Walking Day

It was Walking Day in the village yesterday and then the fete last night in a marquee on the cricket pitch – all sounds very middle England, and to be fair, it probably is.

We caught the tail end of the procession, some men in white frocks who look suspiciously like Druids, with their white hair, white robes and tall staffs, striding down the High Street from one end of the village to another, looking very serious and very (self) important. They were followed by children of various youth organisations, brass bands, Morris Men, Morris Woman, tractors decorated with flowers pulling carts filled with more flowers and small children waving at grandparents and neighbours: All very civilised. Oh and there was a whole cloud of parents buzzing around the procession. It was a perfect day, blue skies and high fluffy white cloud

We didn’t got to the fete, we didn’t fancy paying the £15:00 each or £60:00 for all of us to go sit in a big smelly tent at the other end of the village eating posh bacon butties, listening to some wedding band murder what were once barely acceptable records. Besides we could sit in the comfort of our own living room, open the windows and listen to them as it was. And it wouldn’t have cost us £60:00 for the privilege. And this is what we did, and has been the case for every village fete since we have lived here, the heavens opened; the rain was biblical. It was really nice sitting here listening to it hammer down. It was that loud that it very nearly drowned out the noise of the fete. I bet it was really loud in the marquee.

Expensive Pager

So my new Orange mobile would at least whilst I am at home, be nothing more than an expensive pager. For whilst there is enough signal for people to phone me, there isn’t enough signal for me to either hear them or actually speak to them. So it seems I get to phone them back on the land line. Cosmic.

Mainly Apples

Image by Denis Collette…!!! via Flickr

It’s known amongst family and friends that I can’t stand beer in any of its forms (stout, ale, bitter, mild, larger etc). I think it’s the taste. For starters I’ve got a relatively sweet tooth, so by definition anything called bitter is not going to appeal to me. I have tried, but after a couple of mouthfuls I just know that the impending mess from the projectile vomit is not worth the effort when there are plenty of other reality altering fluids available. I can drink vodka till it comes out my nose and frequently do, but that’s another story.

Despite my dislike of such things I do go to our local beer festival, which is not as weird as it first sounds. There’s a ‘normal’ bar there, so I can stand and sip my vodka and mixer of choice whilst watching my friends crumble into incoherence as the last pint of Bishop’s Nobbrot or Whapweasel slams through their shuddering synapses. This year though, the bar was closed: Calamity; no vodka. No nothing, other than what was in the gloomy looking barrels piled up behind the make shift bench across the back of the church hall.

There was an entrance fee, for the life of my I can’t remember what it was, but you got a pint pot with the date and event printed on the side, so you can look back fondly on the event, reminiscing about the huge blankness where your memory used to be. And you got to purchase some tickets which you traded for beer at the back. Oh and a program listing all the beers, which you could tick off as you worked your way through them: All very civilised, all very English.

But what was I going to drink? I stood there pondering for some time, long enough for my friends to return with various coloured inebriants, which they held up to the light and eyed warily. They were shared around, everybody had a sip of everybody elses. I found they either made my toes curl or one eye go into spasm and my saliva glands slam shut. On flicking through the program once more I spied a small suspicious section labelled ‘ciders’. Crivens, I’d not drunk cider since I was about 14, and even then I think it was mixed with lemonade. These were manly, organic, 7%+ ciders. Was that good or bad? My friends all pulled a face at the idea, but something made from apples had to be sweeter than the oaty, barley, hoppy bitter things they were all standing around chewing.

You got to use own glass all night, the one they’d given you as you walked in and it had been established early on, that if you went for a pint and you had a pint pot, then you got a pint. This is not only stating the bleeding obvious but could also lumber you with a whole pint of something that sounded glorious in the even program but actually tasted like Satan’s Piss. Better to get a half, (and half price) and go back for more if you really liked it. And because these were hand poured from the barrels, you usually ended up with 2/3 or 3/4 of a pint, so you got more bang for your buck. In these credit crunch times, it made perfect sense. It all seemed like a win-win situation: Till your legs fell off.

