Pynchon

I am here early. There was a flashing light on my router that I had not seen there before. This was unacceptable. I turned the router off. I turned it back on. The flashing light stopped... er... flashing. More importantly, the router still works.

That is what you call IT Support. Obviously I am a genius. (Pats myself on the back.)

Has anybody been watching "The IT Crowd" on Channel 4? Almost like watching a documentary.

Labels: Computers, Television

IT people of a sensitive nature, who are familiar with the UNIX operating system, are advised to look away now.

Gay Harry, the oldest and most experienced UNIX programmer at The Company, today logged onto a major customer's UNIX system as root and did the following:

cd /
rm -rf *

The command (delete everything in the current directory and beneath the current directory) only ran for 20 seconds before Gay Harry broke into it but, Hey! How long does it take to detonate an atom bomb?

When Gay Harry came over to me he was as white as a sheet, was sweating and his eyes were on stalks. I thought he was having another heart attack. (Gay Harry had a heart attack in the office a couple of years ago. It was a very shocking thing to witness. A first aider, a very disagreeable but brilliant programmer named Norman Grizzly, saved Gay Harry's life that day. I'm convinced of it.)

"John. I think I've fucked up."

Er... Yes.

My first thought. No problem. We can restore the whole of the system to last night's backup.

Er... No we can't. The customer had logged a call this morning letting us know that their backup had not worked since last Thursday. They had watched it fail, day after day after day, and had only bothered to tell us today.

Oh, shit! Then I think I shit myself.

I told Gay Harry to go for a walk and then I told Salvador Full, the product Boss, what had happened. He was remarkably calm.

"Did you do it?"

"No."

"Who did it?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

Shit.

"Gay Harry. It was an accident."

There was a bit of chat about what Gay Harry had intended to do, which was kosher enough, and then Salvador shrugged his shoulders and said the happy phrase, "It's a tech problem now, isn't it? Give it to them. Tell Harry not to worry."

I kissed him on both cheeks and flung the problem on Terry Pig's desk.

Long story short, Terry is booked on an early plane tomorrow. The customer is abroad and Terry needs to be on site to rebuild their UNIX system. The data is fucked though.

I'm going to have a lie down. It's been a long day.

Labels: Computers, Stress, Work

I am stuck in Bank Holiday hell.

It has been raining for days. It is cold. I have a cold (or at least the sniffles). I have nothing to do. (Actually I have loads to do, just nothing that I want to do.) I have been out of the house, sneered at the posters for "Spider-Man 3" and "Pirates Of The Caribbean 3", and come home again.

(How come not a single, solitary cinema in Birmingham could make room for an interesting film like "Jindabyne", which I really want to see, when "Pirates Of The Caribbean 3" is cluttering up multiple screens at the multiplexes? Actually I know the answer to that. "POTC3" will make more money. Now, that is fair enough, but sometimes art should come over commerce.)

Lorraine is downstairs working on the laptop. I have surfed some porn and had a wank.

Bank Holiday hell. Maybe I should start writing that Oscar winning screenplay? Maybe later.

Sorting out Sister 3's computer was easier than I thought. One download and install and it was all done. I then introduced my Nephew to the delights of the "Doctor Who" website. He claims to be a big fan of the show, so I'm surprised that he had never been on it before. (By the way, was I right? Wasn't the last episode a brilliant, brilliant classic? Who thinks that there is going to be tears before bedtime by the end of the next episode? I certainly do.)

After finishing at Sister 3's I went to see David Fincher's "Zodiac".



Really interesting, multi-layered, factually dense, ensemble piece based on the investigation into the Zodiac murders of the 1960's/1970's. As much about the human cost of the investigation on the people involved (policemen, reporters and their families) as it is about the murders and the murder suspects themselves.

"Zodiac" is an old fashioned and naturalistic movie. It wouldn't have been out of place if it had been released in the 1970's and helmed by somebody like Alan Pakula or Robert Altman. This should not put you off. Old fashioned craftsmanship is good and David Fincher has done a fine job. I think that "Zodiac" is a much better movie than "Panic Room". David Fincher is back to being the peak-of-his-game Director that made "Seven" and "Fight Club".

Not a single bad performance in the entire movie. "Zodiac" is very good and definitely worth a view.

Labels: Computers, Movies

Sister 3 annoys the hell out of me.

After my Nephew's birthday lunch at the Dragon BBQ Chinese Buffet (cheap, cheerful and shit, but there were 17 of us there including family, girlfriends, boyfriends and children, and my Sister did pay for a fair few of them), I have spent a frustrating afternoon at her house trying to find out why the speakers on her computer have stopped working.

I am Sherlock Holmes. I pieced it together. It took time. I'm a bit nervous when messing about with software. Sister 3 had accidentally uninstalled her Realtek High Definition Audio Driver.

