August 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Live Chat Abuse III
AT&T were being so useless I thought I’d wrap it up with a simple question and some mindfucking games.
Liza: Are there any other questions I can help answer today? AD: do you know the value of π? AD: that’s pi Liza: What value are you referring to exactly? AD: pi AD: the mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter Liza: Are you wondering...
1 tag
Live Chat Abuse II
This time, Comcast: Jessica: Let’s move this chat and make it a window of its own. Please click ‘Move Chat Window’ to move it now. AD: Done. Perfect. Much cozier this way.
(…) Jessica: Oh I see. Then yes, they may need a TV set for the installation process. AD: Keyword being may, like the month.
(…) Jessica: I recommend calling our Customer Service Team. AD:...
1 tag
Live Chat Abuse I
Welcome to Overstock.com Live Chat, you will be joined with a chat representative as quickly as possible. You are now chatting with Stuart.
Stuart: Hello, how can I help you? AD: Hi Stu, how are you? Stuart: Hi, I’m doing good, thanks for asking. Stuart: How about you? AD: pretty good, pretty good AD: tell me something Stu, do you sleep on a memory foam mattress? Stuart: I’m sorry, I...
February 2011
1 post
4 tags
June 2010
2 posts
“Q: Is the end of books the end of reading?
A (Simon Mawar): Not until you can...”
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/31/hay-festival-author-questions
To Kill an Idle Login
There are number of commands you can run to check who’s logged in to your system, e.g. w, who, finger and users. If you happen to spot a login with an idle state and wish to get rid of it then grab the ttys name (you can find this using w or who) and query the process status for that particular terminal device as per this example:
ps -ft ttys001
This returns a list of the processes...
May 2010
5 posts
Saying no is hard.
Just to be clear
On my ride to work today I jumped a light just as it turned red (yes, yes, I know). As I was merging onto the main road so was a Police van that was coming from the other side. The dude goes “was that a red light?” and I immediately (yet a bit nervously) retorted “no it was yellow” and then thought I should be more convincing and clear so turned around again and shouted...
Monolingual dumbed down my Mac
In a desperate quest for some free space on my hard-drive I ran Monolingual on my work laptop, choosing to remove what I considered to be unnecessary Languages, Input Menus and Architectures, and was surprised to see a 4GB gain. I also ran it on my home laptop but, oddly, it only freed 1.5GB of disk space.
I haven’t noticed any issues on my home machine but iTunes and anything that...
RIP Slimy Buffo
Usually performed on a sleeping or otherwise unsuspecting person, the perpetrator of a wet willy wets his or her finger with saliva and inserts it into the ear of the victim. A variant known as the Slimy Buffo involves the making of an OK sign and then closing of the bottom fingers to form a fist-like cup. The rim of the thumb and pointer finger are licked and a loogie is sometimes spit into...
March 2010
8 posts
Note to self
RTFM
Minimum Wage in Europe
See more and at greater detail.
Google’s Public Data directory has a couple more different datasets for the curious ones out there.
Pulling my finger out
Make a list of everything you have to do.
Write an intention statement.
Set realistic goals.
Break it down.
Make your task meaningful.
Promise yourself a reward.
Eliminate tasks you never plan to do.
Estimate the amount of time you think it will take you to complete a task, then increase that amount by 100%.
in Strategies for Reducing Procrastination
WatchNot many things deserve to be reblogged.
pornandbeauty:
Alice in Wonderland - The Porn Musical
This is absolutely absurd. I read a blog where someone mentioned this movie, and I just had to check it out. What a weird movie. I doubt any of you will watch it all the way through, as it’s over an hour of hippie love-in interrupted by porn and singing. But it’s worth skimming through for a glance...
Procrastination and Perfectionism
Symfony’s making my head hurt and I’m having deja vu. I start looking at different PHP frameworks full of excitement akin to a hungry baby glancing at his mother’s ample bosom. Some three hours late I’ve spent two thirds of that trying (and failing) to install and configure APC simply because the check_configuration.php script flagged it up as a warning and highly...
February 2010
2 posts
Because I couldn't type to save my life
I’ve been having issues with my backspace key not working properly in vim (spitting out ^? instead of deleting to the left as expected) and after much debugging and searching the web for answers this has finally worked for me [1]:
set t_kb=<press ctrl+v><press backspace>
Where <press ctrl+v><press backspace> means literally that: ctrl + v backspace.
If...
Lost-and-found grab bag of clusterfuck dahling
Strange day today. I lost my wallet on the way to work. Fortunately someone found it and dropped it off at Leicester Sq tube station’s lost-and-found. I’ve got it back now. It’s the second time this has happened in about 3 months but I blame Andrea for the first time. It seems the karma from that wallet I found and returned with £70 in it is still paying off. A colleague suggested I should buy a...
January 2010
4 posts
Both are for sucking on
Your earlobs line up with your nipples.
6 tags
Resetting Adium's search index
My IM logs have become one of my most precious bits of data on my laptop. I use Adium which has a pretty decent search but, since I got a new laptop, it was letting me down big time despite me having transferred all my backed up logs (normally located in ~/Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0/Users/Default/Logs/). A mate at work mentioned it could be because I had lost the search index. Turns out...
Hello World
Let’s give this a try for logging random thoughts, findings, etc.