Have you ever dug a hole?
I must have, quite literally, dug possibly as many as five holes in my life. Most of them in various gardens, sometimes my own garden, sometimes whilst sober. But there's always that feeling of wonder you get when you start. Will I find anything interesting? maybe a potsherd (the proper name for a bit of broken old pottery) or a coin or a water main, or the holy of holies for us hole-diggers... A skull!
Doesn't matter what species it is... Human would be coolest, obviously, because your day gets instantly more exciting when a big white tent appears in your garden and you have all these people wandering around in paper suits, treading mud up your stairs when they go to the toilet. The least cool.. I suppose that would have to be digging up what seems to be an Ancient Egyptian burial site (Momentarily forgetting that you're in Walsall) and then suddenly remembering that this is where you buried Mimsy the cat some years before.
Anywho, digging a big hole, finding something even remotely unusual and identifying it. There's a name for that - It's called ruining a perfectly good garden... But the professionals, the people who've spent time at University drinking cheap cider in the SU bar and fumbling inexpertly with girls called Sophia behind the curtains at the Socialist Worker Christmas Marxist fundraiser call it Archaeology.
Nothing has done more to promote modern archaeology (Yes, Oxymoron, I know) to the masses, than the most wonderful of wonderful programs involving diggers, the one that introduced the word 'GeoFizz' (Yes, I know, I spelled it wrong - Comedy Blog, remember?)
'Time Team'
It is / was brilliant. Simple premise, a group of lovable, heavily personalitied, professionals, and Tony Robinson, go to various places and dig them up. I don't mean they just throw a dart at the map and then wander across the pitch at Wembley and start digging up the touchline, they often get invited by people who've found something interesting in their garden, or by a local archaeology society who thinks that the interesting lumpy bit in the field down the road might be the remains of the only known prehistoric branch of Greggs the Bakers or Poundstretcher.
They'd arrive in their big 4x4s, Tony would say that he couldn't see anything, the professionals would smile knowingly and pinch the little scamp's cheek, then send him up in a helicopter to look for interesting lines. Then John would come out and start walking around the place with an array of increasingly Heath-Robinson contraptions to map out what lay below the soil. A map would be produced which, much like the ultrasounds that pregnant women often bring into work, only looked like something if you already knew what it was that you were looking at.
JCBs would then arrive where blobs of coalesced GeoFizz had indicated the presence of walls or floors or waste pits and then Phil would stride onto the scene with his trademark west-country accent and feathered hat, gesticulate wildly and describe in glorious technodetail, what would be happening on the site some thousand years previously, he would include the names of the people involved, their favourite colour and their inside leg measurement.
In the background, gently shaking his head, would be a shock of wild white hair connected directly to an improbably knitted stripy jumper - The One, The Only, The Occasionally Quite Grumpy, Professor Mick Aston.
Once they had bundled Phil off to make a pot or smelt some bronze or catch a rabbit with only his hat and a replica of a roman toothbrush (I'm reliably informed that this is actually how the Romans caught rabbits - They called the process captas lepus dente dignissim et galeam - I believe I remember from school) Mick got down to the actual work, watching the digger take the top layer of grass and soil off, then directing trainees and archaeology students to get busy with their badger-bristle brushes and Barbie sized trowels. Within minutes, the hole is nine feet deep and they've got Iceland ice-cream tubs full of broken tea service all over the place.
Then Tony walks over again and asks how everyone's doing. Mick indicates the wall of the ditch and points to a selection of, to the casual observer, completely fictitious stripes which seemingly delineate where they've cut through an ancient river bed and and area decimated by a forest fire. There's a single piece of gravel pointing to the fact that the area was once rife with charcoal burners and a patch of earth on the floor telling him where there used to be a hole.
So, just rewinding a little, this chap could identify, at the bottom of a deep, freshly dug pit, an area where there used to be a hole, but there isn't one now - How good do you have to be at your job to be able to detect something that no longer exists, inside a large version of the same thing, that has only just been called into being? - I mean, that crimped my gourd just writing that, let alone being able to do it.
I think I remember one time (Although in fairness, I've probably made it up - But it's the sort of things that could well have happened) where Mick was explaining that a flat rock that they'd uncovered in a pit was actually from the bottom of a post-hole and had been used as a foundation for a wooden post some 4,000 years ago. Tony indicated another, incredibly similar rock a few inches away and asked if that was another one and Mick had said 'No Tony, that's just a rock.' And looked at him as if he may have been a bit simple.
Then they'd cut to the lab, where a half-inch square of grubby pot rim had been identified, and the viewer was treated to a CGI image of a five foot high carboy that had once contained olive oil or vinegar, or both (for Pre-historic salad dressing presumably), decorated with complex swirls and impressionist pictures of antelopes and rhinos (Still possibly in Walsall). How can you possibly do that? it's physically impossible. It's like a Chinese bloke taking a single blood cell and making a frog out of it... (What? No... I haven't read the news? A whole frog? 140 frogs? from one drop of blood? really? - Bugger - No, I can't take it out, they've read it now. Yes, I'll do more research next time before I go shooting my mouth off.)
Then someone would suggest digging another trench, although they didn't really have time. Then Mick would have an argument with John, Phil would proudly return from his reconstruction of life as a beaker-person or whathaveyou and proudly show off whatever it was that he'd not quite had long enough to make properly. Victor, the resident artist would show us scenes that he'd drawn depicting the buildings and artifacts that we'd seen. There'd be a shot of them all down the pub, showing that they were all great mates in real life and then Tony would do a piece to camera about what they'd achieved, there'd be an aerial shot of the dig, pulling out to the picturesque village that they happened to be in (or a rain soaked car-park in Walsall - poe-tay-toe / poe-tar-toe)
And then the spell would be broken - And you'd realise that you'd been sat, spellbound, in front of the TV watching some odd old geezers and the straight-man from Blackadder poddle about in the mud and spin you a yarn about the history of the country that we all love so much.
They'd brought history alive. For that hour every week that I, and hopefully thousands of other people spent absorbing our past, I thank you Time Team. I for one, hope that the cancellation of the show gets repealed.
I learned a lot.
This post dedicated to the memory of Professor Mick Aston - 1 July 1946 – 24 June 2013.
A native of Oldbury, not a million miles from where I'm sitting now, the archaeological inspiration of a generation, and wearer of some deeply awful jumpers
Friday, 28 June 2013
Thursday, 27 June 2013
It's all your fault!
I just read a post on one of those 'Spotted' Pages on Facebook. I don't know if your area is covered, but effectively it's a page where people can post things about people they've seen in the local area that they would 'Like to get to know better' - I presume that that's what they mean when they say 'I'm rite lyk to smash er back doorz in bruv.' anyway. Or when they find your choice of car or clothes unacceptable or they wish you would close your front curtains whilst you are excitedly banging your spotty buttocked, squealing girlfriend when they are peering through your windows whilst taking their kids to school and suchlike.
Anyway, going off on a tangent there... Don't know where that one would have ended up if I'd carried on with it *whew*.
The post was from someone thanking some kids who had handed her Grans purse into a local shop when they'd found it on the floor. It still had all the money in it and everything. Wonderful story, very uplifting - Proving that the youth of today deserves to be looked at as a disparate, loose grouping of individuals with their own special attributes and aspirations, rather than a huge septic mass of snapbacks and hoodies who cannot spell a three letter word never mind have an original thought without putting 'ey' or 'YGM' or something on the end of it.
Brilliant, great post, great event, warm and firm handshakes all around.
