Cart before horse, srsly.

My local train station has installed automatic barriers. So, no ticket, no entry... (remember this, it's important). Fine, cuts down on ticket evasion, costs, blahblahblah. Bet my season ticket price won't drop though.

Now, bearing in mind that the local populace (particularly the local chavs) are somewhat dimmer than a Tesco value lightbulb, this causes much confusion. The queues caused by idiots that can't work out which way up to put the ticket in (aside from the diagram right above the slot for the ticket), can't work out that expired tickets won't get them through, and general fuckwittery and excuses, are unbelievable. At first, it was a source of amusement. Now, to abate the general stupidity inherent in the local in-breeders, the guards just leave one gate open. And occasionally man it to check tickets. If they feel like it. Which leaves us where we were six months ago. Hurray! Lazy buggers.

Oh, the other point (I discovered this by sheer laziness), if the set of gates on platform 2 are closed and requiring tickets, take the bridge to the other side and wander through, they'll be open and probably unmanned. Saves all the arduous hassle of removing ticket from wallet, and stuffing it in the slot.

To the point! Or, one of them. Today, I needed to purchase a ticket. Wheee. So, I wandered into the station, espied the ticket machine, and then the penny dropped. Remember what I said earlier about no ticket, no entry? Yeah, the ticket machine is behind the barrier. So, without a ticket, you can't get through the barrier to get to the ticket machine to purchase a ticket to get through the barrier... oh, we've been here before. Impressive. Train station layout by Joseph Heller.

Possibly some mumblings of a literary nature later. Possibly not tho, given my reliability on updating.

Bai!

Conference bumblings

So, humanity in general can kiss my ass. No offence intended, but people are beginning to get on my tits (see previous angst-ridden entries for examples).

You can get a good feel for the calibre of someones personality purely by how they react when the shit hits the fan. Now, to be fair, some people are not good in a crisis. Those are not the people I am referring to. I prefer people to panic, as opposed to the next option. I'm more referring to the "It's everybody else's fault but miiiiiiine" collective. Arseholes.

Todays (first, of many, probably) example. Salesman wants conference call. Salesman gets instructions on how to set up conference call. Salesman screws it up. Techie (not I) attempts to help recover. Techie gets an earful. Salesman still manages to cock it up royally. Salesman then cannot understand why the tech team in general don't really care that he can no longer get to a particular network share. "Reboot". Although there are at least two quicker options, reboot was the least tech intensive, and most end-user inconvenient we could think of. With the side effect of working, too. Still, can't have everything.

Ah, life in support. You can't beat it. Not even with a really big stick.

Back soon

Long Day

So, today I gets into the office for 7:30. In the ay-emm. Round about the time most "normal" people (and I use that term veeeery loosely) are getting up and ready for their cornflakes, or whatever cereal's marketing machine grabbed them hardest before they last went shopping.

We had a minor "Sod's law" in the office yesterday. We needed to get a backup agent onto the webserver. In doing so, the webby buggered up the thumbnail generator on the server. In fixing the thumbnails, he buggered up mysql. At which point, we needed a backup. So we'd have needed a backup agent on the server. How did this all start? Hmm, vicious circle ftw.

So, anyhow, he fixed it today. And teh the backup agent now works. Well, when I say works, it means we can back up the files the server will let us have. Some of them, it just says "Er, no, not on your life mate." and kills the connection for us. Bastard. Tomorrows job, apart from adding RSA tothe SSH Application Gateway. Which will be Fun. Note the capital "F".

Although you can't tell, there was a slight pause there while I fed the fish in the virtual aquarium. One of the oscars was sick, the ram cichlids were eating each other, but the freshwater angelfish were fine. Now, why a virtual aquarium? Well, the fish at home have ich/whitespot, which is a proper bastard to get rid of. Although the treatment seems to be working. I have a new tank (130 litres, the bloody tetras are going to get lost!) which needs to bed in. And I have to get rid of the ich. Plus, virtual fish are not in danger of my bloody git of a furball cat eating them. Not that he has, yet, but you can tell he's thinking about it. Particularly the horseface loach. But it will wind him up. Sucks himself against the glass whenever the cat sits next to the tank. Heh.

Well, that rambled on longer than expected. Makes up for not updating in the last forever, in a kind of not-making-up-at-all way.

Oh well, 6:30 pee-emm is less than an hour away, then I can go home. Finally.

Later.

Costs you nothing.

Go click.

I'm not usually a fan of "click this and someone gets some medical treatment they really need" sort of ideas, as I have a generally low opinion of humanity in general, and net charity culture in particular. But, I've taken a look at this one, and it satisfies my cynicism. Plus, its been banded around a number of sites that are above (my) question.