Posts by ICPurvis47

BOFH: It's not just an awesome app, it'll look great on my Insta. . a. a. AAAARRRRRGGH

Re: You'd have thought...

I used to date a student at an american university, who came from the Philippines. The Uni authorities assigned her to a room in the Women's Dormitory, and then assigned another girl as her room-mate. This girl came from Fairbanks, Alaska, so they could never agree on what temperature their room should be. Aurora would go into the room, shut the windows, and turn up the heating, and Elizabeth would come in, turn off the heating, and open all the windows, even in the depths of winter. I don't know how they managed to put up with each other, or who murdered whom.

Not another pro-Brexit demo... though easy to confuse: Each Union Jack marks a pile of poo

German equivalent

When on holiday in a campsite near Koln, I saw this inscribed on the inside of the cubicle door:

Ein Blick zuruck, Ein Grif zum Besen, Und Niemann kann dien Spuren lesen.

Translation:

A glance behind, a grip of the brush, and no-one can read your tracks.

Take your pick: 0/1/* ... but beware – your click could tank an entire edition of a century-old newspaper

Re: photoplating

When I was at Uni in the early 1970s, I was on the editorial team for the in-house newspaper. We used to gather news during the week, including photographs (on film), and get the college secretaries to type the text up on A4 paper. The night before publication day was spent cutting and pasting (literally) these sheets of text and photographic prints onto the galleys (A3 sized sheets of thick paper/thin card), and at 7AM I used to take the completed galleys in my car to the printers in Coventry (about 15 miles away). They would produce the print run, and I would drive the papers back to Rugby for distribution.

During this time, I also worked as an apprentice at Gants Hill office of Ford Motor Company (my uni sponsors) producing the workshop manual for the Mark III Cortina, using the same cut and paste system, only there we used Cow Gum to attach the text and images. The excess Cow Gum was removed from the galleys by rolling a ball of set gum around, which meant that the ball got bigger and bigger with continued use. There was a prize at the end of the week for the editor who could produce the largest Cow Gum ball.

Defense against the Darknet, or how to accessorize to defeat video surveillance

Re: Finally, sensible fashion choices coming back

"and it appears I still think like a 14 year old, sometimes :D"

Me too, and I'm in my 70s.

Motion detectors: say hello, wave goodbye and… flushhhhhh

Re: mandatory marigolds!

How do you tell the difference between a Blue Collar worker and a White Collar worker?

The White Collar worker washes his hands after going to the toilet.

The Blue Collar worker washes his hands before.....

Re: Strange Toilets

Sounds very like the toilets on the Paris Regional trains. I went into one for a pee, and could see the sleepers racing by underneath through the vertical discharge pipe.

Israeli Moon probe crashes at the last minute but SpaceX scores with Falcon Heavy launch

"The exact cause of the fault is still being analyzed"

Windows 10?

Hello, tech support? Yes, I've run out of desk... Yes, DESK... space

Re: Common Problem

At one office where I worked, they had a "Clean Desk" policy, you had to remove every scrap of paper and put it away in a drawer before you left the desk for _any_ reason (even to nip to the loo). I solved the problem by obtaining a toughened glass tabletop and placing it on my desk. Any papers I wanted to have easily to hand, such as internal phone directory, reference lists, notes regarding upcoming appointments, were simply arranged tidily underneath the glass top, and current work could then be spread out over the top. When it was time to "clear the desk", all the stuff on top was filed in a drawer, but the stuff underneath stayed put. I was taken to task by the manager, he said I shouldn't be leaving sensitive info on display, but I pointed out that everybody had access to that info anyway, so it was not sensitive. He then said that the cleaners would not be able to clean my desk because of the clutter, so I took a duster and wiped it clean in front of him. I kept that desk as was until I moved to a more enlightened office, where one was not required to keep a clean desk.

Re: Reminds me of the old joke .....

What's the difference between a Mechanical Engineer and a Civil Engineer?

Mechanical Engineers build weapons, Civil Engineers build targets.

FYI: You could make Tesla's Autopilot swerve into traffic with a few stickers on the road

Re: Growl of a V8, was "a driver can easily override Autopilot at any time "

Hear Hear! I am a V8 junkie, my latest is a Classic Range Rover, the second one I have owned. Before that, some time ago, I owned a 59 Chevrolet "Gull Wing" station wagon (283 cu. in.). I was under the hood (bonnet) one day in the college car park, tinkering with the carbs, and when I walked to the back of the car to get some tools out, I found a college mate lying flat on his back on the grass with his head by the tow hitch, equidistant between the two exhaust pipes, and a beatific smile on his face. "Rev it up again" he said, so I did.

BOFH: Tick tick BOOM. It's B-day! No we're not eating Brussels flouts...

Re: Fruit baskets NO!

I spent much of my apprenticeship at Ford's Dunton Research Facility. The Apprentice Training Department was slap bang in the middle of an enormous open plan office, broken up by tall filing cabinets to surround each of the individual departments. There were windows, but they were so far away from AppTrg that you needed a stepladder and a pair of binoculars to actually see them, and no light ever had the temerity to reach us in the gloom. On the other hand, there were perks, once you'd escaped into the Development Labs building, lots of lovely toys to play with, and the management actually encouraged you to try to break the kit in an effort to find out how long it would last out in the real world.

Are you sure you've got a floppy disk stuck in the drive? Or is it 100 lodged in the chassis?

Re: The "stiffy" problem

Hadn't seen that, but it proves the point. Thanks for posting it, made me laugh.

Re: The "stiffy" problem

We had an Australian apprentice come to work with us, he was the "Victorian Apprentice of the Year". He asked if anyone had a roll of Durex, to everyone else's amusement. We had to explain to him what we called Durex here in England, as in Australia, Durex is their name for adhesive tape, what we would call Sellotape. He later amused himself and some of the other apprentices by going into WH Smith's and asking the assistant (obviously female) for "a roll of Durex".

Re: Did you marry her? (was One, OK, hundred, I have my doubts)

When I was in the drawing office, an influx of school leavers were assigned, one to each department. Ours was a cute little thing, very easy on the eye, but severely lacking between the ears, we gave her the nickname "The Little Goldfish" because that was about the length of her attention span. She was completely innumerate, and made a complete hash of our filing system as she couldn't understand that drawing numbers are issued sequentially, and just filed any drawing in any drawer, no matter what it's subject matter was. Her next assignment was in the Post Room, but that only lasted a week because her method of sorting the mail was random, and you would be lucky if your mail ended up in the right building, let alone in the right department. Only thing she was any good at was making tea and coffee, so that's where she ended up, in the Catering Department, pushing a trolley with a tea urn around the factory. Even that caused trouble, work used to stop completely while she was on the factory floor, all the blokes were too busy ogling her as she went past. The Union was up in arms when the management decided to "let her go", so she was reassigned to pushing a trolley around the front office instead, where there were predominantly female employees. I left some three years later, and she was still there, pushing that trolley.

'It's full of beer!' Miracle fridge reveals itself to pals tuckered out from cleaning flooded cabin

Re: I think I've seen that film...

Where I worked back in the 70s, we had a draughtsman named Marshal Gaylard. He was also known as Captain Happyfat. There was also a Technical Writer called Barry Crick, who styled himself as Lord Barrington of Crick (Crick is a small village in Northamptonshire, about 5 miles from Rugby, just below where the M6 diverges from the M1). We also had a Ted Jones and a Tom Heath in the same office, at about the same time as Ted Heath was PM and Tom Jones was in the charts.

Techies take turns at shut-down top trumps

Re: Be careful about differentiating by colour

IIRC, back in Greek times, the sky was referred to as being green, so green predates blue. (I may well be wrong, please correct me if so).

Chap joins elite support team, solves what no one else can. Is he invited back? Is he f**k

Re: not neccessarily very good at brown-nosing...

Solved the boot up time problem by leaving the machines running 24/5 from Monday morning until Saturday lunchtime. One machine had a sticky hard drive, so I swapped it for the one from my machine, so I had the task of giving it a wiggle every Monday morning (didn't bolt it in), and the others didn't have to bother. Ran that department for over three years, until the whole company was made redundant, and the production equipment shipped overseas.