However, I started to notice a worrying trend in some of the replies. Apart from the spelling (which genuinely caused me to try and mouth the words and see if I could figure out what they were trying to say) and the almost apocalyptic lack of punctuation (Really, a sentence that stretches over four lines? - you must have some well hench lungs if you can say all that without stopping to breathe) - Oh! Lookit me! I'm trying to sound like a skinny, spotty white-boy, who weighs 5 stone wringing wet, doesn't know how hats work, thinks 'flipping the bird' is the epitome of human pulchritude, wears a lot of knock-off high-nylon-content sportswear and really wants to have been born, as a heavily muscled black gentleman, in South-Central LA or Compton.
So, apart from them, I kept reading things like 'Ah! they've made their Mums proud.' and 'That's because of the way that their Mums have brought them up' and 'Bet their Mums are giving them extra-big cuddles tonight'
See the theme?
Give you a clue, it starts with the letter 'M' and rhymes with 'bum'
I'm a Dad, and even if I say so myself, a pretty good one. I appreciate that traditionally, mothers have always been seen as the primary caregivers and I'm not trying to take anything away from them. I'd say that at least 80-90% of Mums are great, brilliant, wonderful people who inspire their kids whilst teaching them the proper boundaries and don't say 'It's just kids being kids, innit' when Little Jay-Zee gets brought home by the police as they've found him keying cars whilst still being dressed in his primary school uniform at 02:30 in the A.M.
I like to think that I've done my bit, in-between being out of the house for twelve hours a day doing the whole work thing. I've helped to teach my kids to think for themselves, to be proud of their achievements, to know the difference between right and wrong, the correct pressure to use when you're putting someone in a sleeper hold (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, there's a very real danger of brain-damage and/or death if you don't know what you're doing!) and, most importantly, respect for themselves and others.
Yet I still get looked at as if I'm either a paedophile, or some other kind of deviant if I happen to be seen outside with my own daughter - I understand from other Dads who have daughters in their late teens that they have a similar but slightly different problem, there's active tutting being directed at them on a fairly regular basis from the more mature (agewise) female members of society. I know that that might sound a bit sexist, but invariably, it's the classic 'Little Old Lady' that's giving it large with the 'He's old enough to be her Dad' business.
So what do we do about it?
How do we change that?
How do we make people start saying 'I bet their parents are proud' Rather than 'I bet their Mums are proud'?
Buggered if I know - but it might be a start for blokes to start taking responsibility for their children, acting like Dads and not just like bloody spermatozoon cannons. Getting their girlfriends pregnant and then rinsing and repeating with the next one and the next one and the next, wandering through their poky housing estates like a sexually ambivalent typhoid Mary (or Typhoid Marlon perhaps, in this particular case) begatting all over the place without a care in the world and bringing hordes of pale, acne-ridden ginger kids into the world who go straight from their third or fourth-hand plastic coated cots to the dole-queue, not passing Go, but still collecting £200 every bloody fortnight.
Parent who have been together for a long time and have subsequently parted after having kids - I get it, things happen, life's not like it is in fairy tales. This isn't directed at you. Neither am I talking about people who've escaped from abusive relationships or people whose partners have died, or mature people who have made the conscious decision to have children but to raise them on their own.
I'm talking about those boys, because they don't deserve to be called men - The 'I'm not wearing a condom, you can't feel anything' brigade, the 'If you loved me you'd let me' types, the ones you see in the adverts who prey on girls with low self-esteem, the ones whose face you would literally never get tired of punching, the ones who grin vacantly at you and you know that no matter how you explain it to them, they will have no idea what you're saying or why they should even care.
The ones that have made women hate men.
The ones that misguided women who don't really understand the difference between feminism and misandry blame all the world's problems on.
The ones that have made women who don't know me mistrust me because I am what is currently known as 'a big bloke.' (people used to use the word imposing you know - Better ring to it I think)
The ones that have made all men into monsters.
The ones that, if there was any justice in the world, would still be contained in a crusty old sock, hidden under their Father's bed.
This is aimed at you...
You make me sick.
Anyway, going off on a tangent there... Don't know where that one would have ended up if I'd carried on with it *whew*.
The post was from someone thanking some kids who had handed her Grans purse into a local shop when they'd found it on the floor. It still had all the money in it and everything. Wonderful story, very uplifting - Proving that the youth of today deserves to be looked at as a disparate, loose grouping of individuals with their own special attributes and aspirations, rather than a huge septic mass of snapbacks and hoodies who cannot spell a three letter word never mind have an original thought without putting 'ey' or 'YGM' or something on the end of it.
Brilliant, great post, great event, warm and firm handshakes all around.
However, I started to notice a worrying trend in some of the replies. Apart from the spelling (which genuinely caused me to try and mouth the words and see if I could figure out what they were trying to say) and the almost apocalyptic lack of punctuation (Really, a sentence that stretches over four lines? - you must have some well hench lungs if you can say all that without stopping to breathe) - Oh! Lookit me! I'm trying to sound like a skinny, spotty white-boy, who weighs 5 stone wringing wet, doesn't know how hats work, thinks 'flipping the bird' is the epitome of human pulchritude, wears a lot of knock-off high-nylon-content sportswear and really wants to have been born, as a heavily muscled black gentleman, in South-Central LA or Compton.
So, apart from them, I kept reading things like 'Ah! they've made their Mums proud.' and 'That's because of the way that their Mums have brought them up' and 'Bet their Mums are giving them extra-big cuddles tonight'
See the theme?
Give you a clue, it starts with the letter 'M' and rhymes with 'bum'
I'm a Dad, and even if I say so myself, a pretty good one. I appreciate that traditionally, mothers have always been seen as the primary caregivers and I'm not trying to take anything away from them. I'd say that at least 80-90% of Mums are great, brilliant, wonderful people who inspire their kids whilst teaching them the proper boundaries and don't say 'It's just kids being kids, innit' when Little Jay-Zee gets brought home by the police as they've found him keying cars whilst still being dressed in his primary school uniform at 02:30 in the A.M.
I like to think that I've done my bit, in-between being out of the house for twelve hours a day doing the whole work thing. I've helped to teach my kids to think for themselves, to be proud of their achievements, to know the difference between right and wrong, the correct pressure to use when you're putting someone in a sleeper hold (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, there's a very real danger of brain-damage and/or death if you don't know what you're doing!) and, most importantly, respect for themselves and others.
Yet I still get looked at as if I'm either a paedophile, or some other kind of deviant if I happen to be seen outside with my own daughter - I understand from other Dads who have daughters in their late teens that they have a similar but slightly different problem, there's active tutting being directed at them on a fairly regular basis from the more mature (agewise) female members of society. I know that that might sound a bit sexist, but invariably, it's the classic 'Little Old Lady' that's giving it large with the 'He's old enough to be her Dad' business.
So what do we do about it?
How do we change that?
How do we make people start saying 'I bet their parents are proud' Rather than 'I bet their Mums are proud'?
Buggered if I know - but it might be a start for blokes to start taking responsibility for their children, acting like Dads and not just like bloody spermatozoon cannons. Getting their girlfriends pregnant and then rinsing and repeating with the next one and the next one and the next, wandering through their poky housing estates like a sexually ambivalent typhoid Mary (or Typhoid Marlon perhaps, in this particular case) begatting all over the place without a care in the world and bringing hordes of pale, acne-ridden ginger kids into the world who go straight from their third or fourth-hand plastic coated cots to the dole-queue, not passing Go, but still collecting £200 every bloody fortnight.
Parent who have been together for a long time and have subsequently parted after having kids - I get it, things happen, life's not like it is in fairy tales. This isn't directed at you. Neither am I talking about people who've escaped from abusive relationships or people whose partners have died, or mature people who have made the conscious decision to have children but to raise them on their own.
I'm talking about those boys, because they don't deserve to be called men - The 'I'm not wearing a condom, you can't feel anything' brigade, the 'If you loved me you'd let me' types, the ones you see in the adverts who prey on girls with low self-esteem, the ones whose face you would literally never get tired of punching, the ones who grin vacantly at you and you know that no matter how you explain it to them, they will have no idea what you're saying or why they should even care.
