Plans for yesterday

So I wrote to British Gas today...

2011-03-14T17:07:00.002Z

From: Mat Lemmings
To: uselesstwats@britishgas / dynorod / whatevertheirnameis.com
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:09:05 +0000
Subject: Homecare Agreement 20114423 J401112

FAO The Customer Relations Director
British Gas Services / Dynorod

Good afternoon.

Ever seen Fawlty Towers? Specifically episode 2 of the 1st series (originally transmitted on 26 September 1975, if you were wondering), where Basil gets the feckless O'Reilly in to do some work which goes horribly wrong? Well, you are O'Reilly and I am Fawlty, which makes me "the poor sod you do jobs for."

As I've no doubt your computer system can tell you, we've been in a relationship for a couple of years now, during which time I've been pretty happy with your service - of course you never write (other than sending me junk mail) and you never call so I do feel a little bit like an out-of-sight mother at times, but it's been a fairly standard marriage and you have hitherto satisfactorily met my demands as and when such have arisen and I'm not aware of any serious wrongdoing on my part, other than my brief 3 day dalliance with an alternative provider of plumbing services for a boiler swap-out which your representative brushed off as an already forgotten irrelevance.

But oh dear. It's all gone rather wrong. Who would have thought that a tetchy hot water tap and a tiny leak would present such a major problem to a multinational plumbing conglomerate such as your good self and drive this iron wedge between us? You've broken my heart and need to make amends.

The sorry tale started around 11.30am last Friday, the 11th March 2011, when I telephoned your "emergency" helpline number (0800 365 100) to report my problem. I'm not sure that the term "emergency" is necessarily correct under the trades descriptions act (I wonder if the fire service, for instance, has ever considered introducing a computer-based answering system where the caller has to press multiple buttons before then being told his call is being diverted to a sister company where the call queue waiting time is 5 minutes - can you imagine "Press 1 if an airplane has flown into a tower block, 2 for a house fire, 3 for a kitten stuck up a tree, 4 for a head stuck in railings (sorry about that btw - it was a one off kinky sex adventure) or 5 for any other enquiry" only for the frenetic pressing of number 3 to result in "We are now transferring your call to The Canine Tree Climbing Company" - the blood spatter would be awful! But we'll forgive your terminology on this occasion and move on.

Your cheerful representative listened to my heart wrenching story of the non-turn-off-able hot tap (fully flowing and I'm on a water meter - eek) and the modest-but-nevertheless-annoying leak in the airing cupboard, raised a couple of job numbers (JB01093 for the leak and JB01086 for the tap) and told me in no uncertain terms that an engineer would be with us in the next few hours, certainly before close of business that day, and that he would telephone prior to his arrival. He did neither.

I awoke Saturday to clear skies above, the warm sun on my face (Mat's eighth law - always have a South facing bedroom) and our small kitten giving me that knowing look which means "I've dismembered a rabbit and hidden it for you to find", indeed we seemed set for a lovely day, save for our continuing escaping water issues.

So I rang you. After retelling my tale of woe and expressing my considerable dismay at the non-appearance of the engineer the day before I was given an explanation-lacking apology but reassured that the said technical representative would be with us by noon at the latest.

He wasn't.

Now then, we're in North Devon which is not exactly the centre of the universe (though of course if you know your astrophysics, actually *everywhere* is the centre of the universe) and the roads do get clogged from time to time so I left it until about 14.30 before phoning again (tap... running... meter... I'll only mention that again once or twice I promise). A charming young lady again apologised, tapped some buttons and informed me that whilst the job had indeed been "despatched to Engineering" (bit like the donut delivery up to Scotty from the Enterprise bakery I suppose) it was scheduled in for, wait for it, the 15TH! Disaster!

I confess to getting a bit cross at this stage and might have suggested she did something her husband would not have been proud of. For this I apologise.

