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What did we do before the Internet?
Today at the Asylum we lost the interwebz for a reasonable length of time. And everyone looked confused over what to do, while those with Smart-Phones tried to grab bits of the net to hug and pet, and remember the good times.
This led to the question being asked “what did we do before the Internet”
Suggestion 1 was read. Err I read ebooks these days that I store online till I need them
Suggestion 2 was chat to people but with every flavour of I’m down how could we chat. And how exactly do you LOL or use emoticons without a keyboard?
Suggestion 3 was write. Apparently with pen and paper?. Then you would put the letters inside other bits of paper and write someone’s name on it and drop it in a box. A box on the side of the road?. Some people would come along then and take it to whoever’s name you wrote on the envelope? It could take days to get there, if it got there at all. Well without ip’s or mx records no wonder it would take so long.
So there you have it, in these days of working online, using cloud services, VoIP phones, emails, even IM for internal communication, the average office worker is lost and unable to be productive without the Internet.
Personally I was scanning the area for unsecured wifi to deal with my addiction.
From The Archive: Every Cloud has a Silver Lining
Nephew: “Why do they say every cloud has a silver lining?“
Me: “It’s because the outer edges of clouds, where the condensed moisture particles hit the ionised atmosphere, interacting with pollutants in the air causes a peculiar affect where the particles oxidise forming silver particles.“
Nephew: “WOW!” *looks back at sky* “So you could fly aeroplanes through clouds and collect silver?“
Me: “No, don’t be silly!“
Nephew: *dejected look*
Me: “Aeroplanes travel too fast, the air pressure they form in front of them pushes the clouds away preventing them collecting the silver. What they use is air ships, which the float slowly through the clouds with special collectors attached to the basket. they just float about in twelve hour shifts harvesting the cloud silver. It also means they make more money from it, since it uses much less petrol than planes.“
And that was the moment my Sister banned me from answering any questions my nephews may ask. Well There was an incident when one of my nephews got excited in school when the teacher asked a question that he knew the answer too, because his uncle had told him.
From the Archive: Were Ninja
We at the Insane Asylum have been running some updates on our antiquated control systems, and during this update I had cause to check the Polychronicon that is the Asylums Wiki. While trying to find the list of perl modules we need to re-install after a major update to allow some of the older systems to continue working (Which I could not find) I came across an odd link to an article simply titled “Were Ninja” Intrigued I had a quick read, and memories of the old days came back, especially of the “Were Ninja” Himself. So I’m reprinting the article here.
Were Ninja
I have been researching a rumor I heard, about strange occurrences in some of the local woods. of a dark figure fleetingly seen from the corner of the eye, strange symbols, glyphs tracks. And most concernedly the noises and screams that echo out of the darkness.
I can now give a slight insight to these happenings..
It starts with a quick 10 minute job after hours, a job that ended up taking longer than was expected, It started with a man tired after hours of staring at a monitor, a man too tired to know what he was doing, It starts with an innocent chain-letter email, one that had to be sent out to a dozen people within thirty minutes or else.
It starts with someone we will call Mr X. He was a normal mild mannered I.T. professional, but one day while taking a break from his work he read his e-mail, the stuff he would normally just junk. It was while reading this e-mail he stumbled upon the book of e-vile! He innocently read out allowed the text from the satanic summoning kanji of death. And because the smtp server was down he could not fulfill the requirements of the chain-letter and the chain was broken, allowing him to be possessed by the spirit of a were-ninja from 14th century japan.
Now on nights where theres a moon he roams the welsh countryside. doing unspeakable things
Heat does not exist in this dojo, does it?
Saturday evening I was informed that my niece had a Karate competition day on Sunday, and that she wanted me to go and support her. So there went my plans of a productive Sunday catching up on my ever-growing todo list. OK! by productive day I mean a day playing “Call of Duty: Black Op’s” which I purchased Saturday.
I don’t normally mind going to support her, since it makes her happy that someone cares, and she likes to talk about the different matches with me, and its normally an interesting day out.
My niece does Shotokan Karate, and the club she goes to is associated with several others in the area, and they take it in turns hosting the competitions. This time there was even some clubs from Luton & Yorkshire along for the day. And the even was held in Hawrden High School’s sports hall.
Now I should point out this is a sports hall with brick walls half way up, then metal sheeting the rest of the way, a metal sheeting roof, and plain concrete floors. There is also building work going on so part of the walls are simple boards while work is being carried out. Oh, and did I mention there was ice on the ground outdoors, and no heating on indoors? The poor kids in bare feet, and Gi’s that are no more than pyjamas really must have been freezing, cos the adults watching were and they had big coats on.