The ones that have made women hate men.
The ones that misguided women who don't really understand the difference between feminism and misandry blame all the world's problems on.
The ones that have made women who don't know me mistrust me because I am what is currently known as 'a big bloke.' (people used to use the word imposing you know - Better ring to it I think)
The ones that have made all men into monsters.
The ones that, if there was any justice in the world, would still be contained in a crusty old sock, hidden under their Father's bed.
This is aimed at you...
You make me sick.
Wednesday, 26 June 2013
Barnaby Wilde (Pt. 4)
It's time for another quick story, about the highs and lows... Who am I kidding, pretty much just the lows, of building custom motorcycles, specifically those with three wheels.
I decided, whilst my current trike was being built, that what I wanted most in the world was a set of stainless steel, straight-thru, unbaffled, drag pipes. Because I'm a badass, honest - Look, I prove it here... *
OK, for the non-exhaustophiles, those things that I describe up there are just really drainpipes that take the noise and noxious fumes away from the engine and deposit them into the radiator grille of the car behind me, or in the lungs of small children minding their own business by the side of the road. There's no boxes like you'd have on a car that take the really poisonous stuff out or baffle the noise.
But, as generations of Badass motorcyclists have always said 'Loud Pipes Save Lives' - And there are many badges and stickers that you can actually buy in real shops that say this, so it must be true.
Anywho, I went to this custom exhaust fabricator guy, who, if I remember correctly, looked a bit like a skinny Thor. He said that it was no problem, seemed simple enough and would probably only take him about week or two. So I went home, enlisted the help of a mate who had a car with a towbar and a dolly (A contraption that allows you to tow something by lifting its front wheel off the ground - Not one of those inflatable things with three holes or the deluxe model with the real hair) and we trundled off down the road, the trike bobbing along behind us like an excited labrador puppy.
Before the next bit, I'd just like to point out that the rear tyres on the trike are 275/75-R15's so they're about 32" (81cm for the Frenchies etc.) in diameter and weigh the same as a medium sized child, or a couple of morbidly obese emperor penguins, or about a fifth of a juvenile Yak.
So, we were going down this hill, towards a mini-roundabout, my mate started to brake and there was a bit of a 'judder' - We both looked at the trike and it seemed fine, so he continued to brake, and as we came to a stop there was this crunch. We turned to look behind us again. The trike was listing at about 30 degrees, so we assumed that one of the wheels had come off... I say assumed... Actually we knew that the wheel had come off because it had just bounced past the drivers side window and made its way down the road, bouncing higher and higher all the time.
By the time it made its way onto the island itself, It was bouncing higher than the cars - There was a lot of beeping of horns, I could sympathise I guess. I'd beep my horn if something like a tractor tyre was flying at my face at 30mph. It made it across the island and swerved into the oncoming traffic. There were many twitching sphyncters on the A514 that afternoon I can tell you. Then it encountered the bus and everything went a bit 'Slo-Mo'. It bounced into the path of said bus, just as it was pulling up at the stop, so the driver slammed his anchors on and all the old ladies that had been waiting to get off were suddenly catapulted forwards and were flattened against the inside of the windscreen. The tyre clipped the front 'wing' of the bus (If buses actually have wings that is) and slammed into the bus-stop. Totally crushing the seating and cracking the glass in the windows.
We both made our way over, saying things like 'Blimey, I wonder who this belongs to?' and 'Well I never, tell you what, why don't I just get this huge wheel out of the way of you lovely people trying to get off this bus?' and 'Goodness Mrs, your nose isn't half flat., want to borrow a tissue?' Grabbed the wheel and had it away on our toes as fast as we could.
There's a nice new bus-stop there now, so I think what I did was actually a good thing for the community, in a way - Don't you?
* Please note: I'm not really a Badass... Well, not really
 |
| This is Buskilla, and the rear wheel in question is on the other side |
I decided, whilst my current trike was being built, that what I wanted most in the world was a set of stainless steel, straight-thru, unbaffled, drag pipes. Because I'm a badass, honest - Look, I prove it here... *
OK, for the non-exhaustophiles, those things that I describe up there are just really drainpipes that take the noise and noxious fumes away from the engine and deposit them into the radiator grille of the car behind me, or in the lungs of small children minding their own business by the side of the road. There's no boxes like you'd have on a car that take the really poisonous stuff out or baffle the noise.
But, as generations of Badass motorcyclists have always said 'Loud Pipes Save Lives' - And there are many badges and stickers that you can actually buy in real shops that say this, so it must be true.
Anywho, I went to this custom exhaust fabricator guy, who, if I remember correctly, looked a bit like a skinny Thor. He said that it was no problem, seemed simple enough and would probably only take him about week or two. So I went home, enlisted the help of a mate who had a car with a towbar and a dolly (A contraption that allows you to tow something by lifting its front wheel off the ground - Not one of those inflatable things with three holes or the deluxe model with the real hair) and we trundled off down the road, the trike bobbing along behind us like an excited labrador puppy.
Before the next bit, I'd just like to point out that the rear tyres on the trike are 275/75-R15's so they're about 32" (81cm for the Frenchies etc.) in diameter and weigh the same as a medium sized child, or a couple of morbidly obese emperor penguins, or about a fifth of a juvenile Yak.
So, we were going down this hill, towards a mini-roundabout, my mate started to brake and there was a bit of a 'judder' - We both looked at the trike and it seemed fine, so he continued to brake, and as we came to a stop there was this crunch. We turned to look behind us again. The trike was listing at about 30 degrees, so we assumed that one of the wheels had come off... I say assumed... Actually we knew that the wheel had come off because it had just bounced past the drivers side window and made its way down the road, bouncing higher and higher all the time.
By the time it made its way onto the island itself, It was bouncing higher than the cars - There was a lot of beeping of horns, I could sympathise I guess. I'd beep my horn if something like a tractor tyre was flying at my face at 30mph. It made it across the island and swerved into the oncoming traffic. There were many twitching sphyncters on the A514 that afternoon I can tell you. Then it encountered the bus and everything went a bit 'Slo-Mo'. It bounced into the path of said bus, just as it was pulling up at the stop, so the driver slammed his anchors on and all the old ladies that had been waiting to get off were suddenly catapulted forwards and were flattened against the inside of the windscreen. The tyre clipped the front 'wing' of the bus (If buses actually have wings that is) and slammed into the bus-stop. Totally crushing the seating and cracking the glass in the windows.
We both made our way over, saying things like 'Blimey, I wonder who this belongs to?' and 'Well I never, tell you what, why don't I just get this huge wheel out of the way of you lovely people trying to get off this bus?' and 'Goodness Mrs, your nose isn't half flat., want to borrow a tissue?' Grabbed the wheel and had it away on our toes as fast as we could.
There's a nice new bus-stop there now, so I think what I did was actually a good thing for the community, in a way - Don't you?
* Please note: I'm not really a Badass... Well, not really
Tuesday, 25 June 2013
But I didnae dye my beard purple
So, if you were to spend £2 on a lottery ticket today, and you matched all seven numbers numbers AND you were the only person to do so... You'd win £157 Million. ($242 Million)
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SEVEN!... MILLION!... POUNDS!
ZED-OH-EM-EFF-GEE!!!1!!!!!11!!1!1111!!!Eleven
What could you do with that amount of money? Well, I guess you could do pretty much anything you wanted - I know I'd go mental, buying black market badgers and teaching them to sing showtunes and suchlike, but I think you'll agree that it's a proper game-changing amount of money.
