For the last two days I’ve been off sick. However, I have discovered Sinutab: Paracetamol + pseudoephedrine…joy! I can sleep without feeling that my entire upper-face is filled with napalm!
This afternoon I was scheduled to have my “Exit Interview” with someone from MegaCorp’s HR department. When the time came I decided to go along rather than cancel, and so went up to the Canary. MegaCorp had prepared their traditional welcome for me: not knowing who I was, whether I should be there, how I could get to where I’m supposed to go without someone making a fucking decision and taking an iota of responsibility.. so I took a seat and waited for the HR person to come and collect me. I selected the same leather sofa I’d sat in the last time I was waiting for someone from HR to come and meet me: when I was waiting for my initial job interview.
The corporate splendor of the vast lobby was no more impressive this time, despite the addition of the Christmas trees: a collection of 7ft tall immaculately decorated artificial trees, emitting about as much Christmas cheer as Ebeneezer Scrooge’s emergency pants.
The efficiency of the Private sector has once again come into play: I can no longer login. Brilliant! Who wants to do anything productive in their last week anyway ?
Sadly, I do. But I can’t.

Colds suck btw – if you don’t have one at the moment then you won’t remember quite how much they suck, but just remember that it’s worse than you remember. Praise the lord for inventing Sinutab in his astral laboratory.
Mmmm…pseudoephedrine….breathing….mmmmmm

So the Space Cadets were hired by Zeppotron, “a part of Endemol”.
All is clear!
Could this be the same Zeppotron that consists of Charlie Brooker and friends (including Chris Morris probly)?
Yes.
Doh!

Excuse me if there are typos in this posting, but my tears of pride may well damage the keyboard. To see such a genuinely spectacular night of pure entertainment as tonight’s Royal Variety Performance is one thing, but the fact that these illustrious stars are gathered together, purely to honour her gracious majesty the Queen, for no money, makes me want to cry.
It’s too much!
And WHAT entertainment! Stars of the small screen, ranging from such diverse programmes as Coronation Street, right up to the grim daytime adverts on ITV2, all gathered together. For Her Maj! Gawd blessem!
Do you know, if it wasn’t for the recent grim ITV2 ads, I wouldn’t have even heard of some of these brilliant performers such as “Bryn Tefal”, “Katherine Jenkinson”, “Andreas Boticelli” and “The Blue headed men who ponce about like a bunch of ponces”. And now, they’re performing at her majesty’s pleasure! Wow!

Anyway, I’ve got a really shitty cold, together with a sinus infection. At least, that what I think it is at the moment. Of course, in the sleepless small-hours when the pain in my sinuses coupled with the gallons of snot up my hooter force me to lie awake worrying, it will once again become anything between an abcess and a tumor.

Tomorrow we’re in the office again. You know, I was hoping that before I left MegaCorp, perhaps I could achieve something, anything, but it was not to be. The only major project I’ve been working on will not be rolled out before the “change freeze”…despite it being “urgent”. So, there’s no chance I’ll be able to see it in place before I leave. Not bad for five months work. This is still high-speed in MegaCorp terms, where it can take months to organise adding a single account to a single system. With all of the various departments trying to offload the responsibility to anyone passing until somone high-up enough says “just fucking sort it out” when it will get done immediately…well…within a week anyway.

Anyway, while I was typing this I missed the comic genius of Joe “squeeky-voiced” Pasquale, Catherine “Do I look like a fuckin’ liberty” Tate, “Guys and Birds”. If I don’t stop then I’ll miss David Grey, Cannon and Ball, The Chinese state Circus , Il G4, and Cliff Richard…probly.

Just so I can say “I told you so” if I’m right: “The biggest ever hoax on television” is actually a hoax on us. They’re all actors and it’s a joke on us, the voyeuristic, mean-sprited audience.

If I’m wrong, then you probably won’t remember anyway.

Talking of which, just an anal reminder to anyone who is sad enough to remember the conversation in the Hogshead last year about power-cuts and conspiracies…see! Told you!

Sorry – what a crap posting. I had all kinds of good stuff to go on about but it’s ended up being about reality TV…again…

Michele works for a company that is essentially funded by public money, yet somehow she is currently getting pissed up on free champagne in Monte Carlo while I sit at home on my own getting pissed up on Vino Collapso from the local Costcutter. Odd, epecially when you consider that I work for one of the biggest capitalist organs on the face of the earth…for now. Last day: December the 15th. Same day as the Christmas Ball. I wasn’t intending to go – 90% of the Goldsmiths people that I want to remain in contact with, I remain in contact with. The rest can fuck off really…and the rest will be there. But Brodie called this week and expressed interest in coming along, together with the other Harvey and Col…so maybe I will come along.
Whilst Michele was being fed grapes, champage and caviar, by the bell boy I was at home with Humph. I’d planned to go out, but that little bird is a captivating creature. You can’t just leave her at home if you have a choice, especially when she’s such good company. So I did some computery things and watched a couple of films:

