the angry geek

I thought the idea of using an account manager, or a third party company, was to make your life easier. I work for a company, of reasonable size (for an SME), which pushes a certain set of vendor's software and hardware. I'm sure you know them. Being a partner has certain advantages - access to various tools, an account manager, sales assistance, etc.

The point of all these things is two fold. One, mutual benefit. Vendors drive business our way, and we drive business their way. Two, to make things easier for us for to get support on new and existing products, and to nuture a relationship that should grow and assist in point one. There is little other significant reason, in my opinion, to any partner program. So why on earth do I have to chase our account manager at a certain major software house?

If I wanted to do this I'm sure the company could quite easily put the money that is currently put towards being a partner into other things. Like mandatory ice cream for all employees once a week. Booze at the pub. Hell, we could burn it and still get a better fucking response from the standard phone lines, where you get through to about 10 different people before they understand what you wanted in the first place. This was certainly the case when IBM binned their account managers. Maybe they were on to something?

Posted by the_angry_angel at 18:12 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

There appears to be a vast number of drivers on the road who don't understand the difference between turning their dipped lights on and also enabling their fog lights. I think I've only ever required my fog lights twice, since I've been driving the last 3-4 years. I'm also damn sure it isn't foggy when everything doesn't look like I've suddenly contracted cateracts, or just gone into a warm pub with my glasses on.

If you ignore the number of older drivers that do this, who clearly do it because they're old, you're actually only left with a vast number of younger drivers. Since younger generations can usually work a video recorder, or an iPod without supervision, they clearly know what they're doing. To you I politely request that you fuck off!

1. It is not cool. You are not a rally driver.
2. They are designed for low level, wide light dispersion, which can be blinding other drivers in many circumstances.
3. UK legislation dictates that it is, infact, a stoppable offence under conditions without restricted visibility.
4. It makes you look like a right penis because you're probably driving a 1.2 Vauxhall Corsa, with a ridiculous exhaust, whilst going a mere 20 mph.

Whilst I'm on the subject of lights, will all drivers who sit, parked, facing the traffic also kindly fuck off? You sir, or madam, are also making a total fool of yourself and could potentially cause an accident. Many people suffer from the additional glare at night, and by adding to it you are only causing a problem.

I would never propose that the police should spend their time monitoring this bullshit, since they've already got their hands full monitoring everyone's speed and hand holding the traffic wombles, but what I would advocate is the right to beat the shit out of the people with a rusty fog lamp, from the nearest scrapyard.

Posted by the_angry_angel at 21:19 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Last Saturday my 1.9TDI Highline Bora was booked in for it's service. When I was booking it in I was asked if I would be interested in a courtesy car. Naturally I was and accepted.

I trundled down for 8:30am and walked up to the service desk. After a few minutes I was presented with a very simple looking key. Puzzled, I followed the rep outside, who suddenly stopped in front of a line of brand new Polo's. There must be some mistake I thought; maybe his shoe needed tying up? Sadly this wasn't the case. Until 3:30pm this rollerskate of a car was mine, and I do mean rollerskate. My new rocks are bigger than this car!

I got in and barely before I closed the door, the horrible truth had hit me and I'd formed several million opinions on it. I had been given a 1.2 petrol engined Polo. The base model. It is the worst car in history. And I've driven French cars. How is that a replacement for a top spec Bora?

I'd driven barely a few miles and I've spent most of that shouting at the car in a Clarkson style whilst pedestrians stare at the mad person. I did so driving past Bath police station and got a double take from the local plod, but they were obviously too busy escorting the health and safety nuts around and emptying their cash machines of film to care. After all I was going far too slowly to do any serious damage to anything but a daisy.

It got worse as I needed petrol. Pulling into the local Sainsburies I got out and was immediately faced with no key hole on the filler cap. Now, I would like to point out that all other cars I've owned have either have release buttons in the cockpit, or keyholes therefore I had immediately assumed that a release button was involved. 10 minutes later, a very worried looking petrol station attendant and lots of shouting I ended up phoning "Tamsin", who politely told me I was being a tit and you merely needed to push the filler flap to release it. Well I'm sorry, but to me this seems backwards! I have no idea of the mechanics behind it, but it appears to me that any fool could walk up to your car, whilst it's unlocked and nab your petrol. Unlikely, but hell the for price of petrol these days I want a sodding lock on it regardless.

Not only was I now humiliated and uncomfortable. The grumbling continued and I overfilled, putting a tenner in, rather than a fiver. Since I was stuck with it, and it with my petrol, I decided to take the bastard thing out for a drive.

I mixed a variety of roads to use the petrol, and although I dread to say it, I actually had fun. Yes, it was slow and cramped, and very, very basic. Yet despite this it was fun to drive and annoy the other drivers like some kind of persistant fly.

Would I buy this car? No. But it was fun for the day.

Posted by the_angry_angel at 23:10 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I'm one of those people who despises "fan-boy-ism". I dislike advocating a company purely because you think that they produce the best product, regardless of other or not it's actually a decent product in the first place.

I fail to see the reasoning behind it. And it makes me visibly angry. And I wonder why I'm basically bald already.

As a consumer it doesn't make any sense what so ever. Why on earth would you go out and pick the wrong product, because you hate the alternatives based on the people who produced them? I can think of several people who buy Sony products, just because they love Sony. I'm sorry but when did Sony produce something relevant? Ignoring Blu-ray, which I may have to conceed, I fail to see anything new from them. Why do you think the PS3 costs so much? Because only the fan-boys buy them.

Of course fan-boy-ism can be very easily confused with lust. I lusted after the Wii. I currently lust after the Macbook Air and the iPhone. I've had the Wii and it's had precisely fuck all use. The reason for this is that it's got bugger all games that I actually want to play. With the exception of Wii Sports. And that was free. With the product.