I tried each of the ciders. The first one was surprisingly refreshing, slightly cloudy, tasted like tin and smelt of pickled onions. And to be honest the others didn’t get any better, one was akin to licking a battery. Having tried them all I settled on the 8% organic one, as by that time I didn’t care. It was a surprisingly clear, golden liquid, the colour of mead or some Norse Goddess’s pubic hair. It’s taste was hard to describe, it didn’t taste like mead for sure. It had cleansing, acrid, napalm like affect. It seemed to dilute the light in the room but that could have been the fumes coming off it. It wasn’t long before I realised that my lower jaw and eyes had somehow become slightly dislocated and were inhabiting a small but subtly different space time continuum to the rest of me. It was a bit like an out of body experience with all the fun taken out. I felt like I had to grip the floor with my toes so I didn’t fall off.

All of this was being compounded by the thumping beat and wailing brass section of a band playing 1920’s 1930’s jazz. Nice. What was nice was the blessed silence that erupted when we staggered outside. The biting, bone gouging wind was now merely fresh as we had donned our invisible yet surprisingly warm alcfrl coats. It was time to leave, one of my friends was quite concerned and wanted to confirm that his legs still worked, the others mute with glee as they had reached double figures: Enough for any mortal. So we ambled back into town and slumped in a corner of a student bar, to sip on something refreshing, sweet, mass produced and non-confrontational.

The uncertainty of measuring smaller than light particles

“… It’s about trying to measure a smaller than light particle – you only get part of the information you want. High energy small wave function methods alter the energy of the system you are looking at; the particles you are using impart some of their energy into the system you are trying to measure, thus the system is altered by the act of measuring. Low energy, less intrusive particles have a longer wave-length and thus contain less data. This leads to uncertainty. The ultimate outcome is that you either know the speed or the location but not both, to this you can only suggest a probability. According to something I read elsewhere…”

Four Chops Five People

Image by naotakem via Flickr

So a good friend of ours, who is just one of the world’s loveliest people, was telling us recently about how she had forgotten she had invited her friend around for Sunday tea. Her guest turned up on the doorstep, with dessert and a bottle of wine looking forward to a Sunday roast. Our friend already had four pork chops in the oven, for herself, her husband and her two kids… the guest commented how lovely the chops smelled and had arrived just in the knick of time as dinner was about to be served. Not wishing to embarrass herself or her friend by owning up to the fact that she had forgotten she was coming, nor having anything else in to eat, came up with a plan so cunning… etc. She took some slices of white bread, broke them up, then moulded the crumbs into a pork chop shape and poured gravy over this fake chop. Once it was on the plate, covered in gravy it looked exactly like the others, a little too exactly, because instead of keeping the fake-chop for herself, she inadvertently ended up with a real chop. Of course once at the table she couldn’t say anything to the rest of the family, like ‘which one of you has the chop made from bread crumbs?’ so just hoped that they wouldn’t say anything in front of her guest. The meal passed without further incident and the guest left some time late in the evening. Our friend then questioned her family, ‘which one of you had the fake chop made from bread crumbs’ when they’d all stopped laughing it transpired that none of them had, they’d all had real chops. Which meant that the guest had ended up with the fake one made from bread. And you know what? The friend has never said a thing. She must think that, that was the weirdest pork chop she ever had, or that they’d suddenly gone vegetarian and it was made from quorn or nuts or something. Either way, the moral is, that if you are going to fake pork chops using white bread and gravy, be sure to mark the plate someway, because like so much in life, until you bite down, you never can really tell what it is.

ScribeFire

ScribeFire test

Tiscali, my arse.

Last night I went to the folks for a cup of tea and they happen to mention that their internet hadn’t worked for the last 24 hours, so being of a kindly persuasion I has a look at their computer. Which appears to be functioning fine. As does their router. I re-boots the router and the p.c. and still nothing.