You could do a lot of good - You could pay the wages for a nurse (Pay band 5, point 1 - for my NHS chums) for nearly seven and a half thousand years. Or, conversely, you could pay Wayne Rooney's wages for ten years. (Feel sick about how our sad society thinks that balding Granny-shaggers that play a child's game for an hour and a half a week are somehow seven hundred and fifty times more important than people who actually save lives yet? I certainly do.)
It's higher than the Gross National Product of the entirety of Micronesia (A chain of island-states just north of Australia) and you could possibly therefore buy it and pronounce yourself King, or Emperor or some other high muck-a-muck and find yourself owning a potential fortune in High-Quality Phosphates - You'd need a big wallet though, especially if you decided to live on the island of Yap, where the local currency consists of carved stone disks, up to twelve feet in diameter. You could introduce some sort of credit system, the islands chiropractors would then worship you as their God. (or possibly kill you and eat you as you'd have taken away all their business).
You could buy four, brand new, AH-64D Apache Longbow Attack Helicopters, one for each member of the family perhaps, and make parking worries a thing of the past. You might even have enough left over to teach you how to fly them. (It seems that there's a bit more to flying one of these buggers than it shows you on the XBox - It's like balancing a tea-tray on an oily ball bearing, in a high wind, or so I'm reliably informed.)
But all the mad things aside, what would you actually do?
If you were sat at home tonight and my very good and close friend, Mr Nick Knowles (or whoever presents it nowadays) reads out those seven numbers and you look at the screen, then look at your ticket, then back at the screen, ticket, screen, ticket. Once the screaming and the explosive defecation had subsided, you'd check the numbers again and then read the back of your ticket to see what to do next. So you ring Camelot and (I don't know because obviously it's never happened to me, but I assume...) They ask you some questions, maybe where you bought the ticket, if you'd like publicity or not, did you want to come to London to collect a cheque, or shall they put it straight into your Post Office savings account?
Would the paranoia set in now do you think? Would you start thinking that every person in the world wanted your ticket? What would you do with it whilst you slept? What if someone breaks in and steals it? What if your wife slits your throat and makes off with it? What if the dog eats it? What if the wind blows through your draughty double-glazing and blows it into the oven, that was still warm from when you reheated a plate of leftovers from yesterday and the cat walks over the button that sends the spark to relight it and it catches on fire?
Then you try to calm down, because you realise that you're about to have a debilitating brain aneurysm - which would be ironic, according to Alanis Morrisette at least.
Then you think... A nice holiday whilst you take it all in, perhaps a couple of months in America. DisneyWorld, Route 66, Hollywood, Californian beaches, maybe even a beachfront house (You can get something quite nice with five bedrooms and eight bathrooms for $20 Million on Laguna beach) where you can spend the summers.
And then maybe a new car, you imagine walking into the Audi dealership, dressed in your pyjamas and your old dressing gown that your Auntie Edith bought you for Christmas in 1987, walk up the the salesman and say, 'I'd like a matching pair of R8 V10 Spyders please, and what's your price for cash?' Then you open the aluminium suitcase full of stacks of £50 notes and watch as he does a sex-wee and crumples to the floor with his eyes rolling back into his head and his arms and legs spasming uncontrollably.
But you'd need somewhere to live, you wouldn't emigrate, because you're staunchly British and you realise that foreign lands are all very well to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there (there are usually flies, and the distinct possibility of poor people, who in all likelihood sweat all over the place and make it look untidy.) So you'd buy some land, and engage some hardworking and artistic people to build you a stately pile. It'd be a castle though wouldn't it, really? From the outside it would look like something that could repel an invasion from an unwashed medieval horde for six months. You'd have a high wall, and possibly a moat, with hammerhead sharks (because my wife says I can't have killer whales), because even though the initial paranoia has worn off, you still know that there're a list of people as long as your arm that think they deserve what you've got and are willing to take it by force.
Your castle would have a cinema, because going to the cinema is great, you might have a nightclub for having parties in, and a gym, obviously. Perhaps you could cultivate the friendship of everyone's favourite 'Dragon', Duncan Bannatyne and he could get you a good deal on some decent equipment. I'd personally supplement all this with a games room, the normal stuff like pool and snooker tables maybe even Ski-ball... And also a number of high-end gaming computers with 50" HD Monitors. Maybe a bowling alley, but definitely a shooting range for guns and bows.
Other possibilities include one of those Wacky Warehouse type places, but adult sized. A swimming pool with built in jaccuzi and water-slides coming from each bedroom. You'd probably have bought some woodland too, then you could get some of those crusty type new-age chaps to build you a completely awesome tree-house / suspended walkway / Ewok habitats where you can sit in the autumn, drinking Fortnum and Mason hot chocolate whilst you take potshots, with your air-rifle, at people poaching rabbits on your land.
I'd have a cave too, built in the cellar, where all the walls have been sculpted out of something that looks like solid rock, but not that Star-Trek expanded foam stuff, painted to look like rock, something solid that you could bang a nail into to hold up a picture or something, should the mood take you. It would have my writing computer, which would be like the gaming computers, but with twin, A4 sized monitors side by side... And I'd be able to dictate stuff to it and it would tell me if it was rubbish or not. It would also have a dumbwaiter that led to the kitchen (that was big enough for me to fit in, because I've always wanted to do that.) And a soundproofed mini cinema, because occasionally you want to watch films in private, with the door locked, on a heated and Scotchguarded La-Z-boy. *Cough*
I guess I'd put a massive wodge of cash in the bank for the kids futures, maybe share it out a Little too, pay my close friends and families debts off, give em a million or so on top. Actually, that's a point... If it were you, would you give everyone the same amount, to save on arguments, or would you employ a 'sliding scale' process? Something like - 'I like you, but you borrowed my George Foreman grill last year and broke it, so I'm taking £100,000 off your award' or 'Actually, even though I've only really known you for a couple of months, you've been quite cool about the time you caught me staring down your top when you bent over, so have another £250,000.'
It's a proper minefield isn't it?
Is it all worth the hassle?
Could you cope with the constant worry about yourself or your family being kidnapped and held for ransom, the deluge of begging letters when people you haven't seen for years find out and come crawling out of the woodwork?
All you'd have in return is everything you've ever dreamed of?
It's a difficult question and no mistake, but as I sit here, riding around my personal skating rink made from ice from Jupiter's moon Europa, on the back of my platinum plated narwhal, I would say yes, it jolly well is worth it and I would repeatedly shoot anyone who says different.
That reminds me, I really must put an advert for a new chef in next month's Country Life.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SEVEN!... MILLION!... POUNDS!
ZED-OH-EM-EFF-GEE!!!1!!!!!11!!1!1111!!!Eleven
What could you do with that amount of money? Well, I guess you could do pretty much anything you wanted - I know I'd go mental, buying black market badgers and teaching them to sing showtunes and suchlike, but I think you'll agree that it's a proper game-changing amount of money.
You could do a lot of good - You could pay the wages for a nurse (Pay band 5, point 1 - for my NHS chums) for nearly seven and a half thousand years. Or, conversely, you could pay Wayne Rooney's wages for ten years. (Feel sick about how our sad society thinks that balding Granny-shaggers that play a child's game for an hour and a half a week are somehow seven hundred and fifty times more important than people who actually save lives yet? I certainly do.)
It's higher than the Gross National Product of the entirety of Micronesia (A chain of island-states just north of Australia) and you could possibly therefore buy it and pronounce yourself King, or Emperor or some other high muck-a-muck and find yourself owning a potential fortune in High-Quality Phosphates - You'd need a big wallet though, especially if you decided to live on the island of Yap, where the local currency consists of carved stone disks, up to twelve feet in diameter. You could introduce some sort of credit system, the islands chiropractors would then worship you as their God. (or possibly kill you and eat you as you'd have taken away all their business).
