November 11, 2005
In the company (or not) of hotties
You'd think that in a large company, such as the one in which I work, there would be a decent number of hot men at which you could look. You would think this, given statistical likelihood.
You would be wrong.
I can count on one hand (haha) the number of men rated as above a 6, that I've seen. And they're all 7s. There seems to be a complete dearth of 8s or above.
Present company excluded, of course.
September 07, 2005
Mailscanner Classified as "Dumb As Shit"
So. All those weird things I've posted are what I see in my work inbox all day long. Simply because the posters on the lists that I happen to be on, decide, every now and then, to use a naughty word.
What the fuck the point of this mailscanner is, god alone knows.
Is to to save bandwidth? Surely not - for the entire fucking message has to be downloaded by the work Exchange server before it can be scanned.
Is it to hide my fucking sensitive eyes from seeing the word? Again, surely not. After all, the mailscanner tells me about the blocked mail, and then very helpfully spells out the word and all its variations right at me...
And not once (let me repeat: not once) has it ever stopped a legitimate message. Never. Nada. Zero times. If just once I had seen it tell me that it had stopped an email from 'viagrashop@hotmail.com', I would have felt that just maybe, MailScanner has a place in this world.
It does not.
Cunts.
Message Classified as "Profanity In"
Mail addressed to you contains unacceptable language or inappropriate material.
Analysis: Script Offensive Language (Extensive) Triggered in Body
Expression: shit OR shitting OR shits OR shittin OR shitty Triggered 1 times weighting 60
This email has been quarantined.
Mail addressed to you contains unacceptable language or inappropriate material.
Analysis: Script Offensive Language (Extensive) Triggered in Body
Expression: jesus h christ OR jesus h. christ Triggered 1 times weighting 60
This email has been quarantined.
Mail addressed to you contains unacceptable language or inappropriate material.
Analysis: Script Offensive Language (Extensive) Triggered in Body
Expression: fuck* Triggered 1 times weighting 60
This email has been quarantined.
Mail addressed to you contains unacceptable language or inappropriate material.
Analysis: Script Offensive Language (Extensive) Triggered in Body
Expression: shite OR shitebag Triggered 1 times weighting 60
This email has been quarantined.
Mail addressed to you contains unacceptable language or inappropriate material.
Analysis: Script Offensive Language (Extensive) Triggered in Body
Expression: goddamn* OR goddamm* OR god damn* Triggered 1 times weighting 60
This email has been quarantined.
September 02, 2005
Mailfeeler
Mail addressed to you may contain S/MIME or PGP encrypted data, that the gateway cannot check for viruses or content.
The attachment has been quarantined.
Mailshitter
Mail addressed to you contains unacceptable language or inappropriate material.
Analysis: Script Offensive Language (Extensive) Triggered in Body
Expression: shit OR shitting OR shits OR shittin OR shitty Triggered 1 times weighting 60
This email has been quarantined.
Mailsleeper
Mail addressed to you may contain S/MIME or PGP encrypted data, that the gateway cannot check for viruses or content.
The attachment has been quarantined.
Mailsweeper
Mail addressed to you contains unacceptable language or inappropriate material.
Analysis: Script Offensive Language (Extensive) Triggered in Body
Expression: jesus h christ OR jesus h. christ Triggered 1 times weighting 60
This email has been quarantined.
August 22, 2005
Mondays
Monday shall from now on be known as Meeting Day. Three meetings and it's barely past noon.
April 11, 2005
Offline folders in Outlook
Yes. I use Exchange. No, it's not my choice.
Yes, I use Outlook. Yes, it is my choice.
And I have just discovered the joy of offline folders, for use on my laptop. What a brilliant system.
April 01, 2005
April Fluffy
So today is April Fools. Well till 12 noon at least. And there was some dithering in the office as to what manner we should celebrate this in. Various ideas were proposed, such as turnabout-dressing, and colour schemes.
In the end I brought in my pink fur-lined handcuffs, which should serve well.