First off was the Kata rounds, so Niece and another girl get up, do their kata and sit down. The next person to get called was called alone, and the ref informed them they were through to the next round. In fact three of the four people in the final to work out places never had to compete against anyone, they just got given their placements. (Can anyone say fix?)
This shall we say for legal reasons “Apparently biased marking” turned into the theme for the day, when you had matches and all four (or six depending on match) ref’s holding out the same colour flag to show who was winner, and main ref (always after quick look to people in background holing forms) would award fight to the other colour. At one point one of the local Sensei’s told his students that one of the clubs who had travelled four hours to turn up were being marked up as a thanks for coming all this way and to not take it personally. Well by the end of the day, the local students had lost all heart and were barley going through the motions in their rounds.
The other let down of the day was the fact that the club that was being allowed to win everything may have been the “Cobra Kai” in disguise. Well they were as dirty fighters as the Cobra’s, with sneaky leg swipes, feet stomps, and face/eye shots. The list of injuries to the local kids was, several broken toes, and sprained back, and several kids with smashed and bleeding eyes.
The Adults associated to the club were even pointing out nice spots on the face to go for to slow down, or take out their opponent, and congratulating them while the other kid would be crying on the floor with medics dealing with them.
I know full contact Karate competitions can be violent, and lead to injuries, but this was a Children’s competition, and the local clubs do not do much full contact fights, and it was supposed to be friendly.
I must admit it was the most badly run & organised rip off I have ever seen. The matches were all fixed and they did not even attempt to hide the fact. There was no food laid on for the kids (they normally lay on food for them out of the attendance fee’s), No heating, The hall rental was a school gym that they normally use, so would not have cost much. The medals were of poor quality, and for the first time in the years my niece has been going there was no “competitors medal or certificate” to give to those who competed (apparently there was no money for them). And yes on the Saturday traiing day there was 100 student (approx) and there must have been 60 or so on the Sunday (all at £20/day).
From the Archive: Last Ever Rock Night at The Tiv Pt:1
Recently it was National Nostalgia Week, and to keep the nostalgia going here’s a photo review of an event that marked the end of an era in North Wales, the closing of the Tiv as a rock venue and leaving north east Wales with no rock clubs at all.
The Last Ever Rock Night at The Tiv!!!!
[Saturday 29th May 1999]
Saturday Night at the Tiv, was the ONLY Rock event in the North East of Wales. But thanks to a new manager who believes Rock is dead, and that STEPS is the be-all and end-all of music, The Saturday Rock Night was replaced with the “Trendy-We-Love-Steps” Night. To mark the end of an era, that had spanned decades, The Tiv had a goodbye to rock party, where all the Rock-Regulars said goodbye with the style only Rockers and Goths can achieve……
I “Pendragon” and Andrew “Ax” decide to go say goodbye to the Tiv’s Rock Night with style. And since this was also the first time we had been out drinking together (and we had known each other for over 4 years) A lot of Alcohol was drunk.. A lot of Moshing was done.. And A lot of Flirting with rock-chicks was done..
I don’t know why the photo shows our hands covered with a strange blood red liquid, and it is a coincidence that the following night we were 100’s of miles away in another part of Wales..
PS: The Doctors say the new manager will be able to walk again soon….
Why is it, when there is a camera about It always seems to capture “iffy” Shots??. Take this one.. We had just met up with some old friends, John “kooper” and Gillian “NurseGrowl”. And look at the photo, it looks like Gill’s hand is heading for an interesting part of Ax’s anatomy, and Kooper does not look happy about it!!!
The Bit I cant work out is why Ax is doing an Igor pose?? with hunchback and gormless look ;0)
After asking a few discrete questions, Well as discrete as only a drunk bloke can be. Ax discovers Gill is single. And in a drunken moment of inspiration decides to kidnap her, and give her to Me as a present!!
Damn nice of him, don’t you think… And I didn’t get him anything…….
Kooper goes into total paralysing shock!!
But why?……..
…….Does he think the Camera will steal his soul??
…….Is he caught in a car’s headlights??
…….Is he to sober to deal with me and Ax??
…….Or is he annoyed at Ax’s Kidnapping of Gill??
I am totally unaware of Ax’s kidnapping of Gill, or Koopers paralysing shock… Like a kitten with a piece of string I am distracted, but in my case its by Vodka….
I did consider claiming I was drinking coke.. But after a quick survey of my friends opinions, I was shocked to discover that no one would believe me if I said I was Tea-Total…
Listening to my Friends you would swear I was an Alcoholic!!!!
I get my present from Ax. I really must thank him one of these days.. After all its not every day you get given a cute 18 year old blonde.. And the fishnet stockings and suspenders were a lovely bonus…
Mind you, my friends might have a point. I have another glass of vodka in my hand, and even the cute blonde can’t prise it off me!!!!!!
Kooper recovers from his shock, and starts to plan my death..
Just after this look to kill!! over a dozen unlucky people that were in his line of sight fell down dead…..
He still hasn’t forgiven me…
I get to grips with my present!!!
Actually this was a totally innocent pose, we were just dancing, and talking to each other… but the curse of the camera turns it into a shot that looks decidedly dodgy!!!!!
Look… Yet another glass of Vodka in my hand, and once again Gill was unable to separate me from my drink………
I’m safe… Kooper gets distracted as he is pulled by Dave.
Don’t they make a lovely looking couple??
PS: Is it just me, or does Dave look like a character from the Muppets or some such program, I just cant place which character……
Owwwwww how sweet.. ending with a Kiss!!!!!
Once again a totally innocent situation, that the curse of the camera makes to look dodgy….. You see, the club was playing VERY loud rock music. and Gill had asked me a question, and I was answering.. but due to the loudness of the music, I had to shout into her ear, and that’s what I am doing in the photo.. Honest!!!!!!
One More than the Queen of England
Weird post title right? What I am referring to is birthdays, The Queen of England has two birthdays a year, Myself I have Three. So if you will sit down comfortably dear Reader, I’ll explain, mostly because its become a FAQ.
A few years ago a friend offered to do one of those astronomical charts for me. One of the larger complicated ones that show your personality, and long term fortune, etc. So I gave my friend the details I had, Date of Birth, and Location of Birth. Both of which are required for accuracy. I was then informed that if I wished a more accurate chart then they would need my time of birth, because when it comes to stars that take a millennium for the light to reach us, knowing what minute you were born makes all the difference. So I asked my parents for the time of my birth.
I think I’ll jump ahead here to the conversation with my friend later, for pure comedy affect.
F=Friend, M=Me
F: “So, you got the time of your birth?“
M: “Yes, Nov 1st“
F: “No the TIME? if you don’t know the exact time you can narrow it down to morning, afternoon, evening, night. it will still help with accuracy“
M: “Nov 1st“
F: “No, can they narrow it down a bit?“
M: “They did, they narrowed it down to Nov 1st. Apparently no one made a note of when I was born, and they latter could not work out if it was Oct 31st, Nov 1st, Nov 2nd. so the narrowed it down to the middle one, Nov 1st“
F: “You just can’t do anything normal can you? you even managed to mess up and complicate getting born!“
It turns out that it was a very long and painful labor, and I was a home birth (a uncommon occurrence at the time). Also the Midwife was not that good, and forgot to fill in the forms at the time. She also banged my head repeatedly against the bed, but that’s a different story. So basically everyone was tired, exhausted, and under belief that the midwife did her job. It was only later when it came time to register my birth they realised they were unsure of the date. My father, Mother & Nian (Grandmother) all believed different days.
They settled on the middle day of the range, since it was central and my mothers vote (well she did have the pain so its only fair). Since then a few people have stated I’m more suited to a Halloween birth than a All Saints Day birth. The upshot is that since I was born on one of three possible days, I think to play safe I should celebrate my birthday over the full three day period. Its the only way I can be sure I have got the right day.
Battle to be The King of Idiots
This week at the Asylum has been a bit weird (And I mean weirder than normal) We’ve had two customers fighting to be crowned “The King of Idiots.” Now you would not think that was a title anyone would actively seek out, but I swear the two nominated contestants must have been. There is no other explanation for the level of stupidity involved.
Contestant 1: (We shall call them Santa & the Elves)
For several weeks now Santa has been emailing our Support department asking for some DNS changes to be made for their domain name. And every week they have been informed the changes were done weeks ago. This finally got escalated to me to look at, and I inform them that the changes have all be done.
I get an email from Santa saying that where www is working and pointing at the correct IP, the domain name by itself is not pointing at the right IP so could an A record be created. So I point out www is a CNAME that points at the domain. so whatever IP www goes to is the one the domain name by itself goes too. *Repeat four Times*. Since Santa is getting nowhere with emails, he decided to phone me up and explain again how www goes to the right place, and can we point the domain to the same place as www. This time as well as explaining it all to him, I logged onto our primary NameServer and emailed him the actual zonefile for his domain to show him where things went.