You could buy four, brand new, AH-64D Apache Longbow Attack Helicopters, one for each member of the family perhaps, and make parking worries a thing of the past. You might even have enough left over to teach you how to fly them. (It seems that there's a bit more to flying one of these buggers than it shows you on the XBox - It's like balancing a tea-tray on an oily ball bearing, in a high wind, or so I'm reliably informed.)
But all the mad things aside, what would you actually do?
If you were sat at home tonight and my very good and close friend, Mr Nick Knowles (or whoever presents it nowadays) reads out those seven numbers and you look at the screen, then look at your ticket, then back at the screen, ticket, screen, ticket. Once the screaming and the explosive defecation had subsided, you'd check the numbers again and then read the back of your ticket to see what to do next. So you ring Camelot and (I don't know because obviously it's never happened to me, but I assume...) They ask you some questions, maybe where you bought the ticket, if you'd like publicity or not, did you want to come to London to collect a cheque, or shall they put it straight into your Post Office savings account?
Would the paranoia set in now do you think? Would you start thinking that every person in the world wanted your ticket? What would you do with it whilst you slept? What if someone breaks in and steals it? What if your wife slits your throat and makes off with it? What if the dog eats it? What if the wind blows through your draughty double-glazing and blows it into the oven, that was still warm from when you reheated a plate of leftovers from yesterday and the cat walks over the button that sends the spark to relight it and it catches on fire?
Then you try to calm down, because you realise that you're about to have a debilitating brain aneurysm - which would be ironic, according to Alanis Morrisette at least.
Then you think... A nice holiday whilst you take it all in, perhaps a couple of months in America. DisneyWorld, Route 66, Hollywood, Californian beaches, maybe even a beachfront house (You can get something quite nice with five bedrooms and eight bathrooms for $20 Million on Laguna beach) where you can spend the summers.
And then maybe a new car, you imagine walking into the Audi dealership, dressed in your pyjamas and your old dressing gown that your Auntie Edith bought you for Christmas in 1987, walk up the the salesman and say, 'I'd like a matching pair of R8 V10 Spyders please, and what's your price for cash?' Then you open the aluminium suitcase full of stacks of £50 notes and watch as he does a sex-wee and crumples to the floor with his eyes rolling back into his head and his arms and legs spasming uncontrollably.
But you'd need somewhere to live, you wouldn't emigrate, because you're staunchly British and you realise that foreign lands are all very well to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there (there are usually flies, and the distinct possibility of poor people, who in all likelihood sweat all over the place and make it look untidy.) So you'd buy some land, and engage some hardworking and artistic people to build you a stately pile. It'd be a castle though wouldn't it, really? From the outside it would look like something that could repel an invasion from an unwashed medieval horde for six months. You'd have a high wall, and possibly a moat, with hammerhead sharks (because my wife says I can't have killer whales), because even though the initial paranoia has worn off, you still know that there're a list of people as long as your arm that think they deserve what you've got and are willing to take it by force.
Your castle would have a cinema, because going to the cinema is great, you might have a nightclub for having parties in, and a gym, obviously. Perhaps you could cultivate the friendship of everyone's favourite 'Dragon', Duncan Bannatyne and he could get you a good deal on some decent equipment. I'd personally supplement all this with a games room, the normal stuff like pool and snooker tables maybe even Ski-ball... And also a number of high-end gaming computers with 50" HD Monitors. Maybe a bowling alley, but definitely a shooting range for guns and bows.
Other possibilities include one of those Wacky Warehouse type places, but adult sized. A swimming pool with built in jaccuzi and water-slides coming from each bedroom. You'd probably have bought some woodland too, then you could get some of those crusty type new-age chaps to build you a completely awesome tree-house / suspended walkway / Ewok habitats where you can sit in the autumn, drinking Fortnum and Mason hot chocolate whilst you take potshots, with your air-rifle, at people poaching rabbits on your land.
I'd have a cave too, built in the cellar, where all the walls have been sculpted out of something that looks like solid rock, but not that Star-Trek expanded foam stuff, painted to look like rock, something solid that you could bang a nail into to hold up a picture or something, should the mood take you. It would have my writing computer, which would be like the gaming computers, but with twin, A4 sized monitors side by side... And I'd be able to dictate stuff to it and it would tell me if it was rubbish or not. It would also have a dumbwaiter that led to the kitchen (that was big enough for me to fit in, because I've always wanted to do that.) And a soundproofed mini cinema, because occasionally you want to watch films in private, with the door locked, on a heated and Scotchguarded La-Z-boy. *Cough*
I guess I'd put a massive wodge of cash in the bank for the kids futures, maybe share it out a Little too, pay my close friends and families debts off, give em a million or so on top. Actually, that's a point... If it were you, would you give everyone the same amount, to save on arguments, or would you employ a 'sliding scale' process? Something like - 'I like you, but you borrowed my George Foreman grill last year and broke it, so I'm taking £100,000 off your award' or 'Actually, even though I've only really known you for a couple of months, you've been quite cool about the time you caught me staring down your top when you bent over, so have another £250,000.'
It's a proper minefield isn't it?
Is it all worth the hassle?
Could you cope with the constant worry about yourself or your family being kidnapped and held for ransom, the deluge of begging letters when people you haven't seen for years find out and come crawling out of the woodwork?
All you'd have in return is everything you've ever dreamed of?
It's a difficult question and no mistake, but as I sit here, riding around my personal skating rink made from ice from Jupiter's moon Europa, on the back of my platinum plated narwhal, I would say yes, it jolly well is worth it and I would repeatedly shoot anyone who says different.
That reminds me, I really must put an advert for a new chef in next month's Country Life.
Friday, 21 June 2013
Eaten? No, Rubbed all over myself? Yes.
Words. Words are great right, if you didn't know any words... Well, you be stuffed wouldn't you? Recent studies have shown that there are somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million words in the English language - That's one for every mile between the Earth and the Moon, or one word for every pound of the price of an average UK house (Or Bugatti Veyron).
However, the average person's vocabulary can be anything between 20,000 - 50,000 words. That means, for every word you know, there are at least another four that you probably don't. OK, I mean a lot of them will be technical words or stuff you're never going to need, or dialect words. But even so, that means that there's a potload of great words that we're not using, I say we... Obviously I mean you guys - I'm all about the using three long words where one short one will do.
I was reading some Blogs this morning, on the toilet (don't judge me, you all do it too, probably) and I saw that it's not just me. A lot of Bloggers use 'flowery' language with the assumption that people will know what they mean. (Or to make themselves look intelligent) - That's not why I do it of course. I genuinely love words... (Although the first time I wrote that, it came out as 'I genuinely love worms' Which isn't the same thing at all)
So, I present below a few of my favourite words (Not worms) as may or may not have been on the Blog, and their rough meanings - Please try to shoe-horn as many as you can into random conversations over the weekend.
Agglomeration - A stuck-together jumble, or pile of cr*p
Anapestic Tetrameter - A style of writing where you stress every third syllable when you read it out (Like T'was the NIGHT be-fore CHRISTMAS)
Anthropomorphic - giving something that isn't human, human attributes, like imagining death as a guy with a hood, and a scythe and a horse, called Binky.
Benzoylmethylecgonine - The posh word for Cocaine
Brobdingnagian - Huge, gigantic, large to the point of uselessness, From Jonathan Swift's book, Gulliver's Travels.
Burgeoning - To grow, but quickly. Like the buds on a flower, or perhaps the belly of an under-aged mother to be.
Calderkin - A dialect word for flint (the type of rock)
Chimping - The act of pooping into your hand and throwing it at the object of your affection. (Yeah, seriously - It's a thing that people actually do.)
Debauchery - Giving it large with the wine and the women, things you wouldn't tell your Mum.
Decrepit - (Not decrepiD, as most people seem to say) Old and feeble.
