Lost in the ether....

I no longer exist!!

This morning I arrived at work nice and early (well the roads were quiet) and traipsed up to my desk, fell into my seat and switched on the computer..... and then tried to log in......... "user and or password not recognised".... Eh..... so I check my log in id and re-type my password (which is stupidly long but not that complicated - my former dogs pedigree names combined with birth dates are very useful sometimes) ... and nothing... so I log a call to IT..... eventually, apparently no one answers the phone till 9 am in IT... never mind that I start at 8.30 am.... only to be told they have a major server/network issue and some users are finding it difficult to log on .... no really?  Oh IT bods, you do surprise me with your intellect sometimes!

Roll forward an hour..... by which time I am bored out my tiny mind having had to resort to filing *shudder*..... and I phone the IT team back....... oh yes, we are fixing the problem, they tell me, only you don't exist....... eep!!

Was I fired and no one told me? Or more seriously, am I lost in the ether, condemned to roam around the broken and frayed ends of decaying networks, amid the scraps of data and lost bits of virtual memory for ever more??....... Thanks to the power of my smart phone I was able to connect with the usual subjects, who were willing to send out a virtual search party to find me........ I am not sure why they automatically thought the best place to look would be the gutter though?? Though something about me being a collector of dinted halos, mistress of the hell hounds, hunter of pocket demons and collector of smut had something to do with it...... I don't know where people get these ideas about me from!

Alas, as far as work goes, I tried to persuade the powers that be that I should have the say off..... but instead was handed a Dictaphone machine and told to get on with my work........ 

Hopefully by tomorrow normal service will have resumed and I will in fact exist once more!

May Day! May Day!

Ok, well it isn't really.... or at least not in the terms of it being May 1st..... however, erm, there might have been a minor SOS call this morning as my amazing powers of destruction surfaced again.

Why is it nearly always kitchen appliances?  Is there a Goddess of Electrical Kitchen Appliances that I've seriously managed to piss off somehow??

My kettle was not that old, okay, it was I think almost got to a year, which in general terms isn't old (I think my sister's was a moving in present about 7 years ago).  Then again, in terms of surviving in my kitchen well for an electrical item to get to almost a year is I suppose a minor miracle....

This morning it gave up the ghost, and for once I did nothing stupid (why yes, I have killed kettles with carelessness in the past with the whole - not awake, switch on kettle, bugger no water, hiss, bang - thing).  I am not actually sure what happened this morning, save for the base, which houses the heating element thing that wasn't like a proper old fashioned heating element but rather a sort of well, anyway, I'm not sure exactly, but it kind of melted, and then when the water seeped through it shorted the electric bit and there was a bit of a fizzle and some smoke and a horrible smell........ and then the lights fused, the house alarm went off and the critters all dived for cover (the last part happens every time I manage to do so much as blow a light bulb mind)

I have been out and bought a new kettle - another value type one because I refuse to pay vast sums of money for things that keep exploding on me for no fault of my own - anyone want to place bets as to how long this one lasts.......

It wasn't me....

..... I didn't do it!

Now I know I have these amazing powers to making things electrical go, erm, fizzz *bang* ... but that only applies to domestic items, like kettles, microwaves, power tools yes....

I can't possibly be held responsible for getting to the check out with my groceries on the way home from work this evening, having them put through the till and then, just as I am about to hand over the money............ all the electrics going off on the tills, the alarms sounding and the lights going off.........

It only took a minute for the back up generators to come on and power up the stores' tills, freezers and chiller cabinets.....

Whilst everyone else was looking a bit shell shocked and bemused I'm afraid to say I got the giggles, rather a lot......which earned me some very very strange looks as I was still giggling when I finally paid and got out the store!

*bang*...Oh no not again.........

Deja Vu, that sense of been here before.... yep, and in fact I had, and not so long ago.... This morning, post dog walk and before showering I was merrily reading on the Kindle whilst I tried to thin the amount of blood in my caffeine stream, then I switched off the device and stowed it in the handbag for later.  On getting to work with 10 minutes to spare before I have to look like I am actually working I thought to myself, ooh good, I can finish that chapter... so I fished out the Kindle, switched the on switch and....... half of the screen saver froze across the screen....

Queue frantic soft booting, hard booting, glaring at it as though it's got some sort of personal grudge against me... tweeting about it and then phoning up the help desk.  Well after being accused of dropping it, or getting it wet, they declared that this Kindle is in fact dead.

I am beginning to think this can only happen to me... I thought 5 weeks of ownership before death was some sort of record with the last one.... but this didn't even get to 4 weeks of ownership....(one friend did suggest that it died of shock from the amount of smut that I put on it... but I know I am not the only one who has this level of smut and their Kindle's don't die!)

A replacement is on it's way to me and should be here by Saturday.....I wonder how long this one will last.... I think I might knit it a cover to keep it warm and cosy and persuade it that I luffs it really so that it will stay with me a bit longer.....

Or am I just doomed to add Kindles to the list of things that can only cope with me for a few weeks before going bang... like the kettle, and the microwave... and the hair dryer....

Judgement by reading material....

My Kindle has (well before I managed to at some point today completely kill it stone dead so that even after 3 hours charging, a short reboot, a longer reboot, a moan to the service desk guy called Richard and some general swearing it would only show me the screen saver..... in Richard the service desk guy's words "Ah, I think we'll just put it down as "dead from unknown causes" and send you a replacement....... yep 5 weeks it managed... I wonder if that's some sort of record?)... anyway, sorry I digress....

My Kindle had the ability for me to tweet to say I'd just read a book and to comment briefly on it... now I'd considered doing this, given that I personally have no problems with what I am reading, but then I thought of my twitter followers - including work colleagues, net friends, random dog and cat people, generally random people and the odd spam bot/person trying to sell me strange and exotic items I don't require - and I thought to myself, erm, no perhaps not...

Now is this wrong?  I am not ashamed of what I am reading... but I know that it will cause some raised eyebrows amongst some of my followers, particularly those who came from a website for children's books, some of which are also quite, well, narrow minded. Whilst they might tweet about the latest chick lit/GO or other book (slow cooker recipes it was last week) I just read it and think not for me and move on, I wonder how many would perhaps investigate the books I was reading and it cause a raised eyebrow or worse?.... It shouldn't really matter what someone else is reading, and conversely I shouldn't care about what someone else thought of my reading material, which is making me feel a bit conflicted, possibly even disloyal to the genre I am reading the most of at present.

I firmly believe in the philosophy of "my kink is not your kink, but I have no problems with your kink" which I think can be applied to all aspects of a persons life rather than just on the whole kink referring to BDSM or any other lifestyle.... and probably because I am extremely broad minded and insatiably curious (read as nosey if you wish) about well, almost anything that might pique my interest, I do tend to look into things, research, consider and sometimes experience things that perhaps others would shy away from.

I would also never judge some one for what their "kink" was.... even if it was down to simply reading material.  The problem I have though is a, possibly unfair, thought of... but what if they are judging me... until I work out not whether they are judging me but whether I actually give a toss that if they are I shall just keep my reading material to myself (oh, and blog readers, and Goodreads followers, and anyone who ever visits my book room....)

A silly little post.......

In the three and a bit years I've been in my current job I have had one keyboard, it has been broken in lovingly and is perfect

It has survived floods (me spilling coffee on it mainly), earthquakes (me dropping files on or next to it), foreign invasions (me dropping things like staples, paper clips etc into it.... see it's a much more resilient keyboard than the one on my lap top, in which the ctrl key lost the battle with the nail clipping from the dog that got under it... and yes, I have learnt my lesson and make sure it's shut before I do the dogs nails now). It even survived repeated attempts by Facilities to remove it on the grounds that because the little white letters have rubbed off the black keys .. why yes, I have a funky keyboard, the background is silver...apparently not having legible letters breaches health and safety or some such nonesense (like I need the letters, I touch type, hell I'm sitting in the book room in the dark typing this)

But alas, today it met it's match as an avalanche of cous-cous salad arrived suddenly over it, a direct result of trying to type one handed whilst eating lunch and accidentally catching the lunch box and sending it flying.  I tried to resurrect it, but I fear Facilities were already on the look out as when I asked for air spray, anti bac and other cleaning things they magically arrived, pronounced it dead and took it away.

I shall miss that keyboard....... I might have accidentally written most of my first novel using it (but we won't mention that to work)

Thwarted by technology

Sometimes I just fail when it comes to technology.

Last night, got home from work, sorted out the critters, did a bit of cleaning, sat down in front of the lap top ready to check mail, do some surfing and then write.... no net connection...

So I went through the routine of rebooting laptop, going upstairs and rebooting the modem, nothing.... so I phoned the broadband people... whose call centre lurks in some other country... to be told, oh all our systems are down, try again in two hours!!  Arghhhh! 

So I wrote for a bit, then tried again, and still they couldn't help.  So I stropped about for a while and went to bed early with a book.

I waited until 6am to phone the call centre back... and spent half an hour playing around with cables, ably assisted by the cats .... it's actually quite hard to switch wires between modem, router and pc box whilst bent around the corner of a desk, balancing a phone between your ear and your shoulder, with a cat determined to sit in the middle of your back or get between your hands and eyes!

Anyway, it appears my router is playing silly buggers... and as it's not one provided by the broadband people, they basically said, yep, thanks not our problem, good luck with that.......

I have managed to get the net connection on the desk top pc upstairs... but that's not particularly helpful as my "workspace" (ok, yes, kitchen table with lap top on, with wall filled with pictures, lyrics and stuff) is downstairs... if I try and work upstairs then rent-a-mob raise strong objections and threaten to find new homes where their owner doesn't abandon them.. they are quite vocal about it.

Add to that, when I got into work I realised that any website that has any form of age restriction/warning automatically triggers the "Naughty Internet User" warning, anything you can buy something from is also blocked, and to add insult to injury something they've done with the filters means that I can't get Twitter up properly either...... so dammit it looks like I am going to have to do real work, all day, without a break...