Anything ELSE for the weekend?

So, most of you know that I work in IT, and you've read some of the stories about the sort of things I've had to put up with in the past.  Some of them were from genuinely stupid people, some were from people who just didn'y know any better and still more were from people who shouldn't be allowed to eat with a fork.

Others of you will know that I work for (Not as) a hairdresser... Can I just point out that I cannot and will not cut or style your hair... Although I'll quite happily have a blundering, all thumbs, attempt at a vajazzle for you. Can you imagine the sort of IT problems that hairdressers create?  I share an office with the IT Support team, and the quality of support calls that their team have to deal with is... Well... I'll let you decide for yourself.

Please note, these things all happened in the last week, and it's not been a particularly busy week.

-oOo-

I've told a story similar to this one before, and I include it just to let you know that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Our salons are split into regions, each of which is overseen by a Regional Manager.  These are often hair stylist who've 'climbed the ladder' and been given more and more responsibility until they're deemed powerful enough to hold other peoples' careers in their hands.

We had an R.M. (as they're known, colloquially) come into the office with the printer from her 'home office' - (Please note, this particular young lady has a thick, Liverpudlian, accent - Bear that in mind, I feel it adds something to the story.)

'This thing doesn't work!' She said, dropping the printer down on the table.

'What seems to be the problem?' Asked one of our guys, very politely, and after a good ten minutes of 'It doesn't work / What exactly do you mean' roundy-roundy type questions, he ascertained that it did everything but actually print.  She'd tried everything that she possibly could, she'd changed the toner (twice), replaced the drum, sacrificed a chicken but nothing would make it spring into life.  By the time that she'd explained all this, she'd decided that she had too much to do to stand around watching someone trying to fix an obviously broken printer - and went off for a coffee.

So, the printer was plugged in, connected to a PC and tested - It didn't print (Please tell me you've figured out what was probably wrong with it)

I'll give you another few minutes, what could possibly be wrong, with a printer, used by someone who has hiring / firing responsibility for 60 or so people, that was so technically intricate that she had to haul it a hundred miles to get it fixed by a tech?

That's right, there was no paper in it.

He put some paper in it and ran a few test prints... Then did the same when she came back to check on his progress.  She had the decency to go a rather fetching shade of scarlet, and swore us to secrecy - And none of us have ever told another living soul. *cough*

-oOo-

I recently overheard on of my other colleagues on the phone to a real, live, hairdresser who was having a huge problem with the printer in the salon, I can only imagine that the poor girl was on her own, had a huge queue of customers and was flustered to the point of turning into... Ah... Something that's notorious for being easily flustered.  Obviously I only heard his half of the conversation, so I've decided to fill in hers from my 'Great Big Book of Things Users Say'

Him: OK, so what's happening when you try to print?
Her: Nothing
Him: Nothing at all, no sounds?
Her: No [To Customer] Sorry to keep you waiting...
Him: Does anything come up on the screen when you try to print?
Her: Yes
Him: [Waits for a few seconds] Well, what does it say?
Her: I can't remember - It doesn't print so I've stopped trying to print things
Him: OK, can you try and print something and tell me what it says?
Her: OK [To Customer] Yes, that'll be £75, I'm sorry the printer's broken, I can't give you a receipt. [To Him] It say 'Printer Not found'
Him: Right, are there any flashing lights on the printer?
Her: No
Him: We're going to need to check if there are any lose cables, can you get to the back of the printer?
Her: Erm... Not really [To Customer] No Madam, I don't think there should be a tingling sensation, but I've only ever used it on my head... [To Him] It's all a bit jammed in.
Him: Are there any lights on the printer at all?
Her: No, not that I can see
Him: Really? Right, was there any noise when the lights went out? or a funny smell?
Her: No, it's been like that since we turned it off.
Him: [Facepalms quite expressively] There's a switch on the front with a 1 and a 0 on it, can you press the side with the 1?
Her: Oh! that seems to have fixed it, well done!

Then he went over to the kitchen and put his head in the microwave, luckily though our microwave is electric and not gas, so he just got a bit of a tan.

-oOo-

And today's final foray into the world of the slapdash shampoo and set is about one of our compatriots in the office.  She has no staff to worry about, but nevertheless, is in a position of some power.

We have just issued everyone who has a workphone with a brand-spanking new iPhone 5 - There have been teething problems, as you would expect, but this one sticks in my mind.  Please also keep in mind that this particular person, relies on her phone more than she relies on her left leg.

