wipe it off, before mr elephanthead comes on

May 13, 2005

wipe it off, before mr elephanthead comes on

managed to squeeze in that conversation about global node deletions and what the process flow looks like for an über publisher in the white walled kingdom of love and how that really makes someone’s day in Korea, who just sent out a billion mailshots to everybody on the big list on their head. and so he went off running through the rain forest and dodging the artillery and I hoofed it down to the sportspark to cough up my kidneys on a rotating rubber platform and row nowhere. it was school sports day in the old field and lots of 13 year olds with their jumpers tied round their heads were cavorting around the ashphalt, shouting “Chris! Chris! Chris! Oi! Chris! Go oooooooon! Yeeeeeeaaah!” at a fat kid who was upside down in a bucket.

think of me when you close your eyes

May 12, 2005

just past mid-point of a globalizationfest and I’ve stuck a pin in the calendar at May 30. we’ll have China and Japan and Taiwan and Korea and Hong Kong and Asia South and, oh, Russia and the Netherlands. if I could stop flapping about in my Panasonics, nodding dementedly to the dust brothers, I could probably also get all the menus fully qualified on search for all 37 sites and make June very happy. but I haven’t done that. I’ve been pointing sticks at globalization policies for corporately produced features and trying to squeeze an annotated screen shot in there because I have an aversion to just publishing things that do the job, when I could spend a day making sure the font sizes are all correct and I can crowbar in a visual to make it look like I know what I’m talking about when obviously I’m making it up, but I happen to have photoshop and a stack of pre-watershed screenshots.

a get sidetracked though. I have to revise the globalization requirements based on me forgetting what I said in the first place and then work out how that gets mangled up with the standard templates for common content across worldwide sites that will compel local business units to opt in to the platform we promised them 3 years ago but they think looks like the one that didn’t work for them before this one and anyway they’re all doing their own thing now and anyway it’s so far away I won’t be able to use that because you can’t support me in this timezone with a blackberry and a couple of matchsticks, even if you do have that guy in the UK who fixed my password once and has a nice sofa.

but then I remember I’ve forgotten to do the things with the globalization forum that would make everything spring back to life and I’ll never ever get to talk with the architect about version 6 of the navigational support technology who thinks I have no idea what happens next because that’s what I told him and anyway now I’m working from home permanently nobody knows who I am which brings me back to the point I hadn’t made yet about being here at 1:10 when I’ve still got tomorrows packed lunches to make and I haven’t filled in the forms about the trip to the fish museum in Yarmouth that will cost me 2×10 quid to let the twins touch a small eel with a pencil and buy stickers of nemo that will make a mark on their antique beds that we can’t get off, even with vinegar.

still, I got some nice duffs today and spent the afternoon looking around skate shops daring beeny hats to point at me and at my obviously 38 year old frame and mock me into a corner with some drum and bass and a stonking great spliiiif. in the end, they all just looked up and said ‘awright mate’ and got back on the moby talking to davo about the blindin’ night they ‘ad last night down at the waterfront. I skulked around looking for a tshirt that didn’t come down to my knees but gave up when one of the d00ds hoofing around behind the oakleys started taking about what to ‘torrent’ off the internet, saying he only had stills of paris hilton. you see, I was tempted you point them at a place I know in hungary where you can get all sorts of strange characters, but it’s been fixed since I last looked so I didn’t really have anything to bring to the party.

so as I crash my head against the mac keyboard that laurence gave me in time to pj harvey – which isn’t easy, especially with the blood in my eyes and it being ‘who the f*’ – I’m thinking about the day that stretches out like a pointy daggery knife and I consider whether us to uk is just as valid as us to jp or kr, because, to be honest, it’d be easier. but that’s not the point right? that’s why sarah chose finnish in 1999 and we all had had to guess what the hell was going on and how you could squeeze Koulutuspalvelut into 47 pixels. just because it’s difficult, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t commit ourselves to defining that perfect strategy and executing beyond everyone’s wildest expectations. it’s just that, well, we won’t, so I’m looking into how we might just get australia to publish a press release and then I’m hoping the rest of the world will just kind of stumble into the trap until those pesky kids pull off my ‘mr halloran the janitor dressed up as a content management werewolf’ mask and hand me over to a waiting california highway patrolman who will take me downtown where michael douglas will extract from me the gory details of that time in union square where we were so drunk we thought it would be funny to approach the ladies in the street, knowing we had to get up in the morning to demo remote mangement software.

I think I just turned shuffle off by mistake unless it true that they do all sound the same where I end and you begin. the sky is falling in etc.

