James D. Stallardblog

...to recommending that we overwrite our hard drives with...a hammer.

And yet they completely fail to note the therapeutic aspects of beating the crap out of an old hard disk with a lump hammer. I did 2 myself recently and I recommend it to everyone!

Today, I received notification from a chap in China that the ebay fodder I ordered during a fit of online retail therapy is on its way:

We are excited to inform you that our Ms. Pigeon has started off and covered 25% of its journey. As stated in the Delivery Note, it will take about 10-15 days during the delivery. Please be patient and wait for the arrival of your lovely item.

Fantastic! Here's hoping Ms. Pigeon (note, not Mrs) makes it before christmas!

While driving home the other day, I saw in the distance, running towards me a naked girl. As I drove closer, the girl continued to be naked and what's more she was being ignored by everyone passing her. As I passed her, I realised that she was fully clothed in a flesh coloured, skin tight lycra running unitard.

I wasn't sure if I should be relieved or disappointed

I have a Hungarian chap working on the house for me at the moment. Roland recent took a trip home and told me a story about his return trip:

"While in the UK, I bought a steering rack and piston liners for an old Aston Martin my friend is fixing up. The parts were in separate suitcases as we came through UK customs.

The first case contained the the steering rack and as it went through the x-ray scanner, the security man looking at the monitor went white and looked very shocked. After discussing it with his boss (who also looked stunned), they asked me what they were seeing, and I told them it was a steering rack for an Aston Martin.

They turned the screen around and it looked just like a machine gun.

Then the case with the piston liners went through and he went white all over again. I told him they were piston liners and he showed me the screen.

They looked just like a grenade launcher."

Even in broken english, that is the funnniest thing i've heard this year

Years ago, I worked for a europe-wide dotcom that was in negotiation to buy a bit of software called "Ecometry".

The software itself was designed to put a catalog-based sales company on the internet, and although we weren't a catalog outfit, the software plainly wasn't fit for purpose (it couldn't even handle multi-currency VAT) and the kit they ran on (HP e3000) was a dead-end product with no realistic lifespan or roadmap; a golf course had been visited and the sale had been made in the club house.

I was bloody livid and said so, loud and long, but that's not the point of this tale...

Part of the promotional material we were duly bombarded with was a box of large, round, blue badges, about 3 inches across with garish yellow lettering on them; "The POWER of E" they said. There was even a little flashing red LED in the middle of the E. Given the prevalence of the drug extasy in the clubbing scene at the time, a less appropriate bit of marketing flummery could not have been invented.

Not wanting to miss out on one iota of the raging irony, a couple of the guy pinned the badges to their favourite clubbing outfits and went on the razz - only to be denied entry to both of the clubs they tried on the grounds that they were part of the drug problem. The second club's doormen actually called over a couple of locally loitering bobbies who took a pretty dim view and gave the lads in question a thorough bit of finger-wagging disapproval.

Amusingly enough, the report of the incident back to our management was enough to eventually kill the deal and the rotten product was never purchased.

"Would you say that you worship Satan, or do you simple respect his no-nonsense approach to discipline?" - Dogbert

While working at Kew, I occasionally have to go to the more remote parts of the site and work on a server whose Remote Desktop has failed. This morning we thought we'd pull out an old server so I took an assistant (we'll call him "Aaron") and as the distance was around a mile or so, we also borrowed one of the golf buggies available for long distance fetching and carrying.

On the way back, it was still early and therefore dark; but this morning it was also very foggy and the usual landmarks we use to navigate the gardens were invisible. We took our minds off the fact that we'd been going round in circles for 20 minutes by singing the 'A-Team' theme tune and pretending that we were doing 60 across the grass with M16's blazing and a roof mounted home-made cannon spitting non-lethal fire in every direction.

Aaron had the old server resting on his knees and all seemed fine until I took a wrong turn and had to do an "emergency" U-turn (sans hand-brake). I say emergency as these buggies are limited to only about 8MPH. However, the effect was almost the same.

Aaron (lulled into a false sense of security by the low speed and fantasies of being 'Hannibal' or the 'Face man') wasn't holding on too well, to the buggy or the server and as I turned sharply he made a sort of strangled "eerrkk" noise, scrabbled to hold onto to something, and very (very) nearly rolled out of the buggy, down the bank and into the lake. Along with our server.

See, it's possible to get into trouble with even the most innocuous vehicles these days!

Update: I entered this story into an IT story competition run by Microsoft and won 2 copies of the new Windows Resource Kit, one of which will of course go to "Aaron".

ok, so I don't do it every week (or even every year), but this one's great:

"Remember, any problem that can be solved using the word "rummage" is bound to be efficient." - Scott Adams

According to new American research, you're more likely to be scammed online by someone you don't know than by someone you do.

Aside from the obvious question; "Why did they bother?" I have to ask, what exactly are we supposed to do with that piece of information?

Clearly a candidate for the Ig-Nobel Prize