Nevertheless, she tolerated me long enough to issue an "Emergency Job Number" and I was told that I would get a call from an engineer within an hour and that he'd come that day without fail. He phoned to say he couldn't but he'd try and get in touch with a more local engineer and see if I they could come Saturday afternoon or Sunday.

They couldn't, but somebody would come absolutely first thing, first job, engineer won't waste time having a shave or breakfast before leaving the house etc. etc. on Monday morning. That's today, by the way.

Sigh.

Tap.

Running.

Anyway, this morning it got to 10.20 and still no sign (Well there was one sign - I saw some smoke coming from a farm up the road, but assumed they were simply announcing the appointment of a new Cow Pope and it had nothing to do with you) so I phoned again (I even knew to press '3' without listening to the message, so I'll knock a few seconds off my wasted time for that) and spoke with a delightful lady most sympathetic to my cause who then got in touch with the local office and re-booked yet another 'priority' visit (I've still got a fully flowing tape and I'm still on a meter...) before putting me in touch with my new best friend Harry in your "Dyno Relations Team" (it sounds like a cool place to work) who explained that my case would be looked into and somebody would call me back and there was no need for me to write in (you think I fell for that? And shame on you for trying to spoil my fun) but there may be a delay of a week or so as you currently have over 2000 outstanding complaints to deal with. Oops. I hope Harry's getting a good overtime rate.

Finally, at 12.25 your man Zeke (what an Uber Cool name that is - I'm seriously thinking about changing mine to that now) arrived and took precisely three minutes to fix both problems. Charming young man, you should promote him - he can talk and everything. Oh, and then Rebecca rang from the Exeter office to tell me he was coming. Bit late for the proactive call but appreciated none the less.

In summary, I've taken 15 working hours off (6 hours on Friday, 4 on Saturday (I'm self-employed, weekends don't exist) and 5 today). Fortunately for you I'm working for a lower-paying-than-usual client at the moment (desperate times and all that jazz; I blame Bill Clinton - if he'd not put that cigar somewhere quite so newsworthy the world could have been an entirely different place do you not agree?) so you're only in to me for £35 per hour (£525 total) which I'd like you to reimburse me within 28 days. Actually, I'd like you to pay within 24 hours as I'm a bit skint and need to pay my dealer, but I'll give Harry the 28 days - I know he's busy - just don't dawdle when he puts my cheque in front of you for signature otherwise I'll have to fill out yet another civil suit to reclaim the money. I'm getting quite good at those now. Tell you what, in the spirit of our new found friendship, call it a round £500 - you've probably got a system in place whereby senior people don't get dragged off the golf course for payments of a monkey or under. Don't say I'm not accommodating.

But wait! What about all that water that I've lost I hear you ask (you'd thought I'd forgotten about that, didn't you)? Well it's a good job for you that I'm clever enough to know I can isolate the hot water flow at the boiler (you remember - that new one that your competition fitted without any fuss or nonsense) so you don't owe me anything for that - how lucky are you?! Have you *seen* the price of water these days? It'd be cheaper to wash in petrol - not that I'd advise that if you were a smoker, of course. Perhaps yoghurt or ass's milk would be more appropriate.

Oh, by the way, I'm really not taking this in the good natured vein you might think based upon my diatribe above. In fact, were it not for the fact that my throwing aim is rather less good than that demonstrated by Steve Harmison for the first ball of the 2006/7 Ashes series (a wide straight to Flintoff at 2nd slip, if you recall), you'd also owe me for a new telephone - good job it smacked into the sofa cushion and not the wall as was my intended target.

I appreciate that most organisations hit operational management issues from time-to-time, especially following such a period of acquisitive growth - the really good news is that this is my field and I can help you out. I'd be happy to work with you to help re-engineer your incident management and customer services functions, my standard daily rate is £750 plus expenses. Oh, and I'll need a car - mine's covered in dents from where I was on hold with you the third time. I've never had a Saab, so perhaps a 9-5 in metallic black with a cream interior? Automatic, obviously, and I don't really like leather seats - cloth will be fine. Perhaps spend the saving on a kick ass stereo?

