Archive for October, 2007

I will have to grindle Linux

October 24th, 2007

I died today.

A bit ironic in view of yesterday’s title!

But they managed to revive me, you’ll be sorry to hear, and that is why I’m a bit later than usual in writing. However the story of my death can wait for another time.

-oOo-

Since I installed Linux the other day, I have been regretting it.

I have a habit of switching on the PC and then going off and making a mug of tea. Now when I come back, the f*cking thing is running Linux, and I want it to run Windows. So I have to reboot every time and wait for a menu to pop up. I then have about .0035 of a second to scroll down and select Windows.

That p*sses me off.

So I did a bit of research. Apparently there is a thing called Lilo. We used to have one of those for lying on on the beach. There is a file called etc/lilo.conf which I have to change. So I went looking for it. No sign of it!

I did more research.

The Linux I installed is called Ubuntu and it uses a thing called Grub.

Where the f*ck do they get these names? Are the people who write Linux high on acid or something? They have the most obscure names for everything. You don’t ‘search’ or ‘find’ – you ‘grep’. And the desktop is called ‘Gnome’ or ‘KDE’.

I found the grub file and it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. It had been laid somewhere else. I opened it in Kate [I rest my case!] and found a block of lines that mentioned Windows. They were at the bottom, so I moved them to the top.

I went to save the file, and it wouldn’t let me. It said I didn’t have permission!

My computer that I bought with my money has the neck to tell me I don’t have permissions!

I have reared a child. I know about authority. So I told it in no uncertain terms, that if it didn’t let me write the file, it was going to be grounded for a month, and that I’d stick burnt matches in its USB ports and use the CD tray as a pipe rack.

It relented.

It let me write the file, and it now starts up properly.

I should think so too.

F*cking little upstart!

Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated

October 23rd, 2007

There seems to be a rumour doing the rounds that I am dead.

My obituary even appears in Damien Mulley’s site.

The bad news is that I’m not. I know this will come as a shock to many of my loyal fans [like Bertie, Harney and Dubya] but that’s the way it is. You’ll just have to put up with it.

One interesting bit of mind-rambling I did yesterday was to take some figures off Google Analytics.

Apparently in the year, I had around 66,000 visitors. Each of them spent an average of three minutes on the site. So this makes a total of 198,000 minutes spent viewing the site.

I know you all view the site during working hours, in between sessions of poker, Facebook and searching for p0rn on Google, so this represents 3,300 hours of productivity lost.

I haven’t a clue what you earn, but you all have computers, so you mostly have office jobs, and must be reasonably intelligent, so I will assume an average salary of €15 an hour [I may be wrong - I'm way out of touch with these things].

This means I am costing the world economy €49,500 a year. And that is a first year, with a bit of growth to be expected in my second year.

So it would pay Dubya and Bertie [and George?] to get together and grant me an annual salary of [say] €50,000 a year to stop blogging. It would have to be index linked, of course.

Am I being unreasonable?

Surreality

October 22nd, 2007

I’m in bad mood today. What else is new?

I wrote my little anniversary post this morning, and ended it politely like Me Mammy always taught me to.

I then had to go out to the village.

First thing was that I found my gate blocked by a f*cking SUV! As I am surrounded by damned building sites at the moment, I picked a builder at random and nailed him to a gatepost. He eventually told me who owned the SUV, just before he passed out.

The SUV was moved [and that is going to be a pile of ashes by tonight] so I went to the village. I found a nice parking spot but another f*cking SUV swung into it just ahead of me. Is it any wonder I hate the things?

In the shop, I saw a notice pinned to the wall. To cheer myself up, I read it, as it was from the local Senior Citizens’ Club.

Dear Friends,
It’s that time of year again when we have our last get-together.
With supper, music and dancing.

What the hell is this about? Senior Citizen Culling? A Lemming Syndrome? I didn’t realise they held an annual mass-suicide.

I won’t be going. I have no intention of popping my clogs just yet.

On my way home I got stuck behind a tourist bus. In October! Do they not know any better? Do they not read by blog?? Luckily, I had my RPG with me [Sandy was sitting on it, so it was nice and warm]. That made me feel a lot happier.

Then I get home and find my blog is filling up with comments.

What’s wrong with you all? Did no-one ever to say good bye when you are finishing a conversation? Should I have said ‘see ya’, or ‘talk to you tomorrow’ or whatever the modern idiom is?

I liked the comment from Rhodester -

You best not quit blogging now.. if you do, I shall bring the missus and visit Ireland. We’ll hang out in your local pub and beat everyone at darts while regaling you with tales of life in California. We’ll be loud, brash and rude, and we’ll wear Hawaiian shirts and take pictures of EVERYTHING, so we can post them to our blogs upon returning home. Our friends will read about it and see the pictures, then they’ll want to come, and come they shall.. in droves..

Reminds me of the 60′s!!

And it just goes to show [to quote the Irish Rail ad] “A lot done, a lot more to do”.

The madness and the mayhem will continue. If only to keep Rhodester out.

I have to go now.

I have a few more builders to cull.

The year is over

October 22nd, 2007

I first launched this site on the 22nd of October 2006.

It was done as a joke. It was also done as an experiment, because I knew nothing about blogging.

If I had read other blogs before starting this, I might have adopted a completely different style. But I knew nothing, so just wrote whatever came into my head.

It has been a bit of a roller coaster of a ride. It has made me many friends; some real, some virtual. I have been introduced to the world of podcasting. I have been asked to write for the Irish Times. I have appeared on television. All because of the blog.

It hasn’t been hard work, because I enjoyed it. I probably got most pleasure out of the comments. Many’s the time Herself has told me to shut up, because I have laughed out loud at some comment or other.

The site has grown in popularity for some unknown reason. Last week alone, I was visited by 17,000 people who read 29,000 pages between them. That is a lot of people.

Anyway, when I set out, I decided I would do it for a year, and that I would try and do a post every day. In fact I wrote 524 posts and received over 6,200 comments. Wow!

And now the year is over.

Thank you all so much for reading.

Good Bye.

Job wanted

October 21st, 2007

I really have had enough of this.

I have been struggling with this web design business now for a few weeks, and it just isn’t me.

I have also been struggling with the Interweb thing and it’s annoying me. People keep sending me invites to Social Networking sites that they swear aren’t Social Networking sites, but it turns out they are. And people keep sending me Memes that drive me insane.

My computer is beginning to get ratty too. It’s starting to give out to me every morning. There’s nothing wrong with it physically [apart from a bit of fluff under the keys], but it’s just getting bad tempered. Like me.

So I’m quitting.

I want a new job to pass the time.

I’m quite good at a lot of things, though I’m not up to much physically, as some of the important bits have fallen off.

The old brain is still reasonably functional. I can do crossword puzzles, and my highest score on Minesweeper [Expert level] is 98 seconds. I’m not a bad shot. I’m very kind to animals, but not humans. I have to work from home, because I’m damned if I’m going to put up with that iniquitous smoking ban thing. There must be some job out there that I’d be good at.

I need something that doesn’t require any effort but makes a lot of cash.

I thought of being Taoiseach, but I’m not devious or corrupt enough for that. Even I have standards.

I thought of becoming a tribunal lawyer. But that means going into Dublin a couple of times a year, and I hate Dublin.

Has anyone got any ideas?

I don’t want to end up like this….

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