Category: misc

IT support

This user-requested software upgrade exchange didn't happen. I've made it up. Yes.*

The Man:

"[folder name] There is a launcher in here [program name].exe which should install the shizzle."

Me, feeling cocky:

"We iz installing the shizzle on Jason’s machine.  We think. :)"

(time passed…)

Unfortunately due to the way [program name] works, its installer had a lie down instead of exhibiting the outward trappings of a performant conclusion.

Me, somewhat circumspect:

"Could you please start the [program name] upgrade on a few more machines after lunch/1pm? Ben, Zeb, John-Boy and John.  Maybe Olivia and Mary-Ellen tomorrow."

The Man:

'Please see below for the correct way to submit a request, as one of your colleagues seemed to nail it!

"Oh Great One,
Your humble servant requests that you fix [another program name] on my PC what not working (but did last week).
Thanks'

Me, acquiescing:

"Dear Sir or Madam of Awesomesauce,

This obsequious underling (initially examining but not limiting said examination to in this regard the relative vertical offsets between uppermost portions of cranial body parts) is desirous of your physical presence around these environs after the commencement and subsequent termination of the half-hour period in which the majority consume their midday repast to effect the increase in [program name]-related CAD and/or design productivity (post-button-fiddling-and-bitwise-cogitation) of a small number of my esteemed colleagues, to be occasioned by a heretofore successful manual implementation of a ‘soft ware upgrade’; those colleagues being namely by name: Ben of Sausage, Zeb of Sausage, John of Sausage, and John-Boy the, er…  And, upon successful termination of the afore-to-alluded-to procedural black-box magic incantations, to examine the possibility of repeating the procedures on two further colleagues’ computing devices at a point not limited to a limited time within the limits of the next working day; those personnel being namely Olivia The Great of A-Specific-Sausage-Name-Analogy and Mary-Ellen The Great of Many-Bread-Product-Name-Analogies.

Yours in eager and trembling anticipatory raptures,
Mr or Mrs Turner.

p.s. The writer has determined that his or her [another program name] is also what not working (but what did earlier in the year.)"

(time passed…)

Yes, of course he did it, tsk!

The end.

*Er… No, that's not exactly true. However the names have been changed to protect the identities of the guineapigs involvZzzz…

App.net legends

Just short of a millennium ago, and handily beating Project Gutenberg, the Chinese invented movable type. Thus began the slow march of the dissemination of things important and unimportant (though perhaps entertaining) through the intervening ten centuries towards this, our almost ephemeral, digital age.

As App.net (ADN) haltingly passes into the realm of myths and fables an 11th-hour equitable stay was granted by the legend that is @berg; time to fix and thus allow the network's inhabitants to download and unpack their digital memories.

24 more hours, the blink of an eye, and an ending somehow slightly less-memorable than of The Ides Of March; a date I'm sure that was chosen to be symbolic. Symbolic of what though?

How many Orcs though, how many Goblins, Men, Elves, nameless dark forces from the east, how many Trolls were slain during the time ADN shone? How many Adventures were had along the road? How many people met, spoke in hushed (and not-so-hushed) tones, whilst forging lasting alliances over cloudy ale and Elven Lembas bread?

Ok, enough allusions to Tolkien-esque worlds; wasn't it fun‽

Simply, yes.

Incidentally, if you came to this scroll of mine expecting a list of legendary folk, instead look in at 10Centuries.org and pnut.io and see who's there.

Do it.

I have invitation codes for both networks, just ask.

Do it, do it now, lest ye be eaten by a grue or (shudders) settle for Twitter!

(time passes…)

Have you done it yet‽

Who knows, before we know it, people could be telling tales of our later legendary exploits.

Stranger

I wonder how it feels, when out with your family, if your partner attracts the attention of someone you don't know but they do, and that person shouts out your name to ask you a trivial question.

I'm imagining a speech/thought bubble:

'Er… how do they know m…'

Blinkers 2

Yesterday evening, fresh out of the gym and leaving the leisure centre, my attention was diverted, pleasantly I might add, from the single-minded pursuit of getting out and home for dinner. Diverted by someone I've known for a few years now, and whose husband used to work for the same company as I.

I apologised for my tunnel-vision, she remarked about my apparent single-minded sense of purpose, and we parted company.

Ok, ok, ok, in a spirit of full disclosure I must confess I wasn't just at the gym. No. I'd just taken my youngest daughter to her weekly swimming lesson; and we'd, together with her oldest sister, endured the trauma of showering and changing in the men's, and the far-busier-than-Saturday's weekday lesson time slot.

What strikes me as comforting, especially against the backdrop of my 'Blinkers' post at the weekend: two people I've known for a while took the time to say hello. Which was nice.