Get your boss to give me a call - meantime I look forward to hearing from you with respect to the other matters raised herein. Don't bother too much with a long winded explanation, I'm really only interested in the cash. Or at least a night in a bloody good central London hotel with plenty of champagne. And don't forget the chocolate on my pillow; in fact leave a couple in case I get lucky.

Sláinte!

Mat Lemmings

Can you help?

2010-03-26T11:57:00.003Z

I'm on the cadge today.

A year ago a close friend's brother, Leslie, was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease of the most virulent form – Progressive Bulbar Pulsay. At the slender age of 40 it is extremely rare to have this disease so young and sadly there is no known cure. Within a year he has gone from full movement to only being able to communicate through moving an eyelid.

There is a circa 7 mile sponsored walk taking place on Good Friday, 2nd April to raise money for MD research. The area for the walk will be ‘The Cornish Way’, more specifically Carclaze to Pentewan with the start of the trail covering Drummond’s Hill – the stretch that Leslie constructed.

I'd be really grateful for any sponsorship you may be willing to offer. Every little helps and if you're ouside of the UK I can take Paypal donations at mail@matlemmings.com - we'll be covering the charges to make sure that every $ sent gets to where it should.

If you're able to help and could let me have your pledge amount before Tuesday I'd really appreciate it.

And if you'd like any further information, or - gasp - would like to take part yourself, just ask!

Thanks

Mat

Of a certain age

2009-03-08T20:40:00.039Z

Several years ago, I had a client who's administration PC had an astounding knack of rebooting itself whenever its operator came near. The operator didn't have to be sat facing the workstation, nor touch either keyboard or mouse. Indeed, this machine was such a recalcitrant bugger that it would restart itself at the slightest feminine touch of the reset button as we discovered when observing, several times, said female's high heels crashing into the computer's front panel as she swung about the place in her chair.

Not being quite as silly as the aforementioned double-X chromosome, it therefore came as somewhat of a surprise last week when Ali failed to find an address where she was due to attend an interview. Nothing too unusual in that, or at least there wouldn't be were it not for the fact that she'd been unable to find it twice. And for the fact that she'd been there just a few days earlier.

Having had an initial interview, Ali had already attempted to make her second interview once before, getting hopelessly lost in the middle of nowhere having gone a totally different way (as suggested by Google Maps) and encountered several flooded roads at the time. Arrangements were made for her to attend again on Thursday and all seemed well with the world.

Thus to the penultimate day of the working week and my sudden awakening at howfuckingearlyo'clock by Ali's subtle bedroom doorway proclamation of "I'm screwed." It became apparent that North Devon had been on the receiving end of a rather large quantity of snow, 4 inches of which had iced over and was now forming an unwelcome second skin on her car that she had been unable to shift.

Hauling myself out of my pit pausing only to collect tracksuit trousers and a fleece top I duly marched downstairs with every intention of getting the girl to where she needed to be without further ado. Having pulled on my mismatched garments and finished my clothing ensemble-extraordinaire with the addition of sockless Reeboks, I strode majestically outside to take control of the situation. Two broken scrapers and plenty of expletives later, we finally set off in search of the elusive enclave.

The main drag from Bideford to Barnstaple was passable but only on a snow-restricted single lane with everybody proceeding in an understandably gingerly fashion. The six miles of main road showed no major casualties other than a couple of abandoned motorcycles and a broken down Alfa Romeo (like there's any other type). Sadly, it appeared that nobody suffering from a pathological desire to proactively screw traffic flow (a.k.a "Caravanners") had the balls to step out on the icy asphalt that day so we didn't even get to chuckle at an upside down Lunar Clubman (or whatever other bloody silly name they go by these days) en route.

