Link thievery

Link snarked from mhw
mybirthday

Reactionary Trolling

In the lifespan of the Internet, the "troll" is an old term. It's meaning somewhat vague and distorted over the period since the genesis of the net.

It's essence is that the troll presents worthless flamebait to the world, and sits back to watch the flames.

I don't agree there. To flame is to provoke argument. To Troll is to provoke thought. And then arguement.

All too often, there are people blinded by their own conceptions, who need to be reminded of this fact.
This is the true art of Trolling. To present an argument, convincingly and concisely, that you trigger the person reading to respond, to give their viewpoint, and maybe even re-consider what they think on the subject.

And so I would urge you all. Go forth. Troll. Awaken the those who's thoughts move sluggishly. They will not thank you for igniting the fire of their enthusiasm. But they may see today a little more clearly.

Attitudes

Have you ever encountered a person that just pisses you off?

There's a few at the place where I work. I try and avoid them, because I know each time I'm involved in a conversation with them, they're going to wind me up.

I'm just not quite sure why there's typically nothing overly 'different' about the requests they put in it's just there's something about the way they talk to you that puts you on edge, and therefore less likely to deal well with them in future.

An example is here, this is an email I recieved:
"Hi Ed,
any chance of looking at the ASP Error 115 problem which stops us viewing reports? I really need to be able to run off some Job Info reports by tomorrow


thanks
john
"

But you see, my automatic thought is 'no, go away'. I'm not entirely sure why, since from anyone else a 'would you mind looking at $problem' email usually is ... well if not well recieved, at least something I accept.

Oh well, when I stop fuming (and again, I'm still not entirely sure why) I'll sort it out. Probably. If I can figure out what the cause is _this_ time.

I still don't know why though - there are a few people who just rub me up the wrong way. I come into contact with them, and get almost childish when dealing with them.

Am I alone in experiencing this?

Council Tax

Ah, the music stops.

OK.
What happened with the council tax.
Last year's some got handed over to Bristow and Sutor.
We were issued with a bill for this year.
Housemate and I made a payment of 1/3rd of this year. Because this didn't match an 'installment' it was credited to the oldest outstanding balance.
So last year's bill _would_ have been £150 or so in credit once the Bailiffs had 'sent back' the outstanding (which they do quarterly).
But it wasn't at the time, so it didn't get noticed.

The nice man at the council as 're-allocated' those payments to this year, leaving an outstanding sum of £78.20. Which is basically the remaining 1/3rd of this year.

I've made a payment of that sum. This settles my account liablity for the previous house.

Of course, I still need to figure if I'm going to do anything about the fact that I've now paid 2/3rds of the council tax + 'court costs and bailiff fees'. Probably not an awful lot, because basically I don't expect to see that money again.
Can one get a debt collection agency to sort it out? :/

The 4 'R's of fixing Windows.

Now it's a long standing joke that there's the 4 'R's of fixing windows.

Reboot
Reinstall
Rebuild
Reformat.

I've now hit R3 here with this error:

"Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0115'

Unexpected error

/amreports/reporttree.asp

A trappable error (E06D7363) occurred in an external object. The script cannot continue running.
"

This is the only information I have regarding this problem. Even in the event log, this is only repeated (well, that's not entirely true. There's a link to the M$ knowledge base, that has no useful information other than 'its usually related to security')

Each time I'm involved with a complicated Windows problem, I am reminded how much I despise this piece of shit software.

Edit: Apparantly this problem is caused by some of the files in a directory it tries to index. If you delete them, and restart the system it'll be fine.
Fer FUCKS SAKE in what way is that considered acceptable behaviour of any product or system?

Spamming

OK, mavnn has pointed out that I'm spamming today.
But that's ok. I'm not quite at my all time record of 9 in one day. But I think that I _used_ to post summary posts with lots of stuff. Now I split 'em. And anyway, ya'll get a break whilst I go off to Maelstrom this weekend.

But this has just got to be shared.

Remember this post about departmental efficiency?

Well, it's on Computerworld Shark Tank.

How cool is that?