» IT Support

Call Center 'IT' Support
Back in about 1998 i worked in IT support for a large insurance company named after a European city. It was a call center and i was paid pennies to talk to the stupidest people on the planet for 8 hours a day. To break the monotony we used to play tricks on each other. The best ruse happened one Friday evening to my mate Derek - he went for a smoke break and didnt lock his desktop. Big mistake!

I downloaded all of his RAM, his proxy firewall and his IP addresses to my USB stick. Once i had all of his information it was simply a case up upgrading my wireless bluetooth headset to linux 7.6. Then i used my blackberry as a makshift firewall proxy(safety first!), installed Sim-City onto my hard disk (The R: drive for all you techies!) and then i passed all the extra processing overheads( remember this was 1998!) onto Dereks PC.

He couldn't understand why his PC was so slow. Me and my other mate Colin high fived each other, we called it high 0101-ing, every time Derek complained about how slow the log file from his virtual processer went below the required gigabyte level of his mainframe. All i had to do was open DOS on my Nokia and i could easily upgrade the HTML for my World of Warcraft elf 'Xelu'. This was all via the read-only file stored on Derek's pentium 4 dual core linux based Operating System!!!

The cherry on the iceing came when Xelu beat Derek's Wizard 'Ian' in World of Warcraft - all because i had bypassed his enchanted sword of Tuman using a simple DOS command 'bypass Tuman -t -a'. Every time Derek hit his space bar it happened again without him knowing! LOL

I moved to sales about two months after that and never did get around to telling him what happened. So if you're reading this Derek, sorry mate! ;-)

Length? About 1 and a half episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
(Mon 28th Sep 2009, 14:13, More)

» Festivals

How many roads must a man walk down?
Oxygen festival in Ireland.I unexpectedly got a ticket on the Thursday afternoon and was offered a lift there too. Great news but it meant I had no time to get a sleeping bag or a change of clothes or anything like that. So I bought bin-liners to sleep in and a bottle of gin and was ready to go. Got there on Thursday night and started into chain smoking and drinking. Lidle gin is terrible, let me tell you,. Nevertheless I was going hell for leather.’ This is awful’ then ’this gin isn’t too bad actually’ then ‘this is amazing’ then ’this is the only drink I will ever drink ever again’ and so on until it culminated in the ‘Worst Piss Of All Time’.

We were miles away from a portaloo but right beside a fence. And there were loads of other blokes ( and a couple of ladies) having their way against this fence, so fuck it, I staggered up, took aim and had one of those drunken pisses where you continually sway. I was singing ‘Blowing in the Wind’ full belt, eyes closed and all. I think I was just getting to the end of the chorus and I staggered backwards. I staggered backwards about four steps trying to regain my balance, all the while I was mid-flight, but it wasn’t happening and I fell, knob in hand, lying on my back and I couldn’t stop pissing. All over myself. About a good two meters away from the fence. If anybody had just turned around it would look like I just walked into an open space, lay down, and pissed over myself.

I had no spare trousers, no-body let me sleep in their tent that night and everyone called me Bob Dylan for the rest of the festival.

Good weekend though. Nice and sunny.
(Fri 5th Jun 2009, 12:41, More)

» Housemates

Pedro; the most handsome man in the world.
I lived in a house with 3 other people, one of which was an Italian girl. She hooked up with this guy called Pedro.Now,I'm 100% straight but my God this guy was a dreamboat. Catalan eyes that would make the entire lions squad blush and giggle. He was a model and was a bit short on money so the italian girl let him stay in ours for a while.He drank our beer, ate our food,smoked our grass and we were delighted.The most charming guy i've probably ever met.

One day i was too hungover to go to work so i spent the day in bed. Everyone else was at uni or work so the house was empty.I heard my bedroom door open and jolted upright to see Pedro standing confused in my room '' where's P?( the italian)'' he asked. I grunted,went back to my headache and thought nothing more of it...

Later that evening i got a call from one of the other flatmates to say we've been burgled; cameras,laptops,playstation,money,jewlery,everything. Bastards.
I mentioned that i saw Pedro in my room earlier in the day, i said he was too handsome to be a thief but the italian blamed him nonetheless. He denied and denied and then caved. He admitted that he robbed us and said he'd return the loot if we didnt go the coppers.

