I didn't quite catch that...

There’s been one company that I’ve been liasing with for the length of my employment here. That’s twelve weeks. Two calls a week. Negotiating the finer details of a system that could save up to 1% on orders worth many, many pounds and a few pence as well.

It’s been painful, it’s been dull. But this company is responsible for a huge amount of the orders we place, and as such would be the deal-breaker for my PRP (were I to be in line for PRP, of course, which I’m not).

But I got them, and it’s all good. Past the tipping point, heading towards 90% efficiency in the new system, up from about 45% when I started. Not bad, methinks.

The more days I spend at work, the more people I find who work through the same temp agency as I do. From where I’m sitting at the minute, I can see five, and a seat where a sixth sat until last week (lucky bastard got a very respectable job). Out of the twenty people in my office at the minute, that’s not a good average.

Especially when you consier that for every ?5.30 I get paid, the agency gets ?1.20. So basicially, 20% of my salary (and the same for the other temps) flows into the coffers of said agency.

If anyone wants to join me in starting a temp agency, I can be contacted at the usual address. Mesa gonna be rich!

I need to link to this. The genius of Acidman. I dunno if he wrote it, or found it, but I found it there, and it is so linked.

UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry

A study conducted by UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry has revealed
that the kind of male face a woman finds attractive can differ depending on
what phase she is in with regard to her menstrual cycle.

For instance, if she is ovulating, she is attracted to men with rugged and masculine features.

However, if she is menstruating, or menopausal, she is more prone to be
attracted to a man with scissors lodged in his temple and a bat jammed
up his ass while he is on fire.

Further studies are expected.

Guess what arrived in the post today? Go on…

West Wing Series III. On DVD. Excellent. Laters.

I am a bit of a geek. Generally. One of the things that my geekness is shown in is my taste in history. I like history. One of the parts I like is Cold War history. One of the books I read about Cold War history was Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers, which is all about, suprisingly, bunkers built in the US and UK during the Cold War.

A passage from said book, if I may:

Manchester GUARDIAN… one hundred and twelve feet below the Rutherford exchange in George Street…

…

…exit routes utilised the deep level cable tunnels that ran for approximately one mile east and west of the exchange, terminating at vertical shafts in Ardwick and Salford.

This is about GPO (now BT) underground, hardened phone exchanges, designed to keep the country communicating. There were similiar installations in London (KINGSWAY) and Birmingham (ANCHOR).

Why do I bring this up now? Well, I woke up this morning, to hear on the radio that there was a fire in ‘underground pipes’ owned by BT. In Manchester. With fire crews working from George Street, and from Salford (a mile away) to put it out. Which jarred my memory, and resulted in me diggiong out the book. To check.

Now, I haven’t heard the locations mentioned on the radio, or on the BBC story, again. But a little titbit on the photo pop up from this page gives a clue:

More than 130,000 telephone lines have been disrupted in Manchester after a fire broke out in a BT underground tunnel in George Street Manchester.

Oops. It seems that a bit of the nuclear proof communication backbone of Britain is.. hmmm… broken. Oh well.

Fame! by Y2kansas
Name
You will becomed famous on	September 3, 2022
You will become famous for	5 years
You will become famous by	Walking on the moon
Your fame will fade when you	Die
You will be known by this many people	40,829,405,319
Your fame will generate	$979,867,528
Created with quill18‘s MemeGen 3.0!

Hat tippage in the general direction of Jersey. Which, by the way, is near France. And the above answer is far superior than the one supplied by Ed John. Which is just depressing. Or John, which is much more likley, but not terribly pleasing.

Incidentially, while the above is the best option, I’m not mad about it suggesting that I’ll die in 2027… Hmm. Highs and lows, I guess.

Davezilla is very funny. Especially when he throws out stuff like this:

The Body Builder
A normal person?s armswing extends ahead of the body slightly farther than it does behind. Not so the male bodybuilder, who swings his arms ahead, but never lets them retreat past his ribcage, as if he were pushing a lawnmower with alternating arms. The arms are also kept a respectable distance away from the sides, presumably to bless us all with his healthier sweat.
If you can imagine a man with an invisible piglet tucked under each arm, trying to push an imaginary lawnmower while elbowing his way through a nonexistent crowd, you?ll have a pretty good idea of the walk.

I’m saying nothin’…

• Good News: The job offer is real
• Bad News: It doesn’t start till May
• Good News: It’s actually mentions degree in the personnel requirements…
• Bad News: But still, only as equal to two years previous experience
• Good News: It pays well
• Bad News: But not well enough for me to retire by 30
• Good News: Ireland won the triple crown
• Bad News: France *spit* won the Grand Slam
• Good News: I hear that Blackadder got into the top 2 in yon sitcom malarkey
• Bad News: Only Fools & Horses won it
• Good News: It’s a Sunday morning
• Bad News: The fucking clocks have decided that I needed one hour’s less sleep last night, and conspired to change themselves to make it so.

Apparently, there’s a letter waiting for me at home. Me being me (impatient, obviously), I’ve gotten someone else to open it and tell me what it says. Key phrases include “offer” and “pending medical”.

So, at risk of repeating myself, “WooHoo!”

Lets go on a journey, shall we? Let’s say that’s it 2004, shall we? And that a new ICT system is dragging a corporate mentality out of the 60s and into the 90s. We’re talking answers supplied in hours, not days. We’re talking about having redundancy (ie, if the system goes belly up, we can use the fax as backup. Instead of the carrier pigeon. Technology, eh?). We’re talking about point-and-click instead of having to remember 6 dozen three letter program codes to run at command prompt level. Amazing technological developments.

So what do people do? Rejoice? Nah, that would be too nice. Quietly accept, work to get the system working? Hah! Bitch all day long about things that don’t exist, and so on? Sure, why the fuck not.

