. Having worked with internet security devices and similar for too long now, you'd have thought I could get an image into a webpage. CSS? WTF? Finally found a nice lil site that documents lots about it here. Not had much of a chance to look at whatever else this is capable of, but I will. So expect a bunch of broken stuff before long, then a few weeks of me breaking it more trying to fix it, until I upload a default profile and start the cycle again XD.

BTW, the background image is a darkened, cropped section of Our Next Way of Life, by the talented Deviant RossIngnoL.

Blood sugar

My little boy has an ear infection. Nothing serious, but its playing merry hell with his diabetes. And the antibiotics the doc prescribed have sugar in. Go figure. Makes balancing the right amount of insulin fun. Got about 3 hours sleep last night between making sure he had enough to drink (so he can flush out the sugar the insulin doesn't get rid of), and doing blood sugar and ketone tests. Did the bloods for his hba1c, and it's gonna be terrible, but we've changed his insulin regime now and it seems to be keeping his levels under 10mmol. Not stellar, but better than the 15-25 they were at >.<;;

Work now, random stuff later.

Secret Super Serum

Link

Trains...

Bloody jobsworth train guard closed all the sodding doors before I could get on the train... peurile activity really, seeing as I was the only person running down the platform to catch the train. Still, I suppose if you're a train guard, you've got to get your kicks where you can. Just made me want to get my mo'bike license that much more now.

OMFGWTFBBQ!!1!11!!eleventy-one!

Seems that a number of people in my immediate vicinity have been struck down with an attack of rabid supidity. Now, I'm not a rocket scientist, or a brain surgeon. But I do own a little common sense. So, when someone asks me if they can install a URL filter on a machine, I'd like to hope it doesn't already have a different URL filtering app on it. Ha. Wrong. Missed. Do not pass GO, do not collect £200. Just try to recover the fucking horrendous mess that was once a fairly useful and active URL filter. It's not that it can't be done. It just requires a little logic, if you intend to chain them. But noooooo. Slap it on, mess with it for five minutes, then forget it ever existed, leaving the mess for some other poor bastard to clear up. Still, it's only a little thing.
Then there's the floppy drive. It doesnt work. I know this. I asked a colleague to replace the drive, and test it. Then, if it worked, to isntall a SCSI card, and cable up the drive that was already in there. Ho, fuck no. I wandered in there two hours later after I'd just been asked "Did you get it working yet?". Floppy, scsi card, and cabling, all still on the side. People never fail to amaze me.

Ho well.

Y'know, I'm not going to refer to easy things as "hardly brain surgery" anymore. It seems to be triviallising (is that a word?) brain surgery. From now on, it's gonna have to be "It's hardly breathing, is it?"

Or something.

Later, cynics.

Rawr

Totally unproductive lunch hour. Still, some reactions to 7/7:

Warren Ellis

Steve - Quotes of the day

Keef Baker

Ruthi the Dormouse

Yeah, I know they're LJ quotes... so what? Fancy a pint?

First Post!

yeah, well, like anyone else was gonna get here first.