» Why I was late

A kid in my class at school
"Sorry I'm late, I was doing a poo."

Nice. Thanks Ryan.
(Thu 28th Jun 2007, 11:02, More)

» The Dirty Secrets of Your Trade

JuanTheMan RE: Light Bulbs
You are of course, spot on the money. Incadescent lightbulbs produce 10% light, and 90% heat, so the energy saved replacing them with energy-saving lightbulbs will just have to be used by your central heating making up the difference.

Don't forget all the extra harmful gasses in energy-saving lightbulbs that don't exist in incadescent ones, like mercury. And who prefers the "boot up time" (plink...plink...plink...[dim light for 2 minutes]...nasty flourescent light) over incandescent bulbs?

So why are the bulbs being phased out, given that their replacements don't actually save energy overall and are crap? Well, as I'm sure you've guessed - it's all about the "dirty secret" of Global Warming. I'm not about to get into a discussion about whether it's down to humans or not - what we can all equivocally agree on is that not one government actually cares about the environment. What they do care about however, is the huge amount of revenue that can be made by whipping up public support for a cause that can net them huge amounts of money in "green taxes".



Whilst we're on the green tax thing - here's another government concept that's full of dirty secrets: Road Charging and Congestion charging.

1) The government's announcement that there will be a "debate" on whether we get Road Charging or not is a total lie - we WILL get it, because it's one of the conditions of being part of the Galileo Project (Europe's answer to GPS) - it's how they're planning on funding the whole project.

2) The road charging "trials" are also a complete lie - they are supposedly "optional" and "fair". In reality, neither is true, since the local authorities which are being targetted are effectively bribed with the promise of £1.4bn in extra Transport funding if they implement it.

3) The city-centre congestion which will be used to justify congestion charging will be in the most part, falsely generated. This is fairly easy to do, mainly with traffic light timing cycles and selective road development - and was used to great effect by TfL when introducing the London congestion charge (as well as introducing it in half term week, genius).

There are many more but I'm sure my post is already too long.... like my cock
(Fri 28th Sep 2007, 18:32, More)

» The Dirty Secrets of Your Trade

More IT Support stuff + electronics stuff
1) Quite often, I'll put people on hold whilst "checking the server out". In reality, I'm just chatting to a mate or watching a youtube video that's been IM'd to me by a colleague.

2) Do not talk down to us or generally be rude - remember you're only calling us because *you* need *our* help. I have a list of wankers on my desk and if one calls me up I'll hit random characters when I'm remote controlling their PC and they're entering in their password, and laugh as they get more frustrated wondering why they can't type it right - "I'm sure that's what I set it to". Don't worry, you *are* typing it right, but because you're a cunt, I'm adding a few keystrokes in every time for good measure.

3) No, your boss is not "too busy" to call us with his problem - like us, he's fucking around all day - and no, "his computer has an error" is not an adaquate description of the problem.

4) In previous IT support jobs I've happily disabled someone's account for being rude.

5) Yes, we can read your email. And we do - especially stuff that the content filter has picked up.

6) The more you insist your call is urgent, especially if it's clearly not, the lower the priority it'll actually get assigned is.


I also worked at a major Electronics re... fuck it, it was Maplin Electronics. Here's a few joys from when I worked there.

1) We all knew the "hidden" option in the till system to show the buy price of an item - i.e. how much Maplin paid for it. £24.99 gold-plated SCART leads cost them £1.24. £15.99 gold-plated IXOS 9-pin serial cables cost 36 pence. Profit margins like this exist throughout the catalogue. Still, if you're stupid enough to pay for a gold-plated serial cable (given their max data rate) you deserve to be ripped off.

2) Official staff policy was that you only ever need one person that knows the slightest bit about electronics working in the store. I believe PC World use this recruitment strategy too. The idea they employ "technical" staff is an utter fallacy - they come from the same recruitment pool as Tesco. And since it's highly likely that Tesco pay more, Maplin probably employ Tesco's rejects.

3) My first wage in 1996 was £2.25 an hour. To stand behind a counter in a hot shop all day, serving capacitors and LEDs to utter retards.
(Thu 27th Sep 2007, 20:45, More)

» I don't understand the attraction

I'm going to have to say it
lolcats.

Sorry, but a picture of a cat with "hilariously mis-spelt" captions just isn't that fucking funny.
(Fri 16th Oct 2009, 15:39, More)

» The Dirty Secrets of Your Trade

In IT Support
Switching your computer off and then on again really does fix some problems. It's not just a fob off to get you off the phone.






OK, it is.
(Thu 27th Sep 2007, 11:45, More)