A question for you computer repair people and builders: How long does it take you to fit a stick of RAM? 2 minutes? Less than that?

My web-hosts; fasthosts.co.uk, probably the slowest hosts in the known universe, must hold the record for the longest time ever taken to fit a stick of RAM, with the assistance of some red tape: -

(Actual times are approximate and recalled from memory to the best of my ability.)

Monday 14th September 2009 – Day 1

After a weekend of repeated sudden server crashes I hire an engineer at fasthosts.co.uk – my web-hosting company – to look into the matter and try and sort it out. He reports back that my blog is overtaxing the server with its current resources, and says that although he has managed to suppress the Apache’ server’s processes somewhat, he recommends that I either reduce the complexity of the blog, or have the server upgraded.

My experience with servers, prior to hiring this dedicated Linux server, is nil. My experience with Ubuntu Linux prior to hiring this Ubuntu Linux server is not a lot to say the least.

As a Fasthosts customer; a Google for “fasthosts are crap” will terrify you more than the first time you watched the film “The Evil Dead” as a teenager back in the 1980s, and then walked home alone across a dark deserted heathland in the early hours of the morning straight afterwards. (– Yes, I did exactly that, and ruined a pair of knickers doing it.)

Monday 14th September 2009 – Day 1 22:00 HRS: 

Having given the engineer’s report a lot of thought, combined with my own findings, I decide to have the server upgraded. Having just shelled out one hell of a lot for the engineer’s fee, I contact Fasthosts, and  as I arrange to have the server’s RAM upgraded I am told that the fee for doing so is more than it would cost me to buy 3GB of DDR2 1200MHz.

The upgrade is seemingly a necessity, and is agreed upon anyway eventually after negotiations. I am told that the job is queued.

Tuesday 15th September 2009 – Day 2 11:39 HRS:

I notice that the server has crashed again. I reboot the server from my remote control panel and phone Fasthosts to enquire when the RAM upgrade is scheduled for. Their answer is vague; only that it is queued and will be carried out ASAP.

Wednesday 16th September 2009 – Day 3: Time relative

An uneventful day as such, where the server behaves itself and doesn’t crash. Visitor numbers are back to normal due to the absence of downtime. I notice that the RAM upgrade still hasn’t been carried out, and so I chase it up. I am informed that the matter has been referred to a manager to give final approval to the result of the earlier negotiations over the exorbitant cost of the operation. I am told that it’s almost a certainty that this will be approved; though I feel a little uncertainty due to this extra unexpected piece of red tape.

Thursday 17th September 2009 – Day 4: Time unspecified.

Another server crash in the early morning goes unnoticed by myself until around 14:00 hours. I reboot the server and once again phone Fasthosts; who assure me that the upgrade operation has been given the green light and is queued. I phone again at around 18:00 HRS: The result of this call being that the upgrade itself is scheduled by negotiation between myself and their dedicated server support representative to take place at 23:00HRS BST, and should take no more than 1/2 hour. I write a post informing my readers of this and publish it.

Thursday 17th September 2009 – Day 4 22:21HRS:

The server goes offline while I am uploading files. I am unable to gain access to the controls to reboot. I phone Fasthosts asking if they have started the upgrade operation early. I am told that the Ubuntu server went into a kernel panic and that everything has now been restored.

I begin to monitor the server, expecting to be taken offline, as agreed, for the upgrade to take place at 23:00HRS. This doesn’t happen.

Thursday 17th September 2009 – Day 4 23:55HRS:

I phone Fasthosts and ask why the schedule has not been kept to. I am informed that the engineer is behind schedule as he had to do unexpected maintenance on some of the shared-platform servers. I am assured that my server will be taken offline and the upgrade carried out within the next 15 minutes.

Friday 18th September 2009 – Day 5 00:36 HRS:

The server; which I am monitoring at 5-second intervals using a FireFox add-on which refreshes the page automatically, is taken offline, the upgrade performed, the server reconnected and rebooted. An email arrives almost instantly confirming this; along with another from around 18:00HRS asking me to confirm that I am willing to accept the extra server-hire charges incurred due to the increased amount of RAM, which I’ve already agreed anyway.

British business – the leading force of the economy: Part of the reason the UK is in billions of dollars of debt.

eBay has become a rather complex beast since it was founded in September 1995, by Pierre Omidyar, a French-born programmer who was previously an engineer at General Magic, a mobile communications company.

eBay owns Shopping.com,  PayPal; an online payment service, has acquired Skype, an Internet calling service; StubHub, a ticketing exchange, and several classified advertising sites around the world, including Kijiji.com.

Recently the company has had a number of challenges to its strategies. The overall growth has slowed in its core auctions business. Amazon.com has begun to pull independent sellers away from eBay; and Google has started its own payment system, called Checkout; which is treading on PayPal’s toes somewhat.

eBay now needs to encourage regrowth in the core auction business, which would then justify its 2005 acquisition of Skype, which cost a small fortune.

Click here for the original video by Weird Al Yankovic.

.

eBay Executive Officers

Pierre M. Omidyar
Chairman. since 1996

John J. Donahoe
CEO since 2005

Robert H. Swan
CFO since 2006

Lorrie M. Norrington
Corp.Exec. since 2008

Scott Thompson
Corp.Exec. since 2008

This was so ironic that I simply had to blog it:-

After Steve Ballmer’s speech at the CES in Vegas I was beginning to think that there was hope for Microsoft. Since Ballmer had announced a new partnership with Facebook I thought I’d go find the Facebook app that would make it possible for me to have Windows Live Spaces automatically configured as another outpost; another piece of cyberspace to call my own as it were.

Having started a search earlier and found the Mirror Blog app, following which I installed it into my Facebook profile and wrote my analysis of it; I began the search again. This time I wasn’t distracted and very soon found it. Full of enthusiasm I installed it to my Facebook profile and started attempting to use.

I managed to sign in without problems; but initially found  the app’s UI a bit confusing. I discovered a few messages from Windows Live Spaces from between June and December 2008; most of which I’d read. The last of which was concerning an outage I’d experienced in December when attempting to sign up to a friend’s Windows Live profile; at which I’d concluded that Windows Live was an [expletive]. I clicked another of the mysteriously-labelled links in the app and was treated to the following: -

(Please forgive the bad-quality screen grab. (Again.))

Marvelous! Nothing’s changed I note.

Maybe I was right all along: Windows Live is an [expletive]? Enough said.

Addendum: I clicked the “About” button on the app and found this:

Windows Live Spaces (Facebook Application)

This app lets you manage your Windows Live Spaces account from inside Facebook, making it easy to run both profiles, or change everything over from Spaces to Facebook!

This application is created by Sean Fagan Systems.

Website: http://www.seanfagansystems.com

Windows Live Spaces © 2008 Sean Fagan Systems. All Rights Reserved.

It appears to possibly be an Irish web-hosting company with a number of extra departments.

The home page looks fairly professional. However when I clicked on the link for “Fagan Way Investments” I got a white screen and this message:-

“HACKED XUGURX BYEE”

This is the company who wrote the Facebook app for Windows Live Spaces. Are Microsoft making dramatic investment cutbacks or something?

Back on the theme of technology; and I saw this initially at http://operatingsystems.mixx.com , went and found it on You-Tube, and brought it here for your entertainment.

What do you imagine would happen if Bill Gates were suddenly captured by Steve Jobs?

Here’s one idea with a Star Wars flavour at one point:

May the source be with you.

Enjoy the coming week, and best of luck with it.

A break from the usual tech-related subject matter.

A blonde phoned up a video-hire shop:

"Hello: I rented a porno-film yesterday to spice up me and my boyfriend’s lovemaking, but when we played it there was nothing on the cassette at all. It really let us down, and I’d like compensation when I bring it back later."

The store owner replied:

"I’m so sorry madam. We did receive a few faulty videos in our last batch; and it seems that you’ve accidentally managed to pick up one of them. I understood that we’d checked all the videos on display and removed all the faulty ones. You say this was a porn video. Do you have the title of it to hand?"

The blonde replied:

"Head Cleaner."

I was having an extended blonde moment today; so I started writing a post about blondes. I deleted a lot of things. It’s unfair to judge a person’s IQ level by their hair colour – There are a lot of hair dyes available these days.

I’m trying to introduce this video I found on You Tube. The artiste’ is Damh the Bard – A very famous performer amongst the Pagan community. You can visit his website at http://www.paganmusic.co.uk. If you like his music then why not buy his album(s)? All the recorded tracks are self-produced, and the money from sales of his albums funds the next album.

Enjoy.

Feel free to comment. Have a good week.

Here’s another weird Windows experiment for you to try in your spare time:-

If you’re running Microsoft Word 2007; open Microsoft Word 2007 and type the following:

=rand (200, 99)

Now press ENTER.

If you’re running Microsoft Word 2003 or earlier; open Microsoft Word and type the following:

=rand.old (200,99)

All of a sudden a load of text has appeared: More Windows magic?

You ain’t seen nothing yet: Let’s try again in a foreign language:

Open Microsoft Word 2007 again and type the following:

=lorem (200,99)

Press ENTER.

(You may have seen this text associated with some third-party aspect of WordPress also perhaps?)

(Unfortunately for users of Word 2003 or earlier, =lorem … only works in Word 2007, or so I am led to believe.)

Crazy Glitch ( Type In =rand(200,99) In Mircrosoft Word – Click here for the funniest movie of the week

What’s going on here?

The rand() or =rand.old function in Microsoft Word specifically generates (random) text. The text that it generates may vary from version to version: In Word 2003 and older versions the text produced is different to that produced by 2007

The first number  inside the brackets is the number of paragraphs of text to generate. The second is the number of lines in each paragraph.

See the following Microsoft help and Support article: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=212251 .

No; this isn’t political subterfuge…

…It’s a crazy little experiment for you to try in your spare time:-

If you’re using Windows, do the following:-

1. Open an empty notepad file
2. Type "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes)
3. Save it as whatever you want.
4. Close it, and re-open it.

(It should work with most versions of Notepad.)

——

That is so weird! Why does that happen?

There’s a bug in most versions of notepad that misinterprets ANSI text as Unicode.

A number of different word patterns can generate this same effect: The bug is triggered by any sentences with a first word with an even number of letters (2 or more) and all other words with odd number of letters (3 or more).

Example: "Go sit about there".

See also: wikipedia.org – Bush_hid_the_facts

I didn’t want to go here but it looks like I am anyway. First a warning that you might find this offensive or extremely contravercial.

On with the show:

And now a small vacation of a few minutes into the continuation of George Bush’s God-Squad politics in the form of God’s insult to evolution; Sarah Palin.

Right-wing religionist and fundamentalist Repugnut Sarah Palin thinks Jesus loves her and has destined her for greatness. (-Which isn’t a bad feat for a Witch who’s been dead for over 2000 years.) Personally I see it as more of a case of the uneducated masses supporting the untalented excuse for a leader who’s intent on perpetuating the only reason that the mentally-dull can find to carry on with their miserable waste-of-a-life; that being their religious crutch with which they limp through their unfulfilled existences.

Senator McCain… Oh yeah he’s meant to be the candidate – No, he’s the puppet fronting the campaign with Palin pulling the strings. It’s the Wizard of Oz all over again!

If they should manage to get in, prepare for a return to the dark-ages for the US at the mercy of the Yahweh and Son black-comedy circus. Forced pregnancies for rape victims, books banned from libraries because they don’t convey Palin’s delusional religionism, children indoctrinated from an early age to worship her image – Just like the children at Jesus Camp around 2006 who worshipped a cardboard cutout of Dubya.

‘Not only that but a prospect of a discontinuation of relations with Russia caused by an inability to negotiate, and maybe a re-ignition of the cold war – In addition to a probable religiously-inspired war with the Islamic nations in the name of "God".

Yes it’s another of those "Vote Republican and veto sanity" elections. – And this time the best that the Religious Right could come up with is not only insane and inadequate, but also this time scarily so.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for feminism and equality: But not with a delusional Jesus-freak peddling it along with an enforcement of her personal beliefs whilst at the same time destroying all the credibility of a superpower and igniting further global tension.

And Obama… Does he have what it takes? Probably not, right at the present moment; but he certainly appears to be at least sane. Honestly I am scared that the Republicans have a chance of winning this US election; even though I live across the puddle in the UK.

OK I just had to vent that. That’s all. I’ll leave you with a fitting ending:-

I’ve just been reading the story at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/?pageId=74461

“Scientists preparing to fire up the world’s largest atom smasher are being flooded with phone calls and emails – even death threats – from people worried that the Large Hadron Collider, when activated, will obliterate planet Earth.”

Is that the flat Earth?

“There are a number who say, ‘You are evil and dangerous and you are going to destroy the world.”"

- And if that’s true then they’ll never have anything else to worry about anyway.

I wonder; were they the same people who instantly believed Tony Blair when he said

“Saddam Hussein has hundreds of missiles pointed at the Western nations and can release them all within 15 minutes. You need to put your life at risk and kill Iraqis to stop him before it’s too late.”

At the same time George Bush said

“The LORD spaketh unto me; and He sayeth: “George – Thou shalt rise up and smite those from the heathen nations who seek to destroy thee; and ye shall take them prisoner and cease their oil; for there may be profit in it for thee.” – So according to our intelligence…According to US intelligence; I don’t have any, we have a strategic advantage and we’re gonna bomb the bastards! God bless America!” (Aside: “Colin who wrote this speech?…Seinfeld huh? Is he new?”)

Are these by any chance the same people who say that Pagans are evil because some ignorant preacher told them that Pagans worship their Devil character? Quite possibly.

“Some scientists have reported receiving death threats.”

Er – Excuse me! You reckon the scientists are going to kill us all and you send them death threats!? Come on now – Like reality check time. Duh!

“CERN, an acronym for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is no stranger to doomsday predictions about its research.”

“Author Dan Brown, famous for writing “The Da Vinci Code,” wrote another novel called “Angels & Demons,” about antimatter stolen from CERN to build a bomb. The book’s popularity prompted CERN to create a webpage devoted to debunking the rumours stirred by the novel.”

If some fruitcake wrote a book the world’s population dieing from gluttony; would that stop mass obesity? No.

Official CERN logo

Internet conspirators have also pointed out the organization’s logo, constructed from the drawn paths of three supercolliders, resembles the organization’s name surrounded by the numerals 666, a number Bible prophecy assigns to the end-times Antichrist.

‘Strange that; I see at least four 6′s there: Maybe it’s the Devil’s phone number! Quick; ban telephones!

  <<The Saviour?

Others have whispered that a statue of “the Indian god of destruction” Lord Shiva, given to CERN by Indian dignitaries four years ago and displayed outside the building, is proof that the organization is destined to destroy the world.

ROFLMFAO!

Pleeease! Somebody round up these halfwits; because I want to do a scientific experiment to see how many large high-energy hadrons I can shove where the sun don’t shine before they expire!

The end of the world is nigh! – GFIA!

A Pagan man died.

He found himself standing at the Pearly Gates; with St Peter blocking his way.

I’m sorry,” Said St Peter, “but you can’t come in here: You’re a Pagan, and you don’t even believe this place exists.”

The Pagan was startled. “Where do I go then?” He asked.

I’m afraid you’ll have to go to hell.” St Peter replied.

The Pagan resigned himself to destiny as St Peter waved his hand and he vanished.

He found himself in a dark courtyard standing outside some black gates smeared with blood suspended on two fiery gateposts. The gates were covered with gruesome gargoyles, and were rather hot to the touch. The Pagan opened the gates and noticed a sign above reading “Hell. No Exit.” He gulped as he stepped inside.

A falling leaf brushed past his face as he looked around. The sun shone through the trees and a song thrush sang a merry tune from the woodland in front of him. He was standing on a well-paved path which led into the woods. Squirrels and fawns came up to meet him as he passed through the wooded scenery. Tree spirits smiled as a tiny sylph hovered above her dew-pond and a dragonfly buzzed past.

Awestruck by the beauty of the place, the Pagan saw a well-dressed gentleman standing at the other end of the wood, holding a black cane with a small skull on the top of it.

“Ah…Hello…” He called, hesitantly, not knowing quite what to expect. “I’m new here: I wonder if you could help me?”

The other man turned and smiled.

Ah a new entrant.” He said. Yes I’ve heard all about you. Do allow me to show you around. I’m Satan by the way. I was just inspecting the latest bluebells, which appear to be sadly lacking in fragrance at this moment.”

“Tell me,” He continued, “Do you think a shrubbery would look nice there? I usually have them planted with pink lobelia, but I have a feeling light blue would better match the light.”

They strode out from the woods, chatting pleasantly, and to the edge of a quiet summer meadow. “The Pagan meeting grounds are right over there near the stone circle just over that hill.” Continued Satan. “I told them you were coming and they’re simply dieing to meet you if you’ll excuse the pun…”

The Pagan had noticed a huge cloud assembling above; and was just about to remark on it when:

KABOOM! A streak of lightning exploded the air between the centre of the meadow and the sky. Smoke rose from the meadow as the ground fell away revealing a huge blazing pit. Sulphur fumes filled the air as a chasm opened in the cloud above the pit, out of which flew three black bat-winged demons carrying pitchforks. One of them shouted “Come on you slow bastards!”, following which out tumbled several naked people into the flames; screaming in agony from the heat.

The pit closed-over and the meadow floor re-grassed itself as if by magick. The Demons re-entered the chasm and it and the cloud melted silently away.

The Pagan stared transfixed in horror and amazement.

“W-what was that!” He exclaimed.

Satan looked directly at him with red eyes aglow, a smirk on his face; and said, tongue-in-cheek:

“Those were Christians, they wouldn’t have it any other way.”

*Please note. : This story is fiction, and was for the purpose of humour only. It does not reflect the beliefs of Pagans, and neither is it written to ‘slate’ or to provoke anyone of any belief or denomination. Any offence caused by this joke is unintentional, and is unnecessarily taken.

*Shazza recommends*

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Starring:

Sharron (Me) 

DedRyzing 

davidrisley 

Bitch that I am I can never resist a bit of “I told you so” bragging: So when David Risley posted the following tweet on twitter:

  “Went to use my Iphone and, sure enough, it’s dead. Frickin’ battery. No comment from @kkomp please. ”

- This war happened:

Me: @davidrisley iPhone, iPhone, falla-diddle-iPhone. iPhone, iPhone, falla-diddle-i…No more need be said…ROFLMFAO!

- At this point DedRyzing opened up on target: 

DedRyzing @davidrisley Well ya know Dave…everyone was saying the iphone battery is dung.  And ya bought two…sad. I feel for ya

DedRyzing @davidrisley Don’t fret though. Disabling the phone will increase batt life for important things like ibeer and the lightsaber thingy 

A feeble response of counter-fire: 

davidrisley @kkomp @DedRyzing Its still the best phone out there, guys. I haven’t seen a phone yet with the same balance of features.

It’s war:

DedRyzing @davidrisley Honestly, yer right. Which says less about how good the iphone is and more about how BAD other phones are.

A shot across the boughs from me:

Me: @davidrisley That’s only because you never bothered to get a Viewty.

A veiled attempt at opening negotiation from the target: 

davidrisley @kkomp Looked at Viewty. Good camera phone. But, it is no Iphone.

Fire 1:

Me: That’s the beauty of a Viewty: It’s not an iPhone! – I ought to do their PR; they’d sell more product than apple!

Fire 2: 

Me: @davidrisley That’s the beauty of a Viewty: It’s not an iPhone! – I ought to do their PR; they’d sell more product than apple!

Fire 3: 

Me: @davidrisley I – Phone but the battery’s dead; so I use the beauty of my Viewty and get straight through: iPhone + dead battery = No phone.

Incoming communication from allied force: 

DedRyzing @kkomp It boils down to this. Other phones do a few things crappy.  The iPhone can do a lot more things crappy.

Incoming challenge from target: 

davidrisley @kkomp DedRyzing Hope you guys will be in the show chatroom tonight so I can argue with you.

Reload tubes. Response to allied force: 

Me: @DedRyzing That says it all : Let’s email LG today and offer to jointly run their PR campaign: KompDedRyzing Promotions Present…

Fire 1: 

Me: @davidrisley LOL you’d better beleive it. Topic = The iPhone battery life and ways to improve it other than not using the iPhone at all.

Fire 2: 

Me: @davidrisley On second thoughts that’ll be the shortest topic discussion ever.

Small-arms attack on target from allied force: 

DedRyzing @davidrisley Geez man…every show I argue with either you or @frostedside. Man…stop picking fights.

Fire 3: 

Me: @davidrisley I hope Apple never develop an electric car…

Incoming communication from allied force: 

DedRyzing @davidrisley Just start running OpenBSD and use an OpenMoko Freerunner and everything will be ok

Response to allied force: 

Me: @DedRyzing …Or he could always invest in a Viewty; as I suggested before he wasted his money on a dead battery – I mean an iPhone.

Nothing further from target – Scanners detect target neutralised.

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