Llynos has, wisely, decided to put her travelogue on-line!

For the record, or rather for my personal diary of BT being useless bastards, they fucked up again yesterday. Zen (my ISP) sum it up rather nicely:

Customers experiencing this fault will not be able to connect via ADSL or SDSL to the Internet.

At present BT have not been able to provide us with details of this problem, and therefore we can provide no estimated time of repair.

Further details will be posted here when available.

Mid-hack yesterday afternoon it all went pair-shaped. The next half-hour was spent on the phone to Zen trying to work out what went wrong. After resetting my BellEnd(TM) router, doing some voodoo and generally swearing at everything I called Zen back and they confirmed that BT had bollocksed up the whole of London. Well done BT! Please see previous blogs for more examples of BT ruining the country.

So I gave Humphrey some apple and carrot and went into the office to finish off what I was doing. A pain because we’d planned to go to the Rosey after work (5 minutes from my front room, twenty from the office).
Anyway – a nice evening – met up with batly, Kate, Vic and Beck. All I remember about the night was laughing a lot.

I left relatively early and it turned out to be good timing. They all went to a crap local eatery and not only got kicked out for laughing(!), the restaurant called the old bill! Admittedly plod was also laughing as he told them that, legally, the owner was perfectly within his right to chuck them out, but still – in my opinion it would be a shit idea to go to Viva Zapata’s, Lewisham Way because, in my opinion, the food is average and overpriced. Also, in my opinion, the staff clearly don’t understand that laughing is a good thing. Also, perhaps plod should have realised that this was all totally fucking stupid and not got involved. Hmm.Note to self:

• The book group
• the showreel
• the mental kids
• Humph is preening me 🙂

Enjoy yourselves (it’s later than you think)

Ohh – I almost forgot! Dear denzil ( the web server that currently hosts this site and many others) is soon getting replaced with a shiney new 1U rack job: Jeremiah. He’s currently propped up against the edge of the desk in this room but he’ll move to his new home next week. Welcome Jeremiah!

Over the past few weeks I’ve spent some considerable time in the Docklands and I’m beginning to like it. It’s like being in the future..or rather like being in the 70s view of the future, right down to the scenic monorail, the digital signage and mobile phones. When it first opened for business in the 80’s it was plain weird. Mainly because the landscape was there but the people weren’t. These huge opulent buildings with glass, chrome and marble everywhere you looked…but no bugger there. Now the place is packed and there are bars, restaurants and all the bollocks. Everywhere you look is a waterfront bar full of young pissed up IT workers, “relaxing” after work and gazing at the shimmering reflections of the capitalist organs in the once busy docks as the DLR glides past.

And you know what ? After the first batch of terrorist attacks it’s going to look absolutely perfect for the set of every post-apocalyptic dystopian fantasy film you could ever want to make.

Anyway, work is progressing at a uniform rate. This week was the first time I’ve had any of my changes put onto one of the production servers…ok only 1 production server but still. However, despite being a newby and quite enjoying the whole deal it looks like I may be leaving: I’ve been offered another, better paid job. And the MegaCorp pay isn’t too shabby let me tell you…Funny old world.

Apart from that nothing much has changed. Still seeing the Goldsmiths people now and again and things seem good. Last night was particularly good Lisa is back from her far east trip, Llynos sent us an some pictures of her feeding a baby roo in the Aussie outback and we had a nice friday evening in the Hobgoblin . It was like old times. In fact, for old times sake I went home via cummin’ up and had some jerk chicken washed down with peanut punch. OK, not exactly the healthy option but the perfect after pub fayre.

One thing that really cheered me up…well a bit anyway..was the crushing defeat of that bastard Blair and his obsequious colleages. For those of you out of touch with the state of the marionette theatre that is contemporary British politics, Blair was trying to push through yet more ultra-right fascistic restrictions on freedom in the name of protecting us from terrorism. They wanted to extend the length of time someone could be held without charge to 90 days (that’s 3 months, or the equivalent of a 6 month prison sentence). But don’t worry, it’s only for suspected terrorists. Suspected terrorists like, for example, the French computer programmer who got a nice Section 44 stop and search at Borough station which, on the discovery of some doodles on his notepad, lead to an arrest (presumably under the terrorist act), a raid on his house, and a month long seizure of his computer equipment. He was released without charge.

Now, there are lots of objections to the 90 day rule, not least of which is why ’90 days’ is the magic number. But one thing I genuinely want to know is why the police would need to arrest someone if it was going to take them 90 days to get any evidence together. OK, if you catch him with a load of C-4 in a backpack then by all means nick him – but you won’t need 90 days to charge him. So what ‘suspicion’ could possibly justify arresting someone if there’s no evidence immediately to hand ? It’s like the old NTNOCN sketch with constable savage arresting the same man for “looking at me in a funny way, possesion of an offensive wife, walking on the cracks on the pavement and possesion of curly black hair and thick lips”….

The police, the government and seemingly every other dimwit in the world seem to think that you can solve any problem with more legislation. Take the recent riots (currently in France). If only the government would introduce legislation to make rioting, causing explosions and shootings illegal then it would solve all of the problems….oh wait a minute…

He died a while ago, and I didn’t know him personally or anything, but what a bloke. If he was on stage you could guarantee a load of really shit jokes, stupid anecdotes and to see his tiny nob. That was Malcolm’s main joke: getting his cock out. You may think that wasn’t a very funny idea, which it wasn’t. But the fact it was such a crap thing to do made it genuinely funny.

But it you grew up in South East London in the 80s/90s you will almost certainly love Malcolm as the rude, drunk uncle that he could have been – especially if you watched The Comic Strip.

This Wikipedia Article includes the excellent quote:

To say that he has no shame, is to drastically exaggerate the amount of shame that he has

although my favourite quote is from Simon Day (Fast Show/Tommy Cockles etc):

after intensive questioning [by the police] they decided that he was not a threat to national security only social security.

More details on his website, especially under the anecdotes.
RIP Malcolm.

Those of you unlucky enough to be deprived of UK TV (and that includes a significant number of the British middle-class) will miss Love Soup which is, in my not so humble opinion, the best thing ever. OK – probably not that good but it I can’t plug it enough. If you missed it, either buy the inevitable DVD or get a torrent from somewhere – in fact, if you find a torrent then please mail it to me. In a few years it will be rediscovered as a masterpiece…then we can all be smug that we loved it “when it was first on” 🙂

During the previous BT fubar I had a brief but welcome chat with an ex-work-colleague who wisely suggested that I get some AFK time in “that park I like”. So we did – on Sunday, Michele and I went back to the Tarn in Eltham…the weather was shite by the time we got there but it was still the most relaxing and life-affirming experience I’ve had for ages. We saw paired Mallards, Moorhens, Coots, Geese, a Pigeon in a hole in a tree and several rats. This is what we want to see! So nice. Especially when combined with a walk and followed by a dinner at my parents.

In attempt to prop-up my memory, recent events include:

• Message 05 with Eric Allman last week (Thursday)
• Sendmail TLS
• Thinkball
• Smoking bans, section 44, tories saying that Labour are always trying to ban things, Blunkett’s troubles, WBush still not getting struck by Lightning
• Jonathan Millar’s “Brief history of disbelief
• Snore-Eeze
• Chris, Limewire and Bob Newhart
• What evil lurks in data Cards

Night everyone.

Our net access and phone line are back thanks to the friendly, sympathetic engineer who turned up today (while I was out using internet access elsewhere). Whether he was the same engineer who was AWOL yesterday I don’t know and didn’t ask, but what I did ask was, what went wrong ?

You’ll never guess! It was a BT engineer fucking up! Basically tripping over our phone line (see previous blog entry) and pulling it out. It took less than an hour to fix. So why did it take 4 days to get it fixed ? I’m hoping the chairman of BT will be able to provide an answer when I write to him (and it will be a ‘him’).
Worse still was the fact that despite the assurance from engineering that he wouldn’t need to get into the house, he needed to get into the house.
“Because you need to put an oscillator on the line right ?” I asked.
“Oh, you really have had a lot of problems in the past haven’t you” he replied.

I knew they’d need to get in. I knew it was an engineer fuck up. I knew we wouldn’t get it fixed on friday. Am I psychic ? No – but I do understand the internal workings of BT better than most people…sadly that includes the senior BT managers.

BT engineers – when you’re migrating lines from one cab to another please ensure you reconnect them properly. Alternatively, let people know you’re going to move them so when you fuck up we can report it properly and get it fixed quickly.

Ahh – Internet access, red wine, curry, crap TV and a parrot on my head. Michele and I are very happy.

For the fourth time since we moved into this flat we have no telephone and no Internet access. For the fourth time, our “service” has been totally suspended with out warning, with no explanation and we are utterly and abjectly pissed off. For the fourth time it has taken 4 days of pain, automated menu systems, arguments, being lied to and apologies from computerised voices to get this far: still no service and the likelihood of nothing until Monday.

So I’m writing this in a text editor for later upload. In fact, I decided to call this text file “blog”, and was amused to discover a previous blog I had written during a previous BT outage.

You may argue that our total dependence on Internet access is a trifle sad and that we should get out more. You’re probably right, but that’s not actually what’s making me ill with anger. It’s BT. A recent report (that I can’t look up until we get Internet access back) blamed the reason for the UK being so behind the rest of Europe in Internet provision solely on BT,
and they’re right. Do a search through my blogs for BT and you’ll see that in the past few years they have given us a service so shit that it looks like it must be deliberate. In fact, I’m now beginning to think it really is deliberate. There’s no way to make your service this shit without actually trying.