Gorram - A shortened version of God-Damn, originally from the Joss Whedon program 'Firefly' - Which you should all go and watch now, it teaches you how to swear in Chinese.
Hvad? - Danish for 'What?' - I've been using this for years and it sounds just enough like the English equivalent for people not to notice... Make me chuckle internally every time though.
Invective - Sweary and unpleasant words.
Ipovlopsychophobia - A fear of having your photograph taken, Like, that whole 'You can't take my picture! - Why, do you think it will steal your soul? - No, you've left the lenscap on' thing.
Laconic - brief, able to be described in just a few words.
Leitmotif - A (very) short piece of music, associated with a particular character - Possibly just a few notes that gets played when, for instance, the villain enters.
Panoply - A lot of different things, displayed at the same time. (From a Greek word that means a full set of weapons and armour)
Pitchblende - The ore that we get Uranium from
Poltroon - Not an idiot, as some people might think, but specifically a coward.
Proclivities - things that you enjoy doing, usually things that other people might find odd, disgusting, or potentially illegal.
Quantum - Now this sounds like one of those frightfully scary scientific words, you hear it a lot in Star Trek and stuff like that. But it just means an amount of something, usually a small amount, but it doesn't have to be. (And you thought the title of the James Bond film Quantum of Solace was just gibberish? Well now you know)
Smorgasbord - (not SmorgasborG) Put simply, a buffet... But can be used to mean the same as a panoply. It actually means a table full of sandwiches.
Sociopath - Someone who not only doesn't have a conscience, but doesn't even know that such a thing exists.
So, hopefully you learned a few new words, or learned what some words you've been using wrongly in the past actually mean.
Have a fun weekend, I'm going to - You see, I might be misguided, but at least I'm determined.
Peace...
Out...
(Kisses my middle and index fingers and waves them at you)
However, the average person's vocabulary can be anything between 20,000 - 50,000 words. That means, for every word you know, there are at least another four that you probably don't. OK, I mean a lot of them will be technical words or stuff you're never going to need, or dialect words. But even so, that means that there's a potload of great words that we're not using, I say we... Obviously I mean you guys - I'm all about the using three long words where one short one will do.
I was reading some Blogs this morning, on the toilet (don't judge me, you all do it too, probably) and I saw that it's not just me. A lot of Bloggers use 'flowery' language with the assumption that people will know what they mean. (Or to make themselves look intelligent) - That's not why I do it of course. I genuinely love words... (Although the first time I wrote that, it came out as 'I genuinely love worms' Which isn't the same thing at all)
So, I present below a few of my favourite words (Not worms) as may or may not have been on the Blog, and their rough meanings - Please try to shoe-horn as many as you can into random conversations over the weekend.
-oOo-
Agglomeration - A stuck-together jumble, or pile of cr*p
Anapestic Tetrameter - A style of writing where you stress every third syllable when you read it out (Like T'was the NIGHT be-fore CHRISTMAS)
Anthropomorphic - giving something that isn't human, human attributes, like imagining death as a guy with a hood, and a scythe and a horse, called Binky.
Benzoylmethylecgonine - The posh word for Cocaine
Brobdingnagian - Huge, gigantic, large to the point of uselessness, From Jonathan Swift's book, Gulliver's Travels.
Burgeoning - To grow, but quickly. Like the buds on a flower, or perhaps the belly of an under-aged mother to be.
Calderkin - A dialect word for flint (the type of rock)
Chimping - The act of pooping into your hand and throwing it at the object of your affection. (Yeah, seriously - It's a thing that people actually do.)
Debauchery - Giving it large with the wine and the women, things you wouldn't tell your Mum.
Decrepit - (Not decrepiD, as most people seem to say) Old and feeble.
Gorram - A shortened version of God-Damn, originally from the Joss Whedon program 'Firefly' - Which you should all go and watch now, it teaches you how to swear in Chinese.
Hvad? - Danish for 'What?' - I've been using this for years and it sounds just enough like the English equivalent for people not to notice... Make me chuckle internally every time though.
Invective - Sweary and unpleasant words.
Ipovlopsychophobia - A fear of having your photograph taken, Like, that whole 'You can't take my picture! - Why, do you think it will steal your soul? - No, you've left the lenscap on' thing.
Laconic - brief, able to be described in just a few words.
Leitmotif - A (very) short piece of music, associated with a particular character - Possibly just a few notes that gets played when, for instance, the villain enters.
Panoply - A lot of different things, displayed at the same time. (From a Greek word that means a full set of weapons and armour)
Pitchblende - The ore that we get Uranium from
Poltroon - Not an idiot, as some people might think, but specifically a coward.
Proclivities - things that you enjoy doing, usually things that other people might find odd, disgusting, or potentially illegal.
Quantum - Now this sounds like one of those frightfully scary scientific words, you hear it a lot in Star Trek and stuff like that. But it just means an amount of something, usually a small amount, but it doesn't have to be. (And you thought the title of the James Bond film Quantum of Solace was just gibberish? Well now you know)
Smorgasbord - (not SmorgasborG) Put simply, a buffet... But can be used to mean the same as a panoply. It actually means a table full of sandwiches.
Sociopath - Someone who not only doesn't have a conscience, but doesn't even know that such a thing exists.
-oOo-
So, hopefully you learned a few new words, or learned what some words you've been using wrongly in the past actually mean.
Have a fun weekend, I'm going to - You see, I might be misguided, but at least I'm determined.
Peace...
Out...
(Kisses my middle and index fingers and waves them at you)
Thursday, 20 June 2013
Is it safe?
I've worked in IT for nearly thirty years now... You're surprised, I know I come across as young and vibrant and thrusting, but in the real world I am a decrepit husk, kept alive only by a room of complicated machinery whose gloop-filled pipes take care of my every biological whim.
The years worth of IT based stories that you've read already have given you an idea of the sort of things that happen on a daily basis and result in the kind of enlarged foreheads that you often see on IT support people (This is not from increased brain capacity, even though that's what they'd have you believe, it's purely from the constant banging of heads against desks, walls, or in some extreme cases, the users themselves.)
But, if I were to have to pick a single 'thing' that causes more calls than anything else, it would have to be passwords.
July and August used to be the traditional 'busy' times for people to ask to have their passwords reset. I get that, people go away on holiday and forget their passwords, it happens. It's annoying, but it happens. But more and more it's getting to be over Bank Holiday weekends, these people come back on a Tuesday morning, sit at their desks surrounded by pictures of their sticky faced kids and the pen-holder made out of a jam-jar covered in plaster and gravel and their minds go blank. They'll sit there with their fingers hovering like eagle's claws over the keyboard for a good few minutes, wracking their brains to remember what they'd set it to on the Wednesday before, before they pick up the phone and call 'The Helpdesk'.
The standard conversation goes a little bit like this...
'Hello support, Dandy speaking, how can I add value to your day?'
'My computer doesn't work.'
'Excellent... And you are?'
'Unable to do anything, because my computer isn't working.'
'Aha-ha-ha... Yes... Very good... But I meant what's your name?'
'My name is Mabel, I work in accounts.'
'Hello Mabel, OK, so what exactly is happening?'
'My password isn't working, when I type it in it says "Incorrect User Name or password"'
'And do you know your password?'
'Yes!'
'And what is it?'
'Ah... Well... We're not supposed to tell anyone our password are we?'
'Technically no, but you can tell me...'
'But you could be anyone, I don't know you.'
'Well, you did call the Helpdesk, and I answered - So you should have at least some idea of who I am, if you think about it... (I listen to a couple of minutes muffled chatting in the background about how many times Chris Packham used the word 'Tits' in the previous evening's Springwatch)... Hello? Are you still there?'
'Yes, someone asked me a question - Can you change it please?'