Re: not neccessarily very good at brown-nosing...

When the company I was working for was being "re-organised" into several smaller companies, I was invited by my then Boss to take over the Technical Manuals department, as the incumbent had decided to take early retirement. The position, Chief Engineer, was Grade six on the company's pay structure, but involved being on call 24/7, and having no overtime allowance. I asked if he would downgrade it to Grade five, Principal Engineer, at the same salary, which would mean that I could leave at 5PM and go home, plus I could come in Saturday mornings and earn some overtime.

As soon as I took over the department, with one other Technical Writer and two Shorthand Typists, we relocated the Xerox DTP system into a different building, and proceeded to produce Technical manuals for the new range of products, plus maintaining those for such previous products as the new company was still producing. Of course, I had no clue as to how much we should charge for the new Contract Specific manuals, so I looked back over the previous five years' records, plotted the Manual Cost against Contract Price, and produced a formula to calculate ongoing prices, which I ran past my Boss and then sent to all of the Sales Team, including the Head of Sales.

Some ten months later, I received a snotty email from the Head of Sales, asking why it was that when he plotted Manual Cost against Contract Price, he got a straight line (log/lin plot). I resent him the original email informing him, and the rest of his crew, of the formula, and explained that the straight line was a direct result of applying that formula.

All good, leave it with you...? Chap is roped into tech support role for clueless customer

Re: Helping out friends

" they offered me a QA management position, because they had made the existing bod redundant "

They broke the law then, you can't make a person redundant, only their job. If they still needed a QA bod, they had to retain him - BY LAW. He should have taken them to a tribunal, and he would have won.

Windows XP point-of-sale machine gets nasty sniffle. Luckily there's a pharmacy nearby

Re: XP still flying here ... and I'm building a Vista system.

I'm still running XP64, I bought a second hand Dell Optiplex last week and transferred the HDD out of my previous Dell machine when the sound card packed up. My mate "upgraded" to Win10 last year and thoroughly regrets it. He can't get drivers for some of his old hardware, such as scanner, printer, etc., so he has to keep his old XP32 laptop running on his network as an interface/print server until he can afford to dispose of the legacy equipment and replace it with new shiny shiny.

Sure, we've got a problem but we don't really want to spend any money on the tech guy you're sending to fix it

Re: Keyboards

When I was running the Technical Manuals department, we had to get some instruction books translated into Swedish. The main body of the books was translated by an outside source, but we had to add some last-minute corrections, so I talked to the translators by phone, and then had to input the text myself. I downloaded a Swedish keyboard driver, and experimented with pressing each key to see what came up on the screen. I then prepared some sticky labels and stuck them on the relevant keys so that I could hunt and peck through the text. Afterwards, reload the qwerty driver and peel off the sticky labels. Customer never said anything about typos, so I assume I did it right.

Re: Back in the day...

When I worked as a development engineer for a large electrical manufacturing company in the UK, we were developing a line of electrical switchgear for use in chemical works. One such was in Runcorn, and I was sent to oversee the installation, no problems except the switches had been stored overnight outside in the snow, so we had to thaw the liquid metal out before we could operate them.

The other installation was in Dormagen, a few kilometers north of Koln, Germany. The twelve switches were too large/heavy/fragile to entrust to a shipping company, so a special body was built by Dispatch and Transport to fit on my trailer chassis, and the switches loaded into it and hitched to my Mk3 Cortina.

Drove down from Rugby to Dover on the Sunday, and boarded the Hovercraft, lovely sunny day for a trip across the channel to Calais. Disembarked and set off up the coast towards Belgium, but stopped at the customs post by officials, who demanded to know what was in the trailer. Try explaining (in a foreign language) that there are NO electronics in the switchgear! Eventually allowed on my way, only to have the same problem at the Belgian/German border. By now running several hours behind schedule, so arrive at hotel too late for evening meal, but kindly chef fixes a nice steak for me.