Notwithstanding all that had gone before, we found ourselves not 5 minutes away from our destination with a good 15 minutes to spare. "Result! We'll make it for sure!" was the celebratory cheer inside the snowplough. At which point we turned into the final lane and found ourselves staring at a tree. "No problemo, little lady." Said I. "Take the wheel and I shall perform a manly hoist of that pesky tree right up over the top of the car so our safe passage can continue." Duly done, Ali edged the car under the tree (alright, small overhanging branch), returned to the comfort of the passenger seat whilst I plonked myself back in the first officer's seat to continue the journey. Which continued for another 150 yards until we came upon 6 trees (yes, actual *trees* this time) lying in the middle of the road. "Bollocks."

Wary of the depleted condition of Ali's phone battery (matched only in its near-empty glory by the state of the fuel tank, which had predicated a future lifespan of 13 miles some 15 miles previously) we made a vain attempt to locate the destination by another route and met with resounding failure. Resorting to the last few milliamps of power left in the Nokia, Ali made a call to the destination asking for alternative directions from our current location, which we followed to the letter and still never found the place. By this time, a tactical surrender to fossil fuel was our only available option and we slowly skulked our way back home bringing the first adventure of the day to an unsatisfactory close.

Arriving home a little after 10.00, I telephoned the local surgery to see if I could bag an appoint with my doctor. I'd seen him a few days earlier as I'd been suffering with a small problem in the plumbing department - namely an overpowering desire to pee all the time but having no actual need to do so - and it was quite obvious to me that the prescribed tablets were having no effect. Having been down this road before and as fellow men of a certain age will confirm, I was fairly certain that any return visit would involve a prostate check, but nevertheless it had to be done. Anal proddage duly arranged, I jumped in the shower, got some proper clothes on and headed up to town.

The visit to the doctor's office went as expected and I left clutching both my cheeks and a box of new drugs.

Upon returning to the motor, I noticed an old VW Polo having problems reversing from a space at the end of the car park. Wandering over, it became apparent that another gentleman of a certain age (his certain age being in my estimation about 30 years older than my certain age) had actually managed to bugger up the manoeuvre on two counts. Firstly, he'd parked on slick mud now covered in snow that offered no traction whatsoever. Secondly, he'd parked so far on to the grass that his back wheel had crossed the kerb and sunk into the mud. Much pulling, prodding and waggling backwards-and-forwards later (it was like being back in the surgery again...) we finally got the old duffer out. I got covered in mud and snow and can't decide whether I expect him or his car's clutch to survive the longest.

Still, at least one good deed for the day had a positive outcome and in conclusion I can report that the men and women of Lemmings towers are equally crap at navigation and should you ever have the need to find yourself in a desperate hurry to find somewhere in the middle of nowhere with snow on the ground and road-closing trees en route, all the time feeling like you need to piss for England whilst anticipating an upcoming bottom-poke, I can but only suggest you leave home with a full mobile battery, a full tank of fuel, money, old clothes, a tow rope, SatNav and a bloody good sense of humour.

By way of a postscript, you may like to know that Ali has a third appointment at the unfindable place in the morning which will be a lot easier for her as we went there earlier today and added it into the SatNav. You may also like to know that the price for a replacement Polo clutch is about £130, it costs £75 to fill a BMW 530i up from empty and I don't, at the moment, need to pee.

Praise before a kicking

2008-10-16T12:33:00.003+01:00

So I see that the wonderful English media are hyping-up the soccer team's success to date in the World Cup qualifiers, commenting they appear much more professional under the new manager, how well the players are working as a team and how this is the best start ever to a cup qualifying campaign.

WTF are they talking about? We've beaten Andorra, Croatia and Belarus for Christ's sake. I'll start to agree with 'em when it's been Germany, Brazil, Argentina, France and Spain in the finals.

Of course, that's unlikely to happen, at which point Capello will be chalked up as another failure; doubtless citing his 'professional' and 'mature' approach as having been too hard on the poor little buggers on the pitch and extolling the virtues of appointing a manager who'll let them 'have fun' and play 'passionate' football.

Ruud Gullit in 2011 then?