Santa then asked would I mind talking to his head IT elf, I agreed so the IT elf phoned and used the same words as Santa. I explained again, and the elf came up with this solution. “If we change the www from a cname to an a record it may work?” I had to check I had heard him right and that his plan was for me to change the one he claimed worked, and set it up exactly as the one he claimed did not work?
Santa then decided we need a conference call with all the elves, and some clever dwarfs who were walking past at the time. In this call they suggested that since www worked when it was just an alias for the domain, that couldn’t we leave it pointing to the domain, and change the domain to point to the www? I believe they could tell by the sound of *BANG* *BANG* as my head banged against my desk, that maybe that would not work.
It was during this conference call while their head IT Elf was muttering that the DNS was all wrong, and his load balancer was not working because of it, which in turn stopped their certificate from working. As soon as I heard cert, I stopped them to ask was this about a SSL cert? (Which it was). They had got one www.domain, only when they went to domain it was giving warnings. And they believed if they could just get the DNS & load balancer working right, this problem would be resolved.
I had to explain what DNS and URL’s were, to several people who were IT professionals, with claimed experience in hosting, networks, dns, etc..
Contestant 2: (We shall call the Seaman)
I was asked in my role of Linux Sys.Admin to help the Seaman with any problems he had moving the hosting of a website over too us. Now there should have been no problems really since the Seaman is a professional web developer.
Now, His entry was a late one, and only lasted one day, as opposed to Contestants 1’s weeks. Yet on that one day he managed to phone up for help over a dozen times, here’s a few of the problems he had.
P: FTP will not let me connect to the server.
S: Spell FTP correctly, and it will work
P: It says it can not load the file, but the files there
S: You realise Linux is case sensitive right?
P: I can not write collected email addresses to a file
S: Make the file writable and not read only.
S2: Errr why are you using a flat file, you have a MySQL DB with that account?
I’ve not decided on the winner YET. I’m leaning towards Contestant 2. Mainly because “How do you spell FTP wrong?” come on, its three letters, and you say the three letters when saying the word F T P?
RTL – From The Games Cabinet – Fallout: New Vegas
You wake up in a doctors office with no memory of how you got there, the last thing you remember was getting a job to deliver a simple package to someone. After further investigation you discover you were waylaying on route, shot in the head and buried alive. Luckily this incident was spotted, and your body was dug up and taken to the nearest doctor. Now you must find out why you were shot, who shot you, and claim VENGEANCE!
No, this is not the plot of some Cheap Western (Or the Japanese original) but the rough starting plot of the new Role-Playing game in the Fallout series by Obsidian Entertainment. Yes “Fallout: New Vegas”.
The game is set about four years after the events of “Fallout 3″, and is located in the post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, Nevada and the Mojave Desert known as the “Mojave Wasteland“. Yes, its a post-apocalyptic world with mutated creatures attacking travelers, legions of slavers, cannibals, criminals killing their way across the land, and Las Vegas is still doing trade as the gambling capital of the world. This is the world you are playing in.
The game play is similar to Fallout 3, well it is running the same game engine. Once again you can have companions, only this time they are more useful, and you can have one humanoid and one none humanoid companion. The greatest difference in my opinion is the addition of crafting. In the old game you had to scavenge for ammunition for your weapons or keep purchasing new ones, in this one you can use workbenches, or reloading stations to make your own ammunition using empty cases, powder and lead. Or you can make tools, equipment, repair items using the scrap you salvage as you travel. You can even use campfires to cook up things, I think this makes it a lot more realistic since most post-apocalyptic travelers would pick up a few real world survival skills.
Like any good RPG, you get to select your skill sets & bonuses as you advance in levels, pick what Armour & weapons you use (I am currently running around in a kilt with a machete thanks to pre-order DLC). You can even customise your ammunition (Armour Piercing, Overcharged Cells, Shrapnel in you dynamite) & add accessories to your firearms (Scopes, Silencers, Etc). You also get to pick which quests you will take, and if you will be nice or evil, which faction to side with, and how you will interact with the inhabitants. You can complete the game by just following you own quest for Vengeance, only you will miss out on so much more fun by doing that.
I would say this game is well worth getting (Hey, I lost the last weekend to this game), and any any fans of the series, or the RPG genre, or anything post-apocalyptic need this game in their collection.
This Article was 1st posted @ rocktheLAN.com
National Nostalgia Week
These and other pointless questions will not be answered in this post. It does make you think though, if today is INTERNATIONAL CAPSLOCK DAY, and people celebrate the annoying use of shoutyness in correspondence, is “National Nostalgia Week” such a insane suggestion? But I digress, I know its an uncommon thing for me to go slightly off-topic but that’s what I seem to have done here.
