today after work i went into to town to put some money into the bank (this is totally irrelevant to the story, but nicely setting the scene). i was stopped by some guys with a camera who were making a short film about a local theatre and asked me to imitate the way local people say eeeee (yeah it's very special and probably really useful to promote a theatre). i agreed, always willing to help people. i'm wearing glasses. all the time. i asked whether i should take them off, thinking about how the reflection might be disturbing for the camera. reply: depends on how vain you are? excuse me. i happen to like my glasses. surely they can be annoying at times (especially in the rain), but generally i think they are quite flashy. but he seemed to imply that glasses are an evil necessity for people who can't wear contacts or something. how rude. glasses can be really cool (with exceptions of course). and i'm not just saying that cos i have to wear them and am too wimpy for lenses. i was really surprised by his remark. like it's a fault to wear glasses. oh poor you, having to wear those damn things, only one step up from braces. i really thought times had changed...oh well.

ah, and since i haven't had a rant at computers for a few days here we go...

as you might be aware...i ordered a new laptop. it arrived yesterday. all new and shiny, superfast and devoid of shit, innocent and filled with new exciting (even though often pointless) features. i played around with it for a while, as you do, and then i tried to install a brand new game i just ordered as well to go with the shiny new supertechnology. 'you've inserted a blank dvd, what would you like to do with it?' eh??? blank?? no no, game on it. me wanting to play now. try again. 'you've inserted a blank dvd, what would you like to do with it?' so i tried a different dvd, a movie this time. same result. rather doubtful that the new game and the movie i had previously watched on numerous occassions would both be blank i inserted the installer/ back up cd that came with the laptop. and...same result. so, me goes off to t'internet to find some solution for my problem. after half an hour of scanning the apple homepage didnt lead to any results i decided to phone their technical support. well, i intended to anyway. the best part of twenty minutes later i finally found a phone number, so that i could speak to a real person, well after waiting another 10 minutes in their phone queue that is, which by the way sounded like a hurricane passing through (but then the helpline people sit in ireland and there's some water in between us and them and heavy gusts...hm.) anyway. a person finally. robert. very nice guy, really helpful. made me do all sort of things. 'now hold down apple (pussyfoot for non-apple users) and control, p and r at the same time and with the other hand (?!? out of my three available) start the computer.' nothing worked though. i was nearly crying at that point, being angry, frustrated and exhausted at the same time, only to be confronted with the news that the bloody damn f*%&ing thing needs to be replaced. he just managed to give me my 'case-number' before i ran out of credit on my mobile phone. great.

so, after i phoned them up again today (having a rather less helpful guy on the phone, who was more interested in how fast the thing was and how light and whether its really cool, than dealing with supplying me with one that actually works). hopefully its getting picked up within the next few days so that they can send me a new one. so, in maybe a weeks time i am going to have the pleasure of being all excited about it again.

another note...at work they still havent managed to supply us with all the necessary programmes, log-ins etc. quite comical. 'next time you're on the phone to someone with 'x' problem, you have to do 'y' for him, oh, hang on, you cant, cos you havent got access to that system yet.' haha.