RIP Santa

2007-12-20T09:08:00.001Z

This in from Richard, original source unknown:

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 10) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000 th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second -- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times he normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them---Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Hero my arse

2007-12-11T11:47:00.000Z

So the back page of yesterday's Daily Mail carried the headline "Fallen Hero" referencing Ricky Hatton's loss to Floyd Mayweather in Sunday's world championship boxing match.

Let's be clear about something. He's no hero. Heroes are soldiers who run out into enemy gunfire to rescue wounded colleagues. Heroes are firefighters who return to burning buildings time after time to rescue people. Heroes can even be everyday run-of-the-mill people like you and me who put themselves at extraordinary risk for the welfare of others.

Boxers are not heroes. Boxers are sportsmen - the top echelon of whom are paid millions of pounds, win or lose, to step inside the ring.

What's heroic about that?

It's time

2007-12-01T10:21:00.000Z

The Gillian Gibbons debacle is proof, were it really needed, that the time has come to put an end to all forms of organised religion on the planet. Personally I would start with Islam and Christianity as that rids us of the most troublesome fuckwits first, but all must be suppressed and outlawed within a year. If you have an address for mail-in donations to that cause, please let me know.

In the meantime, I suggest you go out this morning, buy the ugliest looking teddy bear you can, call it Muhammad and beat it senseless, Basil Fawlty style, until its insides are all over the place.

And then burn the bastard.

Come to think of it, there is one religion that should be allowed to live. Scientology may be left untouched, as anyone following that particular doctrine is obviously far too stupid to pose any threat to the rest of us anyway.

Books wot I just red

2007-11-19T15:19:00.001Z

Given the amount of work that I've got through lately I'm totally gobsmacked at the realisation that I have, somehow, managed to read a few books over the past couple of weeks.

I'm a kind of "real world" person -- I don't care much for dramatic fiction (the Bible, for instance), nor almanacs or reference works (ever heard of the Internet?); but I do enjoy (auto)biographies and practical tomes.

Hancock's Last Stand: The Series That Never Was, by Edward Joffe, tells the story of Tony Hancock's last days in Australia in 1968. Always a troubled man, the book chronicles the timeframe of a lifelong depressive heading down under to make a new TV series whilst struggling to come to terms with both his alcoholism and dwindling popularity in his home country.

Faced with the prospect of long seperation from his sometime partner Joan Le Mesurier and suffering a total crisis of confidence, Hancock arrives in Sydney and almost immediately slips into a routine of continual drinking, oversleeping and dismal performances only occasionally tempered thanks primarily to the efforts of the author, the producer of the series.

Whilst probably not of broad appeal (I don't know many people my age, let alone younger who know Hancock's work to any great extent), this insighful tome is certainly worthy of a read if you've any interest in mental health or addicitive issues and is a fascinating insight into the final weeks of the man once considered Britain's premier comedian.

On The Edge - Richard Hammond is another story altogether. For those of you that don't know, Hammond is a presenter of Top Gear, a motoring show shown on the UK's BBC2 channel, who had a rather bad accident whilst driving a jet powered car in 2006.

If you did know that, don't read this book. If you didn't know that, don't read this book. Why? Because the paragraph that you've just read summarises 95% of the content.

Following the de rigueur introductory chapters covering birth to celebrity, we are then subjected to hundreds of pages detailing the crash and the aftermath from his perspective. And his wife's perspective. And his budgie's perspective. The bloke who lives three doors along and bumped into him once gives his point of view as well, as does the postman, baker and occasional colleague.

It's badly written, hideously edited and stupendously boring. I don't think I've ever been so annoyed at spending my hard-earned money on an ink pregnated dead tree for a long, long time.

In complete contrast, Slash: The Autobiography charts the life of the Guns N' Roses star using interesting, fluid writing (thanks in no small way, I suspect, to co-author Anthony Bozza), giving you enough detail to comprehend the growth and development of a rock icon whilst avoiding the monotonous "and an hour later I woke up again and had another poo" nonsense of Hammond's book.

Telling the story of how Slash turns chaos into organised dishevellery in an almost Alchemistic way, the book is a fascinating insight into the world of growing up in LA in the 1970's. The jacket reads "I've always had to do things my way; I play guitar my way; I've taken myself to the edges of life my way; I've gotten clean my way; and I'm still here. Whether I deserve to be is another story."

And one that's worth reading.

Bang!

2007-11-11T17:11:00.000Z

I thought last night might be interesting and so it proved, only not quite in the way I imagined.

The firework display was anything but dull, thanks to several rouge rockets flying sideways into the crowd and the farm barns. Fortunately no serious injuries, though the vicar did take one on the leg. An act of God suggesting a change of profession, perhaps?

Suffice to say, everyone was pretty shaken up (fireworks going off inside corrugated iron barns sound much like I imagine the Mujaheddin announcing their arrival at an enemy base in Afghanistan would) and the event kind of lost its' shine fairly swiftly therafter!

Still, on the plus side, we got to go back to a nice warm pub to finish the night and everybody present has, I suspect, now developed a healthy respect for explosive devices.

Oh how we laughed. [or "Anna Burns Rubber"]

2007-11-10T15:29:00.001Z

Lunatic niece Anna finally arrived for a visit yesterday, having endured a rather harrowing journey down from London.

The first time she ever drove down by herself a couple of years ago, the clutch on her car exploded (you're not supposed to rest your foot on it girl...); this time she got within 50 miles and was happily zooming along overtaking everything in sight when, in her words, "the steering went wobbly and I saw my tyre rolling down the road behind me." Turns out her offside rear tyre simply, er, let go.

Fortunately she managed to pull over on three wheels (we'll buy her a Reliant Robin next now she's used to that), called the RAC and got to wait for an hour in the back of a cop car who'd arrived to look after her until the rescue service arrived.

Of course, having established that there was no damage to life, limb or car, our emotions quickly changed from concerned family to merciless piss-takers - perfect when you're planning on spending a night out at the pub, as we did. From 7pm until 3am. Ugh.

Good fun was had by all -- four hours at the Cyder Presse followed by 5 of us piling into Duncan's little Corsa car (he wasn't happy, moaning about stressed wishbones or something that no-one cared about after 10 pints) and heading up to The Globe in Torrington where Ady & I ended up playing (and winning, I think) doubles Pool against the locals for an hour. Always interesting when you're pissed.

For some odd reason, Duncan (not drinking, remember) decided to hang around so we got a free lift home afterwards ("... my poor car.. think of the suspension..."). We worked out this morning that we'd spent £170 between 5 of us, which is pretty good going. Ali must have been thirsty I suppose.

I'd like nothing more than a quiet night in, but that ain't gonna happen as the annual village firework party is due to kick off at Pickard's farm in just over three hours' time.

And the heavy drinkers are with us tonight.

Anyone got a liver for sale?

Woody & Anna would make a lovely couple. But their kids might be ginger.

Ady & I don't. Have ginger kids, that is.

He looks happier with landlady Jude

Whilst earlier on Mike and Chaz can't decide between Orange Juice or Beer

Three times

2007-11-08T20:48:00.000Z

Just as my friend John Dominik says, if I say something three times I mean it.

Vista is shit. Vista is shit. Vista is shit.

Another frustrating few hours thanks to the arseholes at Microshit who decided the aforementioned product really was 'enterprise ready' at launch. Not content with losing DVD drives and running on bloody good hardware like a man with no legs through treacle, I'm confronted today with several situations that I simply can't resolve, owing to the complete lack of drivers for 64-bit versions. And that's without mentioning of course the fact that the present version of iTunes in an x64 environment can't import or burn CD's. Let me think now, what do we think are the two most likely functions required of an audio application?

Undercurrents in the marketplace do not bode well for Gates & Ballmer. Linux in the server room is rapidly becoming the de facto standard for file, mail, web and collaborative services, with Windows servers taking ever more of a back seat required only by those unfortunate enough to have to run bespoke M$ applications such as Exchange (hawk... spit...) and whilst some continue to question the maturity of Linux for the corporate desktop, the tide is surely turning.

