Administrivia

In which FP cuts out the junk

Written by Forest Pines; published at 8:18 am on June 9th, 2007.
Filed under: Geekery, Meta.

I’m getting very bored of the amount of junk email I get. Mostly to my specialised “message board posting” email addresses, which never get any real mail anyway; so they’ve all been rolled over and new addresses created. Result: incoming spam down by about half overnight. Hurrah! If you did have any email addresses for me which were just message-board-name@this domain, then delete them, cos they won’t work any more.

And so, having done that, I had spam for dinner. It seemed apt.

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Keyword noise: administration, email, IT, IT support, junk mail, spam

Grump

In which things tend to go wrong in groups

Written by Forest Pines; published at 5:15 pm on April 22nd, 2007.
Filed under: Dear Diary, Feeling Meh.

Why do things happen together? Why do bad events congregate, and bad things happen at the same time? Why do unrelated things all break, and why is it always the Most Important People who break things.

Like on Friday at work; when the Managing Director’s daughter’s laptop needed fixing; then, the MD’s email became corrupt enough to crash the email server; then, a Very Important piece of software, without which we do not get paid, lost its internal databases to file corruption. All unrelated machines, unrelated events. There’s no way any of them are connected, I’m absolutely sure about that, so why did they all happen together?

Especially when, on Saturday morning, H’s laptop bluescreened itself and then refused to boot. Checking its disk for errors resolved things,* but not before H had had a major panic that the whole machine had died. Oh, and then, H’s DVD player decided to spit out loud white noise instead of any audio it was supposed to be playing. The last few days have left me tired, stressed, and annoyed at the slightest little thing, because it feels as if every piece of hardware around me is set to attack.

* apparently resolved things, at any rate. I am wary of what may have caused the original bluescreen.

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Keyword noise: Blue Screen Of Death, BSOD, cluster, crash, IT, IT support, problems

Grumble grumble

In which we have problems

Written by Forest Pines; published at 10:30 pm on December 18th, 2006.
Filed under: Feeling Meh, Meta.

Well, in addition to not being able to find any of the Christmas presents I want to buy in the shops; the computer has started misbehaving. It crashed in the middle of an update, and hasn’t been working right ever since. For those of you who have been on the internet since the early 90s: I’m posting this using the text-only browser Lynx. because it was the only one I could get working quickly whilst getting the rest of the machine back on its feet.

So if anything in this post looks a bit strange, that’s because I can’t really see what I’m doing, because the text-entry widget in Lynx is a bit…

The Plain People Of The Internet: So what was the explanation for all those other posts looking a bit strange, then?

Me: Har har.

More whining posts tomorrow; or if I’m in a good mood, I’ll tell you about the pantomime I went to see.

Update: Although Lynx lets you create posts in WordPress, it doesn’t seem to like you editing them. Grrr, again.

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Keyword noise: computers, computing, crash, IT, IT support, Lynx, problems, Wordpress

We love enthusiatic amateurs

In which there’s work to do, to take our minds off disgusting art

Written by Forest Pines; published at 10:39 pm on December 12th, 2006.
Filed under: Artistic, The Office.

Today, the boss spent the afternoon over at our warehouse. It’s fifty miles away, so it does at least keep him well out of our hair, with no risk of him suddenly popping down to find me and Big Dave playing poker,* or The Good-Looking One From Accounts skiving behind my desk.**

Right after he left to come back over to Head Office, one of the warehouse staff phoned:

“Your boss was on my computer for ages fiddling about with stuff. And now it doesn’t work.”

Oh, hurrah. That was the rest of the afternoon gone, then – working out just what he’d done. I realised what he’d been trying to do; and had to work back from there to sort out what he actually did.

Ah, well. To change the subject: have you ever been browsing the web and thought: why the hell would anyone want to do that? Tonight I came across: spermcube.*** It’s all in the name of art, apparently. If you want to know more reasons why it’s a bad idea – other than just “ewww” – read this.

* for our collection of spare computer case screws. I reckon I’m about 15% up on him at the moment.

** if she kneels next to my chair, and the door is shut, you can’t see her through the window.

*** link via Rod Begbie, who I remember being a prolific Sinisterine back in the day

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Keyword noise: art, Big Dave, breakage, colleagues, computing, disgusting, IT, IT support, office, work