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Fuckwittage III

Hi! And welcome to another edition of Fuckwittage. Last time we talked about NAPPI, and NAPPI-RASH. Today's story also features NAPPI-RASH.

A week or so before the last episode of Fuckwittage, a problem came to light with a particular user accessing NAPPI-RASH. They could access the NAPPI-RASH website but seemed to be having difficulty connecting to the NAPPI-RASH application server. Naturally, since a cursory check of the network didn't show that anything blindingly obvious was wrong, it must've been a problem with the actual application, right? (This is a rhetorical question. Anyone actually agreeing with it should fuck off and work in MacDonalds).

I pointed out, by email, at least a week ago, that if it was any kind of problem with the application that it would be affecting every goddamn user in Britain and Ireland. This email appears to have landed on deaf ears, or blind eyes, I guess, since it's the written word, or whatever. I'm not sure either phrasing is acceptable, although as anyone reading this will probably know, I'm not one for all this Political Correctness rubbish. I continued to watch emails fly around discussing the problem and what could be done about it. I told them what the problem had to be rooted in, and these clueless emails continued to fly around.

So, today, Throw-His-Weight-Around Network Guy decided it was time to put his cure-all technique into action. He called an audio meeting. The meeting utilised one of these clever 'audio bridge' things which involves everyone dialing the same number (a fuckoff huge switchboard, I guess) and typing in a pin number, and it connects them to an audio conference (Net-geeks, think chatroom by phone). When we connected to it, the ongoing conversation was about the weather, it being humid and muggy in most parts of the country.

At this point, our latest character entered the audio. We'll call her Giggly Network Bint. One of her first comments was to contribute to the weather discussion "well, it's pissing down 'ere", to which someone who was amused, if a little taken aback, replied, "I think you mean it's raining?" I'm no prude, but I could see his point.

Then the 'real' discussion began, meaning that all the network people started talking about all the little things they'd done which meant it wasn't a network problem after all. I interrupted this at one point to point out that one of their tests may have been totally invalidated by the presence of a proxy server. This seemed to be glossed over at the time, but I'd like to think that somewhere within Giggly Network Bint's brain an old and tarnished penny was perhaps starting to drop.

So we try and set up a live test, during the audio. Giggly Network Bint is monitoring traffic through the proxy server while this test goes on. And then she giggles. It's a tiny embarassed giggle. She's just spotted an error occurring on the proxy server. An error that just so happens to be affecting the NAPPI-RASH application. Gosh-darnit, that would mean it wasn't a problem with the application itself, wouldn't it?

Needless to say, after that it was only a matter of time before the meek excuse me while I eat this humble pie email turned up, and I forwarded it to my boss's boss's boss's and a good few of our clients too, to make sure they knew it wasn't the application that was playing up. In cases of extreme fuckwittage, this is always wise.

In other news...

We received official notification of our mortgage today *happy bounce*

A fair portion of this afternoon was spent negotiating a fee with Anne for Alison's services (yes, this was just kidding around, let me spell this out for the hard of irony), but she wasn't able to meet anything like the sort of fee that Alison was after. As she so rightly pointed out, in Indecent Proposal the fee was $1,000,000. Remember that, Ms. Hardy, next time you find yourself singing along to The Bare-naked Ladies.

My parents are moving in two days time, and mention was made of my set of keys to the old house. Posting the keys to the new owners didn't seem particularly wise, so I am going to find a convenient canal or something to dispose of them. I'm sure there's some desperately good reason why I shouldn't do this, but it just seems a fantastically cool thing to do. Or something.