Seventh Heaven

The end of last week saw me both ill and gadgetted up with a brand new PC. Unfortunately the former delayed my getting to grips with the latter by a day or two.

‘Cos, let’s face it, you have to be completely healthy when faced with a brand spanking new PC complete with brand spanking new operating system – the much vaunted Windows 7. New PC’s are stress-fests of the highest order. Will it like your peripherals? Will it run your software? Or will it spit the dummy at the first whiff of your modem, tantrum at the mere proximity of your scanner? Will you have to claw your way through dozens of installation discs that have littered your shelves like strange voodoo objects that you’re too scared to throw away but have no idea what at all it is they were created to do?

The man in the computer shop assured me that the above scenarios would just not take place. Windows 7 is – despite a ubiquitous mistrust of all things Microsoft – a break-through. An operating system that for once delivers; it does exactly what it says on the box.

Just plug everything in, the man advised me, it’ll all work instantly...

Yeah right.

I’ve run PC’s for 10 years, mate. Plug ‘n’ play in a fallacy. It rarely happens. Instead it takes hours of head-bashing to work everything out or to download the necessary patches and updates and tweaks.

Like I said. I needed to be fully fit and healthy before attempting a job of this magnitude.

But blow me if the man wasn’t right.

The installation discs for my various bits of antiquated hardware were unnecessary. The dust on them has not been disturbed.

I plugged everything in and everything worked with barely a pause. I was online, emailed up and fully connected with the WWW in under 10 minutes. An absolute record.

No glitches. No freezes. No compatibility issues. All my hardware A-OK. All my software A-OK.

Microsoft has at last come up with a shiny new operating system that I have fallen completely in love with. It’s smooth. It’s (so far) stable. It’s visual and intuitive. It’s easily customizable. It’s fast (though this might have more to do with my quad core processor and fully stocked memory than the OS).

It’s, in short, beautiful.

I like it. I’m impressed.

Suddenly I’ve fallen in love with my computer again. I’m experiencing a new honeymoon period. I hate being away from it. For anyone or anything.

All other life is a distraction.

Me and my new motherboard, we’re like bonded, OK?

So, that’s it, folks. Me and Windows 7 have got things to do, things to discuss. We gotta shoot the breeze. And we might be some time.

Bye.

Didn’t You Get My Message?

Read receipts.

Evidence of extreme efficiency or a level of neurosis that should be treated with industrial strength horse tranquilizers?

I only ask because I received an email this week that bullied me into sending a read receipt when I opened it, prodded me to send another receipt when I closed it and then poked me to send yet another when I deleted the damned thing.

It wasn’t even an important email. The message was totally banal.

The security of this nation did not depend on me reading this email. Neither were billions of pounds in global investments riding on its arrival in my Inbox.

Why the panic? Why would someone give a shit about me deleting it?

Did they erupt into hysterical sobs when they got that particular receipt? He... he deleted it?! He deleted it! I can’t believe it! How could he do such a thing...? Is the originator of the email going to be found hanging from a lampshade in their office, life extinguished by the plastic flex to the kettle? Is their death going to be on my hands?

I don’t want this responsibility.

I just want to receive emails and delete them without having to account for my actions. After all, once they’re in my Inbox they’re mine and I can do what I bloody well like with them. I’ll delete them, forward them, reply to them – sometimes even maliciously modify them – as and when I see fit.

Who invited the email Nazi’s to the party anyway?

I mean when you post a letter to someone you don’t ring them up and ask have you opened it yet? Do you? You don’t demand to know if they’ve binned the envelope or worse still run the letter through the shredder. Why all this panic about emails?

Plainly it is a case of some kind of inferiority / superiority complex. I send you an email and refuse to relinquish control of it. I demand to know every stage of its journey and I demand to know exactly what you do with it. Because I refuse to be ignored. You will acknowledge my email. You will acknowledge the reading and the deleting of it. You will acknowledge me, me, me and the power I have over you.

Bullshit.

