Archive for the 'work' Category

Minding your business

June 24th, 2009

When I took on this web hosting business, I thought it would be simple enough.

All I had to do was give people their little space on the Interweb and I could then sit back and rake in the readies.

Not so.

All those cretins that I euphemistically call ‘clients’ keep phoning me with their problems.

I usually hang up on the ones who are blaming me for their hard disk crashing or for the fact that their dog now has rabies, but one or two manage to sneak through my defences.

A hell of a lot of them seem to have problems with e-mails.

Why the fuck can’t they write a letter like the rest of us?

They phone me and complain that they can’t send e-mails or they can’t receive e-mails.  They complain that their mailbox is full, or that they are getting spam.

The ones who are getting spam give me a laugh.  Who doesn’t get spam?  I usually just laugh at them [and maybe if I’m feeling good, I’ll remove them from some of my mailing lists].

The ones who complain about their mailbox being full are simple.  I just go onto their server and delete all their mail.  For some reason, this annoys them despite the fact that I have solved their problem.  Some people are never satisfied.

The ones who complain they are not receiving mails are usually just sad fuckers who are blaming me for their lack of friends.

Oddly enough, I’m getting a lot of complaints from people who claim they can’t send mails.

I did a bit of investigating here as I was intrigued as to why these mails were so important.

One of my clients has just got married.  The horny fucker has been sending rather graphic mails to his new mother-in-law telling her how he has fallen in love with her [and what he would like to do with her].  I had a moral dilemma here, so I just redirected all his outgoing mails into his wife’s inbox.  They are all on the same server, so he stopped getting error messages and the problem was solved.

There is another bloke who has come up with a new business idea.  I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it has something to do with selling ice-cream on line.  He is trying to promote his idea by mailing every Tom Dick and Harry he can think of.  Fucking idiot.  I redirected his outgoing mail into a null account, so he is now happy.

One persistent bastard did some sleuthing of his own.  He claims that my mail server has been blacklisted on the Interweb for ‘spreading malicious material or spamming’.  He had a fucking nerve.  He should mind his own business, and let me get on with mine.

Anyone want any Viagra or an excellent watch?

New horizons

June 9th, 2009

A few people have asked me why I am giving up my little business.

There are a few reasons.

Silver Haired Internet Technologies [S.H.I.T.] has been running for a while now and has been surprisingly successful.  There was talk of being quoted on the New York Stock Exchange, but we must be thankful for small mercies.

Income has been damned good, and therein lies the first reason for quitting.  Those fuckers got to hear about it in the tax office and they started sending me bills.  I retaliated to submitting counterclaims, and to date, I am winning.  My Dad always taught me to quit while I’m ahead, so that is the first reason.

The main reason is that my laptop is running very slowly.

You see, web design requires quite a few programmes, and they take up a lot of disk space and a lot of memory.  Worst of all though is all the crap I am left with cluttering up my machine.  I have all the copies of the web sites and all the files that I never used but keep ‘just in case’.  40Gb is just too much when it clashes with my large collection of porn photographs.

There are other reasons of course.  I am getting a little tired of people phoning me at four in the morning complaining that they have just received an email offering them a larger penis.  I usually reply that if they had a larger penis they might find something more interesting to do at four in the morning than reading emails.  I am getting good at customer relations, and it’s a pity to waste that talent, but that’s life.

I am also getting complaints from the neighbours about the sign on the lane.  I had trouble with clients finding Head Rambles Manor so I had to put a large sign at the entrance to my lane saying “S.H.I.T. HERE”.  My neighbours are very intolerant for some reason.

So the wind down is proceeding.  It’s taking time, but it’s hard to kill a good thing.

I want to concentrate on my new business.

Anyone want to buy a pill that guarantees to enlarge your member by eighteen inches?

Grandad needs liquidity

April 21st, 2009

I am fucking furious.

I was sniffing around the Interweb just now and came across this.

What the fuck is that about?

The little bollix goes off without a word to anyone and makes a unilateral decision that affects all of us.  The little shit.

It’s all right for him.  He can go off mincing around doing his gardening and his knitting or whatever poncy things he likes doing but what about me?  I have serious commitments that require funding.  I have Guinness and tobacco to buy, and ammunition to purchase.  How am I supposed to manage now?

This really is serious.  Like the banks, I need capitalisation and funding.  My adventures cannot continue without liquidity [more Guinness].

I am loth to put up one of those Donate Here buttons because that would turn me into a beggar, and God knows you can’t walk for ten steps these days without tripping over one of them.

There is only one solution.

Get out there and buy the fucking book!  I need sales in the hundreds of thousands to afford my simple lifestyle, so push the book like mad.  Buy copies for your neighbours.  Buy copies for your friends.  Buy copies for your enemies.  Get me on Oprah or whatever the bint is called.

Nuclear missiles aren’t cheap, you know.

Even on eBay. 

To the people of Tver

March 17th, 2009

Do you live in Tver?

Never heard of it?  Nor had I until today.

It is a city in Russia with a population of around half a million.

I am interested in Tver, because there is a street in it called Sovetskaya.  And the reason I am interested in Sovetskaya is because there is a sneaky fucking bollix by the name of Alexander Goganov living there.

Alexander Goganov is dead meat.  He has about thirty nine minutes left to live before a 28 Megaton eBay special eradicates him, and all who live around him.

I am sorry for the other people of Tver.  I mean them no harm but as the old cliché goes: you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

You see, I have just wasted that last twenty four hours repairing a few of my sites.  That little fucker managed to hack a little file on my server that caused Google to think it was spidering my site, when it was in fact spidering that little fuckers site.  And his site is full of warez and shit like that, so Google now thinks my site is full of warez and shit like that.

I had plans for today.

I was going to celebrate the official opening of the Tourist Season by going on a little rampage with the lads, and then end up in the pub and get hammered.  They have gone off without me now because I was too busy to go.  I can hear the sound of distant gunfire, and I really resent being stuck here undoing all Alexander Goganov’s handywork.

You now have around thirty two minutes left, Alexander.  Say your prayers to try to redeem your sad little life.

I’m off to the pub now.

At least all the day won’t be wasted.

I will raise a glass to the other 499,999 people of Tver and say a silent apology.

But shit happens.

My guide to a happy life

March 12th, 2009

When I worked in RTE we had a great perk.

People used to assume that we got free television licences, but we didn’t.  Being caught without one was actually a sackable offence, along with hitting the boss or getting someone pregnant.

People used to assume that I had free access to the Late Late Show.  Frankly, if it had been compulsory to attend that, I would have been sacked immediately. 

So what was this fantastic perk that we got?

A free RTE Guide!

I will be honest and say that I was never a great fan of the Guide.  It was useless for lighting fires with as the damned paper was impossible to burn.  They also printed it on very smooth shiny paper, so it was useless for wiping your arse with; it just shifted the shit around, as it were.

In the mid nineties, finances got a bit tight.  It was around the time they spent around a third of a million upgrading the toilets on the executive floor, so sacrifices had to be made.  The Guide was one of them.  They cancelled our perk.

I was devastated.  It wasn’t so much a case of losing the Guide as fury that my one and only perk had been removed.

A few weeks ago, a large envelope arrived at the house.  Inside was an invite to the Pensioner’s Dinner and an RTE Guide.

Wow!  It was just like old times.

Since then, every week a Guide pops through the letterbox.

So my perk has returned, even though I no longer work there.

Is this by way of an apology for removing it in the nineties?  Are they trying to tell me how much they miss me?  Do they want me back?

Life is full of surprised and delights.

But it’s still printed on non-flammable slidey paper.

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