So Ma phones Tiscali Tech Support, and spends a stupefyingly, ridiculous length of time navigating a selection of soul crushing menus before being put through to a real life human being. He then asks her all sorts of seemingly unrelated question (like her birthday and post code) to establish that she is in fact the paying customer and not some brownian-motion mad woman who happens to have phoned up tech support in a random attempt to get a complete strangers broadband working again.

It very quickly became apparent that Ma had no idea as to the answers that this tech support person was asking, so she passed him over to me. He asks me if the computer plugs into a modem or a router.

“It’s a wireless router.” I reply.

He then asks me if there is a cable connecting the router to the computer.

This causes me to pause for thought, and ponder the relevance of any answers I am likely to give him in the near future.

To avoid being sarcastic and rude to a complete stranger on the phone, through gritted teeth, I pointed out that “no there isn’t a cable between the router and the computer as in fact it is a wireless router….”

He seems completely non-plussed by this sudden and dramatic turn of events and charges on with his questions with reckless abandon. He asks me to establish what lights are on the router and what colour they are.

“There are 4 lights and there are all green.”

“Is there a power light on?”

“Yes”

“And is it green?”

“Yes all lights are green. If there was no power and therefore no power light, surely there would be no lights, green or otherwise?”

He ignores my pertinent question and blunders on. He asks me to switch the router off, then switch the p.c. off, then switch the p.c. back on, then switch the router on. He then asks me to confirm the green lights on the router, and try accessing the internet again. No change, still not working.

He then asks me to take the yellow cable and plug the cable from the router into the back of the computer.

“What yellow cable?”

“The one that came with the router?”

“I have no idea where that is?”

“We can’t proceed without the yellow cable.”

“Why not?”

“Because… we need to establish that the computer is talking to the router properly”

“It is talking to the router properly, because I can see the router on the p.c., I can see the wireless network from the p.c., I can see the code name of the network/router on the p.c. The p.c. can see the router!”

“Yes but there might be a fault with the wireless network and we need to establish that if it is a fault with your computer or the wireless network or the phone line?”

He then goes on to tell me that if it’s a fault with the computer we need to take it back to the vender. If it’s a fault with the wireless network then we will need to make alternative arrangements as Tiscali don’t support wireless networks. And to do this we need the yellow cable.

I was nearly flummoxed by this, not least because his English was appalling and Ma was waving a yellow cable in my face telling me she’d found it at the back of a draw. It then dawned on me what he had just said.

“What do you mean you don’t support wireless networks? You sold us the wireless router in the first place, not that many months ago, how can you provide the equipment and not provide any technical support afterwards? The main reason the folks went with Tiscali was the wireless ’service’ you were offering.”

There then followed a snowstorm of words that were utterly meaningless, unintelligible and unrelated. I swear he had just kicked a scrabble board in the air and was reading words that he could see scattered around him. This tirade of random words went on for quite some time. I have no idea what he said. This problem has raised it’s head before and once again I will state the obvious; in any business transaction both parties being able to clearly understand what each other are communicating is FUCKING essential for a successful outcome. I take my hat off to this guy he obviously speaks more languages than I do, I’ve just got the 1, at least he seems to have at least 1.5 maybe 1.6 languages.

Having clearly established that we are going nowhere with this person, I then go on further to waste my breath and several minutes of my life which I won’t get back, to point out that having been offered our wireless setup which they are now saying they don’t support, the router is something like 17 feet away from the computer and the 2.5 foot yellow cable is not going to reach. It’s going to require considerable re-wiring, moving of the tv and other such endeavors to even get close, not to mention the finding of a telephone extension cable which they don’t have. He then asks if we would like him to wait on the line whilst we plug the yellow cable in. I sigh, and die a little inside, this man is clearly fixated on the yellow cable and not listening to a bloody thing I am saying.

I thank him, say good bye and tell them we will call them back. Leaving the folks to ponder the acquisition or lending of a considerable telephone cable extension.