The old "Linux is so much harder than Windows to use and administer, our productivity will nosedive and our support costs will rocket" tale no longer holds true, those that say otherwise simply have nothing constructive to contribute to the debate and doubtless mutter such nonsense mostly whilst rebooting their Windows boxen following yet another blue screen of death.

So why the hell do we have so many problems? Surely if we're not having to use Vista then I should be unconcerned at the many shortcomings of doing so? Well, you're right, but we're stuffed as our clients run so many bespoke (and in some cases, old) applications in the Windows environment that we need to be able to replicate their configuration and even doing so within a virtual machine on a Linux host doesn't take away the need to solve the ensuing problems.

That's my buggest bug-bear with Vista. It takes such a long time to fix it, and I hate nothing more than something wasting my time.

And if you need a platform for games that supports the latest video technologies, allows multiplayer participation across LANs and WANs and can also play your audio and video libraries without missing a beat, I have the solution.

Go buy a Nintendo Wii.

A nation of idiots?

2007-11-07T10:19:00.000Z

I've oft pondered how some people manage to get through life. Over the years, certain individuals have had me wondering how on earth they manage day-to-day, being obviously unable to, for instance, tie their shoelaces, open a letter or buy two items from a store at the same time. Now it would seem that math-for-three-year-olds is beyond many residents of one of our major Northern cities - http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1022757_cool_cash_card_confusion. Be sure to read the comments, some of them are wonderful.

Feeling somewhat under the weather today (no, it's not alcohol related) and not being especially productive so far, in stark contrast to yesterday when not only did I manage to put some long-standing work issues to bed (SQLyog is a great tool for admin & backup of mySQL databases), I also now have, courtesy of Woody, a functional stereo, repaired central locking and two whole reverse lights on my work car, not to mention some posh new carpet mats. Sometimes little victories count for a lot.

It must be Monday

2007-11-05T11:54:00.001Z

A mere three hours into the working week and already so many things have gone wrong:

The taxman wants £5k more than I think I owe him
Sage crashed on me this morning meaning one set of company accounts is now totally screwed up
Another week has passed without a [long overdue] payment from one particular customer who obviously won't mind when their server goes offline very soon now ;-)
An unusual power supply that I desperately need, purchased on eBay last week under the impression that it was shipping from within the UK on 24 hour service, turns out to be coming from China in 2-4 weeks
The new Eagles album that we've only been waiting 28 years for is, basically, pants
My 80Gb iPod is full up and I need a bigger one :-(
The Dell laptop that cost me £1400 less than two months ago has gone wrong for the second time. What a bloody waste of money that thing is turning out to be

Still, never mind eh? As they say, things can only get better and given several of my 'issues' are purely financial, they're not really worth worrying about. It's a funny thing though - money problems are by far the easiest to solve (find some...) but invariably the most distractive (destructive?) and irritating of all. My philosophy so far as cash is concerned comes courtesy of Sid James circa 1958 - "if you've got it, spend it and if you ain't got it, get it." Guess I'd better knuckle down and do the 'get' part again for a while, for the piggy bank is looking decidedly hungry at the moment.

Oh yes, and if you were one of the many who tried and more importantly remain amongst the few still running Vista (hawk... spit...) as your OS of choice you'll find, sooner or later, your DVD drive will cease to function. It's happened, without fail, on at least one machine at every single client site that's got it. It's an easy fix -- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929461, but boy what a PITA. Service Pack 1 is due soon and hopefully that'll make things a bit more stable but I'll betcha it's still going to remain an already outdated, buggy, slow, insecure piece of bloatware. How I long for the halcyon days of Windows 2000 running against Netware servers... things just seemed to work then! I've been unfortunate enough to work on about 20 machines now running various incarnations of said retail packaged software shit and the only time I've seen one come *close* to XP performance has been on a Core2Duo running at 2.4Ghz with 4Gb of RAM, a 10k SCSI hard disk and 1Gb USB memory stick for ReadyBoost. Crap. Unmitigated, total, complete crap.