So, lets say that the system makes work processes an average of 50% ‘better’. Lets completely ignore the half that is above average. Instead, lets focus on the one process that is only 10% better. And isn’t important anyway. And bitch about that, all day long. Oh, and loudly. That’s always good.

Oh well. I think I’ve got to go and advise the Committee to Send an Email now. Six people, gathered round a terminal, figuring out which button they need to hit. They have a choice of “Send”, “Bring down system”, “Piss off tech support enough that specific parts of the system will be brought down, sharpish”, and “Go for coffee”.

Some people are over the moon that Mark & Lard are going, but I’m not. Why, I’m not entirely sure. Their show is not the best, obviously, as the fat one gets that honour. They’re not the worst, because that spot is occupied by twat-features-who-is-up-the-duff. I think it’s just that their immature brand of humour appeals to me. So there.

So, tomorrow’s show will be the end of an era. And I will be there in spirit, but unable to listen. My boss handed me a tome of sites that I’d visited over the last week while at work. Four pages of URLs. Work related sites took up about an inch and a half. Oops.

Due to recent terrorism, France has upgraded it’s security status from
RUN to HIDE.

HIDE is the third highest level, after SURRENDER and COLLABORATION.

This security announcement was transmitted via Joe. Please do not leave baggage unattended anywhere on the website, or it may be removed and destroyed by security personnel.

Well, apparently I warrant not being apologised to. Which is always nice. You live and learn: obviously getting a bit miffed at a little paddy bashing is unacceptable.

All harmless fun, though. Even if you then realise that Ed isn’t a unique name! And some people even consider themselves to be “Special Ed”!

Welcome to this Journalism awards ceremony. We have only one catagory, and thusly only one winner. Today, we’re going to present a one off award, to a bastion of the genre. Yes, we’re going to present the award for “Best comic headline, ever, in the world, we will brook no argument, these guys are the best, so they are, fucking genius, total respect, and so on, you get the drift“. Can you guess who’s going to get it?

How exciting. Drum roll please from the band.

And the winner is….

The Guardian! We don’t have the time here to show all of their entries for this award, so we’ll only go with the most recent.

U.N.: Yassin Killing Will Lead to Violence

Christ on a bike. The long established peace in the Middle East has been shattered! No more shall citizens of Israel be able to feel safe in their towns and cities! No more will the Palestinians be able to raise their families in their safe and secure cities! What ever will they do!

That’s no the funny part. The funny part is that the Guardian editors seemed to miss a couple of words out, and added some of their own. The panel has decided that the headline was meant to read:

U.N.: Yassin Killing Will Lead to no more Violence.

UPDATE: Sorry. The panel was wrong. We gave the Guardian’s editors more credit than they deserved. They made a mistake with the headline, then carried it the whole way through the story. How can a editor that makes such a blatent hash of the truth continue in their post?

Oh. The Guardian. Right. Never mind.

• Miles covered today: 160
• Pounds converted to petrol (and extortion tax this morning: 34.50
• Unpleasant experiences recently: 3
  Consisting of:
  • 1 x Grade VI interview
  • 1 x Grade V interview
  • 1 x dental appointment

• Hours left at work: 3
• Number of headache pills consumed in last 24 hours: 8
• Maximum number of said headache pills to be consumed in any 24 hour period: 8
• Feelings of resentment towards all HR departments ever: 100%
• Feelings of resentment towards all lawyers ever: 100%

Which sums up the world.

Dentist was pleased. I haven’t been in four years, and haven’t needed a filling in six. So I turned up today, and was told that I needed a filling. And that it’d have to wait three weeks before they got round to it. Boo.

Today, we will be presenting the award for “Worst performer at Interview, ever”. The nominees are…

Fuck the rest of the field, you all know who’s going to win:

Me!

And now I gotta go dentist. I was going to saw something about interviews being as much fun as getting teeth pulled, but that would be way too obvious.

The world knows that Micro$oft is evil, yes? But did you also know that their software is responsible for this? Ok, not just their software, the poor use of their software, but still. Having an ATM boot up into WinXP sounds like fun… Hmmm, security holes…. Hmmm, mmmmoooooooonnnnnnneeeeeeyyyyyyyyyy.

Hat tip to Dave.

Fucknuggets. Fucking Sky spoiled 24 for me (AGAIN) by showing the summary of last night’s show just before the show. Arseholes. Must find and destroy them. All of them.

Incidentially, I think that if I was included in this clip (and why shouldn’t I be? Huh? Give me a reason?), I’d have to say “fucknugget”. Although I think that Janel Moloney‘s “I like cunt!” *girlie clap* was quite entertaining. Because my mind is easily amused, OK?

Where I work, we all have to swipe in and out (like clocking in and out, but more anal high tech). Or we don’t get paid. Simple, see?

I work in a building that’s about 12 years old. And, considering it’s youth, the builders forgot something. Disabled access. Oops. So, now, they’re retrofitting a lift, right into the reception. Simple, see?

So, they have to close reception. Which means none of us can get to the swipe machine. Which means none of us will get paid. And nobody thought of this until ten minutes ago. Reception closed 20 minutes ago. Simple, see?

Of course, we could move the swipe to somewhere else. But that’s not going to happen, because we’re also moving the comms room (because the roof fell in on many pounds worth of kit). So, we’re can’t be moving anything else, because we can’t change anything on the server, because it’s in a box in the corner (we’re using a proxy, before anyone gets smart).

So, we’re all having to go back to the old fashioned way: accounts are going to have to trust people to fill in their details correctly. Mwhahaha! I’ll soon have enough for my holiday in the Bahamas! Obviously I’m making it up! I wouldn’t lie to get more pay! That’s what milage claims are for! (no tax, stupid)