The next morning, I get an email from them, it’s all working again, no idea what the problem was, but somebody, somewhere fixed it.

I’ve never had any dealings with Tiscali before, and I’ve got to say that on a balanced, first impression point of view, their tech support was pointless, unintelligible and quite frankly utter bollocks. I wouldn’t trust them to find their arses with a map, both hands and the freaking light on. What a complete waste of time: Someone should sue the useless fucks for trades description or something because 1) they are providing wireless solutions which they are then refusing to support and 2) they have no concept of the meaning of the word support (be it customer or technical). In my humble, personal opinion.

200 Lashes

A stony silence, that silence that comes from asking “what’s wrong?” and being told that “no_thing is wrong”, each syllable marked with an exclamation mark, hurled ferociously out of the passenger window. I’m already tetchy, we’ve a long journey ahead of us, I really don’t want it to be a frosty silent one, so I persevere.

“Well I can tell by the way that you emphasised each syllable of ‘no-thing’ that there is some-thing?” Do you see what I did there, reversed the syllable emphasis, right back? Silence. In fact you would never believe that someone can stare out of the passenger window so passively aggressively till you’ve seen my better half with a cob on. A horse we pass watching the traffic from its field, winces, recoils and runs away from said glare…

“Look if you don’t tell me, am not going to know, if I don’t know I can’t do anything about it, and if I don’t know now I’ll probably do it again.” A pause filled with potential….

“If you don’t know what it is I’m not going to tell you,” she replies, still staring out of the window.

Speechless; as strategies go, as philosophies for living, nay improving ones life, this leaves something to be desired. I have clearly wronged and despite not realising what I have done (otherwise I would not have done it – I try to be karmic like that) I am not to be told what it is, leaving it highly likely I will err again, as I have no idea what is going on. Ah that old cosmic joker called Love; well let me know how that works out for you. Fine!” I snap, “Am not psychic like you, so next time don’t be surprised when it happens again!!” Note the two exclamation marks in the sentence…whoooo there; am on a roll!

She sniffs. A response, a chink in her armour… mwhwhwhahahahahaha etc. I bend around trying to see in her face, whilst keeping the car on the black stuff and not steer us into the scenery – that would just would not be funny.

“Well?”

“If you don’t even notice, I don’t see why I should have to point it out to you.”

Notice, did you notice the choice of words there, she said ‘notice’. I quickly scan her, nope, not new shoes, don’t think it’s a new dress, her hair, has she dyed it, has it been cut? Erm oh fuck…. possibly, possibly not.

“I guess the honeymoon period is over,” she adds.

Tempting here to be sarcastic, and point out that we’ve been together for 7 years… 7 wonderful years… can you still be on a honeymoon after 7 years? But the self preservation frontal cortex does engage so I’m not kicked to death by my own words whilst driving the car. I manage to withhold my sarcastic urges: It’s tough. Still at this point, I honestly have no idea what’s different, so I take a plunge, ‘Your hair…”

“It’s not my hair!” she bellows back at me. I think one of my ear drums burst. Quick thinking here; “I was going to say ‘your hair doesn’t look any different, you’ve not cut it or dyed it before I was so rudely interrupted,” with just a hint of indignation. I think I got away with it.

She stares at me with a withering contempt. I can feel my testicles recoiling.

“Well I don’t know, it’s not your hair, your dress or shoes, give us a fucking clue and get it over with!”

She pauses… “I’ve had my eye lashes dyed” She look at me and flutters her eye lashes with mocking exuberance. I look at them, try not to crash the car, re-adjust the steering wheel, take another look, then another…re-adjust the steering wheel.

Now am not sure if my next statement was the correct one or not; the initial response from a casual reader would be ‘what the fuck did you say that for’ but then it turns out to be the right one after all, and just a shade more surreal than Mr. Dali having a bad shroom day as it turns out. I take a breath, the birds stop singing for a moment, the wind stills, a bee on the verge stops humming some unknown tune it heard four days ago and can’t it out of it’s head, the universe pauses, looks, and gets ready to run… like the big bang suddenly going into reverse, scurrying back down what ever dark hole it came from in the first place.