She came into the office claiming that her phone had stopped working, and she'd appreciate it if we fixed it.
Her phone was duly examined and found to be working perfectly well, she was asked to demonstrate the problem... She rang her desk phone, which forwarded the call to her iPhone, which remained silent - But the screen lit up and flashed that someone was calling her.

'Ah, this happens sometimes!', explained the same gentleman who 'fixed' the printer in the above story, 'You just have to do this:' He stiffly banged the top of the iPhone, whilst surreptitiously switching off the Mute button.

'Try it now.'

So she did, and it worked (Well, it would, wouldn't it.?)

'Yeah, just a loose connection... I wonder...' He gave it a brisk tap (and switched the Mute on again). 'Try it again?'

Which she did, and of course it didn't ring... Tapped... Unmuted... gave it back to her.

Now, the plan is, every time any of us sees it unattended on her desk, we're going to mute it, then wander past and see if we can catch her beating the crap out of her phone trying to unmute it.

We've planned an upgrade to this jolly jape... We're going to try and convince the next person who had this 'problem' that you can mute and unmute the iPhone by voice control - See if we can get them to re-enact the Scotty 'Invention of Transparent Aluminium' Scene from Star Trek: the Voyage Home.



Have a nice weekend kids, I'm going to be a bit busy myself... Whilst I'm on the subject - I don't suppose any of you have a radiator that'd fit a 2002 Citroen Xsara Picasso have you?

Я очень популярны в России

Firstly, another apology... Three days without a Blog!

What was I thinking?

Well, Monday and Tuesday I wholeheartedly blame on my day-job.  Lots of documentation that needed doing, lots of research, lots of boring stuff that pays the bills.

Yesterday I spent lolling in my pit until I felt strong enough to drag myself to the sofa and watch the final episode of 'American Horror Story: Asylum' (That I Sky+'d about 15 years ago) and had a bit of a cry when I realised that Mrs Dandy had deleted all the old episodes of 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars' that I was saving for those days when I feel like an eight year old...

(No, not like that... You maggots!)

Anywho, a mixture of various painkillers, glucose drinks and sheer bloodymindedness has seen me drag my weary old frame the fifty miles to work, on my hands and knees, so that I can waffle to you ungrateful lot about the square-root of bugger all whilst someone pays me to do something completely different. (Although, in fairness, I did send a couple of mails from my deathbed yesterday - So I class that as working from home - Guilt assuaged)

Secondly, the title of this post could probably do with some explaining.  recently, I've been getting rather more than usual hits from search engines, and not from my regular 'Things you can type into Google where the Blog is the first Hit' Twitter posts -

Today's is 'Nude Pangolin is House of Lords IT guru' by the way, just so as you know.

No, these hits are from the Russian language search engine yandex.ru (as I think I might have mentioned when it originally started happening).  The three search terms that they are using are 'The Doors Lock', 'The Internet Saying' and 'I Sit Here on the Verge' - These have stormed to the top of the Most popular searches ever with around 60 instances between them.

I would love to know what they're actually searching for, as I've tried doing it myself and just get a random selection of unconnected page results... Maybe someone cleverer than me can let me know - Or if you're a Russian person, whose English is better than my Russian - Which wouldn't be difficult as I'm pretty much lost after Spasibo (спасибо) - Please leave a comment as to what you're actually looking for, I'd be really appreciative.

Not... That... Appreciative. Sheesh dude, you literally have one track minds... I wouldn't even know how to do half the things you're thinking about!

If this Blog was written in real-time... There'd be a huge gap just there ^ as I've been away from my desk for the past hour 'Doing the post'

I work for a large, multinational (hairdressing) company... Who still does their post manually. five people from various sections of the office come together every fortnight, in a spirit of co-operation and harmony and take post out of pigeonholes, stuff it into a brown envelopes, stick a label on it and send it for franking...

Which is exactly why I got into IT...

Stuffing hairdressers payslips into envelopes...

You ever get the feeling that your life isn't going in completely the right direction?

Should I have bothered? Probably...

I very nearly wasn't going to post a Blog today, I drew a blank with serious ideas, and I couldn't think of anything funny.

I couldn't spin out a story about one overpriced prima-donna of a footballer biting chunks out of another overpriced prima-donna of a footballer then limping off like a petulant seven year old, pretending that he'd been fouled to avoid retribution, for long enough to fill a whole page.