So she went to recover our stuff and we phoned the coppers, they came around and went through the formalities.Just as they were leaving they asked if Pedro had a job. When we said 'model' they knew exactly who we were talking about and said that it was not the first time he'd done this. Same story with some other girl about two weeks previous. He stole that girl's top-of-the-range camera, moved to our house, sold it to my housemate and then stole it from him.
The way he did it was he left a window open the night before 'the heist' and seeing as usually the house would be empty during the day he figured he could help himself.And he would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't those pesky schoolnight pints.

Turns out he wasn't Spanish but in fact a Bulgarian national.Turns out he wasn't even called Pedro but rather Pedrov and it turns out that he wasn't even a model. Just a very handsome thief.

He wasn't caught but we did get our stuff back and the previous girl did get her camera back too...

Not a funny story. But a story in which i'm a crime stopping hero.
(Thu 26th Feb 2009, 16:53, More)

» Pet Peeves

lots
Noisy Eaters – Come on, I mean you must be able to hear the noises you make and how revolting it is. You sound like an animal. This isn’t even a ‘pet peeve’ actually – this is something that makes me tremble with anger. Same for those that can’t drink a cup of tea without sounding like a wilderbeast lapping at a riverbank.

Religion- ‘’ If I had my way, I’d ban religion me, all those religious types are nutters and the world would be better off without it’’. What? You’d ban ‘religion’ would you? Think about that for more than about .005 of a seccond, you nazi. It’s not really ‘religion’ is it? more those extreme fundamentalists that you disagree with. It’s like saying you’d ban football because of football hooligans.

Dan Brown – Not the man himself, but the people that read his books and his books only and think they are some sort of English literature professor. Listen, if you can buy a book in Spar, it doesn’t really count. Mind you, these guys are much better than the guys that are strangely proud of the fact that they don’t read at all. ‘’its boring innit’’

Paddy – I know I’m Irish but it’s 2008 for fuck’s sake, don’t call me ‘paddy’ you mong.

Anti Mainstream Success – People that ONLY watch foreign/ arty/ underground films. Nothing wrong with those films (well actually most of them are pretentious wank) but don’t turn your nose up at me because I want to watch some glossy Hollywood blockbuster. I mean what sort of a person thinks he’s too clever to enjoy a film that more than 12 people have ever seen. At least something will fucking happen in those films. Same goes for people that don’t like any bands with mainstream success, solely because they have mainstream success. Shoreditch take note.

Vegans – Have a sausage for God’s sake. Who are you kidding?

Abbreviations – Not ‘txt spk’ which has been well documented already (and rightly so) but people who speak in three letter acronyms instead of actually saying the phrase. ASAP ; just say ‘‘ as soon as possible’’, it’s only 2 extra syllables and you won’t sound like an eejit, same goes for BBQ and don’t ever shorten words like ‘Mediterranean’ to ‘med’ .While we’re at it, don’t refer to your mobile phone as your ‘cell phone’ either ( unless of course, you’re American)

Liverpool FC fans. You are no good. At all. The fact you did so well in the champion’s league over the last few seasons sickens me and devalues the whole competition.

The redundant apostrophe. People without a shred of manners or etiquette. Courtroom dramas. Hospital dramas. Blokes that always go on about birds they pulled. Blokes that go on about how ‘mad’ they are. Girls that drink half a bottle of wine and turn into the loudest, most annoying screechers on the planet and keep trying to get you to dance or something like that – sure enough they’ll keep drinking and inevitably start crying about an hour later and then pass out.

Jesus, I could go on all day but I suspect you don’t care and I really should go and get some lunch.


Noisy eaters are they worst though, I have a friend that hates it more than I do and actually slapped one of his mates,proper angry, open handed across the face in a McDonalds because he wouldn’t close his mouth.
(Fri 2nd May 2008, 13:58, More)

» I Quit!

:-(
I met the first girl I’ve actually liked in more than 2 years last weekend. She’s fit as fuck and proper cool. Spent Friday night together then went for breakfast and everything seemed absolutely brilliant.
We’ve been texting since then but I get the feeling that she’s not as keen as I am. Just asked her out for a drink about 10 minutes and there’s been no reply. I know its only 10 minutes and she’s at work and but Christ I feel sick and keep looking at my phone every 2 seconds.
I need to quit being a pathetic spa and pull myself together.
(Wed 28th May 2008, 16:34, More)