Eh? How is it possible to accidentally uninstall an audio driver?

Ah, but it wasn't her! A friend who knows a "bit about computers" tried to install Real Player, fucked it up, and uninstalled everything with the word 'Real' in the title. The first time they realised anything was wrong was when they tried to play a clip on You Tube.

Utter clown. Particular pain in the arse today because Lorraine and I had vague plans to visit the cinema this afternoon, which is the only time Lorraine has free. Hairdresser's tomorrow. Monday... I don't know, probably work.

Anyway, it will be sorted tomorrow. At Sister 3's house today I found that I was getting tied up in knots, and a couple of attempts to find and download the correct version did not work. I've come home, had another look and a think and now I know what is to be done. I am going back tomorrow to sort it out.

I'm off. Could be a classic "Doctor Who" tonight. You mark my words.

Labels: Computers, Family, Television

Let me tell you about what a nice guy yours truly really is.

All day yesterday I was on a course learning about data manipulation software. It was not at all boring. In fact it was really interesting. I learnt a lot, made some really good notes and came out of the course in a really good mood.

The mood didn't last.

I got back to my desk with an hour of the working day still to go. Plenty to do, but I felt I could cram quite a bit of work into an hour. I was up for it.

Except that I couldn't log on to any of the external sites.

I asked if somebody had been messing about with the modems. I got indifference.

I asked again. Had somebody been messing with the modems? Somebody said that they thought somebody had been under my desk doing something (isn't that a great sentence?), but that it shouldn't have affected me.

I said that I was affected. Could somebody sort it out? Please?

Lorraine suggested that I have a look for myself.

And I did have a look for myself. Hardware, cables, modems, printers, mouses, routers, phone sockets, wireless, blingimigs, woofers, tweeters, blodgers, marfarrrrs, eekephips. Machines. These are not my bag. These are not things that I am happy with. I sweat when I have to plug in and mess about with machines. I don't like doing it. I especially do not like making a fool of myself at work with machines especially when there is a dedicated (hah!) section, the Internal Infrastructure Team, to do it for people like me.

Then Lorraine said, "We always have to baby you along, don't we?"

I fucking exploded. In front of everybody. In front of the whole office. Well, by that time it was 17:30 and the mass rush for the exit had started, so it wasn't everybody who witnessed the Pynchon meltdown. I ranted and I raved and I banged the desk with anger.

Something had fucking changed. Someone had stopped me doing my work. Somebody had gotten in my way. Somebody should take responsibility. All I wanted was help to do my fucking work and all I was getting was indifference. Like our customers. Like everybody that The Fucking Company deal with. I could see the James Cunt in his office. He heard what I said.

Lorraine was very red in the face. She said some things and I said some things and a guy who was going to give Lorraine and me a lift home quietly disappeared. I don't blame him. He probably thought we would start punching each other in his car.

Eventually, after a very quiet journey on the bus, we got home and started again.

Lorraine said that I had shown her up in front of everybody. She said that I had embarrassed her. She said that work was bad enough as it was without me being a bastard. She said that if she let me get away with it, I was giving all of her staff carte blanch to talk to her how the hell they wanted. I said that I really didn't give a fuck.

But... She was right.

I regret it. I could have handled it a lot better. I could have chosen not to lose my temper. You can choose to do that, you know. I know that sometimes I have anger problems, but it rarely turns into a red mist moment. My Mom has told me that my Dad used to have those a lot when he had been drinking.

You can choose not to be an arsehole and that's what I have become.

Before stopping to watch "C.S.I. Crime Scene Investigation" and "Smith" I listened to "In Utero" by Nirvana on my MP3 player. I am pretty certain that the last time I listened to that album was the evening in 1994 that Sister 3 had her abortion. I paid for that abortion. She asked me for the money because nobody else would help her out. Maybe "In Utero" is my severe crisis album?

Yes, I am a really nice guy. A really fine piece of work.

(By the way, when I got into work this morning the connectivity on my PC was fine. Lorraine had crawled under my desk and sorted it out. That really made me feel good. Nothing else was said at work by anybody. Pynchon survives, but it will be a blessed relief if I am sacked.)

Labels: Arguments, Computers, Lorraine, Stress

I am now able to read any .blogspot.com sites directly. Thank Christ for that. I was getting very pissed off. I don't do Internet isolation very well.

On the Blogger Help Group message board a very nice man let me know a work around which worked a treat. If you are finding that you are getting 'page cannot be displayed' messages when trying to read a blog, try to read the blog via this link. It should display with no problems. I would imagine that it is a very useful little link for getting around blogs that are blocked by Company firewalls, as well. Hmm...