'No problem, just give me a second to log onto the server.'
'Will you be able to see what's on my computer?'
'When I log onto the server? No, don't worry. What's your User Name?'
'Mabel.'
'No, sorry, I mean the thing you type above your password when you log in.'
'I don't type anything in above my password - I don't know what you mean.'
(I force my head not to impact with the table)
'When you log on, there are two boxes, you type your User Name into the top one and your password into the bottom one... What does it say in the top one?'
'Username'
'No, actually in the box, I know that it says User Name to the left of the box, but what's actually IN the box?'
'It says Username, you just told me to type it in.'
'No I... Wait, What?'
'You said that I should type "Username" in the top box.'
(I take a second to bite myself repeatedly on the forearm - to check that I'm not having a nightmare)
'When you turn your computer on in the morning, what does it say in that box normally?'
'I can't remember - I don't usually have to type it in.'
'Fine, what's your surname?'
'Table.'
(I search on the server for someone with the surname Table, but can't find anyone)
'You're name's definitely... Mabel Table?'
'Yes?'
'Only, I can't find anyone with that name, are you new?'
'No, I've been here for ten years!'
'Have you recently got married?'
'Yes! It was lovely, we had cake and bunting and we released some doves that my Mum said were pigeons which was a scandal for how much she paid and had wine and a balloon animal bloke.'
'Sounds lovely... What was your name before you got married?'
'Unterbrook'
(I look down the list on the server and find Mabel Unterbrook, I reset her password and unlock her account, as she'd been trying random passwords and had locked it)
'I've changed the password for "munter01" to "Thursday01" - You'll need to change it the first time you log on.'
'What should I change it to?'
'Well, anything you like, but preferably something you'll remember.'
'Like what?'
'I don't really know, do you have a password for something like telephone banking?'
'Yes, it's "YellowHat"!'
'I didn't actually need to know that, but I guess you could use it, if you put a number on the end - There are rules: It has to be at least eight letters, it has to have a mix of upper and lower case letters, and it must contain a number.'
'Just let me write that down.'
'We suggest that you don't write down your password anywhere.'
'No, I was writing down the rules.'
'OK, did you want to try logging on?'
'So, I put "munter01" in the top box and my new password in the bottom one?'
'Yep.'
(A long wait and than sounds of furious tapping)
'It says Incorrect User Name or Password again.'
'Try it again for me please...'
'Nope, same thing.'
'What password are you using?'
'YellowHat1.'
'Why are you using that? I said I'd changed it to "Thursday01"'
'But you said I'd have to change it to "YellowHat1" the first time I logged in.'
'I... But... Erm... Look, just type "munter01" in the top box and "Thursday01" in the bottom one.'
(More furious tapping)
'Hey that's worked. But it's asking me to change my password.'
'It will do, yes.'
'But you've just changed my password haven't you?'
'Enter "Thursday01" in the top box, "YellowHat1" in the middle box and confirm it in the bottom box.'
'It says my new passwords don't match.'
'Did you type your new password in both of the bottom two boxes?'
'No, I typed "YellowHat1" in the middle one and "Yes" in the bottom one.'
'Why did you do that exactly?'
'You told me to confirm my password, so I typed "Yes"'
It was shortly after that that she got moved to another department, well, I say department, actually she's inside one of the bridge supports of the M6 Toll Road - If you look carefully as you go past Brownhills, you'll see a particularly stupid looking pillar, that's her.
The years worth of IT based stories that you've read already have given you an idea of the sort of things that happen on a daily basis and result in the kind of enlarged foreheads that you often see on IT support people (This is not from increased brain capacity, even though that's what they'd have you believe, it's purely from the constant banging of heads against desks, walls, or in some extreme cases, the users themselves.)
But, if I were to have to pick a single 'thing' that causes more calls than anything else, it would have to be passwords.
July and August used to be the traditional 'busy' times for people to ask to have their passwords reset. I get that, people go away on holiday and forget their passwords, it happens. It's annoying, but it happens. But more and more it's getting to be over Bank Holiday weekends, these people come back on a Tuesday morning, sit at their desks surrounded by pictures of their sticky faced kids and the pen-holder made out of a jam-jar covered in plaster and gravel and their minds go blank. They'll sit there with their fingers hovering like eagle's claws over the keyboard for a good few minutes, wracking their brains to remember what they'd set it to on the Wednesday before, before they pick up the phone and call 'The Helpdesk'.
The standard conversation goes a little bit like this...
-oOo-
'Hello support, Dandy speaking, how can I add value to your day?'
'My computer doesn't work.'
'Excellent... And you are?'
'Unable to do anything, because my computer isn't working.'
'Aha-ha-ha... Yes... Very good... But I meant what's your name?'
'My name is Mabel, I work in accounts.'
'Hello Mabel, OK, so what exactly is happening?'
'My password isn't working, when I type it in it says "Incorrect User Name or password"'
'And do you know your password?'
'Yes!'
'And what is it?'
'Ah... Well... We're not supposed to tell anyone our password are we?'
'Technically no, but you can tell me...'
'But you could be anyone, I don't know you.'
'Well, you did call the Helpdesk, and I answered - So you should have at least some idea of who I am, if you think about it... (I listen to a couple of minutes muffled chatting in the background about how many times Chris Packham used the word 'Tits' in the previous evening's Springwatch)... Hello? Are you still there?'
'Yes, someone asked me a question - Can you change it please?'
'No problem, just give me a second to log onto the server.'
'Will you be able to see what's on my computer?'
'When I log onto the server? No, don't worry. What's your User Name?'
'Mabel.'
'No, sorry, I mean the thing you type above your password when you log in.'
'I don't type anything in above my password - I don't know what you mean.'
(I force my head not to impact with the table)
'When you log on, there are two boxes, you type your User Name into the top one and your password into the bottom one... What does it say in the top one?'
'Username'
'No, actually in the box, I know that it says User Name to the left of the box, but what's actually IN the box?'
'It says Username, you just told me to type it in.'
'No I... Wait, What?'
'You said that I should type "Username" in the top box.'
(I take a second to bite myself repeatedly on the forearm - to check that I'm not having a nightmare)
'When you turn your computer on in the morning, what does it say in that box normally?'
'I can't remember - I don't usually have to type it in.'
'Fine, what's your surname?'
'Table.'
(I search on the server for someone with the surname Table, but can't find anyone)
'You're name's definitely... Mabel Table?'
'Yes?'
'Only, I can't find anyone with that name, are you new?'
'No, I've been here for ten years!'
'Have you recently got married?'
'Yes! It was lovely, we had cake and bunting and we released some doves that my Mum said were pigeons which was a scandal for how much she paid and had wine and a balloon animal bloke.'
'Sounds lovely... What was your name before you got married?'
'Unterbrook'
(I look down the list on the server and find Mabel Unterbrook, I reset her password and unlock her account, as she'd been trying random passwords and had locked it)
'I've changed the password for "munter01" to "Thursday01" - You'll need to change it the first time you log on.'
'What should I change it to?'
'Well, anything you like, but preferably something you'll remember.'
'Like what?'
'I don't really know, do you have a password for something like telephone banking?'
'Yes, it's "YellowHat"!'
'I didn't actually need to know that, but I guess you could use it, if you put a number on the end - There are rules: It has to be at least eight letters, it has to have a mix of upper and lower case letters, and it must contain a number.'
'Just let me write that down.'
'We suggest that you don't write down your password anywhere.'
'No, I was writing down the rules.'
'OK, did you want to try logging on?'
'So, I put "munter01" in the top box and my new password in the bottom one?'
'Yep.'
(A long wait and than sounds of furious tapping)
'It says Incorrect User Name or Password again.'
'Try it again for me please...'
'Nope, same thing.'