The concept of “National Nostalgia Week” has come about because this week seems to be a collection of things reminding me of days gone by, basically a string of nostalgic memories for bygone days. Let me share a few here for you dear reader.
Nostalgia 1.
Wednesday in the office we were listening to my last.fm stream and it randomly played “Your in the army now” by Status Quo. Now I’ve not heard that song since I was about 15, and it was played almost constantly at the ACF camp I was attending. In fact, a group of us even rewrote the lyrics to be a comedy of events involving people from our battalion. We even performed the song as part of a show for Christmas that year, it was a good show with staged fights and fake blood the works. Now I have not thought about my Childhood, or my time spent in the ACF for a very, very, very long time. Its amazing that one song can bring back so many memories.
Nostalgia 2.
Yesterday (Thursday) I was working from home in the afternoon, and chatting to an old friend/X-colleague/Training Partner/Fellow Farmyard torrets sufferer PlanetPete. He recently started his own blog over at ChimonTendo, and had imported all his old LiveJournal posts into the archive, and we were reading the Insanity of the olden days, and trying to work out where such pearls of wisdom as “Beware the fuzzy duck with a mongoose on its back” came from.
Nostalgia 3.
This morning before commuting to work I spotted my eldest nephews car parked on my parents drive so I popped over to say hello. He’s been working night shifts down in London Town for the last few weeks, and I was curious to how he was getting on. During the conversation it was mentioned that he may be working in Ireland next week, so I was joking how he’d probably get to Anglesey and get lost. It was then that my mother said she was worried since he often speaks without thinking so could say the wrong thing over there and get in trouble. I defended him by saying its easy to say the wrong thing, and recalled an incident that happened many years ago on my first visit to Dublin.
I was drinking at the bar in a pub with a friend when this young attractive girl came over and sat in my lap, apparently it was a quicker way to get to the crowded bar. So we started talking while she was getting server, well she started telling me about her collection of studded collars and such she had at home, and it started from there. During the conversation she pointed around the room and said “look at them all getting drunk on a Saturday night, its silly really as we have to confess it all in the morning, it makes you wonder why we do it!” to which I answer without thinking “I don’t know. I’m not a catholic!“. Have you ever seen a horror film when the people walk into a Inn on a moor and the whole place goes silent and stare at them? Its what happened, everything went silent, people stared, and I’m sure a group of men in the shadows started to put hands under jackets as if reaching for something. Remember the Catholic-Protestant issues they have over there. Luckily I had the sense of mind to follow it up with “I’m Welsh!” at which the noise returned to the pub, and several blokes came over to greet me and point out the Welsh hate the English as much as they do so I was all right. I then had several hours of drinks and anti-English jokes.
So all in all its been a week of being reminded of my past, who knows what it means, if anything. I will just smile to myself and say to the Verse “Thanks for the memories”.
BT has killed my will to live.
I am sat here, feet on desk, phone resting on my shoulder trying to work out if I can slash my wrists with a business card. Why you ask? Well to fully explain I need to go back over a hour, so sit comfortably and get ready for story time.
The Governor of the Asylum signed up to attend a BT teleconference on their plans to move some of their systems to a newer environment. The only problem was, he decided to be visiting London Town for the scheduled appointment, So I was picked to fill in for him. On paper this sounds like a good thing, a couple of hour conference call where I could legitimately do no work.
I got my login details for the call and noticed the first problem. BT use Microsoft livemeeting for their conference calls, which is fine unless you run a Linux desktop. So for starters I would have to use the audio only phone part of the meeting, meaning I would not see the slides, the presentation or have access to the ongoing Q&A controls.
Feeling slightly annoyed to start off with, I follow the instructions and phone in five minutes before the conference is due to start. And get really annoying hold music which was on a two minute loop of the same tune. This very very annoying hold music continued for almost twenty minutes before the conference started.
Feeling very annoyed, I listen to the conference which seems to be almost fully talking about what we can see on the slides (What slides? audio only remember?). Another irritation was the fact there seemed to be several dozen people giving the talk. You would get one person introduce themselves, say a couple of sentences and then pass on to the next person who would do the same. This went on for over a hour, I lost count of the number of people we switched through.
Sometime in the last twenty minutes I really lost the will to live, since the constant droning in my ear from the voices in the phone are preventing me napping.
Oh, and the meeting, was a let you know what’s going on before the full meeting in January next year? Like I will remember any of this junk by tomorrow, let alone next year.