No-one likes automated telephone menus systems. But BT’s are so, so bad that they must be taking the piss. Before you can get through to the message telling that you’re about to be put into a queue and maybe you shouldn’t bother because they’re experiencing a very heavy call load, you have to go through 4 levels of menu, type your phone number, have it read back to you and listen to seemingly superfluous ringing tones. An example of one of the clearly obvious wind-ups is as follows:

“Please choose from the following four options. For BT products and services press 1. For….”
1
“Thank you. Please choose from the following options. If you are interested in BT products or services press 1. Otherwise press 2”

What ? What’s that for ? I pressed 1 which clearly demonstrates I have an interest in BT products and services. So why are you asking me again ?

The whole system is geared towards making you give up and fuck off. What in the social service they call ‘tertiary rationing’: making the bureaucracy so tortuous that people don’t bother to claim their benefits.

But, until yesterday, I was always singlemindedly stubborn and determined to get through to a human and usually did – even if I had to wait half an hour in a queue. But yesterday I broke. In total I was in queues for over hour. In total I was in queues for over an hour, when I should have been working. After 10 or so rings the voice of BT comes on, apologises for the delay, and suggests you go online to sort it out. Don’t take the piss woman! If I could get on-line I would! Eventually I realised I had lost the will to live, threw the phone down and collapsed. Just then the phone rang. It was George from Milton Keynes calling me back to tell me that he hadn’t managed to get through to the engineer who was supposed to be working on my line and so it probably wasn’t going to get fixed. Despite this bad news, I was so overjoyed to hear a human being and so delighted that he had stayed late to call me back, as promised, that the flame in my soul re-lit. Thank you George!

Look BT, London Electricity have kept our lights working consistently for over a year. Thames water have been keeping water flowing in and our turds flowing out for the same time. So why, why, can’t you keep my phone service working for a few months at a time ? Just leave it the fuck alone! Don’t touch it and it will carry on working! What goes on ? Does the tea-boy keep tripping over our line and pulling out in the exchange ? Get him a job at London Electricity, then at least if he does it again he’ll get a serious burn – maybe he’ll be more careful after that.
Everywhere you look nowadays in the UK you see privatised companies destroying their services and coining in more cash for the top level of idle layabouts in their “management team” and we become less and less empowered to stop them. Michele summed it up yesterday [you need to hear her American accent as you read it]: “You know, I can totally see why this country lost the Empire”

I nearly hurt myself laughing…

After hearing the interview with John Reid on the Today programme this morning, I couldn’t help wondering if he was ever bullied in the school showers about the size of his Chinooks.

There’s a TV ad that’s bubbled from the heady heights of ITV down to the cess-pits of “Men and Motors” for the new e-bank: “first direct”. “new” because it’s been around for years and years. “e” because they realised the business advantage of ditching all of the expensive high-street staff in favour of a load of desperate call-centre monkeys long before the Internet was widespread enough to be a serious option. OK, that sounds harsh but there are some caveats:

• The people who work in the call-centres are not necessarily stupid, in fact I would think that nowadays they are way up above the average IQ andprobably the cream of the market. The problem is their location and situation: you live in Newcastle, Plymouth or Belfast these days then you don’t have many choices. Consequently, you are competing against an increasingly educated workforce for the few shitty jobs that global companies are still forced to provide (computers still can’t cope with voice recognition – you’ll know when they can because the caring capitalists will cause a wave of mass global unemployment). Pity that there are areas of the world more poor than you because otherwise you may have some job security. Kiss goodbye to your jobs because India is currently where it’s at. At the moment anyway. Those uppity Indians will soon be as unreasonable as all of us and demand business-unfriendly, “inflexible” wages! Never mind, we haven’t even started on China properly yet. And you wait until North Korea starts to take the bait!
• Being sandwiched between ads for wank-lines, low-quality ring-tones and tits doesn’t mean first-direct are desperate! It’s just good business!
• Yeah – I was watching! But in my defence it’s because Jack Reagan and George Carter are my heroes….ok..I lose that one…
• If you work in a call centre you are having a hard enough time with the day-to-day stuff so you really don’t need wankers like me calling you monkeys! So get angry! But not with me and all the other millions of people, including you probably, who hate talking to call centres, get angry with the fact that there’s enough money in the world for everyone to live in comfort. Not just survive, but live in comfort! So why do people starve ? Tricky one that…

Anyway, back to the ad: this gormless couple of McDonalds-dependent turds explain how they feel like being an fd customer is like being in a select club. Well, yes, very select I would say. Shot in black-and-white (we probably wouldn’t want to see them in colour) their words are displayed on the screen as they are spoken, probably to make the average Men and Motors viewer feel that he can read. But then you start to look at their surroundings. OK, a minimalistic room with bare floorboards: very cool. On the other hand there’s fuck all else there! Nothing but a radiator! They are sitting in a big empty room! Has it been repossessed by their “select club” ? Damn! The bastards even took the carpet!

Apologies for not writing to you. I don’t deserve any friends I know…but I’ve been in a bit of a fug of worky scaredness recently. Love!