“They don’t look any different.” Says I. I can see the words galloping up and out of somewhere inside, but I can’t stop them, my mouth involuntarily opens and they fall out. I can’t let go of the steering wheel to push them back in, too late, they are out, flapping uncontrollably about the car liked winged monkeys. I can’t believe what I’ve just unleashed. And then, and then it gets really weird…

“They are not supposed to!” It takes me a moment, to register what she just said.

“What!?” was about all I could muster. Which as witty ripostes go, is not one really to brag about.

“They are not supposed to.” She repeats with added venom. I take my foot of the accelerator, for safeties sake, whilst my synapses crinkle, you could probably hear the neurons firing from there.

“What do you mean they are not supposed to?”

“They’re supposed to look like I’ve got mascara on.”

“…. but you always wear mascara..”

“That’s the point!”

“What the fuck do you mean that’s the point? How am I supposed to notice something which has been explicitly undertaken to look exactly the same as it did before?”

“That is not the point”

“It’s about as near the fucking point as you’re going to get without stabbing yourself.”

“That can be arranged.”

“How am I supposed to notice something that quite clearly hasn’t changed!” More silence; logic, natural law, actually being right, means I should have every chance of winning this point, if not the argument. Still no answer, I have her squirming on the spear of righteousness… I can see a glimmer of doubt in her eyes, she’s furiously searching her mind for some noose of truth by which to strangle my bid for manhood; I’m on a roll, plunging onwards with abandon.

“Well, please feel free to elaborate on how this works? You’ve changed your appearance to make it look like you always do. Which part of something has not changed at fucking all am I supposed to have noticed for you to get all emotional about?”

No response. I push the point, I can see the winning line up ahead, a full qualified, self righteous harrumph noise on the horizon.

“And what if I had have noticed? What then?”

“I’d have been really pissed off!”

A strangled scream, lurches from my throat, there are still teeth marks in the steering wheel, “So if I had noticed you’d have been pissed at me because you’d spent money on something which hadn’t worked, yet you still feel inclined to be pissed at me, because it did work, despite the fact that we have already established I hadn’t got a snow balls chance in fucking hell of noticing, as they are supposed to look identical to the mascara your normally wear?! Well whoopy fooking doo, hush my mouth and hold the sarcasm!”

Silence…. just the noise, the engine, the tyres on tarmac… I push for the winners tape…. “So how much was this eye lash dying session?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Clearly it does or you would have told me, which indicates that it was quite expensive and probably worth every penny, considering nobody is supposed to notice. Unless of course you’re me, but then if I had have noticed that would have been as bad a thing as not noticing. What you pay per lash or something, does the treatment come with extra lashings of Catch22 or is that an optional extra?”

Barely audible over the hum of the engine, the faint rumble of tyres on tarmac, could be heard a self righteous ‘hmph’ noise, the noise of a bludgeon of truth, a flutter of freedom for all mankind from the tethers of insanity that is woman.

Fury, Flurry & Futility

Image via Wikipedia

The usual caveat, that none of this is true, it must be made up because it’s all to freaking surreal:

The new QA started work today, nobody from senior management bothered to tell the QM, as per previous entry, she’s still not even been consulted on the suitability of this person, nor has there been any evaluation of the post or interview process. QA has no Audit, Quality or IT skills; which are kind of essential for the role. But seemingly does have an ability to be parachuted into a post that doesn’t really exist.

So having arrived this morning it was quickly established that she had no where to sit, no desk, no chair, no phone, no computer. There’s nowhere for QA to go, because we physically don’t have a spare desk or computer. So she’s trying to hot desk onto computers as they come free around the place; It is a little tedious for all concerned to find someone waiting to sit at your desk every time you stand up, to get a couple of minutes on a p.c.

