The Brief Pedant

Big Ben has been named Britain's favourite landmark, in a poll of more than 2,000 adults.

The central London attraction beat Wiltshire stone circle Stonehenge into second place.

Big Ben is the bell, not the tower...morons.

Fuck You Bill Gates!

OK. Granted...I'm sure he's not personally to blame, but Windows sure does suck as an OS.

Oooh la-de-da hark at the Linux/Mac fanboy larfing it up with his geeky "I know all about computers me" attitude and many, many nights weeping over obscure configuration files and not even able to play 'proper' games like Far Cry and WoW!!

Well, fuck you too!

I have to use Windows for work (though I'm planning a workaround of sorts....more on this later maybe). It pains me dearly to know that I'm struggling to get my supposedly OK-spec, supposedly 900-notes-plus laptop to do something mundane like move an email from one folder to another while at the same time (on another monitor) displaying a couple of webpages, a document or two and a project timeline...much of this is probably down to the shiteness of MobilePhoneOperatorInsertedHere's ability to manage its own IT systems...but the blame lies equally in the laps (heaven forfend) of Teh Windoze D00dz!

My 'half-the-spec' 300 quid laptop running Ubuntu Feisty is shitting on it! Right on it!!!

People ask me what I do. I've stopped explaining, but when they learn that it involves 'computers' I inevitably get asked about Viruses and Trojans and BSOD...I have to admit that I don't know why, now, these things are causing gip. A few years ago yeah; I'd've (heh, apostrophe nightmare!) maybe known or been able to bungle through....Probably. I would have seen the advisory, or had the issue and found a fix....Nowadays?...Don't even get me started on the: "so, I have this 18 month contract...", "what's the best phone right now?"...or better yet: "Can you get me a phone for free?" questions.

I do (but have no need real need to) run a firewall. I do have (but have no real need for) advert & script blocking plugins. I run (to no real purpose) virus/trojan checkers...what's wasting your resources?

Oh yes, the point!

The point of this post is that:

- Using a Beta of Ubuntu Feisty I've migrated 2 people from Windows 2000/XP, with all their settings (wallpaper, My Documents, IM and email settings, bookmarks etc...) intact. TMWNN (the man with no name...he chose the nick) says 'Fuck that paying shit. This is mad!'
- I spent 12 hours upgrading 4 PCs while downloading new Heroes episodes and ripping such exciting DVDs as Andromeda Strain and Chorlton & The Wheelies...
- And burnt a CD about Tigers (or Tie-gull in lilspeak)
- Am now sitting on the sofa with wireless working on my cheapo laptop which is way more than my work laptop could do. Ever.
- Did I mention the restricted driver and codec detection?
- NTFS support I added a few days too late to get the (apparently) classic "Joo wanna muffin?" clip from a disk off T'Ex...

FTP and then Rosie are my next targets...Then M&D....Then Dunkle Doe...then...the world!!!

Eggs Perry Mental

Right. I'm knackered, a bit fed-up of feeling guilty (for no reason) for not posting quite as often or in quite the same rantageous (yes it is a word...if I say so) way as I have in the past. I blame Missman (joke). Actually, because I told Missman of the site I suddenly thought I'd better re-read some of my older posts to see if I came across as some kind of mentalist. What I mean is, a different type of mental from my mental....ya get me?

Also, Ricola better phone me soon or they're in trouble!

By the way, I don't want an iPhone (which you may have inferred from the last post), but that interface does look awesome. If I'm a fanboy at all, I'm a Mac OS X fanboy and possibly not even that as I'd rather it was all free...I'm still running a Debian machine as a server and using the Daptop regularly now I sorted out some of the wireless issues. Somehow though, my Mac Mini has become my machine of choice rather than just the media machine I'd intended.

I'll also admit to heaving several huge sighs of relief at work today; just before I went on Yuletime holiday I realised I might have 'over sold' something to Belgium and that I'd possibly fucked Belgium (ugh!) and thus probably a very, very expensive project right up. I couldn't do anything about it other than worry (not that I do that much) about it a bit over the last few weeks. Anyway, long story short we finally caught up on the matter today and it turns out I'd just twisted it round in my head (and so had one of the Belgo's which was why I was worrying) because their techie guy is definitely on the ball and had also noticed my cunning 'call per service' (too long a story) plan...it just wasn't flow-charted correctly. Also, Maggie is back which is really good and I'll be working with her now.

The paragraph above has been written suspecting that Teh Bo55 still has this thing RSS'd or bookmarked. But it's true...and cannot be submitted as evidence for my next Performance Review ;-)

Flo has some seriously sore nappy-area issues, but is happy enough despite being a bit pasty and under-the-weather-looking. She ate loads of Fishcake, Rice, Brocolli and Sweetcorn and was sooo tired she wanted her bed at 6:30 right after her bath (lots of shouting and splashing...and bubbles)...let's hope she sleeps through as I've another killer 2 days at work coming up followed by (hopefully) some debauchery and then a full Saturday...Flo's staying a bit later than usual on Sunday.

O.O

Seems I can rant when I have it in me...except now I'm definitely going to bed before 9!

You thought I'd forgotten....haha!