I’ve worked in IT for while now - just over 10 years. In that time an awful lot has changed, but one thing has remained constant - every user who has played any sort of game on a PC thinks they’re an expert and they demand that I explain everything I fix.

I used to try and explain correctly, but this started to irritate me when I constantly had to explain the difference between RAM and hard disk memory. Then I tried shunning the explanation demands with “technical stuff”, but this just led to more questions.

The method I’m currently using is ‘making shit up’. You have to be careful with this - guage your users experience level, use a mixture of some words they know and some that they’ve heard but don’t understand.

A few examples…

• Random crash
  The SRAM got out of sync with the data bus. That can happen on fast systems sometimes. The only real solution is severely underclocking the system, but that may cause collisions on the CPU core and cause it to overheat.
• Web page time out
  The secondary firewall must have detected a protocol error in the http request. That can happen if a T3 link to the remote host is overloaded.
• VPN connection error/timeout
  The secure key lost cohesion with the master RSA key due to small variation in the server clocks, it happens if the UDP packet is re-routed over a lower capacity intermediary network link. Restart your router to get onto a different subnet.

Kill them with ire (not a typo).

I don’t appear to be very good at this whole regular updates thing. I recently lost a very close member of my family and I didn’t really want to drag those kind of personal feelings in front of you - the random unwashed reader. Nothing personal you understand, it’s just that I probably don’t like you.

So, back to this updating thing.
I switched to wordpress to make updating this easier for me. Trouble is, it’s no fun any more. I’m a geeky, tweaky, fiddly, meddling kind of person and this whole ‘type into a box and click save’ isn’t pushing my buttons. I need to be messing with HTML. PHP is too much like hard work for a small personal site, though it’s on my list of things to learn, along with Python, Java and lucid dreaming.

All I need of this site is a few simple things -

• Post pointless blog entries now and then
• Post link with short descripts regularly
• Make an album of picures

No real need for a CMS at all. Hmm.

The future of this site then is very much like the future of all of us - resting delicately in the balance, depending on the barely sober actions of some idiot with his finger on the button.

Volume up to eleven. Click this link.

My move to O2 Broadband is now complete, and it’s great! I can actually watch YouTube videos without pausing to rebuffer every 30 seconds. Videos in BBC news items play. It’s mind buggeringly wonderful. I can’t beleive how poor the Virgin service was. If anyone reading this is with them - leave. Do it now.

The wait to get on O2 was a great experience too - regular text messages and emails to let me know what was happening. A complete revelation compared to Virgin. I’m also very happy with the O2 wireless router - a branded Thomson 780, a very good router fromprevious experience.

Now if only O2 would hurry up and provide LLU to my exchange I’ll be on 20Mb. W00t!

Linky link
I’ve been with Virgin.net (or Virgin Media as they now are) for 9 years. That’s three times longer than I’ve been with my girlfriend. ten times older than my son. I worked there for 7 years from 1999 to 2006 (screw that stupid blaster worm thing, I was in for fixmail, bitches).

Fuck ‘em.

At the start of May I downloaded a lot of things. A few Linux distros etc. I was then capped to a rediculous 10Kbytes/second. Of course they didn’t tell me this when I asked why my connection was slow. I was fobbed off and asked to run a speedtest from a particular website. The website timed out loading, thast’s how crap the connection was. I asked if I may have been capped due to my sizeable downloads in a short period - no answer. The techy cockmonkey may as well have started drooling (assuming he wasn’t already). Fuck Virgin Media, fuck them in their stupid asses.

So I’m leaving. Going to O2 broadband. 9 years of loyal custom gone, all thanks to the complete fucktarditude of one barely conscious induhvidual calling himself ‘Jayant’.

Thank you Jayant, hope you enjoyed your bonus this year, arf arf.