The sender has requested a read receipt be sent when the message is read. Do you want to send a receipt? Yes / No.

No.

No. No. Effing no.

I think you’ll find that it is me – me, me, me – who truly has the power...

Out Of Africa

A short while ago – in zestful arrogance – I wrote a sarcastic email to some poor enterprising con man in Burkina Faso. I took the mickey out of his risible attempts to get me involved in a multi-million dollar scam and scoffed at the very idea that my Great Aunt Matilda could have enjoyed sexual congress with a tribesman of that region a century ago producing an off-shoot of the family tree that would, in 2009, name me as a the sole heir to his dubiously misbegotten fortune.

Of course I was aware of the scientific theory that we all ultimately descended from a single tribe in central Africa many thousands of years ago but ignored it in favour of cutting edge satire and a cheap joke about Kunte Kinte being my long lost cousin.

I now bow my head in shame.

Dr Alice Roberts (if my doctor looked liked her I’d become a hypochondriac) has investigated and, to my mind, proven the theory as fact beyond all shadow of a doubt. Her programme, The Human Journey, has been essential Sunday night viewing for the last 4 weeks.

And what a terrific gig for Dr R.

She got to sashay her pert little tush across every continent on the planet and got her hands wrapped around some amazing looking bones. Lucky girl.

But it wasn’t all sun screen and sultry pouts to camera for Dr R, Oh no. She worked bloody hard too. She risked a night alone in the African bush, fingered lots of ancient skulls in dusty museum store rooms and correlated and produced a work of such superlative televisual research that it stopped me mourning the absence of Lark Rise To Candleford.

It seems that we did indeed – all of us – descend from one single tribe that emerged out of Africa about 50,000 years ago. A tribe that gradually worked its way up into Europe, jogged across into Asia and Australasia and finally made the big leap into the Americas about 14,500 years ago – spreading its bounteous seed like wild oats as it went. Genetically the theory has also been proven. Undeniably. Irrefutably. The men in white coats say so. Their scientific barcode thingies prove it.

We are all of us related.

You are all of you – including the con man in Burkina Faso, including Dr Alice Roberts – my brothers and sisters.

Technically we’ve been inbreeding for years.

No wonder the planet is in such a God-awful mess.

Do You Know Ali Bongo?

As some of you know I’ve been getting more than my fair share of spam emails at the moment. Most of them purporting to originate from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. All of them asking me to claim vast sums of money held in trust by mysterious relatives who have all died in very inconvenient plane crashes.

For the most part I’ve been ignoring / deleting them but I’m now reaching the point where my irritation is seeking another outlet.

Taking my lead from others who have responded "in kind" to these emails I am embarking on a little programme of spurious RSVP myself. This could be a series of many or even just a series of one. But here, for your delectation, is one of the offending emails and below it, my carefully worded reply. Enjoy.

FROM THE OFFICE OF MR ALI DONGO
DIRECTOR AUDITING AND ACCOUNTING UNIT,
BANK OF AFRICA.(BOA)
OUAGADOUGOU -BURKINA FASO

SORRY IF THIS MESSAGE DO NOT MEET YOUR PERSONAL ADVANTAGE,
WE APOLOGIES

Compliment,
Pleasure writing to you at this moment of the day, I am Mr.ALI DONGO.
the director incharge of auditing and accounting Dept. of Bank of Africa OUAGADOUGOU -BURKINA FASO.I deem it fit to contact you regarding an inactive/dormant account fund that will benefit both of us at the end, if parties involved will take restrait and maintain absolute secrecy, honesty and integrity. I got your contact in my search for a reputable and reliable person to particularly assist me to claim the fund in question. During auditing, in our bank at the end of last fiscal year, We discovered the sum of Twenty five millions United States dollars (US$25M) in a dormant account belonging to an international businessman who was involved in the December 25th Benin plane crash. while travelling for his bussiness. I kept this information(secret) confidential within my jurisdiction to enable us submit claims and transfer this fund through trustworthy person whom we shall present to our bank as the bonafide next of kin to the ceased. