Hold everything! The new computer has just arrived! Time to celebrate...and feel like this, or maybe just plain old this, or possibly (as manly as I am) be here.

Who cares? Not me matey, I have a bit of work to do, then it's time to lose myself in the 120MB HD.....trail off to meaningless specs and sounds of tearing packaging....

I realise that I seem to ask a lot of questions on this blog, but I really, really, REALLY have to know.....What?

News fresh in, the snow has decided to come early and get in the way of any computery delivery antics of any UPS people that may be hanging around in the neighbourhood.

Glumness

OOoo that was a bit arty......

I was out when my new PC from heaven was supposed to be delivered. NOOOoooo. Just picture it...

A dark mail room somewhere, and the light shining in through the small barred window, onto the corner of a frightened, quietly sobbing box of computer filled lovelyness... And TO CAP IT ALL, IT'S GOING TO SNOW HEAVILY TOMORROW, AND THEY MAY NOT BE ABLE TO DELIVER IT ANYWAY!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHH!....and every other cliched scene where someone is having a bad day, with the camera slowly moving out from their mouth and ending up in outer space, accompanied by a long wail and positively NO full stops in the overly long sentance!

What am I to do with 2.8Ghz and 120GB HD sitting just downtown somwhere, at a secret location, being snowed in here with my pathetic dial up, unable to benchmark the crap out of my new motherboard. It even has a clear sided case just to be really show-offy!

Hang on, here's a pic of me in my current mood.

Perhaps I am usually like this?

But mostly like this.

Can I have one please?

The facilitating gets more 'interesting'. I am beggining to discover every single computer lab in the country restricts the users of their computers so much that they become little more than net browsing machines, which you can also write M$ Word documents on. No wonder city governments moan about supplying technology to their particular masses.....

"Hey lets get people empowered, by using computers."

"Sounds great! Then everyone will be happier in our town."

"It should only cost a few hundred thousand, but think of what people will be able to do"

"Yes, they will all be computer literate, and be better placed in today's world of ever complicating technology"

Months later.....

"Hey where is everyone?"

"Dunno, but that lab cost us a fortune!"

Would it have something to do with the small fact that the computers in these places are so restricted (in the name of vandalism) that nobody can get any real use out of them? Never even come close to simulating what a real computing experience is like. Some people still believe computers are too complicated and expensive to deal with. This way I think they will for ever more!

But there is a cunning plan in the works.... cue evil laugh and swishing black cape, while exiting stage left at the end of act I

And that evil plan has something to do with letting people in a lab know that there actually IS a right mouse button, and a file directory, that they CAN access.

Oo I am so annoyed I almost exceeded my measly bandwidth then for a moment..

Great news! The idiots at Verizon have decided that they will make us wait until the 13th of Feruary until they can get the DSL back. No, I don't understand it either! They are fast approaching an all time new record to replace AOL as number one on my, "What are they on this planet for?" list.

Day three, must.....use.....essential....words...only......dial....access.....slow...... you get the idea? It's like the point in the movie when they know they only have limited oxygen, but someone always insists on doing the minor-supporting-actor-losing-it-bigtime-scene. I say nya nya, to dial up limitations and blog on regardless.

Oops, gotta go, I have a 3k advertising banner to wait for....

A big thankyou to all the stupid f*ckwits at Verizon for giving the worlds most pathetic excuse for not supplying my DSL. Thanks to them I now have to wait until the 6th of February until I get back at full speed. In the beginning it was ok, as they kept saying, "Oh, sorry for the mix up, here have another reduced/free months rental etc". These days, even that is wearing just a LITTLE thin. I don't want anymore free anything, because they promise something is so, and then turns out it isn't like that at all. I just want it to work correctly in the first place. And I have given up asking them THREE times during every conversation, "So what you're saying is x,y and z...?" Because all you get is, "Yes of course it is sir". Then without warning, you are reminded of something through the post, and when you call and say, "Your operator (giving specific name) said this would be fine and it was all taken care of", they say, "Oh well it isn't, so we will have to do it all over again."

Editing a rant from this page, I should just like to add, that we were told, "We have to do physical work to get your DSL back online."

BIG PUZZLED LOOKS ALL AROUND. "But we HAD DSL this morning, and you have only just cut it off now!"

"It's not the number, it's the phone line, and that DSL was connected to a discontinued number"

"Thats your fault, connect it now!"

"We can't as someone has to go there and do something with a wire."

Cutting loads of pointless, "Well we HAD IT THIS MORNING" from this....it went further...

"What are we going to do? I need the net for work."

"Dial up"

Supressing loads of moaning about dial up, we then get passed back and forth between apparently same company departments, which amazingly cannot deal with a connected problem as they don't deal with that area....... this is wasting time SERIOUSLY now.....

After finally getting a dial up number, we find it doesn't connect. Calling the SAME department back, they say, "Oh we don't have a local access number for your city" I don't want to give away my location, but let me just say it's a major metropolitan city, which everyone on the planet has seen in the movies....

Much goading into getting them to look at the number list again and again resulted in even managing to extract more than one number, which a minute ago didn't actually exist. Extracting as in the proverbial teeth pulling version of someone who has brushed, flossed AND rinsed between every BREATH!

And that brings me to this page today, under the steam driven version of onlinedness, trying not to think of all the things I am NOT going to be doing without my DSL, WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Boo hoo!

Well, inbetween the commutes from hell, I saw the Cancer Man and Audrey Roberts today while at lunch! They were crossing the road together opposite the deli I was in. In fact Audrey appeared to recognize me, and waved frantically through the window....to which I did of course continue to not react at all.