I look like a pig

May 10, 2005

I do. Its true. just like an orwellian über pig with a face like a slapped Chesney. every time I breathe in its like a collision at a ratchet factory, but that’s alright, because when I breathe out its like a moon landing on a brown field site just outside attleborough. I had to draw myself with my right hand today, so even though I was able to use the left side of my brain, I’d slept the wrong way round and it was just full of chaff. I came out like a satanic peter stringfellow, so I ordered meself a pie and sat down on a peasant. it was better after that, but I’ve got a stack of standard web templates piled up on the migration roadmap and I’ve got to pull it all together.

nah. think I’ll just get the Talin out and get it all ‘Colorado’. It’s Japan on day 2, so if I’m not on the overlap, I’ll get a load of bother from the pusherman, standing by with his big fat switch. I reckon that’ll be an overnight job, upside down in Broomfield, bluffing the lot on a pair of 8s, while droozilla cackles uncontrolably into his ventilator, gibbering something about accessibility. ooh. there goes bob dylan.

but I want to do it another way

May 2, 2005

just a quick check to see if everythings ok and oh, world of pain. so Tom and the boys are gathered around an Americano, throwing bits of anchovy at a twisted effigy of a marketeer made out old Dreamweaver boxes. it’s a public holiday so they’ve decided to spend all day slumped over a big top, poking at bits of Hungarian until the end drops off and they have to copy and paste umlauts from a transcription of the Sun Web Karaoke ’98 event in Copenhagen, where Anna was looking particularly elfin. to make things worse, I don’t even have a clue what they’re supposed to be doing tomorrow, so I’m relying on Mr. Swindon to perform his usual unfaltering push script fandango, so that kudos flutters from the sky like the dry leaves of a recognition tree and alights on the shoulders of the hunchbacks and misfits that make up this great global brotherhood of monkeys.

meanwhile, I’m coughing up internal organs and getting very cold shoulders because I’ve not left my crack pit since returning from Andalucia. there’s 17 load balancing balinesians to plunder and that’s before I’ve checked in with Marco, who’s pointing his roots at the moon, and Johanesjohanusnessunsen who has sprung from an email backup to inform me that everything is alright forever and if they can’t find the press section, I’m sure they’ll work it out themselves. not to mention that Tanned Guy who is quietly moving up on the outside, finding a space between an un-kerned exclamation mark and a stack of 508 update requests.

The reason I’m doing this is unclear. I’ve just kind of got stuck in a project plan trap, but I’ve got so fat I can’t bend over to chew my foot off. while I’m simpering into a bucket, various apparitions dance before me, floating around in the ether and slapping me in the chuff with wet gantt charts until I agree to put me arm in the trap as well, ooh, and while you’re there, could you just make us a cup of tea? I agree to do this, of course, because I’ve got Cliff Richard coming round and I don’t what him to think I’m a slacker, even though he didn’t send me a birthday card this year.

la la la I can’t hear you

April 28, 2005

oh, that’s good. I like that. yeah, do it again. lucky me, BT Business Broadband has gone down on me for the fourth time in a week. They had a run on wet conductive flanges at B&Q this week, so Dave the engineer didn’t have anything to stick the 01603 exchange back together again, did he? Well cockadoodle bloody doo. I hit the speed dial now occupied by the BT Business Broadband status line. “Welcome to your internet service status line for BT Broadband, updated at 3:05 Thursday the 28th of April. We are aware of a technical fault at the Norwich exchange, affecting dialling code 01603. Our engineers are currently working on the problem, but Steve had to go and get a Ginsters from the shop, and Darren is currently on his mobile, flogging a Celica to a hairdresser from Penge. We tried Gary, but he got a bad knee, so it doesn’t look much like that red light on your modem is going to turn green today. I’d do it myself, but I’m in a lap dancing club in Wapping”

I did make some of that up, but my red light is still on as I scratch these words into my arm with a screwdriver, and I’ve just thrown a melon out of the office window at two dogs biting their own ears off in frustration. it’s the timing you see. I mean, it’s only Norwich right? you don’t need t’interneht to be in a tractor pull or to just stand on the edge of the village green, slapping yourself in the face with a haddock and mumbling about your sister’s mum’s boyfriend’s Civic. no mate, but I’m trying to publish the globalization development kit for 37 countries you see? they wanted it last week, when your sodding service was disrupted for 3 whole mornings in a row, so now I’m still here, wondering where I go to Read More about Massively Scalable Sun UltraSPARC IV Servers, looking out the window at a recalcitrent hoofer flicking her mane over a lovebite, wondering when you might be so good as to let me get online to see what Olga in the Ukraine needs me to do for her. it’s not too much to ask. not at 100 quid a month. I’m not even losing revenue. you’re just making me look like a dolt when I have to phone people to get them to tell me the number of the conference call I need to attend where I can’t update you on your email because I can’t currently read it and the update I sent out earlier isn’t there but the stuff you want is here but, oh, I’m sorry, you can’t have it because I’ve run out of pigeons.