• The Scarlet Claw – pretty poor but Basil and Nige make it all worthwhile.
• The Ghost of St Michaels: Still really good. Bought it from Amazon because Will Hay is my main man.
• Layer Cake – for the umpteenth time…but it’s the only other British Gangster film since The Long Good Friday that’s not only worth bothering with but really worth going out of your way to see…and lots of it is shot in Greenwich too. 🙂

Before I forget, Michele and Humph were on the letters page of the Daily Mail on Friday. Picture to follow.

Nice night last night too. Ian, Rach, Mod, Mod’s new Geezer and I met up in Greenwich. We had a couple of pints in the Kings Arms, which is now a theme pub..the theme being Olde English Pubbes. I like that though, especially now they open late. Then we did the long walk of abut 10 inches to the vietnamese restaurant next door for a stupidly large meal….followed by a trek back to the pub 🙂
Tip of the day: if you go into a pub after closing time and the bar staff ask you if you just came in, the answer is “NO!”. It seems that some pubs have licences allowing them to serve late only to punters who’ve been in there since before closing time.
More probably…

A side effect of living in New Cross is that you become immune to sirens. In fact, no music I ever play ever sounds right without them. In fact, in fact, I wonder if that’s how dub started.

Michele is a liar. She denies being a Daily Mail reader, despite the concrete evidence:

• There’s frequently a copy of it in her bag after work.
• Tonight, for the second time, we had a Mail photographer round to photograph her for the letters page.
• She reads the Daily Mail

Why ? I’m buggered if I know. we don’t even own a house. In fact it’s a tad depressing. Maybe she’ll turn out to be in the Neo-con Republican KKK chapter too.

This evening I learned a great deal about the private sector and its natural in-built efficiency. As a practical example of why we should privatise everything read on:

The problem:

An application server we rely on for our every day work is broken.

The Public Sector Solution

• I notice the problem.
• I log into the affected server and try to work out what the problem is.
• I sort the problem

How old fashioned is that ? Please don’t laugh! It’s what I used to think was correct!

The Solution

Here is the model answer, as provided by the private sector:

• I notice the problem.
• I send an IM to my boss.
• My boss organises a group IM chat to discuss the issue.
• The result of the chat is that the “SA team” need to be contacted as none of us are allowed to login to the server (for corporate reasons).
• The boss asks someone to page the team and to setup a conference call.
• A conference call is established with 7 people, all in different countries, and we spend a while waiting for the SA team to respond to the page.
• Eventually the guy arrives and we try to diagnose the problem by telling the guy (who, despite being very well meaning and competent, doesn’t speak very good english or have a very good understanding of the systems involved at all.)
• We realise that the only way we’re going to solve it is by getting a login into the affected server.
• We try to describe the measures necessary to the SA guy to perform this and fail…
• …loads more tedious crap until we all realise that unless we leave the call we will die there.

See how simple it looks now. How foolish I feel for thinking that the old way was better. Just because it would have achieved the goal for far less effort/time/money. But there would be no audit trial!
Don’t laugh at me because I’m a fool…

BT got the ADSL back up up by half ten last night. Being a sad old git, I was tucked up in bed by then of course. No-one could complain that it was fixed out of hours on a Sunday…unless it was broken in the first place, 14 hours earlier, by sheer stupidity. Anyway, here’s a great tip I picked up from blagger.com, you can guarantee talking to a human at BT by calling 020 7356 5000! I was so excited when I heard this that I called on a sunday evening…and a HUMAN answered! Woohooo! Even though she told me to ring back the next day, it was almost cathartic after so many frustrating hours talking to robots.

BTW – I’ve found an automated telephone service even more annoying than BT’s: Parcel Force! Not only is it arsingly irritating, it’s on an expensive 0870 number and it uses voice (un)recognition!

As the DSL was Donald yesterday, I went over to Eltham to do some work. The bus ride was your typical South East London experience, right down to the 60+ year old pissing all over the top deck, much to the dismay and annoyance of an African bloke there who really couldn’t conceal his consternation.

I also saw a lovely old Routemaster going in the other direction. What sort of lucky tourist party could get hold of one of those ancient bits of heritage? I wondered. As it got closer, the magic words “Railway Replacement” could be seen on the front and I too nearly wet myself. These 50 year old buses, apparently too old to be in service as buses, are now back in service to assist the wreckage of our once-proud, now privatised, rail system.