Monday morning, present myself and cargo at chemical factory's security, no-one aware that I am arriving that day, they were expecting a lorry or similar, not a car and trailer. Eventually (about lunchtime) find someone with the authority to let me drive onto the site, and back the trailer into the basement of the chemical plant. Taken to company canteen and force-fed Sauerkraut. Spend pleasant afternoon making short tour of historic local village (Feste Zons), and drive back to hotel for another steak.

Tuesday morning, introduced to a Foreman and two Fitters. None of them spoke a word of English, two of them were called Uve, and one spoke with a lisp. Schoolboy German to the rescue, and we managed to communicate sufficiently to get four of the switches installed that day. Incidentally, the busbars were fifteen feet above the concrete floor, running at 400V DC, and about 80°C, so standing on a wobbly wooden ladder to work (had to be non-conductive), and if you put a spanner down on the concrete supports, the huge magnetic field would swing it round and either poke you in the ribs or it would leap up and stick to the busbars. Back to the hotel for another steak.

Next day, same performance, but as we now knew what we were doing, managed to install the remaining eight switches. Thursday was spent commissioning and recording the voltage drops and currents, and Friday morning was spent doing the necessary paperwork.

Saturday morning, hitched up empty trailer and set off back to Calais, hovercraft to Dover, and drive back to Rugby, arriving at my home address late afternoon, early evening. Sunday, drive back to our factory to unload test equipment, tools, and trailer body.

All in all a good week, steak for dinner every day, nice drive across northern Europe, and all my expenses covered by the customer, although I probably made a bit of a loss on the petrol costs.

Hipster whines at tech mag for using his pic to imply hipsters look the same, discovers pic was of an entirely different hipster

Re: We have surely reached peak beard.

I have had a beard since the day I left school at 19. I had it when I met my wife, and she liked it, so it stayed. Many years later, I arrived at work one morning after having trimmed my beard, and my boss noticed and remarked on the fact. I told her that my wife had suggested that I gave it a trim because "kissing me was like kissing the Wild Man of Borneo". My boss replied "How does she know?"

Re: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same

And include Coventry while you're at it (please...)

Blue Monday: Efforts to inspire teamwork with swears back-fires for n00b team manager

Re: Use of Swear words in test / demo systems is never acceptable

There used to be a piece of electrical test equipment called a Wayne-Kerr Bridge. Caused much sniggering when I was at college. At school, we also had a young lad called Warren Peace, poor boy.

Not so smart after all: A techie's tale of toilet noise horror

Re: Ironing... racking up enormous numbers of steps.

My sister-in-law refers to ironing as "therapy".

Visited the Grand Canyon since 2000? You'll have great photos – and maybe a teensy bit of unwanted radiation

Re: Mountains.

On my first day at High School (South East Essex Technical High School) I was the only member of 1B that wore spectacles, so, as everyone was introducing themselves, someone nicknamed me "The Professor", which was soon shortened to "Prof". I carried this nickname throughout my education, right up to MSc. level in 1974. I also rejoiced in a couple of other names, "English" when I was living in Louisville Kentucky for a while, and "Chev" when I was working for a tyre fitting company, because I owned a 1959 Chevrolet Parkwood "Gull Wing" station wagon. When I was a development engineer at an electrical manufacturing company, the three of that were developing a new product were often scrounging around the factory for existing parts to incorporate in our prototype, so we were referred to as "The Wombles". The section leader was "Grand Uncle Bulgaria" because he was Polish, I was "Tobermory" because I did most of the innovation work, and the third member was "Orinoco", because he said that he was "Fat and Lazy". Unfortunately, he was actually very ill, and passed away soon after the project was completed. Nowadays, I'll answer to almost anything, as long as it is not too derogatory.

Twilight of the sundials: Archaic timepiece dying out and millennials are to blame, reckons boffin

Is that you?

Jonathan, is that you? I made a sundial for my cousin's wedding in 1986, so that would be just under 33 years ago. I made it for the correct latitude of their first house, but it would have to be adjusted if they moved to a different latitude.

