Author: Mosh

OK, so this post is going to be footie-oriented, and then some ****’s getting it in the neck. So be it.

Cack-awful ******* ***** **** **** referees

OK, so we weren’t that great tonight. Carr lapsed. O’Brien seems to be career-suicidal. Bowyer collects yellow cards like whores collect venereal diseases. But we’ve effectively lost because of three shitty refereeing decisions.

The goal we got at St James’ should have been disallowed for Ameobi’s foul on a defender. But the other should have stood (the ref told Robert he could strike the ball then changed his mind), and Ameobi shouldn’t have been penalised for the ball-to-hand that left their goal wide open.

Sporting’s second goal tonight was a ******* mile offside. You could have squeezed three Boumsong’s in that ******* hole.

Still, at least they didn’t cheat anywhere near as much as most other foreign clubs, and there was no sign of trouble anywhere in or around the ground. I certainly can’t claim they cheated their way through. So…

Well done Sporting. A team that lives up to the English meaning of their name. Both refs however can **** off. As can your ******* linesmen.

From now on, though – come on Liverpool. Let’s see the one remaining English club in Europe do well (no, I don’t count Chelski).

Oh, and will someone please tell the tosspot commentating on Channel 5 tonight that Dyer pulling up with a hamstring problem isn’t a “worry for the weekend” because it’s the second game of a small domestic three match ban he might have heard about if he was a half-decent ******* journalist. It was only the biggest ******* football story for 6 months.

Prick. And the other one for not correcting him. Twice.

Impressed by an FA

Spain and England could learn a bit from the Italian FA. After the disgusting scenes at the Milan derbies, the Juve/Liverpool game and – frankly – for the last umpteen years, they’ve decided to step down.

Hard.

If any objects are thrown at the pitch during any Italian league game, the match is to be abandoned immediately. The team who’s fans are guilty lose the game 3-0. Simple as.

No piss-ant 20-minutes-wages fine for racially abusing players, no crap-awful fines to clubs with the king’s own bank account behind them for bringing an entire nation’s sport into disrepute. Fast, simple, harsh punishment.

This puts the onus on the clubs to train their stewards to actually do something about this mess. Search the home fans as well as visitors. Remove people from stands and arrest / fine / eject them for offenses, rather than just standing and bloody watching like at Juve the other night.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Italian FA – I applaud you.

***** on eBay

Two so far this week. I just popped a new mobile up for sale, and within a couple of hours had the following email:

hello,
how are you and your business,i am interested in buying you item for my daughter and I will be paying via postal order/paypal so kindly get back to me with the actual amount you are willing to sell the item as well as your name and address where the postal order will be address to and moreso kindly get the accurate postage cost via a registered royal mail service to my daughter in Nigeria and get back to me asap.
thanks.
thompson.

As soon as I saw the word “Nigeria” the phrase “**** off” sprang immediately to mind, especially as my ad says I only ship to the UK. There’s a scam going round involving dodgy cheques and dodgier Nigerians (sorry, but it is predomonantly people from there) which I’m fortunate enough to know about. I’m sure some other poor sod will get caught out.

I replied via eBay and hid my email address. Half an hour later I got a mail from eBay support warning me about this thieving ******. At least they’re on the lookout.

The other’s some little **** who bought some memory off me on “Buy It Now”. I got an email post-purchase asking if I accepted postal orders. Yup, fine – saves me the PayPal fees. Two days later I got another mail. Decipher this if you can:

hey soz lad i am new to ebay and wen i sent tht msg to u i thourgh the msg sent to my email account msg box not my hotmail account. so i av gone and temoved ur ltem frm my bidin list cos i thourght u wearnt gettin bck 2 me sorry!!!! if i c any more of ur items tht i wnt i will buy them from u first sorry mate!

Well **** you. It cost me to list the item. It costs me a percentage of the sale price when it’s sold. I wrote and told him (politely, of course – this will have to be taken up by eBay). His reply:

well am sorry bt another reason y i dntwnt ur item is tht ur post and
packaging it 2 much 2 pay sorry

Well **** you again. The post and packing (£2.50 for first class recorded delivery in static proof sponge and a sturdy cardboard box) is a lot less than some other people are charging. AND it was listed as part of the cost on the item before he bought it.

Then there’s the small matter of the warning that he’s entered into a legally binding contract after the totals have been provided and before he makes the final click to say “OK”.

eBay, though, say I have to wait 7 days (i.e. till the 19th) before I can lodge an official “Non Payment” complaint.

In the meantime, the idiot’s username on eBay is ryanx16x. If anyone wants his full name, address and email details… I won’t give them. For a while.

Grr.

A little message for Sharon:

******* WELL DONE!!! 🙂

D’oh

On Friday at work, I was running round like a blue-arsed fly trying to sort out a PC for someone we have visiting this week. No actual machine was forthcoming, but I arranged all the software licenses and said I’d pop in on Saturday to do the installation. I just needed an actual machine.

Saturday lunchtime and I make a journey into work (via a detour as the police had closed the main route into Halifax from where I live), only to find a complete lack of anything machiney. After an hour of getting no answer from people’s mobiles, I headed on to my next appointment – sorting out a friend’s mum’s PC (same one as last week). She’s about as IT-literate as a damp sponge. Or indeed as my mother. Much of a muchness.

I was off on Monday – when this machine was due by – so my boss and one of the lads I work with did the install. Boss-man kicked it off with the Oracle installation early in the morning. Full whack – software, database, the works.

We use one of these big portable hard drive things for installs. Very handy as it stores loads and works on anything 2000 upwards with a USB port. Also, as the machine wasn’t to be networked it was the only way to get the install programs onto it.

Allen did the rest of the install, took the drive off and stored it safely away. Our visitor then started work on the machine… for two minutes before coming a bit of a cropper. None of the software was working. Or at least, nothing that needed to connect to the Oracle database.

So, Allen has a bit of a dig. Processes seem to be running, services are there… but won’t start. A registry dig says that all the components are installed. On the E: drive. Funny. The machine only has a C: and a CD-ROM.

Boss-Bloke has only gone and installed Oracle, and the database, on the portable drive.

Cue Allen, in his own words, “looking a right lemon” as he removes the software piece by piece and reinstalls it in the correct place.

Italian “fans”

I found the use of flares at the Milan derby the other night disgraceful. They’re sooo seventies and should never have made a comeback.

But, seriously, folks – how come as soon as England enter a competition there’s UEFA warnings that the first problem our fans cause will see us ejected from competition? Italians regularly throw objects at the players. This is getting more common here, but ******* flares? How on earth are they getting them into the grounds?

A lad I work with went to that same stadium following Leeds a few years ago. His mate has his fag lighter and deoderant taken off him, yet the home fans were bunging flares off all game. The fire services are on standby inside the stadium at all the matches there for that very reason. In addition, the visiting fans had bottles of piss, coins, spit and other detritus thrown at and over them by the home fans. The police ignored this utterly, yet as soon as a Leeds fan stood up, or tried to go to the loo… How the hell do they get away with it?

Don’t even get me started on Turkey, though. Can anyone tell me how many foreign football fans have visited England and been stabbed to death in the last few years? Yet UEFA reject Newcastle (and others) as a Champions League Cup Final ground in favour of… the Atatürk Olympic stadium in Istanbul, Turkey.

Yes, UEFA. Let’s just spit on the memories of Spate and Lofthouse. You *******.

No more COOOKIES!!!

Cookie Monster has been silenced, or at least made to tell kids that cookies are only a “sometimes food”. I love that. How ******* American is that phrase?

It’s hardly the same, is it? “SOMETIMES FOOODDDD! SOMETIMES FOOOODDD!”

It is a dark day for us all. If they want to “get with the kids”, The Count should turn to rap:

“One! One bullet in the shitty rap star!
Two! Two bullets in his bling-addled chest!
Three! Three caps in his mother-fuckin’ ass!
Four! Four bits of hot lead to shut his bitch-ass mouth!
Five! Five cop-killers in his fuckin’ head!
Six! Six rounds to show him who’s his daddy!
Seven! Seven shots in his dirty fuckin’ face!
Eight! Eight 9mm’s in a dotted line across his front!
Nine! Nine shiny death-dealers smashing out his teeth!
Ten! Ah, ****. Run out, and the tosser’s still breathing”

And Kermit should be a flasher with that dirty mac he wears. And Big Bird should sell crack to Mr Snofalopolous. He’d need shitloads with that big ******* nose of his.

Phones and drinkies

OK, so I was bored, but has anyone else noticed the main UK mobile phone networks all seem to be drink-related?

There’s Orange (juice), Virgin (Cola), O2 (water, if you muck around with some hydrogen), and Vod(k)afone. “3” could mean a treble, but I’m a bit stuck on T-mobile.

Always one exception to a rule.

When I took this job, I was given a small maths test as part of the interview process. I was allowed to use a calculator and I admit I ended up resorting to it, though I tried not to.

Now that I field 2nd line calls from helpdesk, it amazes me that they don’t consider a short written or typed English test as well. Some of the things we get through are just unreal – and virtually impossible to deal with as a result.

I thought at one point that one of the helpdesk staff had given up punctuation for Lent, but that’s been and gone now and there’s still not a capital letter, full stop or comma to be seen in any of their call logs. In all honesty, I’d not expect staff to have to run a 50-word word docket through a spellcheck and grammar check to make it meaningful, but I fear we may have to enforce it.

This kind of thing’s becoming almost a part of our culture. I know people who are pretty intelligent. They’re great to converse with. They have good jobs and qualifications. Yet I receive an email from them and it’s full of abbreviations, mis-spellings, bad punctuation, abysmal grammar… Are we forgetting things? Don’t we have the time? Or are they not being taught? I’ve noticed that the worst offenders are people a fair bit younger than me, but it’s too easy to point fingers at poor schooling. Of course, in a country where you can get a “B” in maths with a 17% exam result…

A few years ago, I actually saw a sign up outside a business advertising their services as advertisers and sign-writers. It has a spelling mistake and a stray apostrophe on it. You can’t walk through the town centre without seeing A-frames, menus and signs with cock-ups on them, and they’re all so inconsistent. On many, it’s like someone’s sprinkled apostrophes around like confetti with the idea that at least some of them will be in the right place.

I know my English isn’t as good as it once was. I’m having to look up words I should know how to spell, for instance. But at least I flipping try.

I confess to one that I use a lot on MSN, though. Abbreviating “OK” to “K”. I mean, how lazy is that?! And I still manage to spell it incorrectly at times.

C ya.