there is one part of the message which directs me to the helpful web site, which of course is about as useful as telling me that if I can’t start my car I should take it to the garage, but I’m not going to mention that, because it’s such a lame horse of a target. dammit! couldn’t stop meself. I know, I’ll power cycle the modem. that’ll fix the exchange. it won’t be quite as exciting as power cycling the W2110z, when I put it face down on the carpet, sit a hamster on thegrill at the back and watch it whoooosh out the window as Sun Java Workstation Über Fan kicks into life making that noise for 10 seconds that makes everybody duck. ah, I remember getting Mike’s old IPX back in 1994 and thinking that was an object of desire, but that thing couldn’t make toast like this brushed-aluminum harlot. ooh, you are awful, but I like you.

what are you doing to yourself?

April 26, 2005

got one of those things on my face. Zoe got her hair suck in it the other day and it went all ‘frizzy’. I also get that look which says it’s about as likely as reversing the mantle over a crisp. I got beard. yeah, but hang on, I got bags as well and I got stuff on me that I can scrape off now. it’s physical embodiment of markup language and it’s flapping about in a carrier bag in the back of the office. shut up. it’s not even validated and its poking old photos of Germaine Greer into my foot, like saying ‘go on then, go on. you’ll never finish me you know. I haven’t even been invented yet – it’s 1974. HAAHAHAHAAA!’.

so I get on a level, but I’m hoping for some kind of truck to take me away and put me in Northamtonshire or somewhere so I get to see Look East but don’t have internet access, because that’s doing me in. I should be having a right laugh, I mean, it’s not like I’ve just stepped out a salon or something. I take a quick look at the corner of the trellis and Mr Potter lobs a jam grenade into the sun, which doesn’t help at all. if I had a leg of lamb for every time it got throttled on the ring road I’d be blistering into a watery cat flap and shooting up red bush tea. it’s not rocket science. just normal science, but with human music in the background.

notorious weasel canal

April 25, 2005

it’s a parody. you can take any number of the words and throw them in a bucket with an airwick. then it’s off down Skinnergate until a dad-faced boy squeals into a fish shop, mumbling something about a ‘press release’ and a bag of kittens lost on the lip of Yorkshire. Danny took the keys and blagged the monitor, putting tiny monkeys in the telly while a puny love child was rattling his fork in about 3 consecutive entries

anyway, cos it was late and I’d had enough of repackaging the future, I went to bed with a long face. I’m lobbing a partner over a crack tomorrow, but it’s gotta be by 11, or I’ll end up coughing over a bog-hopper and immediately sticking my wad on the 12:20 at Doncaster.

infinity

April 23, 2005

exuent and fall over. it’s the ubiquity of globalfulnessness that makes us all sit at our desks and talk like this. I used to be just the same as I am now. sitting there on a warranty desk filtering out the calls with ‘SunOS 4.1.1’ or ‘Openwindows’ and putting them in a queue I kept especially for people I thought would never call again and then spending the rest of the day constructing a hilarious usenet posting about Pot Noodles and flaming a dick from Leighton Buzzard. but you progress, and now I’m working at the weekend because the thing I first thought of has turned into the thing that that’s now 2 weeks later and 37 into one isn’t quite all I thought it could be. you’ve got one of those over there, but I haven’t got one over here. they definitely don’t have one in Japan, and a guy from Slovakia has told me he already knew about it when I was supposed have told him but didn’t but he isn’t going to but it doesn’t matter because they don’t but I’m thinking they will when they see the things I’m sending them because they haven’t asked for it, but they’re going to get it and they’ll just have to take it out themselves

if I could only rearrange the following words, I think I’d be able to make sense of it: time on delivered when going might help if but you’re busy localization applications for once I that said before dammit. It’s probably something to do with that infinite number of program managers and an email client proposition. you know, give an infinite number of program managers an email client and eventually they’ll write every single conference call number and meeting time combination possible on one line without word wrapping but including a signature file so dense the universe implodes after a ‘five minute break’, but crucially, they’ll then spontaneously all stop using it and create a startup company and be the only people at their own leaving parties in an infinite number of bars on University Avenue, necking an infinite number of Jagers before waking up on their own and crying an infinite number of tears into their muesli because that’s really all there is and there’s always a parrot calling your name, but it’s spelt wrong so you never got the email, but the sys admin who’s aliased your own domain and catches all bounces is laughing at you with his friends and pointing at you in an infinite number of corridors with Network Computing posters and notices about Java Desktop System and Solaris plastered on them covering up the Why? campaigns that nobody’s really sure whether you allowed to take down even though they’re 3 years old.

there, there. is there a t-shirt I can wear? I love free stuff.