Techie in need of a doorstop picks up 'chunk of metal' – only to find out it's rather pricey

Mercury, and Titanium

When I was a kid, my father worked for the Medical Research Council as a Research Instrument Maker at UCL in Gower Street. He often used Mercury in the equipment he made (pressure transducers, etc.) and, as he sometimes worked from home, he brought his raw materials home with him. I can remember a small brown ceramic bottle full of the stuff, it was extremely heavy and fun to play with. Dad's only comment was not to lose any of it, as he would have to get some more if I did.

When I was an apprentice, we had a cigarette machine that took the new 50p coins. One of the apprentices put one in the copy holder of the big copying milling machine, and machined a bar of Titanium to the same cross section. The bar was then put on a lathe and parted off to make false 50p pieces, at whatever value, and used to buy cigarettes. The vending machine operator complained volubly that his machine was full of "worthless metal discs", and refused to refill the machine. Head of Trade School had all of us on the carpet and demanded that we clubbed together to reimburse the cigarette company for their "loss", but no mention was made of the lost value of the Titanium bar, or where its swarf had gone.

Crash, bang, wallop: What a power-down. But what hit the kill switch?

Re: Not Unique...

When I was a kid, we moved house. The previous occupant used to keep parrots, in a purpose-built aviary at the bottom of the garden. Our cat, Mickey (long story), was extremely interested in the aviary, running back and forth across the front with his nose pressed against the wire mesh. We opened the door to let him in, and didn't see him again for three days. Every morning there was a row of dead mice lined up outside the back door, heads towards the door, eleven the first morning, seven the second morning, and five the third. Mickey then strutted back into the house with a smug air about him, but didn't bother with the food we put down, so how many of his victims had not made it to the line-ups we never found out.

Unintentional Emergency Shutdown

When I was working for a very large electrical engineering company, building motor control gear for a well known maritime organisation, I also caused mayhem with part of my anatomy. One of the units was in Test, and the testers were doing a heat run, running the equipment at full chat whilst the observers from the customer looked on. I had gone into Test to take some photographs for the Instruction Manual that I was preparing (I was in Technical Manuals Department at the time) and I had to scrunch myself up into one corner of the roped-off area in order to get all of the cabinets in shot. Suddenly everything went dark, and the high pitched whine of the invertors wound down the scale to inaudibility. Cue furious shouts from the Test Engineers, I had inadvertently backed onto one of the emergency shutdown buttons that were located at various points around the department, and that had shut off all power to the Test area and surrounding parts of the building. A complete morning's heat run ruined, and the customer's observers were distinctly unimpressed. The heat run had to be rescheduled for the next morning as it had to start from cold. Needless to say, I was NOT allowed into Test whist a heat run was being performed on that or any further equipments.

How I got horizontal with a gimp and untangled his cables

Re: "I'd wear a boiler suit or ex-RAF surplus jumpsuit if I could"

I have a boiler suit that was too big for me when I "acquired" it, too long in the arms and legs and too baggy round the middle. It seems to have changed shape in the intervening years (too many of them to count), it is still too long in the arms and legs, but seems to be much tighter around the middle. So much so that yesterday, I bent down to pick up a dropped spanner, and there was a ripping sound as the Velcro parted company, followed by a strange cold draught across my stomach. Either the fabric has shrunk in one direction only, or I have expanded.

Ca-caw-caw: Pigeon poops on tot's face as tempers fray at siege of Lincoln flats

Pigeon Pie

When I was a teenager, my sister's BF lived on Portland. We used to go down (from London) to stay during the summer, and some days we used to take a 16 bore shotgun down the disused railway line and pot a few rabbits and pigeons. BF's Dad made a superb rabbit and pigeon pie, but you had to be a bit careful to spit out the lead shot embedded in the meat.

Jammy dodgers: Boffin warns of auto autos congesting cities to avoid parking fees

Re: I said that!

When I was taxi driving in order to supplement my grant, I didn't get paid for sitting at the rank, I was only paid a percentage of the fares I collected. The useful bit was that, when sitting at the rank, I could get out my college books and continue to study or write my thesis.