'What password are you using?'
'YellowHat1.'
'Why are you using that? I said I'd changed it to "Thursday01"'
'But you said I'd have to change it to "YellowHat1" the first time I logged in.'
'I... But... Erm... Look, just type "munter01" in the top box and "Thursday01" in the bottom one.'
(More furious tapping)
'Hey that's worked. But it's asking me to change my password.'
'It will do, yes.'
'But you've just changed my password haven't you?'
'Enter "Thursday01" in the top box, "YellowHat1" in the middle box and confirm it in the bottom box.'
'It says my new passwords don't match.'
'Did you type your new password in both of the bottom two boxes?'
'No, I typed "YellowHat1" in the middle one and "Yes" in the bottom one.'
'Why did you do that exactly?'
'You told me to confirm my password, so I typed "Yes"'
-oOo-
It was shortly after that that she got moved to another department, well, I say department, actually she's inside one of the bridge supports of the M6 Toll Road - If you look carefully as you go past Brownhills, you'll see a particularly stupid looking pillar, that's her.
Wednesday, 19 June 2013
I'm all about the Kid-Lit
OK, so most of you know by now that I'm writing a book, I mean, I shoehorn it into into pretty much every conversation I have, with anyone.
For example, I was in the Doctors on Monday, and my sun was lying on the floor in the waiting room reading the manuscript and pointing out grammatical and logical errors (He's eight by the way - And he's forced more re-writes than anyone else in the history of history) and the Receptionist called out someone's name and I just automatically stood up and shouted 'But I'm writing a book!' and then went a bit red, and sat down, and then tried to crawl into the upholstery.
But it's not the first thing I've started to write. A long time ago I had the idea of writing a children's book. I only got as far as writing one page of A4, but maybe I could develop it. Let me know what you think.
It's about cats, maybe I'll just release it on the Internets, the Internets likes cats.
Mango yawned, the conservatory was warm and sunny and everything, but he couldn't shake the feeling that there was a draught coming from somewhere.
'Feeling that ghost draught again?' Said Clem. Clem was a full head taller than Mango and about a coat of varnish paler, but he was still a Ginger Tom and as such was due some respect.
'There nothing ghostly about it,' snapped Mango, 'One of the Talls must have forgotten to close a door somewhere, if they're not forgetting to close them, they're trying to shut my tail in them.'
Clem shook his head slowly and set about cleaning himself up, the long journey down from the top of the TV, along the bookshelf and onto the rocking chair was tiring and dusty at the best of times - and this particular spring afternoon was not one of those times.
Mango look accusingly at the doors, frowned, blinked and then settled back to sleep.
The Talls had been acting oddly all day; furniture had been moved, curtains had been taken down, the washing machine had been going all day and most important of all, every time either Mango or Clem had got comfortable on something, it had been snatched out from underneath them with a cry of 'CAT!'
Now, there was only so much of this behaviour that any tomcat worth his stripes should be expected to take, but it still came as a surprise to the tallest of the Talls when Mango bit his thumb when he tried to pitch him off a perfectly comfortable pile of cushions. They had both been relegated to the conservatory by the scruffs of their necks and they could tell by the scowl on the Tall's face that it might make sense not to argue.
Clem stared through the glass at the Talls as they busily moved things from one place to another. He couldn't understand why they always had to do so many things. Tomcat life was simple; You woke up in the morning, ate, washed, went for a brisk walk, scared some birds, came home, slept, ate some biscuits, slept, annoyed the dog and then slept until breakfast time. If you could fit in some extra sleeping, washing and eating, then that was even better, but there was certainly no moving of furniture, or making loud noises.
'Do you think they're making a nest?' wondered Clem out loud.
'Mmm?' mumbled Mango, not really paying attention.
'The Talls, they're moving everything around and cleaning it.'
'Why are you trying to work out what they're doing?' Mango was trying his best not to be interested, but was failing miserably.
'Because - I just noticed that your ball was under the sofa that they just moved.'
Mango was suddenly VERY interested. His ball, his wonderful, bouncy, difficult to chase ball! He'd lost it ages ago during one of his hunting experiments. He was trying to see how many times he could pounce on the ball, knock it across the room, catch it, bite it and bat it away again before it got away from him and went under the sofa.
Unfortunately, the answer was one.
And there you go, it's all I wrote. Later episodes would involve Saff, the vegetarian but ultimately dim dog, appearances by Enna, Fog and Pop the kittens - And if it were 'have legs' maybe Morty the tail-chasing Staffie.
Something to think about in the future.
For example, I was in the Doctors on Monday, and my sun was lying on the floor in the waiting room reading the manuscript and pointing out grammatical and logical errors (He's eight by the way - And he's forced more re-writes than anyone else in the history of history) and the Receptionist called out someone's name and I just automatically stood up and shouted 'But I'm writing a book!' and then went a bit red, and sat down, and then tried to crawl into the upholstery.
But it's not the first thing I've started to write. A long time ago I had the idea of writing a children's book. I only got as far as writing one page of A4, but maybe I could develop it. Let me know what you think.
It's about cats, maybe I'll just release it on the Internets, the Internets likes cats.
-oOo-
Mango yawned, the conservatory was warm and sunny and everything, but he couldn't shake the feeling that there was a draught coming from somewhere.
'Feeling that ghost draught again?' Said Clem. Clem was a full head taller than Mango and about a coat of varnish paler, but he was still a Ginger Tom and as such was due some respect.
'There nothing ghostly about it,' snapped Mango, 'One of the Talls must have forgotten to close a door somewhere, if they're not forgetting to close them, they're trying to shut my tail in them.'
Clem shook his head slowly and set about cleaning himself up, the long journey down from the top of the TV, along the bookshelf and onto the rocking chair was tiring and dusty at the best of times - and this particular spring afternoon was not one of those times.
Mango look accusingly at the doors, frowned, blinked and then settled back to sleep.
The Talls had been acting oddly all day; furniture had been moved, curtains had been taken down, the washing machine had been going all day and most important of all, every time either Mango or Clem had got comfortable on something, it had been snatched out from underneath them with a cry of 'CAT!'
Now, there was only so much of this behaviour that any tomcat worth his stripes should be expected to take, but it still came as a surprise to the tallest of the Talls when Mango bit his thumb when he tried to pitch him off a perfectly comfortable pile of cushions. They had both been relegated to the conservatory by the scruffs of their necks and they could tell by the scowl on the Tall's face that it might make sense not to argue.
Clem stared through the glass at the Talls as they busily moved things from one place to another. He couldn't understand why they always had to do so many things. Tomcat life was simple; You woke up in the morning, ate, washed, went for a brisk walk, scared some birds, came home, slept, ate some biscuits, slept, annoyed the dog and then slept until breakfast time. If you could fit in some extra sleeping, washing and eating, then that was even better, but there was certainly no moving of furniture, or making loud noises.
'Do you think they're making a nest?' wondered Clem out loud.
'Mmm?' mumbled Mango, not really paying attention.
'The Talls, they're moving everything around and cleaning it.'
'Why are you trying to work out what they're doing?' Mango was trying his best not to be interested, but was failing miserably.
'Because - I just noticed that your ball was under the sofa that they just moved.'
Mango was suddenly VERY interested. His ball, his wonderful, bouncy, difficult to chase ball! He'd lost it ages ago during one of his hunting experiments. He was trying to see how many times he could pounce on the ball, knock it across the room, catch it, bite it and bat it away again before it got away from him and went under the sofa.
Unfortunately, the answer was one.
-oOo-
And there you go, it's all I wrote. Later episodes would involve Saff, the vegetarian but ultimately dim dog, appearances by Enna, Fog and Pop the kittens - And if it were 'have legs' maybe Morty the tail-chasing Staffie.
Something to think about in the future.
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