Travelling

Yes, I’m away again this weekend. Updates may be sporadic (good word) but we’ll see. And my heavy reading for the journey? After the hassles earlier this week, it just had to be a refresher on TCP/IP. Oh dear. Who was it said something about needing to get out more? Well, this is what happens when I do – while I’m going there, I’ll still descend into basic ubergeekdom.

Sunny D-Shite

Interesting today to see that Procter and Gamble has flogged off Sunny Delight to a bunch of US Investors. (The Grauniad didn’t name them, but the P & G press release names them as J W Childs, a Boston-based private equity firm)

In some ways I’m not surprised that it’s been sold off – it had bad press from day one, but at the same time, it still has annual sales of $550m, which is hardly chicken-feed.

Prettifying

Ye gods, I despair sometimes. Today will be spent making an utterly functional piece of web application into a pretty version. The voices from On High want it to look pretty. Apparently (according to them) auditors care more about how something looks than whether it works OK. I don’t believe them, but there we go – what would I know?

So it’s all about prettifying, about a nice clickable interface that looks good. It doesn’t add any functionality, so it’s likely to be the ubiquitous Waste of Money, but hey, the auditors won’t care about that. They’ll want it to look good.

And of course they won’t pay any attention to the fact that the Senior Management never even look at the results from this application, which is all about performance indicators and the like. Nah, that’s irrelevant. So long as it looks good.

Return to Type

Meh. That’s all my brain said at 7am today. Meh. Loudly, and repeatedly. It’s been networked out for the last three days, installing a complete wireless network, plus server, router, access point, and ADSL modem. The network side worked fine. The connection to the ADSL modem didn’t. It’s taken two days to sort out, and it’s still a tempramental piece of crap.

I’m stumped as to why. Monday will involve another visit to the site (possibly with a hammer) because last night it died – and hasn’t come back – for no reason at all. The entire thing had been shut down and rebooted (including to power-off level) three times, and was fine. Then for no good reason, it just died. The router/access point can see the modem, and communicate with it. But the modem doesn’t want to communicate with the outside world. And there’s no reason I can see for it.

I hate networks and networking. I can do the basics – and the wireless network side has worked fine, even with WEP, SSIDs and the lot, it’s all connecting fine. One computer keeps deciding to lose it’s workgroup, which is a pain in the bum, but the network is fine. It’s just the connection to the ADSL that’s a cunt. And when it gets to that kind of problem, it’s just a nightmare for me – considering that networking is supposed to be logical and easy, it’s the most complicated, user-hostile and illogical occurrence ever. I hate it – because it doesn’t make sense.

I’d also like to point out that the fuckhead who decided that things like routers and modems should have web-accessible interfaces deserves a kick in the bollocks with pointy stilettos. Accessing the different bits when only one is working, or when gateways are chuffed is a total nightmare of constantly altering IP addresses and the like.

I’m just immensely thankful that I’ve got a couple of friends who are pretty damn good at network-based stuff, and who are prepared to help me when I’m out of my depth. One of them I know owe big-time for helping bail me out yesterday. And yes, I find it strangely comforting to hear them saying “What the hell?” as well – it means it’s not just me making a stupid mistake.