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undercover with Surrey Traffic Police

Yesterday afternoon at 16:09, in Surrey, a sales rep in a red Vauxhall Vectra shunted a plumber driving a white van on the middle lane of the M25. Twenty years ago, the following cars would have quickly stopped to allow the protagonists to pull over to the hard shoulder.

Twenty years ago, a heated exchange would ensue. Then both parties would calm down and exchange insurance details. Twenty years ago, the white van driver would resume his journey while the Vectra owner waited for a tow from The AA to a local garage to replace his pierced radiator.

Web 2.0 - am I infected ?

Email

1. You use ELM on a VT220.
2. You use Emacs and Gnus.
3. Corporate standards force you to use Microsoft Outlook and you don’t even mind.
4. You use Gmail for all work and personal email.

Documents

1. Quill and parchment.
2. XEmacs.
3. Microsoft Word with 37 macros.
4. Microsoft Excel for all documents .
5. Google Documents for all correspondence.

Newsgroups

1. What are newsgroups ?
2. You use Emacs and Gnus.
3. Your company doesn’t run an NNTP server for security reasons.
4. Newsgroups are just another data source mashed into your aggregator.

Home Page

YCNMIU

Student fined £80 for making a 4 foot penis in the snow.

the unbearable coolness of VOIP

As part of my job, I often have the pleasure of walking around call centers where agents use headsets to enable them to interact with a computer while conducting a telephone call with a customer.

I have often wondered whether it would be cool or nerdy to use such a headset myself. To date, where possible, I tend to use my mobile phone on speakerphone so I am free to continue to type. For lengthy conference calls (abroad), this isn’t a particularly cost-effective option but please don’t tell the CFO.

great fun with Iris

Despite a scattering of snow in London that normally brings the country to a complete halt, my return flight from Copenhagen was on time and blissfully uneventful.

Unusually, I was hoping for lengthy queues at passport control in T3. I was praying for four flights to land simultaneously and for the resulting queues to snake around the corner and past the toilets.

Why ? Because today it is finally going to happen. After, inexplicably not flying abroad for 6 months, I had finally managed to arrange my rendezvous with Iris. Tonight was the our first date.

Here we go

Blueyonder Webmail is down which is unusual. Welcome to the brand new, exciting world of Virgin Media.

Still, at least they have a nice friendly, Web 2.0 style apology. The marketeers must be busy planning the launch party and deciding which dress Richard Branson will wear.

the art of lazy consultancy

Many years ago, a customer thanked me which was a pleasant surprise and quite unusual. Most simply ask ‘When will your report be ready ?’

This particular customer remarked on my ’logical and methodical approach’ to understanding this long standing complex problem, proposing a plan of action and, on this rare occasion, resolving it.

I was interested by his choice of the words ’logical and methodical’. As an aside, I was convinced I heard a surly DBA murmur ‘slow, laboured and hopeless more like’ which hurt terribly.

questions and answers

Over the past couple of days, much to my surprise, I have actually managed to answer some questions.

1. The parameter ‘ExtractStartDate’ was set to ‘11/01/2007’. This means that Siebel will ignore all appointments and tasks prior to this date. The default value of ‘ExtractStartDateFormat’ is ‘MM/DD/YYYY’ which equates to ‘01 November 2007’.
2. Install Cygwin, sed -n -e ‘x,yp’ < bigfile.log
3. If the Exchange Connector and SSSE Engine component are run by accounts in different domains, trust must be established in order for RPC calls to work correctly. Alternatively, use two separate accounts (least privilege) in the same domain.
4. In the heart of London, surprisingly.
5. Install OHS from the OAS Companion CD
6. F11

And now for the questions…

a night of outrageous flirting in Copenhagen

[Well, my SEO professor said it was much better than ‘Sports Bars of Europe #7’]

Feverishly scoured the Interweb looking for alternative sports bars in Copenhagen. Once I saw the address of my previous haunt, the marvellous ‘Irish Rover’, my mind was instantly made up.

Tomorrow morning, when the customer politely asks me what I got up to last night, instead of ‘Caught up with my email and ordered room service’, I can now proffer ‘I spent a glorious, unforgettable night up ‘Jorcks Passage’.

job vacancy

Travel Administrator for overpaid and unbelievably stupid IT consultant

• must be capable of using a corporate travel service to book a flight to Copenhagen from London Heathrow
• must be capable of reading confirmation email to check flight is actually from LHR and not London City airport
• must be able to secure approvals for travel booked less than 7 days from departure
• must be able to verify a flexible ticket has indeed been issued as requested
• must be able to convince the lady at SAS ticket sales to change a fixed, non-refundable, non-changeable ticket to a different flight at no additional cost

Salary - none. Bonus - none although you will receive my eternal thanks and defer my next nervous breakdown.