Brexit-ready BT sits back, watches profit rise in CEO's swansong quarter

Re: BT

It may be "Good to Walk", but when I tried it last autumn, it backfired on me. When I joined BT a couple of years ago, I was offered a "New Customer" discount, and signed up for an 18 month contract. 12 months into that contract, the price suddenly jumped by over 100%. I telephoned to ask why and was told that my discount had ended, and that I was still locked in for another 6 months, until the original contract has ended. I tried to renegotiate in order to reduce the price slightly, and was successful, to a degree. The downside is that I'm now on a new 18 months contract, at a price which is still almost double my original contract, and if I try to "walk away", I will be forced to continue paying for the unused services until those 18 months are up. I am therefore stuck with BT's offerings until I can transfer to another carrier, who is currently advertising a 12 month contract for less than one third of what I am paying now.

Users fail to squeak through basic computer skills test. Well, it was the '90s

Re: Mice are not particularly intuitive

When I was a baby, my mother used to read my Noddy books to me at bedtime. As I grew a bit bigger, I used to ask her where she was on the page, so she started following the text with her forefinger, and I used to watch it from the opposite side as she progressed. I learned to read upside-down before I could read up the right way, and still can today.

When I was in the services, I also learned to read and write backwards on the rear side of the transparent Display A and Display B maps so that the scientists could work their magic on the front side without us minions getting in the way.

I also learned to read Cyrillic characters whilst on holiday in Yugoslavia (pre 1980), although I don't speak Russian. A recent episode of University Challenge featured a picture round with Russian cities named in Cyrillic, but none of the contestants could read any of them, they were as plain to me as if they had put LONDON on a map of the UK.

Office 365 enjoys good old-fashioned Thursday wobble as email teeters over in Europe

Affected my day

This outage affected my day badly too, and I don't even use O365 or the cloud. I was trying to arrange (and pay for) the delivery and connection of a washing machine, but the insurance company could not work due to not having O365 up, so they referred me to the manufacturer. They were experiencing difficulties also, so they referred me to the warehousing company, who also (you guessed it) could not function, and referred me on down the chain. In all I spent over an hour on the phone to six different companies down the supply chain before eventually being referred back to the original insurers. They took the details and promised to ring me back before end of business day to tell me whether they had managed to arrange the delivery. This they eventually did, so I could pay up and relax. O365's unreliability doesn't only affect its users, it has a wider impact on the end customer, like myself, who wouldn't touch it with a bargepole in my own business' dealings, but was forced in this case to waste over an hour chasing something which should have taken less than five minutes.

Clone your own Prince Phil, says eBay seller hawking debris left over from royal car crash

Re: The school I went to had loads of Bastards...

When I was an apprentice, at the Trade School in Harold Hill, near Romford, we all had to take a 4 weeks' course in Basic Fitting before being let loose on any of the lathes, milling machines, etc., etc. in the main building. This involved being taught how to use a file properly, then being given a 1" diameter piece of steel bar about 8" long. We then had to file it perfectly square (I forget the exact dimension), then have it inspected. Next, file it perfectly cylindrical again, and have it inspected. Finally, file a Whitworth thread all along it and present it for the final inspection, which involved having a standard BSW nut screwed all the way from one end to the other. This little "Trade Test" took most of us about a week to accomplish, but some fell by the wayside and never completed the course. We then went on to make other useful bits and bobs, such as the hacksaw frame and the centre finder, both of which I still use daily some 50 years later. I don't know which was the bigger bastard, the file or the instructor!

Slack to fend off the collaboration competition with... a new logo

Reminds me...

Do you remember when Lloyd Grossman used to host "Through the Keyhole"? About that time I was working for a large electrical company (which may or may not have been called GEC), when we were taken over by the french company Alsthom. Some time later they reinvented themselves as ALSTOM, but the O was replaced with a weird spiral symbol (https://seeklogo.com/vector-logo/300509/alstom), which rapidly became referred to as "Down the Plughole". This turned out to be a very accurate prediction of what was to come, the Rugby site is now an out-of-town shopping experience and a residential housing estate. I can hardly recognise the old place now. Incidentally, the logo was in four bitmaps, AL, ST, "Plughole", and M. By rearranging the bitmaps in 1-4-3-2 order, it spelt ALMOST.

You were told to clean up our systems, not delete 8,000 crucial files

Inherited HDD

Many moons ago (pre 1990), when I was just getting to grips with DOS4 on a two-floppy (5¼") XT, a colleague of mine was entrusted with a similar machine with a 20MB hard drive expansion card in order to fulfil his position as Membership Secretary of his local Crown Green Bowling club. He complained that he could not update the membership database or add any new game fixtures, and would I have a look at it please. It appeared that the previous incumbent of that post had been paranoid about virus infections, and had added every antivirus suite he could lay his hands on, and everything was installed in the C:\ directory, which was at full capacity having 255 entries. The poor old HDD was struggling and had thrown up a few bad sectors as well. I persuaded the club to buy him a new (30MB) hard drive card, copied all of the important files across and organised them into a proper directory structure, then removed the old drive and returned the newly working computer to him, with the admonition NOT to add any more free-on-the-cover-of-a-magazine antivirus software, and to keep the one kosher AV I had reinstalled up to date. I then low level formatted the 20MB drive to remove the bad sectors, reformatted it and installed DOS4, and installed it drive card in my XT as payment for the service I had provided.

Introducing 'Happy Quit', where Chinese smokers are text-spammed into nicotine abstinence

Re: Not much to brag about

Maybe the Yanks should try this, but target gun use/misuse? Knife crime over here would be another suggestion.

Who's watching you from an unmarked van while you shop in London? Cops with facial recog tech

Re: ...following on

I was fined for entering a bus lane in Coventry. I came in from the ring road, following the large orange signs to one of the multi-storey car parks. The sign directed me to turn right, and after I had done so, I passed a small blue text on white background sign that said "Busses Only". I didn't see that sign as I was concentrating on finding the entrance to the car park. After I received the summons several days later, I revisited the scene, and only then did I find the small sign, attached to a lamp post. I took photos and video, but the council refused to accept my defence, and fined me £30. I wonder how many other innocent drivers, unfamiliar with the area and following the orange signs, have been stung in this way. Nice little earner for Coventry City Council, my advice is to steer clear.

Forget your deepest, darkest secrets, smart speakers will soon listen for sniffles and farts too

Re: It would be inundated in our house!

I am trying to retrain my ring (no, not the doorbell) to only emit the silent but deadly brand of farts. That'll confuse them, unless they add smellyvision TM to it.

LG's beer-making bot singlehandedly sucks all fun, boffinry from home brewing

Re: Get a keg

When I was a kid, my dad used to brew Elderberry Wine (and other assorted tipple). He didn't have a proper air trap, but used to open the valve on the keg every day to let the pressure out. One time, we went on holiday, and he forgot about the brew, which was on top of the airing cupboard at the top of the stairs. When we returned after four weeks in Scotland (staying at a Granary where they malted barley for whiskey), we discovered that the plastic container had burst, and the downstairs hall ceiling was a patchy shade of purple. Worse was to come when Mum discovered that the whole of the contents of the airing cupboard, linen, towels, and her best undies, was dyed bright purple.

Also, my Uncle once brewed a 55 gallon oak barrel of cider. He used to draw off a pint or so every so often, "just to see how it's coming along". Of course, it was never deemed to be ready, so no-one else was offered a taste, and long before it was ready, he'd drunk the lot.

Support whizz 'fixes' screeching laptop with a single click... by closing 'malware-y' browser tab

Beyond Economic Repair

When I was working for a small publishing house, I was friendly with the IT guy (George). One of the Field Reporters returned his 386 laptop with the complaint that only the right hand side of the keyboard worked, the other half was completely unresponsive. George spent quite a long time booting and running some diagnostics from floppy, and declared that it was BER. I said I was looking for a laptop, so George gave it to me. On getting it home, I opened the case and found that only one of the two keyboard ribbon cables was connected to the motherboard, the left one had snapped off just above the socket. Teased the broken stub out with needle nosed pliers, stripped back the insulating varnish off the broken cable, and plugged it back in. I still have that 386 laptop, but don't use it, even though it gave me good service for several years until I could afford a better one.