there’s only one word here: washing. it’s done in outline font and tarmac. it’s right next to phone number for BT Business Broadband complaints (which is 0800 679905, by the way) and it serves to remind me of one thing. I’m more responsible than I ever used to be. I have a number of dependents, more house than Mecca bingo and sums of money that constantly slip betweem my tanned-but-fading fingers. If I don’t hang the washing out I will DIE. That’s all there is to it. I’ll now put Joy Division on and poke myself with sticks in the dark until I get the bends.

one of these days I’m going to cut you into little pieces

April 22, 2005

you hum it, I’ll play it. oh, I see, it’s like that. I got 1 thing to do today which is really 18 things which I have to put in 1 place, all chopped up and ready to go. I just had that lovely designer and the very lovely program manager give me everything I could ever wish for, and so I just need to extract the semantics and identify the local business requirements and goodness me, it’ll be like a barn dance where everyone drink’s Dad’s cider and falls into a trough with a pig holding their trousers over a bucket while Charlotte writes “feck!” in her web.

twould be troo if I could get down the 01603 exchange and just stick the 2 bits of chicken wire together that have apparently fallen apart and caused an entire city to lose internet access on and off for 2 days. I work from home. I’m 3 hours from the nearest office. Great. but it’s not me I’m worried about. Noone will believe me anyway, so I’ll just have to fit my entire 2 days work into an intermittent 2 hour window while some BT engineer has accidently enabled everything by squatting over a drain and conducting electricity through his dangling tools. From his tool belt. I’ll then have to send a hilarious email describing how I fell of my roof during a meeting of the Rod Hull fan club and so I’ve been offline for a bit and everyone will forgive me as they laugh uncontrollably into my performance review. No, the people who I’m really very concerned about are the ones who might have to get the dust sheets of their X5s and actually visit Tescos in person – rather than having the online order picked out by hand by Beverley Maggots, who’s washed her hands at least once this week and *thinks* that’s a Gala Melon – mingling with the chavs and mardy local gits from east of the city as they pick out their Organic Guacamole by squeezing in between Grant and Ashley who are sticking a Star Wars sticker book into the eyes of 4 year old David Rio Michael who’s standing up in the trolley tipping Walkers crisps over the side and pooing his pants just so he can get a slap and use it as an excuse to leave home at 14 and walk up and down my street scratching his name into the offside door of our Scenic.

quick check under the desk and I have 3 green lights on the Wireless Network 1250, which I’m expecting to all suddenly go off any minute just after Jensen Button has jump started from row 6 and everything will be irrepairably broke for the rest of the day. I’ll have conference calls of course, but I’ve got no idea what number to call as all the details are kept on my Sun Java System calendar, which is on the other side of my Cisco VPN client which is installed on my Windows XP which is running on my Sun Java Workstation W2100z which has a Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet card which has a ethernet cable coming out of it which is connected to my Netgear RP614 router which has a cable coming out of it which is connected to my Wireless Network 1250 modem which has a phone wire coming out of it which is connected to the first BT box on my wall which has a hamster behind it who has won a free holiday for 2 weeks or a telly or 50 quid cash, and he’s been calling a premium rate number for 17 hours and started chewing his own foot off to escape. aah.

commit no nuisance

April 21, 2005

endangered as they are, socialists in the community do get out sometimes. There was a scintillating debate on plasma vs. LCD, but you know, we’re stuck on or Sony Trinitrons, and we can’t justify the upgrades. I can stretch to a digibox, because then I can get BBC Four where they have Bulgarian folk music and Damien Rice in session, but goodness me, I can’t justify £1900 on a widescreen LCD. I mean, it’s probably made in an emerging market economy in terribly exploitative working conditions. The thing is, I can justify my Sony W1, because I researched it extensively and didn’t overspend unnecessarily. So that’s alright, right?

lucky me, I get to live in a market economy with freedom of speech and my liberty intact. I can sit in the pub talking bollocks about the government and not get arrested and persecuted just because I think I might vote for the Green Party. Even if I think they’d be a rubbish government. You’ve just got to nail it down sometimes. I have my choice to make but I’m driven by dichotomies. It’s no good me clinging to my Militant Tendency youth when I clearly can’t justify my overspending. So I just talk about it in the pub with Sean. Then I go home and flick on my Dell to see if the share price is above the number I first thought of and then doubled and added 1.

In the end, it’s all about that transition phase between being 23 and unemployed in Sheffield and a fat bald bloke in Surrey doing 5k on the treadmill in my lunch hour. Somewhere in the middle I got paid a large sum of money and then I forgot I really cared about anything. I went to the workhouse the other day and came away with this message. Stop it Mr. Ecclescake, you’re killing me! Now there’s a sound in my head from 1991 and everything’s alright. I went with Neil to the Kilburn National to see Robyn Hitchcock and everything went white. I didn’t really feel anymore, but Neil lived in St. John’s Wood so it was a long way home.

oh, and here’s a tractor

Things what I writ