I currently lust after the MacBook Air, which actually sucks. Yes, it hits all the buttons. The size. The weight. It has the geek cool factor. Realistically there are many problems with it, and I'm glad I put the credit card away during the keynote. I'll take this point on saying thank you to VW to having a rather expensive (in comparison to my previous cars) major service cost. You saved me.

Sadly this has given way to the iPhone lust. Having used one, I want one despite the fact that I despise iTunes with an irritational hatred. It's not necessarily the best for every job, but it work would well for me, and would be a very, very good replacement for a portable laptop and the rather irritating Sony Ericisson K800i that I own.

The thing that keeps holding me back is that I hate iTunes. I'm afraid that I've turned into an opensource snob. A fan-boy. That which I hate most. Yes, opensource is clearly a better model for development, but just look at the iPhone in comparison to the openMoko device(s). There's no competition. Yet it troubles me.

Maybe the problem is that the opensource solutions currently don't have the clear cut dictator role, with the exception of the Linux kernel, which ends up with a project where you might as well be herding cats. Maybe this is why I have so much respect for Jobs' and Linus.

Oh dear lord... I'm a dictator whore.

Posted by the_angry_angel at 18:41 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

The big sin for this time of year is gluttony. From a young age western children are educated that it's okay to eat a lot at Christmas and New Year. There's the advent calendars, and the sheer amount of chocolate that gets given when adults are stuck for gift ideas. They're telling kids that it's ok, it's a time of indulgance.

Maybe it's just me, but that seems a bit... well wrong. I'm just as guilty of this as everyone else, and I'll happily blame my parents, as that is fashionable. it's even logical. We are forever complaining that children are behaving badly, not acting as we would when we were young, but to me it just seems to be our own fault. The message of indulgence is wrong and leads a mind on to greed, and therefore the behaviour we see today.

I'd like to give you a real example, now admittedly this is, hopefully, from the far end of the spectrum. However, it's true nonetheless. A few years ago my step-nephew was given an advent calendar. He'd just started to understand about Christmas, and seen how adults around him had behaved over the last few years, and he must've started making a connection. The reason I say this is because the little bugger ate the entire advent calendar in a single day. Now at this point I would like to say I don't know of the exact proceeding, how he was disciplined, and so on, but what I do know is that he got another advent calendar eventually. And another, I believe. Granted this is bad parenting, but this is sending the wrong message to the child. I wonder how he'll act when he grows old enough to have children of his own, but that's another rant for another time.

Once Christmas and New Year is done, or in the case of several women I know, even before Christmas dinner is over, people start getting concerned about clogging up their veins, their weight and the fact that they may just keel over and die before the Great Escape or Shrek has finished, if they don't go and vomit up the food they've just eaten. The horrifying thing is that I found myself thinking exactly the same thing this Christmas. I've never been bothered before, but at the age of 21 I've started feeling guilty about how I treat my body, and of all times it should be when I'm supposed to be having fun. Still, I choked down this ill feeling and got on with it like a man. After all, I'm young. I won't die.

Of course the last laugh is on karma, or whatever you want to call it these days, because I'm now dying from what I suspect is bird flu.

Posted by the_angry_angel at 21:50 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Gift vouchers have always been a fantastic idea. You can buy them for someone for Christmas and spend as much as you want, or as little, and put practically no effort in. Conversely it works well for the shop as it means you're not actually buying anything at that time, so they're not loosing stock.

And there's the problem. Just how many gift vouchers go missing, unspent and forgotten each year? I'm willing to bet rather a lot. Personally I can see 2 GAME gift cards, a HMV gift card, and a GameStation voucher in range of my desk right now. That's easily a £30 at the least. But here's the kicker, I don't actually know the precise value for sure, as GAME and HMV cards are little plastic things. Like credit cards.

Now this is an awesome play by the companies involved. Kids never liked vouchers, because they're crappy bits of paper with some value written on them. There's no fun there. However, these new style plastic gift cards are basically a debit card, that looks like a credit card, with fun stuff on them. That's something all kids want to do - be like mummy and daddy and play grown up. Just how grown up are they going to feel when they get one of these? Oh sure, the parents will likely look after it and keep track of things, but even so, they get to play with it once it's been fully used.

The second reason is that you have no absolutely no idea just how much these things are worth. Granted the giver might write the value somewhere, or give you the reciept, but once that bit of cardboard or paper is gone you have no idea. Not a problem, you may think; just go to the shop and find out how much is on it. Now here comes the good bit. In order to do so you currently have to ask, and the people in the shop usually look pretty busy when I get to shop, so I don't want to bother them. This is a flaw with my character, but it affects so many other people besides me. Sadly, it seems to be just those people who you give gift cards and vouchers.

This is fucking marketing genius. I have "money" sat around the house that I practically can't use and is just being pissed away into the pockets of the retrospective company.

Posted by the_angry_angel at 14:56 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

It looks like the BBC has picked up on your clueless moanings about the way in which DSL is advertised in the UK. You appear to be complaining about how fast your internet connection really is. The reason why you are not on the maximum speed is relatively technical, but I hope this analogy will suffice.

Imagine your broadband is a car. When you buy a car you do not return it to the manufacturer because it's not going full speed everywhere. Now, before I hear you cry that you never get top speed, don't fret. When it comes to [A|S]DSL (in the UK) you're currently restricted in terms of speed by your distance from the telephone exchange. Consider this distance to be analogous to a traffic jam, or a steep hill. The further away the more traffic you have to deal with, or the steeper the hill you have to climb, which makes it harder to get to top speed. I hope this helps explain the situation, in an easy to understand manner.

Posted by the_angry_angel at 03:32 | Comments (0) | Trackback (1)