Indescribable

"It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congerie of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter."
—H. P. Lovecraft



Have you ever seen something which literally defied description? I have.

It started out quite normally. A new girl had arrived in the Nodnol office; let's call her Laura. She was hella good at her job, but that's not what caught my attention. And what with those being the days of steam radio, before Al Gore invented t'internet, it certainly wasn't her appearance; I had no idea what she looked like. But I could figure it out from her voice.

Laura came from the Republic of Oireland, where leprechauns still leave crocks of gold at the end of the rainbow. Where the grass truly is greener. Ah, to hear her talk about her home town, 'twas a marvellous place indeed. Did you know, for example, that the Oirish had Clones long before Professor Wilmut stopped shagging sheep long enough to make a copy of one? (Fer feck's sake, why? Why make an identical copy of an animal from a species famous for looking exactly the same as each other?)

I digress. I used to phone Laura for the odd chat, and while she told me about the wonders of the Emerald Isle, I would listen to her silky-smooth voice, like Baileys Oirish Cream on the rocks, and build up a mental image of her. Let's see.

From the bottom up:
Impossibly high heels, definately FM shoes by anyone's standard.
Long, smooth, tanned legs going all the way up to her chin.
Tights Stockings with the tops just peeping out from under...
A really, really short skirt.
Bit of midriff showing. Slim waist, possibly a pierced belly-button. With an emerald in it.
Some kind of flimsy blouse revealing more than it covered.
Lots of cleavage.
Arms bare except for perhaps a fashionable bangle.
Long fingernails, highly varnished and bright crimson...
To match her glossy lipstick...
And long, flowing red hair, cascading down over her shoulders.
Flashing green eyes. (Can redheads even have green eyes?)
Blindingly white, perfect teeth.
A nose like a ski slope.

Nothing special, just a cross between Nadine off Girls Aloud and Jessica off Roger Rabbit.





All the blokes in Embra fancied her something rotten, so imagine my surprise and delight when she casually dropped into the conversation that some new piece of software was due to be installed, some kind of flexible rattlesnake, and she would have to come up to Embra to explain it to us geeks. As geek-in-chief, I was to get a one-hour session all to myself.

Really, really should have exchanged photos first.

The big day arrived. I spramped myself up, clean shirt, new tie, cut a couple of feet off the end of my beard, turned my underpants inside out. Checked the mirror - OMG I'm gorgeous! Off to work.

The phone call came - "someone in reception for you." Oh boyohboyohboy!

Looked around reception. And around again. Finally, an angelic voice came from somewhere near my waist: "Yew most be Fartee. Oim Laura. Hi."

My eyes tried to focus, but all I could see was a short, vaguely female shape dressed in tweed. I introduced myself and led her off to my lair desk. An hour later, we said our goodbyes and off she went to her next meeting. And an hour after that, I'd completely forgotten what she looked like.

The next time we spoke on the phone again, she was, of course, fantastic. Literally.

Am I a bad person?

Domestic Bliss

Mrs Farty has decided she'd rather have a shower cubicle than a bath - whatever a "bath" is - so we've been shopping around and found just the thing. We've found a reputable plumber, i.e. one we've used before who didn't rip us off, and he set to work today carefully removing the old bath. (We can probly get a few bob for it on on eBay.)

Then he took one look at the floorboards and said, "These are rotten, look!" And ripped one out with his bare hand. Sure enough, we remembered the bathroom flooding a few years ago after the drain pipe worked loose from the bath, but thought we'd managed to dry it out with a dehumidifier running flat out for two weeks. Wrong.

Not only are the floorboards rotten, so are a couple of the joists supporting them. I had a momentary mental image of Mrs Farty, sitting in the bath, crashing through the floor and into our neighbour's living room. "Air hellair, jahst thort Ay'd drope een four a cappa tea, don't-choo-know?" Then I remembered we live on the ground floor.

A quick phone call to the insurers confirmed our worst fears: "If you check the small print in the policy, you'll see that you're not covered for fraud. Nyer nyer nyer."

So we called a joiner, who raced around to Farty Towers toot sweet to assess the damage - about £240 plus labour. Plus parts. Plus callout fee.

Perhaps I should arrange an electrician, glazier and painter while I'm at it?

Desktop

I fully support my company's clear desk policy.



In principle.

*cough*

Gone Phishin' Part 3

Please read all of this post, you know it makes sense.

From: Natwest Online Security Service

To: MrFarty@BlueYonder.co.uk [really]

Subject: Natwest Online Alert : Online Access Suspended


Dear Value [sic] Customer,

Due to concerns for safety [whose?],Your account has been randomly flagged in our system as a part of our latest security measures against online fishing [sic]. This happens to ensure that only you have access to your natwest account [what account is that then?] and to ensure a safe Banking experience against online fraud. We require all flagged accounts as yours, to verify their information on file with us. To Speed up the Verification Process,We urge you [to?] verify your account now to avoid your online access disabled.

To Begin the verification process of your natwest records,Please click on the reference link below:
[looks like natwest dot com but actually medisave dot co dot uk]

Thank You.

Smith [no forename]
Customer Advisor
Natwest Direct.
Natwest. another way.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Accounts Management As outlined in our User Agreement, nationwide [um, I thought this was Gnatwest?] will periodically send you information about site changes and enhancements.

===============================================

Now for the science bit:

National ID Fraud Week

National ID Fraud Week takes place across the UK from 8 to 12 October 2007. This annual industry initiative provides a range educational and prevention advice on identity fraud.

Appearances can be deceiving. ID theft affects more than 100,000 people every year in the UK and the Home Office estimates that it currently costs the UK economy £1.7 billion per annum.

We all have a part to play in fighting financial crime and this campaign provides an excellent opportunity for us to help customers who have any concerns or queries around ID Fraud.

In addition to recognising and reporting anything that doesn't look or feel right, employees should use this opportunity to signpost customers to the various sources of information available to our customers on identity theft. These include:

Home Office ID Theft leaflet "Don't Become a Victim Of Crime" (held in all our branches)
Security advice held on RBS.com and NatWest.com

External sources of information:

www.identitytheft.org.uk
www.cifas.org.uk
www.apacs.org.uk

---------------------------

...and according to the real NatWest website:

At NatWest we will never ask our customers for any personal information by e-mail. If you receive such an email, before deleting it, please attach it to a new email and send it to phishing@natwest.com

...done.

Political Correctness Gone Differently Sane

• Ramadana Ding-Dong
  Embra hospital workers have been told not to eat at their desks to avoid offending Muslim colleagues during Ramadan. And Muslim doctors have been requested not to drive burning jeeps into Scotch airport lounges during the summer holiday period.


• Walking Two Short Planks
  Insurers threatened to pull the plug on the annual Plank-Walking Championships in Kent unless entrance forms were amended to warn contestants that "plank-walking may make you wet". Visitors to the Vatican have also been warned to look out for Catholic Popes and hikers planning on taking a stroll in the woods should mind their step.


• Rubbish Flowers
  Paul Newman - who appears to have eschewed Hollywood for Bedshampton in Hampshire - has been snubbed by garbage disposal operatives after leaving a bunch of dead flowers in his household waste. They'd prefer that he puts the lilies in the back of his truck and drives the twenty-mile round trip to the dump to dispose of them in an environmentally-friendly way. With the emphasis on "mental".


• Barking Mad
  Feliciana P. Harrell was arrested in Wisconsin after she "barked at and agitated a K-9 dog". How do you agitate a tin dog?


• Losing The Plot
  June Turnbull, whose gardening skills at the entrance to the high street helped win Urchfont the Best Kept Village Of The Year award, has been given a cease-and-desist order for failing to wear a fluorescent jacket, place women-at-work warning signs or have a second person standing by whenever she wanted to go along and do a bit of weeding. The order comes from Wiltshire County Council, whose county seat lies in Salisbury. Sour grapes or what?

A Word of Warning

Some residents of Blogland don't care who knows their true identity¹. Some go so far as to advertise their name, address and phone number. Others, who don't really fancy getting weird phone calls at all hours of the day and night, are a bit more circumspect. Some still give their name, but keep their address a mystery. Many use a pseudonym(sp?), if only to distinguish themselves from the million other "John Smiths" out there. And some are complete enigmas. I wonder if any are aliens writing blogs right now?

My point? Did I have one? Yes. You might not want certain people in your workplace or family to know what you're writing about them. Or not writing, as the case may be. People have been fired for this. And possibly divorced. Or beaten up.

So imagine my shock when, a few weeks ago, an electromail arrived in my normal inbox, from a fellow blogger whom I had never heard of until then (although it turns out that this one is in the book). How had this person found me out? Was I about to be blackmailed? What if Mrs Farty had been leaning over my shoulder when I opened my mail (as she sometimes does)?

As it turned out, I needn't have worried. I had been targeted by my blog id, but BCC'ed to hide my name from all the others on a circular. Since my inbox rules send all "MrFarty" mail to my blogger inbox, and "MrFarty" wasn't named, the default applied.

And then there was the time I posted something in the comments box of a blog that was being moderated. A hiccup in the interweb meant that the owner didn't get notified, but instead I got an "undelivered" message to let me know. From the owner's (until then) secret email address.

When someone posts a comment about one of my posts, I get an email to tell me about it. Naturally, this email goes to "MrFarty", which is the same address you see when you want to contact me. I thought everyone on Blogger did the same. Until yesterday.

Imagine my surprise when, shortly after posting a comment on xxxxx's blog, I received an email from yyyyy, helpfully telling me that yyyyy was "out of the Office until the 9th May". The contact address in the blog was not even remotely similar to the one on the email. Shome mishtake, shurely? And this from someone who works for a security firm².

So let's be careful out there. I'm just saying.

¹ A philosopher might ask, what do we mean by "true identity"? After all, you can have one identity on the interweb, one at work, one at play, one with one's spouse...see Nietzsche for more on this. I dare you.

² btw, what does DWFN stand for?

Me and my Big Mouth

Just came here from Little Red Boat, where Anna mentions that reading a book can affect the way you write or speak...

I've been reading Non-Working Monkey.

At 3am last Saturday morning I got a phone call from work, asking me to join a conference call...so...
"What's up?"
"We stopped a system to do some maintenance and now it won't start."
"What does the manual say?"
"'Use the restart command.'"
"So use the restart command."
"That's what we wanted to do, but {pointy-haired manager} insisted on opening up a conference call."
"What a twat!"
{clunk}
"Um, what was that clunk?"
"That would be {pointy-haired manager} dropping the phone."
"Oh...anyway, have you done it yet?"
"Yes."
"Did it work?"
"Yes."
"Can I go back to sleep now?"
"Yes."
"Nighty-night then."
"Nighty-night, Farty."