So, one of those days when I feel I either need to get back on the SSRI's or off the wagon then and given I'm all out of citalopram or fluoxetine, I guess I'll be having a pint later on. Cheers!

Math Lesson

2007-11-04T15:22:00.000Z

Whoever says that blogs serve no useful purpose other than providing cathartic therapy for their delusional creators has never been to a party at our house, where we always try and provide a balanced mixed of fun, alcohol and education. Never has this been more true than last night, where during our arranged-in-a-hurry bonfire party, Professor Chandler stepped up to the plate with his latest math lesson, viz:

And if that weren't education enough for one night, Dr Adam Cresswell then proceeded to demonstrate that if one stands legs akimbo, staring into the darkness whilst screaming prose somewhat akin to an All Blacks Haka, you can indeed raise long-sleeping demons:

So, once again, another fairly uneventful and boring weekend. Hope yours was a bit more interesting.

I'm just wondering...

2007-11-03T15:18:00.000Z

.. is it just me, or is Heather Mills-McCartney really the most delusional, arrogant, idiotic stupid bitch ever to walk the planet?

Strike 3!

2007-11-02T00:13:00.000Z

Sorry about that. You know how it is sometimes - you pop out for Pizza and by the time you get back it's eight months later.

Whilst in many respects nothing fundamental in life has changed for me since I first started my original daynotes, followed by last year's scribbles from our extended trip down under, in several ways everything's different.

For a start, we're now all a year older, with the Lemmings pack now weighing in at 99 years young. Chaz has the dubious honour of taking us to 100 what with his being the next birthday come March '08.

Work-wise, I'm still plugging away with the same old techno crap, consultancy and project management though (usually) enjoying it more so than I have over the past few years owing to the current mix of content, clients and colleagues.

On a personal level, it really has been a year of two halves. The pre-Australia partying and pratting around continued unabated upon our return until being rudely interrupted by Chandler* discovering he had cancer. Poor sod has subsequently endured 3 surgeries along with daily blasts of radiotherapy and chemo sessions, but is now, thankfully, on the mend. Physically, at least. He stills tells crap jokes and farts too much.

Those of you who know us will however be aware that friends suffering a life-threatening illness is nothing new to us over these past few years and being hard, insensitive types, we've tried to not let it get in the way too much of the drinking, dining and casual sex that hitherto marked with absolute certainty that it was, once again, a day ending in the letter 'y'. To be honest though, come September we were all bloody knackered and waved goodbye (or at least au reviour) to the drunken and debauched life following a big party in the paddock for Ali's birthday. Partying (for me, at least) has been restricted to weekends since then, a tragic waste of one of my few natural talents about which I intend to make amends forthwith.

The Wanderlust following the Australia trip is still burning strong to the extent that we're in the [very] early stages of applying for resident visas with a view to eventual migration down under. Meantime, our house is on the market - the eventual sale of which will certainly herald another decent [3-9 month] break and perhaps even mark the end of our lives as we know it. I've been thinking for some time about moving the business along and may well use the sale as my excuse for 'retirement'. We'll be so loaded, I won't even need to think about earning money for a good 4 or 5 weeks. We all want another trip back down-under to have a proper look at the employment, education and lifestyle opportunities in our chosen destination (South Australia, somewhere South-East of Adelaide in the general direction of the SA/Victorian border), us boys fancy driving across the US and Ali's definitely up for a bit more shopping in Asia, so we may well decide just to bugger off for good.

As Jerry Pournelle is fond of saying, we live in interesting times.

Oh, by the way, it's nice to be back. Again.

*for the uninformed: Chandler is our friend Ian Chandler, husband of Jools, consumptor extraordinaire of strong European beer and the inspiration behind the blog from down under)