We shall see.
March 08, 2005
Gmail blocked
In what has got to be the weirdest WebMarshall firewall rule I have ever seen, Gmail is blocked at my new place of employment.
March 07, 2005
Interactive again
Well, it's been a while. Three months of freelancing and/or working on a killer tan.
It's kind of nice to have structure to my day again. And by structure, I don't mean my previous hectic schedule of rising at 10am, eating breakfast, grooming, tanning for anywhere between 1 and 2 hours, more grooming, shower, shaving, shopping, more grooming, TV, TV, TV, final grooming, and bed.
July 14, 2004
June 23, 2004
Hiding stuff
The best way to hide your personal apple juice supply in the fridge at work, is to label it "urine sample - don't touch".
June 17, 2004
February 17, 2004
L8 @ nite in the TV studio
Antoinette: "How do I make it bigger?"
Me: "Rub it."
(turns out she was talking about a video window on the screen)
January 27, 2004
B'ing busy
Work, work, work. Produce, produce, produce. Gottacutdownoncaffeine. So busy.
So very, very busy.
Six and a half days to go. Six and a half days.
January 15, 2004
Coffee laps
The upside of consuming an inordinate amount of coffee during the day while at work, is that you have lots of energy to run to the bathroom all the time.
January 06, 2004
December 02, 2003
The locked toilet
The first stall in the guy's toilet at work is now, again, Pubic, er... Public Domain. The entire floor of the building is occupied (unlike the stall, which was for private use of one person from a company downstairs).
Gotta love progress.
November 25, 2003
Death by Chocolate
It's Oskar's birthday today! And there be cake. Much, much, chocolatey-delicious cake.
My stomach hurts.
November 24, 2003
Work Christmas party
Ye gods. I allow myself, and thus my liver, about two occasions per year, in which to get, to put it gently, rat-arsed drunk.
Last Thursday. The work Christmas Party. Open bar. 'nuff said.
August 20, 2003
Absence makes the mind grow softer...
(regarding another person in the office)
Maureen: "He's been very quiet lately."
Sharon: "He hasn't been here lately."
Maureen: "Oh..."
August 19, 2003
Tossing the bird
I feel slightly relieved, as I hear the wierd clicking sound in the ceiling, to notice that other people in the office are hearing it too. Mine is not the only upturned head.
And it seems the bird that has managed to find its way into our ceiling, is slowly succumbing to the inevitability of Darwin, as it cannot find its way out again. One can only pray that it has not yet bred.
August 18, 2003
Out of orifice
Oskar and Dave are not in the office. They're on-site, installing an application for a client.
It's quiet.
Almost too quiet.
June 26, 2003
June 03, 2003
The tea lady cometh
We now have a fantastic new development at work: Ignoria. This is our brand spanking (stop giggling at the back) new tea lady. And twice a day she comes round and offers us tea and coffee and then makes it and brings it to us.
I've heard of such things happening in a company before, but never experienced it.
Sheer luxury, I tell you. Sheer luxury.
May 28, 2003
Spec. Spec. Spec.
IF you're working on a project, AND
- the vast majority of your time is spent:
- checking stuff into CVS AND
- ensuring that your changes and additions are fitting in with the whole project and the other team members
- your actual coding takes a comparatively small time because...
- it's all beautifully spec'd...
THEN
you are in a very good place indeed.
END IF
May 20, 2003
Whatever next
And today, I start work on a new contract job. First impressions: stunning kitchen. And it's about 3 blocks from where I live.
May 16, 2003
The case of the illiterate PC thief
Warren writes:
Hey all..
Just to keep you all posted: The training center has been burgled, they made off with 10 boxes. Please bear this in mind if you come to pilfer biscuits:
- Leave no prints
- Biscuit pilfery is a crime too (hehe)
- We're too angry to be leaving biscuits out at a time like this
Sigh... The irony is that they stole some of the lowest spec'ed boxes in the whole building. Life as an IT illiterate PC thief must be unrewarding work.
