I think everyone has weird dreams, I know I certainly do. I had a particularly weird one last night, about this blog, it could talk, it wasn’t happy. It decided to rant at me for neglecting it, after all the promises to pay it more attention, to feed it regularly. This seemed to go on for hours until I grew tired of the blog ranting at me and proceeded to pull out a paint gun and shoot the blog right between the eyes. There were so many things wrong with this, a blog doesn’t even have eyes!

When I woke up I came to the decision, I’m either going to give it another go or shoot it between the eyes.

Here I am, giving it another go. I’m still not sure what I want to put here. I may abandon ship yet. I may use the space to keep track of some thoughts or rantings, perhaps both. Either way, don’t stay tuned, better things to read on the internet.

Sony. What a shower of *insert expletive*. A customer dropped in a relatively new (probably about 6/7 months old) Vaio. It had received a bit of a knock and it wasn’t booting to windows anymore, he tried repairing it himself with the built in OS restore. That aside, it semi-wiped the drive and outright failed then. Ok I’ve no problem with that, customers mistake, probably didn’t read the restore warnings, but he wasn’t too bothered about the data, just needed it up and running before leaving the country, or at least to know what can be done about it.

So anyway, I bring it home, try to boot up using windows disks to do a check disk. No joy, constant “Operating System Not Found” warning, despite setting the order of boot to cd first etc.. So fine, not working, time to take out the drive and check it. Hummm no bloody access to the hard disk! To get to the drive I had to take the entire laptop apart. What muppet in Sony designed this! What normally takes 2 mins to remove a hard drive took 20. I thought maybe they designed it this way to keep customers coming back to THEM for repairs, this is just a really bad design. No regular customer would be taking their hard drive out, so why do it?

I can’t just blame Sony for this crappy design, I’ve seen Fujitsu do it too but it was on their older models. Sony seem to be taking a cheap route in their laptop design and building. I hate badly designed goods, it couldn’t have been that more expensive to add an extra panel for easy access. At the very least it’d make it easier for their own staff to assemble, repair or customise laptops. The only reason I’m ranting about this is that Sony were the expensive, quality laptop, now they seem to be going down the Iqon route. I’ll rant about Iqon another time, actually I don’t think there’s a need. Anyone that has repaired, owned or used an Iqon laptop/pc knows how crap they are and how inept the company were.

rant rant rant

Anywho, besides me ranting about crap, I’m now older, kinda only copped it this morning, when thinking about finances for year 3 of college, may be able to get the mature student grant (if the country hasn’t melted by then).

Gonna try and keep this up to date a bit more, preemptive new year resolution. Anywho back to work and study, exams Monday, fun fun…

Ooo also blood update, got an email back eventually from IBTS.ie, the soonest I can give blood in Athlone is… January. wow

Edit/Update: I withdraw my insults about Iqon, while they’re still crap, they can’t beat HP’s wonder Pavillion DV series. Yesterday I recieved yet another DEAD Hp Pavillion Dvxxxx, I’m into the double digits of these laptops that decided to roll over and die. Main cause of the problem seems to be the Nvidia graphics chip, requiring an entire mainboard replacement. Guess what? Most of these laptops I’ve dealt with are out of warrenty and some aren’t covered by the limited add on warrenty hp offered. A total recall of these units should have been performed. I’m offer repairs on a small scale, I wonder how many hp have recieved of these? Also good luck with their tech support staff, not in warrenty, you have to call a premium rate number, then you have to pay for the mainboard replacement, despite it being a widespread fault. Way to go HP, you now take number one position on manufactuers I hate.

Laptop manufacturers listed by hate:

1: HP – For faulty hardware

2: Iqon – For no driver support / no customer support

3: Sony – Bad design

4: Fujitsu Siemens – Selling loads of cheap laptops with Celerons

5: Dell – Feckin Indian tech support, your last name isn’t Smith, it’s something with 6 syllables, don’t lie to me.