The papers and TV have been obsessed with the new extended opening hours. If you’ve ever wanted to see a better example of bad journalism then pick any channel, newspaper or news-site and look for the coverage. Hours of videos, pages of pictures and long lurid descriptions of the same thing: drunk people in town centres at 3am on a sunday morning getting their arses out whilst shouting “aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrghhhhhh”. Now, I live within 15 minutes walk of the Old Kent Road. People getting pissed and violent early in the morning is not new! The reason why I don’t go out on saturday nights is because it’s full of drunk arseholes, and has been forever. The relaxation of the laws can only have a beneficial effect….but give it a chance. You can’t change culture overnight. Give it at least a year…please! Once people realise there’s no rush they will surely calm down. I hope.

For the third time this month we have no Internet access! I’m in a state beyond normal anger.
Of course, we don’t know whose fault it is…the fact that it went down during scheduled engineering work at my local exchange and hasn’t come back up since is surely a co-incidence. Otherwise that would make BT the most incompetent, usless, bubmling, reckless cocks onf the whole of the fucking bastard planet.
So, I’m writing this using my mobile as a GPRS modem. 3 second ping times! I remember those! But oddly they don’t fill me with nostalgic joy.
In response to my ISP fulfilling their legal requirement by informing me that I may be charged if engineers are called out I mentioned that if BT tried to charge me there would be slayings of BT staff. He told me he could comment. He also asked me if I would video it and put a torrent on the net for him…I liked him.

Humphrey has got used to me being at home and is slowly turning into a spoiled little bugger. OK, in fairness, a beautiful, innocent, sweet, spoiled, little bugger, but a bugger nonetheless. She’s got very clingy and yells as soon as one of us even approaches the door. On the few occasions that this doesn’t coincide with her being stuffed full of seeds, she will launch herself at your head so that she can accompany us to wherever we’re headed. In reality it’s probably to the bog, but in her simple, feathery, avian, little mind we are going out to the seeds and interesting object room. Poor little bird. But she has been very loving, and in a way it’s quite flattering. The down points are that she keeps trying to gain my attention while I’m working by eeking, squeaking, and trying to prise keys off the laptop keyboards. She’s very skilled at key removal. Cross platform too (iBook and ThinkPad equally).
Of course, the other problem with a clingy bird is the poo. I could happily go to a job interview with bird-shit all over my shoulders now. In fact, I probably wouldn’t even notice.
She’s on my head now as I type. This is as a result of Michele trying to put her to bed. It’s like having a toddler. She knows the grown-ups are still up and feels that she’s missing out. But, in return, she preens my hair and her claws make great scalp massagers.
You know, I had intended to write something totally different, but our dear bird has distracted me.

For my personal record:
Good night last night – met with some top union dudes, then Andy, Michele and I went to Nouvelle Spice for a top meal. Great to chat…

Miss you all!

Another tech BTW:
Fatsquirrel has now been moved to Jeremiah!
As denzil is currently down again this has cheered me up no end!
To celebrate the shift, I’ve recoded the diabolical bolog-engine to generate legit xhtml and cut out a load of crap from the display. Non geeks will notice nothing….sorry. Geeks should view-source and let me know what facets of Nu-Web(tm) I’ve fucked up on. I can then respond with an overly nasty “fuck you” email.

Good night.

As every Englishman knows, the high point of the calendar is the Lord Mayor’s Show. An ancient (783 years) ritual in the square-mile that mixes the bizarre, basic, feudal, unpleasantness of 13th century England with the bizarre, basic, unfair, unpleasantness of the modern-day world.

Our non-English friends may wonder at the spectacle of loads of corporate whores in horrible pastiches of Ole Englande constume, parading up and down in a joyless fashion, holding their corporate logos on banners, desperately trying to convince the TV cameras that they are having a great time dancing in the cold, grey drizzle.

The Lord Mayor in the mean-time looks every bit the part: jolly, red-faced and happy to watch the dreary procession of civil servants, proles and soldiers. Of course he does! This procession heralds the start of the best year of his life! For the next 12 months he will be off round the planet, getting celebrity treatment without a care in the world! And why ? Because he spent most of his life supporting previous Lord Mayors like a good civil servant.

It’s not only joyless corporate whores on the floats though! In between the advertising banners are the military, demonstrating how big and pointy their weapons of mass destruction really are. The whole display is to show off Britain’s pathetic “Military Industrial Complex”, as Eisenhower put it.

After the heady excitement of the Lord Mayor’s Show, the whole of the English population get together as one for the “solemn ceremony of remembrance”: a ceremony in which we remember the thousands of people we sent off to certain death in the name of keeping our rich, rich.

As one on the Sunday morning we all collectively sit in our baths and shout out “Oh fucking hell they’ve put the Archers back by an hour for this bastard ceremony”

Oh England, my Lionheart.