In honour of St George's Day

[kuang.livejournal.com]

This is something I posted a while back to my own journal, but thought I'd wheel it out for a second airing here as it fits the occasion nicely. It's getting harder to enjoy St Georges Day in many ways because of the amount of fuckwittery that surrounds it - sometimes it's good to remember where you came from, take pride in your nationality and celebrate the events in your home country from the past that you should be proud of. Sadly England is mired in misplaced political correctness that often does more harm than good and tends to assume the actions of a moronic few represent the many, and this is a prime example.

I received an email to say that the presentation PC that sits on our reception desk had been turned off because it was displaying an 'inappropriate image' and could I fix it? I wandered through to have a look and was told that the machine had been displaying 'a red cross on a white background' and it was felt by the deputy principal of the college that it could be seen as racist.

Powerpoint had failed to load a full-screen image and the cross was the diagonal 'image not found' icon stretched to fill the screen. I presume that the moron in question felt that any red cross on a white background could be likened to the George Cross (ie. the flag of England) and got an attack of the political correctness-induced shits. Not only did we have one of the highest people in the college showing a remarkable degree of ignorance, but somebody who is supposed to be behind the colleges policy of 'celebrating diversity' effectively saying that anything representing the country that funds the college is inherently bad and should be hidden.

(no subject)

[harmer.livejournal.com]

I've had the classic dumb calls everyone else has. The people who cannot connect to the Internet, only to discover their computer was off. But for some reason, I think this is my new dumbest call:

Me: Thank you for calling $ISP, my name is harmer, how can I help you?
Customer: Yeah, I live in Columbus, Ohio but I'm in Mississippi right now in a Holiday Inn and I'm using wireless to connect to their Internet. It says I'm connected but I can't get on the Internet!! I know I paid my bill before I left, what do I do?!!?
Me: Sir, what Internet company does that hotel use?
Customer: $OTHERISP.
Me: ... *deep breaths, explains as simply as possible*

The router is not a magic box.

[darkblade1.livejournal.com]

Look, the router is not a magic box. You just can't expect to hook it up and have it magically work.

I even posed the question to you tonight because I've got my serious "balls" on tonight. No bullshit is going through me. I'll admit, I'm a little more friendly sometimes, but not tonight. I've only had 3 Red Bulls today. I'm willing to say anything. Don't make me go off on you. I'm pleasantly buzzed.

I posed the question tonight. "Did you read the manual?"

"No. I just tossed it in there, and all it does is stops working after a couple of minutes. I just figured it would work."

Guess what genius, it doesn't! Didn't anything seem suspicious to you that maybe perhaps they gave you a manual and a CD?

Nah, that's just garbage.

You weren't surprised that it didn't ask you any type of questions?

It's a tech #1 rule. RTFM!

It will save you almost 9 times out of 10.

Perhaps I'm just bitter for working on a Sunday night until 11:30.

Maybe just a little. :)