Kudos to Invader Stu for being the first to mention the origin of my avatar. It's not actually a picture of me, but it looks incredibly like me (in fact I've had friends come to this page and ask how I made a computer character of myself). The avatar is in fact from the opening scenes of Half Life 2, and he later re-appears at various stages of the game.

Stu has pointed out that a comic strip has been made of this character, so check it out if you're a HL2 fan. Thanks Stu!

**

I have given myself a Bonehead of the Week award for an effort last week when I was working on a laptop here in the office. It was a Toshiba, of which we don't see many, and after re-installing Windows I couldn't find a drivers disk or drivers on any of our servers. The Toshiba website had drivers but these turned out to be corrupt. Thank you Toshiba! Dickwads.

I then embarked on a search across The Internets to find drivers, and after an hour or so had everything working but the sound. The drivers seemed to install ok, but no sound was coming out. Windows has about 5 different spots where you can set the volume, so I made sure none of these were turned down. Another tech in the workshop told me he had worked on this laptp last year and had the same problem, and that 'only very specific drivers work', but he couldn't remember where he found them.

Another 3 hours and 10 different sets of driver installs later, I was wondering how much air time I could get if I threw it out of my four storey window. Still no sound. I managed to get a nice jungle rythm happening as I banged my head against the desk. Then my eye caught sight of a nearly invisible dial on the front of the machine, pictured. You guessed it, the volume dial was turned to zero.

I graciously accept this Bonehead of the Week award. I'd like to thank the academy...

Posted by Bonestorm at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments

What is it with blank CDs these days? Five years ago blank CDs that I bought and burned as an audio CD could be played in pretty much anything I own. Three years ago CDs started skipping on my home stereo, which is 15 years old, so I guess I can't complain too much about that.

Now they are skipping in my car as well, which has a new-ish CD player in it. It's driving me nuts. I figure CD production standards have dropped as they are now being pumped out by the billion and as cheaply as possible. I'd gladly pay a dollar per CD if I knew they were going to work ok. Does anyone have a brand to suggest?

**

I'm eating Iced Vovos at work at the moment. Roughly translated, old person food. Bonestorm, 32 going on 70. I just need to start complaining about everything (CDs were soooo much better back in the good old days) and my transition to old fart will be complete.

**

My home PC's CPU died peacefully on Monday and I'm in mourning. It's under warranty but may take a month to come back (if the manufacturer deems I haven't used it improperly). This being the case, I've assumed command of Ms B's computer for the time being. There will be a funeral for the CPU on Friday and afterwards a wake, where I'll be serving Iced Vovos on a platter made out of ruined CDs.

Posted by Bonestorm at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments

I thought this one was worthy of a link:

http://howtoprankatelemarketer.ytmnd.com/

Posted by Bonestorm at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments

Ok, be honest with me here guys. Am I a tard because I can't snap my fingers properly or whistle?

I have my own versions of these two things. When I snap my fingers, about one in ten sounds half decent. The others sound like chipmunk farts. Plus, my thumbnail manages to shred my index finger, even if the thumbnail is trimmed right down, so after a dozen shots at it my finger is missing about 6 layers of skin.

My version of whistling is just as bad. It's weak sounding and I can't vary the pitch much at all. It's a clayton's whistle to be honest.

And it's not like I haven't attempted perfecting these things in the past. When I was 13 a mate and I decided we'd try whistling until we got it right. For two hours we produced noises that varied from an alpaca with diarrhea to the noise you get when you blow on the top of a coke bottle. Eventually I went home in disgust. He kept at it all night on his back porch apparently, and the next day he was ripping off whistles you could hear in the next suburb.

Last week I even went looking for tutorials on the web after deciding it was finally time to master these impossible arts. Pitiful, I know. I gave up once again after I decided it wasn't worth the trouble which, I guess, has always been my problem.

Is anyone else incapable of snapping and whistling? Tell me I'm not the only one...

Posted by Bonestorm at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments

Bonestorm's inaugural Bonehead Client of the Week Award goes to...

A lady who called me up from a hotel in Sydney, where she's staying at the moment. She couldn't turn her laptop on. Now we've all heard the stories of dumb end users calling up because they don't have their computer plugged into the power etc, but this one actually happened and I can verify it personally.

Award recipient: Nothing is coming up on the screen.
Bonestorm: So it doesn't boot into Windows? Is the power plugged into the wall?
Award recipient: Yes.
Five more minutes of this conversation continues
Bonestorm: Are there any beeps or noises when you turn it on?
Award recipient: How do I turn it on?
Crickets chirping.
...
...
Bonestorm: You don't know how to turn the laptop on? Is it your laptop?
Award recipient: Yes it's mine. Where is the On button?

I eventually talk her through turning the machine on, all the while wondering how she turns it on every other day... or wondering if her admin assistant does it for her. Conversation ends, I close the job.

Five minutes later the phone rings and I can see it's her mobile number again. This is going to be good.

Award recipient: Hello I've got the laptop started now.
Bonestorm: Very good.
Award recipient: But now I can't access the internet.
Bonestorm: Oh really? How are you connected to the internet?
Award recipient: Through the hotel's broadband system. The hotel told me that their broadband system is down and that technicians are working on it. Is that why the internet isn't coming up?
Crickets chirping. Lots and lots of crickets.
...
...
...
Bonestorm: I'd say that's the reason, yes.

I can only be thankful I didn't have to talk her through connecting via modem as she decided to wait for the hotel to fix it's connection. A worthy recipient of this prestigious award, I must say.

Posted by Bonestorm at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments