On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 14:19:49 -0700, John Southern wrote:
One thing is that if any arsehole ask for electricial work doing on the
side i can polietly tell them i cannot do it. People expect u to carry
out skilled time consuming work for next to nothing at there beck and
call. When part P comes into force they will have to dig deep into there
pockets to pay an approved contractor to carry out the works. Such as
recently i was going to do a partial rewire of a house so i bought some
materials ready for the job but the arsehole client decides that he
doesnt want it doing anymore. Wont ever be doing any odd jobs from now
on i shall be sticking to my streetlighting and doing no electricial
work outside of working hours.
Jon.
[major OT rant coming]
Mate, I sympathise... Try being a computer specialist:
programmer/sysadmin/hardware bod/network admin/web designer... doesn't
matter. I'm a Linux systems programmer/admin, but it's all the same to
them... All it is is "oo, he's into computers..."
"INTO" - WTF is that!? I've spent over 20 years learning my trade... And
still do as it's ever changing...
Imagine Jon, someone saying "oo, you're into 'electrics'" then asking you
to fix the TV/put a plug on/set up their home cinema/rewire the entire
house. Oh, and you have to use all the B&Q "value" parts they already
bought themselves because "there was this sale, you see..." And they never
bothered to read the instructions, because "it's hard" and after all, "we
knew you were into electrics". Pah.
Anyway, soon as someone gets a wiff, it's "my computer's broken... Could
you have a look?" Or "my random associate's daughter's friend's computer
is being a bit slow..." Erm, no.
So far this year I've had to fix/reinstall far too many random worm
infested PCs running MicroBloody**** Windoze in my road alone this year
(did I say I'm a Linux specialist - it's not without reason...) Each one
can take a full day - that adds up fast. And they always want something
else looked at, just when you think it's all done.
And the parents'. And the wife's friends'. Now, I'm not a tight sod
ordinarily. Parents deserve help. Neighbours are nice and I can call on
some quid-pro-quo from their specialisms.
But it does get a bit much. I've even been probed at funerals for advice
FFS.
They *need* a Part W (Wazzock) for Computer Ownership along the lines of:
"Are you a Wazzock who will buy a piece of crud from Tiny (=Yugo) just
because it came with a free dodgey printer, 5 "lite" (=crap) programs and
a feeble excuse for an OS (=WinME) just because the salesoik said it had
"Intel inside" (and the cheapest video, nastiest audio and shortest lifed
noisiest disk they could find)?
Will you then *never* service it (Windows Update - come on, even MS tried
to make that easy so a complete 'nana could manage it...)
Will you make no effort (not even a tiny bit) to learn at least a little
bit about it, treating it instead as a HiFi: "what button makes it do
blah???"
Will you then connect it to broadband so you can get your pr0n faster and
bombard me constantly with the faeces of your worms/viruses/trojans?
Look at my Apache Web Server log from last month:
************************************************** ******
access_log.1:81.243.224.135 - - [20/Sep/2004:21:06:42 +0100] "GET
/d/winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+dir HTTP/1.0" 404 467 "-" "-"
access_log.1:81.243.224.135 - - [20/Sep/2004:21:06:42 +0100] "GET
/scripts/..%255c../winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+dir HTTP/1.0" 404 481 "-" "-"
access_log.1:81.243.224.135 - - [20/Sep/2004:21:06:42 +0100] "GET
/_vti_bin/..%255c../..%255c../..%255c../winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+dir
HTTP/1.0" 404 498 "-" "-"
and so on...
************************************************** ******
Come on, that's getting old now... And that's from Brussels, not the 3rd
world...
I could start about the standards of "drivers" on the A21 too, but I feel
better for a good rant
Timbo