Today I dealt with a query that nearly made me bang my head against the wall:

Driver: Hi. Errrr… you sent me a speeding fine notification
Me: Yup.
Driver: But I was only doing 53mph in a 40mph….They can’t do me for that can they?
Me: Yes, it’s THE LAW. Speed limits are legally enforcable and if they catch you on camera they get you for it…..

Cue discussion about how much the fine is and how many penalty points he’ll get on his licence. He could barely believe he’d get points let alone a fine for breaking the law. Some people are just too stupid to be let loose on the roads…..

Google bought YouTube for $1.6 billion today. (The service will now only be referred to as GooTube around these parts)
My friend and I often discussed YouTube and how it could possibly make any money. We came to the following conclusions several months ago:
* It was started to host videos of people lighting their farts. And
* the only way it could make money would be to be bought out by another company such as Google.

How accurate can you be……

Talking of Google, I was doing a search at work and decided to use Google’s cache feature to help me find the relevant info faster only to get myself presented with a huge warning screen informing me that the site I had tried to access was blocked and my details logged. Cue a mispelling of a url shortly after and MSN search tied to kick in (not by my choice) and again! Another warning screen! I totalled 4 in 5 minutes.
Of course I phoned tech support…
Me: You’ve blocked Google Cache!
IT support: Yes.
Me: But that’s like tearing out half the pages of the dictionary and telling me to get on with it!
IT Support: Yes. Umm…Sorry?
Me: You’ve blocked Google Cache! I use that feature of the search engine.
IT Support: You could talk to your director(!) and ask for access….

Turns out that their web filter is
a) shit
and
b) badly configured

so because people have been abusing these two issues they decided to make it block everything and unblock things on an ‘as asked by a director of the company’ level.
It took them 2 weeks to issue me with a password to login to the system and 2 months to get back to me about accessing a shared folder I urgently needed for work. A ‘new starter’ that’s been in the company for 6 weeks is still waiting for a PC to use…
I can tell you now that if I were to ever run that department they’d be a lot of changes and even a few sackings…

Tags: Google, video