May 09, 2003
May 07, 2003
New desk
Today is the first day that I get to sit at my new desk at the office. Everyone else has been settled in since Friday, Internet-connection-strung over from the old office notwithstanding. Highlight of arriving? Finding a brand-new fly-lead, still in shrinkwrap, on my desk. Ooooh, nice.
So for the past hour I've: moved my desk 90 degrees to the right, located the convenient smoking balcony (exactly eleven steps from my desk), plugged in the laptop, started fetching five day's worth of mail, placed books and other PC-detritus around the desk, and reconfigured my network connections.
May 01, 2003
I am moved to observe (and comment)
I'm sitting on the upper floor of HQ, typing this on the laptop, precariously balanced on a cardboard box (the laptop, not me), which in turn (the laptop, not the cardboard box) is connected via a quick-and-dirty connection to the skeletal remains of the company network (due to move tomorrow, we are assured by Telkom). There is an unsuprising amount of dust on the floor, to which I am uncomfortably close. I'm alone, and hence, smoking. Ha.
It's a Thursday. And the company is moving. Not very far -- just to a much more spacious building about a 200m away. It's really not that distant from the two buildings, that up until Wednesday night, we occupied. Nevertheless, the company, in its most human-capital-sensitive moment yet, hired a moving company.
It's incredible to watch: a penguin of geeks, ambling around, gently wafting back and forth between the old and the new spaces, while a gang of sweaty, yellow-T-shirt clad men lug our office detritus into a moving van. That will then take, oh, about 3 minutes to drive to the new building (out office park, down the road for a couple of meters, and right into the new parking space. Which, I am told, is already not big enough for us. Ah, well.)
I do not like moving. I hate moving. I loathe moving. If it were human, I'd be locked up for committing a moving violation. And I'd have done it with malice, foresight, and a large blunt object (most likely the humour of Nkosasana Zuma).
But this move -- this superb, stunning, chilled gathering -- has proven to be the most delightful movement, barring the bowel, I've ever had the pleasure of being around to witness.
All praise the company. All praise the yellow-T-shirt men. Someone else sweated on our behalf, while we swanned about the new offices, laying claim to good lighting, and the chairs that don't squeak.
I, and all the others of the new Order, are moved.
April 30, 2003
Working offsite
I'm working offsite at the moment. And the crazy thing is: at this place you have to sign out to go for a smoke. The 'smoke-logs' read like a study in the insanely bored. Out-time: 10:00am. In-time: 10:05am. Oy vey.
So I'm going for another smoke.
April 07, 2003
March 28, 2003
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
Curiouser and curiouser. Police have just pitched up at work, looking for someone.
March 18, 2003
February 20, 2003
January 29, 2003
Colin, Coke, and blowjobs
Colin is a co-worker. Well, he's in the same office as me, and I think he works.
Me: Take me to the store - I wanna go buy some Cokes.
Colin: No.
Me: I'll buy you a Coke.
Colin: No.
Me: I'll suck your dick.
Colin: That Coke is sounding better.
December 18, 2002
Threads
I'm working with multi-threaded apps at the moment. It had to happen eventually. Doing things serially means some processes take forever. And then block. But ye gods, it's tricky - and you don't have the benefit of working in an IDE. *sigh*
October 22, 2002
Ouch
I am exhausted. And before you wonder, it's because I've been working really hard.
June 05, 2002
Moving offices
On Monday, we took on another company, and they moved into our offices. So a wall had to come down. One day, they said. It'll all be over in 8 hours, they said. Don't worry, they said. Anyway, today's Wednesday, and it's finally finished. So I'm now sitting in a new position, facing out towards the nature reserve. Cool.
On the plus side, at least one of the new people working with us is really cute. :)
May 15, 2002
Out of the office
...well, out of the Woodmead office. I'm working offsite in Centurion, and going through that wonderful process known as 'figuring out some other company's network'.
DHCP et al. And their bandwidth is really slow.