I wasn't in the mood to comment on the Cypriot financial crisis, or the vast swathes of the uneducated masses confusing Chechnya and Czechoslovakia (or thinking that The Brighton Pavillion is a Mosque)

Neither could I rouse enough bile to comment on why North Korea has stumbled down the list of 'things that people are talking about that involve the end of the world'

You see, this is why I don't do 'Current Affairs', it all comes from being so gorram  anachronistic I guess.
So I started looking through the back catalog of the Blog and seeing if there were any 'unfinished stories' or suchlike that grabbed me.  But there weren't.  I guess that it's just because it's Monday and the uphill struggle seems a little steeper than usual.

We all feel a bit Meh! occasionally, right?

What I did notice was that there were a few posts that stood out as having much lower than average number of hits - Now I know that this Blog is a bit hit and miss (Take today for instance).  But personally, I think some of these are OK.

I mean there's one post on the list that spawned the idea for the short-story that you can buy, with real cash-money, on Amazon, and that got less than 30 views!  You people are so fickle.  So, as I'm a second chances kind of guy, at least where pushing my juvenile claptrap out to an unwilling audience is concerned,  I present the six least read Blog posts that are any good... I've written posts that have had less hits than these, but in fairness they were pretty awful - I wouldn't ask you to read them...

But these, these are great... Well, They're OK... I say OK, the chances are your eyes won't fall out whilst you're actually reading them, Not fall out, not completely at least.

-oOo-

Let's start at the least worst:

With 30 page views, published back in December 2012 is - Something for the Weekend - Where I tell you about the day I spent working in a hairdressing salon:  Caution, starts with a dream sequence involving sturgeon and a wheelbarrow full of custard.

Just pipping it to the post marked 'Not quite as good' by one page view, also from December 2012 is - Pandas, the Eastern Scourge - Describing the enigma and possible evolutionary development of the Giant Panda.  This idea was developed into the Flash Fiction story 'Danao', as published to critical acclaim in February 2013.

With two less page views again is the confused engineering nightmare of - Maybe they explained it badly - A frank and forthright discussion on how the laws of physics can work against each other and we've all just accepted it since 1903 because we don't know any better.

Then we jump down the scale all the way to 22 page views, the oldest post in the list, from November 2012 and the first real post on the Blog - I'm a Bigot, You're a Bigot, We're ALL Bigots... - This attempts to describe, in an educational way, how bigotry can be a terrible, life changing thing.  To get the most from this Blog, you may need to know some of the short-codes that Starbucks use for their drinks, although... Nahh, con't worry about it.

We jump ahead to February 2013 for - Celebrity? She's a bit of a cult - A post where I display my complete ignorance of popularist celebrity culture, and delve into the past of one Kimberly Noel Kardashian and her ilk.

And right at the bottom, wallowing in the cesspit of ignored posts, was the very next day's post, racking up an almost unbelievable 20 page views, plucking at the very heartstrings of your ever-loving Bloggoteer, comes - My Interview with iBazinga magazine -  A pun and in-joke riddled travesty that details ficticious questions, asked by ficticious people, from actual places that the Blog has had hits from, which points you to other posts on the Blog... A bit of light Blog-a-ception for you there - But it does hold a link to the Chimpin Dandy's super-villain origin story, involving a smattering of telling lies to strippers to get free dances.

-oOo-

Hopefully I'm have magically become more creative tomorrow, or you could be lucky and something odd will happen to me between now and then.


P.S. Anyone else had trouble downloading the client for the free version of Star Wars: The Old Republic?  Thought I'd bang it on ready for playing it over the bank holiday weekend, but it's taken two days to download so far, it keeps stalling.  Hope this isn't a precursor to the quality of the game...

Something for the Weekend?

Hands up, all those people who thought it was funny when your Ever-Lovin' Chimpster got a job at a Hairdressers? One, two, some, many - is that two people at the back or one person with both hands up? What? Oh, that's not your hand... You're very kind sir, but I'm not that way inclined.

OK, keep your hands up if you thought was even funnier when I found out that I had to work one day a year in an actual salon, with real people, who have actual hair?

And keep them up if you thought this was even funnier when you remembered I am, for all intents and purposes, bald?