We used to have a spare p.c., was supposed to be spare for anyone to use, but has been recently commandeered by another department due to lack of resources, and a further hurdle being that we don’t have any spare licenses to install the software she needs as it’s not already on this computer.

I would point out that we’ve just spent approx  £10,000 on new workstations so that most of the consultants in part of our organisation can have 3 computers each, such that they don’t have to trouble their ickle legs and walk to their office and use the one that’s especially just for them. Now they have 3 each especially just for them, 1 for where ever they happen to be in the department. A department they are rarely in because they are off out and about doing other things. I digress, because this is apparently irrelevant.

Not least of all because the QM has spent most of the day guiding the QA in the use of spread sheets, how to enter data and draw graphs. This is something of a fundamental IT skill for this role, but we’ve been through that. You may also recall from a previous post that we’ve got the Auditors coming in 2 weeks, if they don’t like what they see, then theoretically they can close us down. QM is also doing the work of 10 other staff, when compared to organisations of a similar size, so you can imagine the stress and frustration. Still not to worry, the consultants get to preen amidst their technoglorious offices, the Quality ‘team’ have their deadline, everyone else gets to squabble and fight to get access to a computer, just to do their job.

Flaming Keys

Image via Wikipedia

Just to point out for the hard of hearing, this did not happen today, okay, it’s all made up, the series of events described below did not unfold.

Flammable Stores at our place are kept most securely under lock and key.
The key is logged out and back in again in a special book, witnessed by a Security Guard no less.
I didn’t know any of this until today.
A man came hunting for me, having been to various buildings to find me, wanting to know why I had logged out the key to the flammable stores, I have no business accessing such places, and why I hadn’t returned the key.
This came as something of a surprise to me because I didn’t know we had a flammable stores, let alone where it is, nor did I know were or how to get the key.
According to the security log (and for privacy reasons the witless have had their names changed) Jack Sprat (my present pseudonym) had taken the key.
I confessed confusion and innocence and he went back to Security to double check.
It also transpired later that he had spoken to my line manager, the boss of the organisation and interrupted a senior managers’ meeting to discuss the matter. I must also confess to being a little peeved about this, as there is nothing to discuss, I did not take the key and am a little narked that the suggestion was thrown at everybody in the food chain above me that I had accessed an area I had no right to and abused organisational policy and protocol. And at the time was more than a little concerned that a potential fire-bomber terrorist type person had used my name to a get a key to get to all the incendiary and ammunition necessary to blow us all to hell. But I digress.
Some time later he returned, it seems the security guard had given him the wrong name after all (bearing in mind I don’t know any of the security guards and they don’t know me (out of 4000+ staff on site)), it seems the security guard meant to say Jack Scole. You will note that other than the forename, a single letter at the beginning of the surname, there is absolutely no comminality between our names. An easy mistake. Maybe.
But it gets better because yon keeper of the keys had then gone back to the original building, to look for Jack Scole. There was and is no such person. There is however a Debbie Scole and when questioned she had indeed taken and logged out the key in the security log and accessed the flammable stores. Considering this is a nessacery aspect of her job not a problem. She had also returned they key, 2 hours previously, albeit to a different security guard, who rather than logging the key back in, in the book, had just lashed it back in the cupboard.
So you can imagaine how thrilled the keeper of the keys was. He’d spent an afternoon on a wild goose chase, hunting me from building to building to find that not only was he looking for the wrong person in the wrong place, then the wrong person in the right place, to finally find the right person (of the opposite sex) who had every reason to take the key and she had returned it, and it was in the box where it should have been all along.
Makes you proud. I will sleep safe tonight, safe in the knowledge that our security systems are in place, and our security guards are of the highest calibre. Safe in the knowledge that our Security Guards can confuse Debbie Scole with Jack Sprat, and that any eegit can just walk up to them and ask for the key to the the largest collection of dangerous chemicals for several miles. Still it’s all ok because we do have a book whereby you can’t access this material without putting your name down first, so it’s all ok. We’ve fulfilled our management obligations. The boxes have been ticked. We’ve got a book.