MSN

Posted: Wed 10 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts, Work-related | 6 Comments »

*shudder* Well, I’ve finally been inducted into the world of MSN Messenger. Up ’til now I’ve never had to use it, and always been able to avoid needing it. Now, though – well, some of the people in work use it, and as they’re in the US, it’s kind of handy I suppose.

But I might just pull out of MSN, and go with something like Trillian where I can use it to handle multiple versions of IM message, instead of having to run the shitefest that is known as MSN…

Abandonment pt. 2

Posted: Tue 9 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: News, Thoughts, Travel | Leave a comment »

Following on from last week’s post about the 15year old girl who was left alone in the UK when her mother decided to move to Turkey after a holiday romance, I see that the mother has now put in an appearance.

No, not in the UK to answer any form of enquiry about why she did it, but instead on Turkish TV, telling how she’s so in love.

“We really liked each other and saw each other every day and when I went back to England I promised I would come back because I want to be with Ali.

“I did everything I could and got back within three weeks. I came back to stay with Ali because I love him.”
No expression of guilt about her daughter, nothing – just self-centred selfish behaviour. Grrr.

Barking

Posted: Tue 9 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: News, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

In a fit of “Mad as a bath-full of hippos” insanity comes this effort, letters sent by the stadd of an American sex-toy store along with a shipment of vibrators to some women in Iraq.

…I hope that when you use this vibrator you realize that Americans do not hate you or your country. We are a kind and loving people who just want everyone to live freely and without oppression….

Utterly, totally, 100% barking.

Security

Posted: Tue 9 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Thoughts, Travel | Leave a comment »

Waiting at the station for today’s train, an announcement came over the speakers that suddenly struck me a little differently to usual. It’s the fairly standard fare about

In this time of increased security, please do not leave your belongings anywhere on the station or the train. Help us to not have security alerts by taking care of your posessions

OK, I’m paraphrasing a little, but all the security alert announcements say the same thing about not leaving your stuff around. Now yes, that’s fair enough – an abandoned package can always look a bit dodgy and so on.

But what struck me was this – if we’re now dealing with suicide bombers, surely they’re not going to leave the packages around? In fact, aren’t you also now going to be looking out for people who clutch their bags to them, or keep on fiddling about with them?

Bad to Worse

Posted: Tue 9 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Work-related | Leave a comment »

Following on from yesterday’s ICBM post, today’s just getting worse. Same situation, more shit – not helped by the Bangalore Boys sending me files that they either haven’t tested, or that don’t work. Cunts.

As a result, updates may be a bit sparse today…

Not really a shock

Posted: Mon 8 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: News, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

The BBC today has a story saying that one in four applicants for jobs in the financial industries have lied on their CVs. Having worked with a bunch of financial types over the years, I really can’t say I’m surprised – most of them seem to have a “can-do” attitude to bullshit that’s second only to that of advertising and marketing execs.

Based on a study of 3,000 CVs, the group found the biggest lies involved academic qualifications, previous jobs, gaps in employment and directorships.

Then again, I don’t think that kind of attitude is limited to just financial applications. But I do wonder what percentage of estate agents have lied on their CVs. And with estate agents, is it to be expected?

ICBM

Posted: Mon 8 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Geeky, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Today has been – to be frank – shit. As most people will already know, diplomacy has never been my strong point, and it’s even less my strong-point when it comes to international bullshit.

The issue today has been one of our sites, which recently migrated from phpNuke to Mambo, which is an unholy piece of user-hostile shitpot crap that I’m rapidly learning to loathe. In fact it’s already been noted in the office that I think it’s a hunk of shit, and I can’t deny, I’m not keeping that opinion quiet. I use it because I have to – but I suspect that there’d be more functionality in a two legged leprosy-ridden pig with swine erysipelas.

The company that did this migration for us are based out in Bangalore, or Delhi, or some fucking out-sourcing hellhole. Which means they’re six hours ahead of us, time-wise. This makes problem solving into something of a challenge. What makes it more interesting still is that the servers we use are hosted in New York, and the person who maintains them is in LA. So the servers are something like 6 hours behind us, timewise, and the guy in LA is two hours or so behind that.

Today’s problems have meant that I’m trying to get the guys in Bangalore to fix a problem, which then comes to me to be uploaded (the paranoid berk in LA won’t give them access to the servers) on to the dev server, and when we’ve tested it, to then go on to the live server. In theory this shouldn’t be a problem, as I’ve got (in theory, remember) all the necessary passwords in order to SCP (not FTP, that’s not secure) the files across to the dev server, and then SSH over to the live server so that it can all go live.

Except that El Paranoid Berk has changed the passwords and permissions so that I can’t do that. So I have to contact him, wait ’til he wakes up and/or can be bothered, and get him to sort it out.

All told, today I’m covering something like 14 different time zones, three continents, and three people, all of whom have different ideas on how this shit should work. Which makes it an Intercontinental Ballistic Motherfucker of a day.

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