The title post was intended to be ironic, so don’t be jumping on my neck, it’s too shiny for that.

Anywho, the reason for this post is the astounding lack of manners from my generation, below and some above. I know now that I’m going to turn into one of those old men who look and tut at the younger generation as they beat and drink themselves stupid while swearing at each other, But well feck it I’m on the way there so why stop.

I work behind a desk, in a shop, in a town. Not a single day goes by, where someone points at something that they want without uttering a word, not to mention the lack of please or thank you. I’m talking about coming into the shop, staring at me, pointing to a computer and sitting down. Then there’s the twats who wander in, grunt “computer upstairs” and wander up there without allowing time for me to give them a number. It’s as if people expect to be waited on hand and foot because they’re a “customer”, I don’t know if it’s just me or society in general, but where the hell have manners gone?

Now I can’t tar everyone with the same brush, I do have quite a few people my age and below that ask politely, don’t even have to say please, it’s just the manner in which it’s done. I’m not asking for everyone to be verbal in their politeness, just a little bit of manners like waiting in the queue, not cutting in front of someone, not cutting in on the conversation while I’m trying to deal with or help someone, not tutting loudly because the person in front is taking more than 5 seconds to pay, yes you’re wearing a suit, but it doesn’t make you any more important.

I’m starting to feel old and grumpy. I don’t like it, but I certainly don’t think it’s acceptable for society to lose its veneer of civilization, wasn’t that the whole point of evolving and culture to better ourselves?

I’m well aware that I’m not the pinnacle of polite/cultured society myself, I swear (a lot) and enjoy dirty jokes, I enjoy watching TV and drinking beer.  The difference between me and the people I complain about is I won’t answer my phone while dealing with someone that I’ve engaged, i.e. a banker, barista, shop assistant. I’ll say thank you when I’m leaving, I don’t throw my wrappers or rubbish on the ground, it’s how I was raised. I’m polite, overly polite at times, but this brings me to the point of my rant. Why does modern society appear to be coming mannerless?  Was it always this way and we’ve never really changed? Maybe I’m just whining too much and should become less polite to people if they’re not willing to show equal respect. Or maybe it’s time to burn the cities down and start again.

Anywho, old man Rob needs some coffee so I’ll wrap this up.

Don’t be an ignorant mannerless twat. Thank you.

I’m back was away for a few days and in general just avoiding being online as much as possible. So frig all going on, back to college in September looking forward to that, well except for the crazy ass fees I’ve got to pay, over 3k

Word of advice, if you’re gonna drop out of college do it in first year, before the year’s over
I originally started college doing a Computing course, a Degree in Computing to be exact, course title changed twice while I was at it. Turned out to be too much business for my liking, I hate business, in the sense of that’s where I’d be heading. I’d like the option to specialise in hardware or software, but not just with business as my target area. I’d be finished college by now if I’d stuck at it, could be working in “business”, feck that. I want to be working with hardware, programming, fixing stuff, not be stuck in a help desk role for all my life, “your spreadsheet isn’t working?”, that in my head is where “business” gets you with computers.

Anywho this turned into a bit of a rant for no real reason. Ah well, all good then

Edit: Just got my form in for my college fees, turns out I made a mistake somewhere, it’s only costing me 2500 instead of over 3k, not as bad

Feckin heat, I hate being overly warm. Unlike most the Irish population I do not look forward to the summer in the hope of a scorcher, I do not look forward to the swelthering heat that leaves everybody gasping for air, like a fish out of water. No, I like the cold, I work better, I feel happier, I don’t get headaches, I get to look forward to being out of the cold or the pissing rain, it’s like a mini reward every time. I am the Irish weather anti-persona, I am the crusader of cold, I am Jacks inflamed sense of rejection… ehh, ok I won’t go down that path

Anyways on a stupid note, why are people still using the bastard child of win 98 and 2000? That’s windows ME for those of you that don’t know it. I’ve a machine sitting behind me that’s buggered, Internet explorer is buggered, so the only option with it is a reinstall (system restore buggered to) it’s all buggered! I seem to get quite a few people in with their windows 98, ME and sometimes 95 systems, get a new computer ffs! blurrrr

Thank feck the painkillers have kicked in

To update on this wonderful working day in Longford I have a riddle for you (and the answer too):

Q: How many kids clad in “designer” track-suits does it take to set up a bebo account?

A: Five, and they wrecked my head every step of the way.

I’m actually surprised at how difficult it was for them to read the basic instructions, pretty dismal if they can’t actually read.  On top of it all no feckin manners. I hate being a desk monkey.

On another note, people are scum. It’s my job to keep an general eye on what’s going on in the Café, make sure people arn’t looking up porn, keep the place tidy etc.. so on a ramble just tidying, keeping a general eye, there’s a guy looking at an escort site taking down numbers. I personally don’t approve of whoresites, but there’s no policy against it, short of dodgy pics, he gets a call and directs someone to where the shop is.

So ten minutes pass, he’s off the site at this point (can see his screen from the desk), and in wanders his wife and kids. Was disgusted, it’s one thing for some guy perving, but a married guy with kids, c’mon. Maybe himself and the wife are into that sort of stuff, but I doubt it.

So here I am in work, just working away fixing a laptop at the desk (I work in an Internet Café), when I get a phone call, a guy calling to ask if I’ll get him a number off a website.

Normally I wouldn’t do this, if you’re not willing to come in and pay to use the computers why should I? But I’m in a relatively good mood, so I say, feck it why not. I ask him the site address, not gonna post it obviously, turns out it’s a feckin Irish escort site, then he blurbs out, “just give me the number of any of the girls there”. Jesus feckin Christ, who the hell rings up a random Internet Café looking for escort numbers??? Of course I didn’t give him any number, I don’t think it was a prank call either, as there was no laughing.

Not as strange as the guy who asked me to look up womens knickers before. I love my customers.

Ok so I wrote this rant years and it still holds true to this day, people never learn. I need content and I’m a bit on the hughover side (fun last night ) so this is a copy and paste from my bebo page written over a year and a half ago.

As the title says how not to piss me off in work (this is not directed at friends but is more of a rant than anything).

1) Don’t complain about the price of things after you’ve used a non-essential service, i.e. an Internet Café. No the price shouldn’t be what you think it should be, the price is what it’s displayed ON THE PRICE LIST, the same thing you checked when you came in!

2) Wait your bloody turn, I can only do one thing at a time. Don’t demand that I go help you especially when i’m busy with another customer.

3) Please don’t try to argue that after an hour you couldn’t log into your email and therefore you shoudln’t have to pay, no matter how many times you shout or raise your voice.

4) When wearing headphones try and remember that you don’t have to shout when talking to the person next to you.

5) Just because I work in an Internet Cafe doesn’t mean it’s ok to wander off the street and ask me what is the best broadband provider, how much they charge and what speeds they have. Do you walk into a shoe shop and ask who their supplier is and how much they charge? I thought not.
I have no problem giving advice to people I have seen at least once or twice before but not just random people.

6) Nobody wants to hear your music. Especially from a mile away, if ya want to go deaf you’re on the way. They’re personal music players, I do not want to hear your thumping dance music, I get enough of it from the passing cars. And what the hell is with that squeaky voice dance crap?

7) Pen + Monitor + Idiot = Angry Rob

8) Chairs are for sitting on oddly enough. Balancing on one leg is fantastic, until you fall over and try to claim for being an idiot. (The braindamage was there before they fell over, I swear.)

9) I am not a low cost babysitter. Don’t even think about leaving your kids here unattended, while you go off shoe shopping. I’ll call the social welfare people.

10) Last but not least, do you think it’s acceptable to be looking up porn in a public place? Well here’s a hint, it isn’t.

This has been an AngryBob Industries PSA