After that I spoke to a very nice man on the Virgin Media help desk who thanked me for bringing the problem to their attention. He promised that he would get somebody to look into the problem as soon as possible and also gave me another useful little link here which allowed me to access any blogs. That link also seems to work for any website that is blocked. Perhaps somebody would like to try it out at work? I'm going to.

That over... Hello. How are you?

I should have a hangover, but I don't. The miracle of bananas, water and cornflakes. I suppose you want to know how my fantastic Saturday and Sunday went? You don't? Couldn't give a shit. I'm going to tell you anyway.

Lorraine went away yesterday. She will be gone for a week. She is visiting her Cousin and then her Brother and his new set of twins. She booked her train seat for some ridiculous hour of the morning, so I was up at 6am to see her off. I felt a serious need to see her before she left. The taxi came at 6:30am, so we only had half an hour, but it was OK.

When she left I got a kiss. It was a fairly perfunctory kiss, to be honest, but it was still a kiss. Lorraine said that we would talk seriously when she got back and that she would call me to make sure I was OK.

I went back to bed, had a wank and fell asleep, stinking, for a couple of hours.

Got up, shit, shaved, showered and into town. It was still relatively early, so I caught the first showing of Nick Love's new film "Outlaw". (It's not the film I intended to see on Saturday. That film was going to be David Lynch's "Inland Empire", which for some unknown reason was only showing in London. Birmingham not sophisticated enough, perhaps? Bastards.)

Anyway, "Outlaw".



My Brother really rates Nick Love as a Director, but until yesterday I had never seen any of his films. It's not been a deliberate choice. Sometimes it's just the way that it goes. There is always an alternative film to go and see. I will say this about Nick Love. Like Shane Meadows before him, I like the idea of Nick Love. He is a a British director who makes particularly British films about British obsessions. The pressures to grow up and out of your friends, gangs, football hooligans, the costa del crime and, now, the impression of a breakdown of law and order on the streets of Britain, the corruption in the criminal justice system, and the wish for somebody to do something about it.

"Outlaw" is probably not a great film. It is way too a fragmentary and unfinished a piece of work to describe as a great film. I got the feeling that a lot of material had been left on the cutting room floor. Perhaps the inevitable DVD release will be a longer, more satisfying cut? But "Outlaw" is a good film, a striking film and not a film you will not forget it a hurry. Bitter, twisted, edgy and very morally ambiguous. It also looks wonderful. Dizziness inducing camera work, a limited colour palette, cold and hard and beautiful.

Look at the picture above. It's great isn't it? The guys look mean, moody and magnificent. A unit ready to kick ass. It's a misleading picture. These men are damaged in all sorts of ways.

A depressed and betrayed soldier.

A mugging victim.

An intelligent and educated man, whose family pays the price for his attempt to uphold the law.

A sad and misguided loner who wants to do the right thing. The one character with the potential to be the true, tough, uncompromising vigilante in the group, but an unpalatable man - racist, uneducated and a bigot. (It is a great performance by Sean Harris. The best in the film. He is rapidly becoming one of my favourite actors.)

And a man, scared by the violence in his dreams, who is confronted with bullying and violence in his real life.

It's a fascinating film. Better than the reviews would have you believe. I would like to see it again.

After "Outlaw" I did some shopping.

Food, some more comfort purchases ("The Best Of The Stranglers", "The Best Of Tori Amos", "The Best Of The Backstreet Boys", "The Best Of The Sugababes" and "Escapology" by Robbie Williams) and some porn DVD's. ("Busty Porn Babes" and "Cathy's Diaries Volume 8", both masterpieces of erotica, of course.)

I went home.

At home I had a wank to "Busty Porn Babes" (it didn't take long). Then I stuck my MP3 player into the set of small speakers Lorraine bought for me for Christmas, stuck the MP3 player on random play and listened to it while having a bath. This is what came up and the order.

"Freak Like Me", the Sugababes. ("It's all about the dark in me." I love that line.)
"Honey Come Back", Glen Campbell.
"Rock DJ", Robbie Williams.
"Sea Of Heartbreak", Johnny Cash.
"I Never Picked Cotton", Johnny Cash.
"Tiny Machine", the Darling Buds.
"Do It Clean", Echo & The Bunnymen.
"Indiana Wants Me", R. Dean Taylor.

(They say that on an atomic level there is no such thing as randomness. If that is true, then something we experience as random is only something we have not yet figured out the pattern for. What is the pattern for the above set of songs? There's got to be one.)

I got hungry. I cooked steak, eggs, mushrooms and onions. I also had two large rolls with butter and drank a whole bottle of Blossom Hill. I watched "Dancing On Ice" (the lovely, large breasted Emily Symons is out - she was not a very good skater, but it's still a disgrace) and "The Trial Of Tony Blair" (not nearly as controversial I thought it would be, but I still liked Alexander Armstrong's little bit as Conservative leader David Cameron getting down with the kids - what a tit).