The dingo... er, Google stole my patent! Biz boss tells how Choc Factory staff tried to rip off idea from interview

Stolen PhD

When I was approaching the end of my MSc., my tutor suggested that I might consider going on to get a PhD., and that he knew the perfect project for me. I went to see the development team at a large Nuclear Power company, who explained that they had a problem, but could not simulate it mathematically. I took the information they provided and went back to college. I spent three months developing a FORTRAN program to do a three dimensional finite element analysis of the problem, and reported back to the company. By this time I had gained my MSc. and intended staying on to do the practical experimentation to support and refine my theoretical work, which should have been financed by the company concerned. At that meeting they thanked me for providing them with the answer to their problem, and that was that. My PhD. lasted three months, I was not paid a penny for doing the groundwork, and they had all the answers they needed to further refine the FE program in house.

When selling security awareness training by email, probably a good shout not to hit 'reply all'

Reply to All button

It is simple in the extreme to remove the Reply to All button from Outlook Express, simply right click on the blank portion of the toolbar, click on Customize, scroll down the list at the right hand side and highlight reply to All. Click on Remove and Close, and voila! no more reply to All button in the toolbar. Did this years ago on every computer I have come into contact with that used OE of any version.

Microsoft sysadmin hired for fake NetWare skills keeps job despite twitchy trigger finger

Sounded too good to be true

When I had been working for a large electrical manufacturing company for a few years, I was faced with redundancy. I neatly sidestepped this by applying for (and getting) a position in a different section of the company (insider knowledge as my wife worked in that department), but just to be on the safe side, I fired off my CV to a couple of agencies. Some years down the line, I suddenly received an invitation to an interview with a large diesel engine manufacturing company, based on the fact that years previously I had obtained an MSc. in Diesel Engine technology. At the interview, I was informed that the position was for a Purchasing Standards Manager, responsible for ensuring that all turned parts used by the company, sourced from all over Europe, met and continued to meet the company's standards. The starting salary was ten percent lower than what I was already earning, and my present job had little or no responsibility attached to it. I respectfully declined the offer, and pointed out to the interviewer that they would be hard pressed to find a willing candidate at so low an offer. I saw some time later that they were then advertising the same vacancy at a much higher salary, but, knowing the level of responsibility involved, I was not tempted to reapply.

Bloke fined £460 after his drone screwed up police chopper search for missing woman

Re: Teacher Icon (was Hunting season)

Teacher Icon is actually Jimmy Edwards (actor) starring in an old black and white TV comedy called Whack-O!, based on the shenanigans of the staff and pupils at a fictitious Public School called Chislebury (http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/whacko/). Quite what it has to do with being a Grammar Nazi (guilty as charged), I have no idea. Used to be a good laugh, though.

Hitler 'is dead' declares French prof who gazed at dictator's nashers

Re: Conspiracy Theories?

Kennedy was shot - accidentally - by one of his security guards, who was riding in the Cadillac following Kennedy's Lincoln. He shouldn't have been there, but as the rostered security detail went out on the piss the previous night, and were unfit for duty, Hickey was press-ganged into riding shotgun. Oswald's first shot was deflected by a street sign and hit the kerbstone, sending up a shower of stone fragments, some of which hit Kennedy in the face. Kennedy said "Oh! God! I'm hit", at which point Governor Connalley turned in his seat to see what was going on. The second shot entered through Kennedy's neck and exited through his voice box, then hit Connalley in the shoulder, passing through and eventually lodging in the back of the front passenger seat. When he heard the first of Oswald's shots, Hickey stood up to see what was going on, grabbing the .22 repeater as he did so. When Oswald's second shot rang out, he swung round and the gun went off, shooting across the top of the windscreen of the Caddy and entering the back of Kennedy's head, disintegrating inside his skull and blowing his right temple off, complete with about a third of his brain. Oswald was using 6.5mm Full Metal jacket ammo, which would not have caused the quarter inch hole in the back of Kennedy's skull, that was made by the .22 Hollow Point ammo used in the Secret Service's weapon. (Edited to correct factual errors caused by senile decay. )