» Public Sex

Picture the scene
It's a cold February night in 1995 and I'm out with my then girlfriend, being 14 neither of us are ready to go all the way (or to put it another way she isn't) so we have "come" to a compromise.

Therefore we ended up one Wednesday night in the beach side of the spectators area of Whitstable Tennis club enjoying ourselves to pre agreed limits. Sitting on the bench jeans round my ankles as she knelt in front of me doing her wonderful impression of one of Dyson's finest I was in heaven looking up at the ceiling in my own little world.

At least I was right up until I looked back down and made eye contact with the police officer approaching. Suddenly panicing but also quickly approaching the moment of release I did the only thing I could think of and held up 5 fingers to the officer and began slowly counting down to my "completion". Now some people rail on the police for various things but at least one of them was cool enough to just give me a nod and turn his back for 30 seconds.

Reaching the moment of lift off we tidied ourselves up and I coughed loudly enough that when he turned on his torch and shined it toward us the young lady I was with assumed that was what had caught his attention. Giving us a stern talking to about being out past midnight on a school night he sent us on our way tipping me a wink when it was safe to do so.

So PC whoever, thanks for cutting a kid a break.

Edit: The Spectator stand in question is the green structure on the left of this picture:
www.seewhitstable.com/whitstable-shops-and-businesses/Images/Tennis%20Courts/whitstable%20tennis%20courts.jpg
View from above:
maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=opera&q=whitstable&ie=UTF8&ll=51.3577,1.018971&spn=0.000799,0.002401&t=h&z=19
(Thu 23rd Apr 2009, 20:04, More)

» Call Centres

Throwing the survey callers off their script
This was an old favourite of my Dads which I have stolen and seems to work quite well.

*Brrrring Brrrring*

Me: Hello
Survey Person: Hello, is that Bill?
Me: It is
SP: Hi, my name is %SP% and I'm calling from %Survey Company%, can I ask you a few questions?
Me: Sure but can I take your billing address first please?
SP: Pardon?
Me: As a consultant my opinions and experience are of value to my clients, therefore it wouldn't be fair to provide them to your company for free so if you could give me your billing address so I can send you an invoice once we're done I'd be happy to answer all your questions.
SP: Err, um, *Click*
(Mon 7th Sep 2009, 15:45, More)

» How nerdy are you?

When I first believed in love at first sight
Instead of listing out all the things that make me a nerd let me tell you about a time I fell in love at first sight.

I was sitting in a pub in Soho after work with 3 other IT bods and as usual when this particular group are sat around the same table the discussion turned to networking. Having just changed ISP I was having trouble getting my Cisco router working with the new faster connection, as we were sitting discussing the problem someone tapped me on the shoulder; I turned around to be confronted by a absolutely stunning brunette who says “That caught me out to, you need to configure the connection as a subinterface of the main ATM dialler interface” thanking her I began discussing this new revelation with my colleagues and it took me about 30 seconds to actually compute that not only was this girl my exact type but she also knew what the hell we were talking about.

Interrupting my friends I went looking for her to start a conversation with someone who was basically my dream girl. Unfortunately she was gone never to be seen again despite repeated visits to the same venue.

So that’s the story of how my dream girl walked into my life, corrected my Cisco config and left never to be seen again.

On the off chance she’s a B3ta reader, if that was you that night Gaz me & by the way you were right, it worked fine as ATM0.1

Bill
(Wed 12th Mar 2008, 0:12, More)

» IT Support

Blaster, Beer and the Disaster Recovery box
Like a lot of unfortunate companies despite our best efforts we were unlucky enough to get hit by the blaster worm. Tracking back the path of infection the time it started to spread was Friday, 5:57PM however I didn't hear about it until 11:05 when my boss phoned me just as I was leaving the pub. This was when I said the one sentence I have probably regretted most

"I'm just in the pub round the corner"

"Brilliant, you can go back and help then"

"No I can't fella, I can barely fucking stand"

"Oh, come on. You'll be fine, the op-eng can help you if you need him to"

So I reluctantly agreed to go back and help with the clean up, arriving 40 minutes later after having had some problems with the 5 minute walk back I fell out of the lift and into a wheelie chair helpfully provided by said operations engineer to get me to the server room.

I then spent a few hours typing very slowly with one hand while I held the other over one eye in an attempt to see only one monitor instead of 3. Eventually I began to sober up enough to remember the Disaster Recovery box, this was a big gray crate holding a copy of all of the install discs ready to be grabbed in an emergency. What I had remembered was my personal additions to the box which were like a shining beacon to me at 3AM, two four packs of Red Bull and a carton of 200B&H. Between those and ordering deliveries on the bosses credit card I somehow survived the next 52 hours until we finally had cleared the infection off every machine we could and ring fenced the ones we couldn't patch.

Leaving the building at about 5 Monday morning and getting the first tube home was such a good feeling at the time that I can't even begin to describe it.
(Mon 28th Sep 2009, 3:09, More)

» Cringe!

2 for the price of one:
The first in which I cringe with every telling:

As some of you no doubt know I used to work for an offshoot of the BBC, this meant that I had to visit Television Center regularly. As part of my employment I also had the opportunity to join the BBC Club, among other benefits this allows access to the onsite bars at the various BBC buildings. Therefore we spent an inordinate amount of time when we should have been working in the staff bar at TVC.

It was one of those Friday evenings when I was working the late shift and really shouldn’t have been in the bar at 6 when while buried in the massive queue I spotted a very cute Indian looking girl, “Fuck I recognize her from somewhere” thinks I, is she the one I was failing to chat up last week? We make eye contact a couple of times until it’s obvious that she knows I’m paying her attention.

Still having no recollection of where I know her from I can only think of one way to proceed that’ll leave me some dignity, style it out. Therefore I wander across to her and open up with “Hiya, I haven’t seen you in ages how are you?”

About 10 minutes into this conversation consisting of nothing but small talk I suddenly realize where I know her from, I’d just spent 10 minutes chatting small talk with Konnie Huq (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konnie_Huq). I think she saw my sudden expression of horror when I noticed but was too kind to say anything as I closed the conversation with “Well, it’s been nice catching up, we’ll have to do this again soon” before escaping as fast as my small remaining shred of dignity would allow.

The second in which hopefully he cringes with every remembrance:

Before I was at the beeb I was working for a different media company headquartered at Pinewood Studios. I didn’t have to go into the main office often but one time while I was there Ricky Gervais was in the main canteen taking a break from shooting the first season of Extras (as I was later to find out). Everyone was in awe of his very existence so it was with some trepidation that I slowly approached his table and said “I’m sorry to interrupt you Mr. Gervais, I’m sure you get this all the time but I just had to come over and say; I think you’re one of the most talentless cunts ever given the misfortune to be allowed a TV show” before pulling a swift 180° turn and leaving before I got lynched.
(Tue 2nd Dec 2008, 14:18, More)