11.04.08: The Laptop Saga, Bloody Ridic, Ian In Charge, Fake Charm and Mystery Wifi

Streaming Song Of The Day: Lips Of An Angel - Hinder

So, close followers of this blog will know I killed my laptop on Wednesday night.  Clever huh?  So, after a day of using the eee PC to blog, I decided enough was enough.  I needed a real laptop.  Yes, I know the eee PC is a real laptop, but it's not enough for blogging.  It doesn't have the grunt for it.  This said, it rocks for watching BBC iPlayer content (the player window near as damnit fills the screen)  So, I remembered I had a virtually dead Sony Vaio which my dad rescued from a skip and I salvaged for my mother, who promptly ignored it.  BUT, it runs Puppy Linux 2.15CE which has PCMCIA drivers for the Atheros card I have.  And Puppy Linux reads and writes to NTFS natively.  So, I am now blogging from the Vaio.  It sucks, big time, but it's better than the eee PC for blogging.  Plus I have access to my backup of the blog files which were stored to my 500gb external HD a few days before I killed the main laptop.  And a mix of this laptop and the eee PC will be a replacement for the main laptop until I get paid in a couple of weeks (things are verging on the dire financially...)

We had a great, arrogant woman in last night.  She strutted into the store, and glared at me and said "You will sell me wine, right?"  I told her I wouldn't and she said  "Oh come on!  All I want is a few bottles of wine" So I explained how the tills won't scan alcohol after 11pm.  So she turned to her friend and said "Oh, come on, let's go, this is bloody ridic, a 24 hour supermarket that won't sell alcohol after 11pm!"  I have to admit, she took me by surprise on many levels.  Firstly, we're not a supermarket, we're a garage.  Secondly, wnd ho the hell uses "ridic" anymore?  Thirdly, WHY does it still surprise people that we can't sell alcohol after 11pm?  It's becoming less and less common that we have to tell people this.  But every so often we run into yet another idiot who can't get that when the pubs stop selling alcohol, so do most other places.

Now, people who know me, or even just read this blog regularly will know I am a fairly even tempered guy.  Get along with me, and I will get along with you.  Start on me, and I will start a war with you.  And you will lose.  So, Laura is going to be a casualty of war.  The moronic chavtastic pig dog has demoted me again from stand in supervisor to regular CSA.  That I don't care about.  I am glad that Ian is going to get all the crap from management.  Anyone who isn't me is welcome to it.  BUT, what has annoyed me is that Pete gets an hour off for Boys Club.  Alan gets an hour off for Boys Club.  Kelly gets an hour off for Boys Club.  I don't.  Damnit, I am CHAIRMAN!  But it's fine, you want to play with fire, you can deal with the consequences.  I'm going to suggest we have the meeting at a nearby pub (suck it) and then, after said meeting, I am going to have a chat with Pete about Psycho Chav.  And tell him if I don't get satisfactory answers to my questions about Miss Piggy's behaviour towards me, I'll be sending a far from anonymous e-mail to the bullying department requesting an investigation.  As I said, start on me, you get a war.

Then I had a really bizarre encounter.  The bar manager from Shorefields (they get a link because Mike works there) came in and tried using fake charm on me.  I work in retail, I use fake charm all the time.  Smiling at customers I hate.  Using soft tones.  Telling drunks to have a nice evening.  Laughing with "cute" girls whilst thinking of my girlfriend.   So this guy comes in and starts giving me the whole fake smile, soft tones "Hi there mate".  I don't do it to other people in retail, namely because I know time serving customers gives you a very accurate BS detector.   So, I decide that the only sensible course is indifference.  Which I lay on thickly no smiles, regular tone, nothing out of the ordinary.  He leaves looking very confused. 

Lastly, I have a really bizarre story for you.  We have Wifi at work.  Not ours.  A community Wifi thing.  It's good, about a 4mbps connection.  Anyway, we have a community housing project near us, which I assumed housed this project.  So, I moved the eee PC closer to the estate in our loading bay.  The connection dropped to 0%.  So I moved to the middle of the loading bay and found that the connection shot up to 64%.  So, why is this a wierd thing?  Well, conventional wisdom states that Wifi has a range of about 100m or so.  I am talking without modification.  100m from where we are is trees.  And road.  But mostly trees.  Trees which form part of the 400 square mile New Forest.  Which leads me to 3 possible explainations.
1) They have shoved a waterproof router onto the railway bridge (possible)
2) They have put a waterproof, fox, badger and deer proof router in the forest (far fetched)
3) Aliens (likely)
Tags: Puppy Linux, Ridic, Demotion, Chavtastic, Meraki Wifi
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