Festering
Posted: Mon 24 October, 2005 Filed under: Festering Season, Thoughts 2 Comments »
You know, I have to say that at the moment the level of Festering Season guff around really isn’t too bad – or hasn’t been for me, anyway.
Normally by the start of October there’s been Festive Tat all over the place, but somehow this year I seem to be not seeing too much of it. Yeah, the bloody DIY stores have their displays out of manky neon and sparkly Santas, but the shops haven’t (yet) started overflowing with tinsel and toss. No bad thing.
Instead they seem to be going for Halloween in a big way – the local Tesco in particular has huge numbers of jack-o’lantern buckets and all sorts of rubbish. But I don’t mind that too much, even though it’s an Americanisation (is that a word?) that owes its entire UK existence to ET.
If nothing else it’s meant I can get to within a fortnight of my birthday, and not yet be sick of Christmas. That’s better than it has been in the last couple of years…
OEM
Posted: Mon 24 October, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »One other (hopefully final) thing that annoyed me during the installation of the new Shuttle PC was this :
I ordered the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) version of Windows XP Pro to go with the PC. Basically, for those who don’t know, the OEM version is basically just the software without all the bells and whistles of packaging, manuals, and all the nice customer-friendly stuff that you don’t really need. It’s packaging for people who are building their own PC – and it’s a buttload cheaper than getting the full “consumer experience”. And that’s all well and good.
However it comes in a cardboard box that’s plastered all over with “Don’t open this box ’til you’ve verified that you’ve been sent the correct version, as an opened box is non-returnable” and “if you open this box, you agree to the following licence agreement” – all the normal guff. But of course on the box there’s nothing on the outside of the box to tell you which version of Windows you’ve got. So you’ve got to open the box to find out, at which point you can’t return it if the suppliers have fucked up, and you’ve accepted the licence at that point too.
Fortunately, I’d received the version that I’d ordered – but I didn’t know that until I’d already accepted everything by having to open the keffing box.
I thought that these “you’ve got to open the box to read the licence that you’ve agreed to by opening the box” methods had been retired, but it looks like they’re still going strong.
Floppy
Posted: Mon 24 October, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 2 Comments »Out of interest, why do we still need to use floppy discs for driver installs and the like? The CD drive works fine, so I could use that. A USB stick would work fine too – but no, the Windows installer insists that the drivers be on a floppy in drive A: – no other options exist. Why?
It just seems like such an archaic thing to have – and it’s a pain, too. I don’t see the point in having an up-to-date latest-tech box that still needs a floppy drive. Up ’til this weekend I haven’t used a floppy in years – with the one exception of the server installs at CrapCo, which had the same thing, they needed a driver installed for the RAID stuff. And that’s it – the floppy drive will never be used again. Everything either gets burned onto a CD (or even a DVD now) or saved on the USB stick.
So – what’s the use of having a floppy drive, other than putting in these one-off drivers?
Chuffers
Posted: Mon 24 October, 2005 Filed under: Travel Leave a comment »Bloody trains – after doing so well for most of the year, as soon as the weather officially turns to shit, so does the service. On Friday I was half an hour late, and today it was quarter of an hour late.
The thing is, I swear you can hear the Random Excuse Generator kicking in…
Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m sorry to announce that the 8.50 to Reading is delayed by 15 minutes because of …
[clickety clickety]
… a short problem with the signalling equipment.
And you can just hear the thought process of “Oh, yeah, signalling equipment, that’s a good one. I’ll use that, and we’ll stick with it for this train. Now, what can we have for the next one, that’s basically “delayed because it’s behind the one that’s already running late“, but we can’t say that…”