Work

Well, I'm here. Not a lot to report. Went to my first workshop on scripting in OS X, which was amazingly informative and filled in a lot of little blank spots in what I'd worked out so far. I expect the amount of tiny little OS X applications I produce to increase (from "none" to "some") soon.

I'm staying at the Mercure Sydney again. I love that hotel, I really do. For those of you who need a little more jealousy in your lives (you know who you are), here are some photos.

My Humble Room


The View From My Balcony

In about 8 hours, I'll be getting on a train and heading for Sydney. It's a work thing, so I doubt I'll see much of the place outside of the conference, but what the hell.

Once I get net access sorted out, I'll post pictures here for the vicarious enjoyment of you all. I'll be back Saturday morning.

I'll be confirming things tomorrow morning, but at this stage it looks like I'll be going back to work at Monash next year. This should be good. Of course, the Eris-care arrangements will be a little tricky, especially over the school holidays, since Lisa and I will both be working full-time.

Well, I'm sure we'll figure it out. It'll be nice to have a job where Eris can actually come in to work with me occasionally. She loves it over there.

Wheee!

This is a post I made on the Something Awful Forums the other day. The thread ended up getting gassed, so I'm putting it up here instead. I had way too much fun writing it.

SmotPokinNinja posted: Problem wit da internets!!!

I'm having a weird-ass problem with my internets... my comp. says it's connected and working properly, but none of my programs that use the internet (IE, Steam, ext.) seem to detect it. I've renewed my IP address and reset my internet settings, but nothing seems to help. Anyone got any ideas?

PS- I'm using my roommates comp. to post this... because my internets doesn't work!

My five-year-old daughter reminded me the other day that I "work for the internets", so I am obviously qualified to answer this ...

Why is it that when people are talking to a technical support person, they suddenly lose any capacity for rational thought? I run people through the process of setting up their email accounts in Outlook fairly regularly. There is a part of the user interface that, for some reason, is incomprehensible.

I just wish I had a dollar for every person who has asked me what to put in the "Your Name" field. I mean, I can understand, to some extent, being uncertain about your email address. I am always ready to answer questions about POP3 servers and the "Secure Password Authentication" checkbox. These things require a degree of experience, but surely these people can handle "Your Name"?

Apparently, this question takes on strange nuances when posed by a computer instead of a person. Here is an example from today:

Mike: "OK, click 'Next'. You'll see a lot of fields to fill out."
Customer: "Right."
(pause)
Customer: "What goes in 'Your Name'?"
Mike: "Your name."
Customer: "Ah, OK."

All I need to do is to repeat what the screen says, and they suddenly know the answer. People are strange.

Domain name of the day: heroinaddiction.biz

Email highlight: "I no how to spell ..."

Someone mailed work's support email address today with the question, "What is the country code for the United States?"

There was a great temptation to reply with a message body consisting solely of "1". Nobody could fault me for that, right?

Also from the queue:

i nid my pass wor and my user name please send