Now, take a look around at all the people who still have their hands up, don't forget the one guy standing behind the pot-plant in the corner, pretending to be a... a... What the hell are you doing to that Sturgeon? put it down! No, not there!, nobody's going to want that now are they, Where the hell did you get a wheelbarrow full of butterscotch Angel Delight? - Anyway, I digress, none of you are getting Christmas cards this year, you people who put your hands down at any point? Neither are you. It's nothing personal, I'm just not sending cards this year, I'm skint.

Back to the story - I called the Salon in Derby yesterday to announce that I would be arriving first thing in the morning to 'Do my thang!' You could hear the faint smell of panic and tightening of sphincters all the way in Coventry. I put the phone down and made inappropriate jokes about my minimal amount of power over people who didn't know who I was. Then I heard a funny noise.

'What was that?'

'What?'

'That noise - The Beeep-Beep noise?'

'You've had a text on your BlackBerry'

'Really? Weird'

'Never had a text before?'

'Not on my work phone, no.'

So feeling a little stupid, I read the text, it said: [Do you like Black or White coffee?] Now, you have to admit that this a strange first text for anyone to recieve. I assumed that it was from the salon, and made a mental note to pick up some milk on my way in, nothing like being prepared. Then, again, Beeep-Beep! Knowing now what this noise signified, I checked my phone, it said: [Do you like puppies?] - Never has my Flabber been more Ghasted! (c) Frankie Howerd 1973. At this point, my colleague over the other side of the office dissolved into fits of giggles, it turns out that he had remote controlled the salon's computer, and got it to send me the texts. Touche Monsieur, Touche!

So I arrived at the salon at the crack of 9:30(ish) to be told that the manager had rang in sick, and the poor stylist had no real idea what was going on.

'I'm here to help you guys out, I can do whatever you need me to'

'You're not here to spy on us and report back on all the things that we're doing wrong?'

Did I mention that I'm a terrible liar? 'No..?' I squealed, like a constipated gecko. I think there was a chance that she may have seen through my complex web of subterfuge and deceit.

'Would you like me to, erm, clean something?'

'OK, how about those shelves?'

'All those? But there must be all of about, oh, I don't know, eight of them or something'

If I'm honest, the next three hours, flew past pretty quicky, and by the time I'd finished the first shelf I had gained the trust, and if I'm honest, grudging admiration of the entire staff, of one person... With my lightning powers of calculation, I figured that the other seven shelves would take me twenty-one hours. I am not a born shelf cleanerer it seems. I decided that my further efforts should be concentrated in a purely managerial / audit capacity. I weighed up the options, balanced what I knew about the salon against what I needed to know, turned to the poor stylist that I had been torturing with my very presence and said'

'I'm going for lunch'

Lunch was a pretty grown up affair consisting of a litre of Chocolate milkshake and a slice of pizza, that took me exactly the one hour to consume *cough*

On my return to the salon, things were getting busy, real people were having real treatments done to them by qualified people who seemed to actually know what they were doing, I felt very much out of my depth.

'I'm going to pop down to the other salon, and see what I can do down there'

'Uh-huh,' said the stylist. In fairness, I could have said 'I'm going to take this tin of beans and see how long it takes me to make it boil by just staring dissapprovingly at it.' And she would have cared exactly as much.

Down I went, into a similar situation again, Different salon, different stylist, same air of 'I know you're trying to help, but will you just get out of my way and let me do what I'm good at.'

Luckily, we have three salons in Derby, so I went to the third. Here at least, I made an impact. Oh yes... Impact.

If you were to think of the four words guaranteed to chill the blood of the average person, what would they be?

You're going to die?

I'm afraid it's positive?

Yes it is loaded?

Why should I care?

I feel that I found four words that trumped all of these today... 'I'm from Head Office' - It struck fear into the very entrails of the assembled staff, brushes were dropped, jaws hit floors, customers chairs spun around uncontrollably making the Zoidberg 'Whoop-whoop-whoop' noise, all hell was, quite literally, let loose.

Do you remember the seagulls from Finding Nemo? - Instead of 'Mine!' the cry that went up from the assembled staff was 'You want the Manager!' So the manager was found, I explained who I was, we all had a great laugh as we hosed the urine out of the salon and I completed my audit, such as it was.

The rest of the afternoon was fairly uneventful, I did a bit of shopping and started my weekend an hour or so earlier than usual.

All in all, not a complete waste of a day.

(Please note, there is a significant amount of artistic license used in this dramatisation, everyone I met today was great and I would have no problem spending an entire day cleaning a shelf for them sometime in the future - Whether any of them feel the same way, well you'd have to ask them)