Blinkers

We went to the pictures yesterday, to watch the Lego Batman Movie. I suspended my sense of disbelief as usual and yes, cried near the end. Who knew that hanging a picture could be so moving‽

To get the film review out of the way, it's fantastic, obviously it is, with an opening sequence that rivals pretty much anything I've seen I all my years (old git.) One of the best scenes in it, a precursor of what's to come, involves heating Lobster Thermidor in a microwave.

Yeah ok, YMMV.

On the way out to the car after spending more money than I intended to (two large Belgian chocolate milkshakes for the girls, from the Costa Coffee) an old, esteemed colleague spotted me, and made his (and his family's) presence known. Upon him asking how the film was, all I could do was mock-rub my eyes, indicating 'it's a tearjerker', and we parted ways.

Interesting that, I've always tended to have tunnel-vision, a single-minded sense of purpose when…

If anyone ever see me walking the streets (or, it's even worse in the car) and I apparently blank them, it really is my inability to focus on anything but the one thing at the centre of my attention. Yesterday's thing: safely getting the girls to the car. Thirty years ago? Making sure I completed the jog without stray dogs, cars or pedestrians breaking my rhythm.

So don't be shy.

micro.blog

There's a social network in the works called micro.blog. It aims to bridge the gap between microblogging and longform blogging. Though I as a blogger-of-sorts see promise in the concept I didn't back it on Kickstarter. Nevertheless it raised over US$80,000 – something like 10x the stated goal? It'll likely be moderately popular.

But meh. The founder has delayed the first stage reward for the backers, pushing back the assignment of usernames until the roll-out of the first stage of the networking bits

Why didn't I back it? Simple really, the concept started off as a request for funds to assist in writing a book. Whether supplied by paper or electronic delivery I'm not certain, but it's a bit of an anachronism in this electronic age. No bother, the blogging/social aspect is intriguing, especially the desire to appoint a manager to stamp on trolls and antisocial behaviour. But I didn't back it because I already belong to an in-beta social, blogging, podcasting, etc., network: 10Centuries.org. You may already have seen that I like it a lot (and would like to invite you there.)

Oh, please disregard the fact that I've bought social/web books before in papery form too, namely Drew Curtis's about Fark.com and Philip Greenspun's about web publishing, and…

I've also been burned, er… ok singed a little, by a previous a Kickstarter campaign. For a twin-plate wallet.

The guy had iterated through innumerable designs, established materials, coatings, a supplier chain (with detailed discussions about tooling), and published a list of stretch goals for backer rewards, and gained multiple positive YouTube reviews…

And then the money arrived.

The materials changed, the suppliers changed, the coatings and production methods changed, the stretch goals were effectively eliminated as the previous costings were wiped out by all those changes.

And then, when the wallets were made available for sale months before delivery to Kickstarter backers, the recriminations started mounting. Obviously. There's such a thing as retaining the attention of those who back you, keeping the momentum going.

Accuse me of sour grapes if you wish, but another social network??

A reminder: App.net shuts down in a week-and-a-half.

Nine

Today marks the ninth anniversary of the sale of our first home together, my wife, my first daughter, and me. A precarious few months preceded the joy of signing that piece of paper and terminating the first of our two mortgages together.

Two concurrent mortgages, though in no way unique, stretched us nonetheless. The simple fact is that we picked a budget for our new home and exceeded that by a generous two-digit percentage.

And we're still paying for that decision.

Still, it is good that I've not been shot at, for at least nine years and three months.

Sinclair C5

Can modern incarnation of C5 succeed? (BBC)

I'm easily old enough to remember the original 3-wheeled washing-machine-motor-powered death-trap, the only safety aid a flag flapping above on a flexible whip shaft, but didn't see one for real until years later, in a museum.

I view the name Sinclair with fondness. I owned a ZX81 (with 16K wobbly RAM Pack, a Spectrum 48K and thermal printer, and an almost-totally-impractical in-ear radio. I still want a red-LED RPN calculator, bug-ridden as I know it to be.

Though modern cars are far safer than during the 1980s, the roads are fuller and the drivers less-attentive than ever. So I confidently predict that Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies here.

The answer to the question the headline poses: No, no more-so than ever.

Poo bag

No, not an insult. Why, when it's absolutely necessary to have a bag for collecting poo, there isn't one? Why, when it doesn't matter, is one's pocket full of the things, often bags sliding languidly to the floor when rummaging for keys, cards, cash…?

No social faux-pas here though whatever the circumstances, it's never particularly awkward; there are many dog owners out there with a similar sense of responsibility.

To avoid the embarrassment, the angst of returning to the scene of an 'incident' there has to be a better way of remembering allied to a better, more discreet method of poo bag concealed carry.