After a bit on the computer, and eating bananas and cornflakes and drinking water, I had another wank, this time to "Cathy's Diaries Volume 8". 3 wanks in one day. Good lord! Am I a stud, or what? No wonder Lorraine doesn't want to sleep with me. She must be scared I would wear out her pussy.

Then I went to bed.

With dinner tonight I had another bottle of wine. I am mellow. I am scum. I am low. I am a cunt and I know it.

I will do Sunday tomorrow and add links, etc. "Sleeping Dogs". Mom. My Brother. My Brother's thoughts on Danny Dyer. "The Football Factory".

Labels: Computers, Drinking, Movies

I cannot read any blogs whatsoever. To be accurate, I cannot read anything ending .blogspot.com.

Having just had most of a bottle of Blossom Hill, I'm probably not in the best mood to write anything anyway, but this is hardly the point.

Labels: Bloggers, Computers

No film today, because I managed to spend the whole of the day at Sister 1's messing with her PC. I didn't really mind. I find that I learn an awful lot about how PC's and Windows works by messing with my siblings' PC's. (Mess with my own PC first? Fuck off!)

I learnt today that my Niece just loves to download toolbars for Internet Explorer 7. Loading up Internet Explorer on Sister 1's PC was like having a migraine nightmare on a street in downtown Tokyo. (Never been to Tokyo, but I would like to.) Lots of flashing graphics. Lots of adverts. Lots of colour!!! About a third of the screen was taken over with toolbar shit. I asked Sister 1 where all of that stuff came from. She said

"Ask the demon"

indicating my Niece, who was sitting at the table with a serene, innocent expression on her face. Don't ask me - I know nothing, what was she was thinking. I could read her thoughts.

My Niece is the Devil. A smart Devil, it must be said, and way cleverer than she lets on.

With a bit of prompting my Niece helped me download all of the latest Microsoft updates, update the Firewall and Virus checker, renew the subscription on the Firewall and Virus checker that was just about the expire, remove all of the games (except the ones I bought her for her birthday), remove most of the toolbars she had downloaded (Google being the only one we decided to keep), run a defrag, setup filters on Outlook Express, tidy up the desktop and remove all temporary Internet files.

I then let her play me the video of "Flying Without Wings" by Westlife. She found it on You Tube. It's her Mom's favourite record. My Niece thinks that she discovered You Tube.

My Niece is 9 years old. She will be 10 in May. One day my Niece will rule the world. Don't doubt it.

My Niece became bored with old people talk, so she went outside to play. Time for a chat with Sister 1.

Sister 1 leaned back, lit a cigarette, looked me in the face and said

"So, what's going on then, John?"

and I told her. I fessed up. I spilled nearly everything. (I didn't mention the blog.) Lorraine and Me. The lack of communication. The lack of sex. The tension. The frustration. The lows. My anger. A bit about the drinking and the blackout that worried me so much at Christmas.

It was cathartic. I've not had such a serious conversation with Sister 1 for a very long time. There was a time when we were completely honest with each other, because no matter how we fought and fell out, secrets were secrets and would never be revealed.

Sister 1 said that I needed to talk to Lorraine. I needed to talk seriously and quickly, before it all fell apart. She said how much she liked Lorraine, but couldn't understand why Lorraine didn't want to talk about our problems.

Indeed.

Re. Sister 1's personal life, until recently she had been nobbing a guy 15 years younger than herself (she will be 38 this year, so well done Sis!), but now it is over. Something about him texting her for Sex at 4:30 in the morning and her commenting that she was "Not a fucking hooker!"

Turn the page. Time to write of better things.

Yesterday I purchased tickets to see The Who at the NIA in May. I got quite good seats. I'll be going with my Brother and Boz Rude from work. Boz is a massive Who fan and is always good fun.

Finally, next Saturday Lorraine and I will be going to see Maureen Lipman in the play "Martha, Josie and the Chinese Elvis" at the Birmingham REP. I know practically nothing about the play, except that it is a comedy, but Lorraine is a huge Maureen Lipman fan and she wanted to go. I'll read up on the play before I get there.

And that, as they say, is that. I'm off. You can talk amongst yourselves while I'm away.

Labels: Computers, Family, Lorraine, Sex

We decided to watch "Domino".

About 5 minutes in we decided that it was awful. About half an hour in Lorraine decided that she had had enough and went to bed. An hour in I finally gave up, turned over to the "Television X" free preview and had a wank.

I am on Lorraine's laptop. I have downloaded Microsoft and Norton upgrades. I have surfed You Tube. (The "Sunshine" trailer looks pretty good.) I will reply to comments in a minute and then I will go to bed and read my book for half an hour.

That was my Friday night. Kind of pathetic, yes?

Labels: Computers, Lorraine, Movies, Sex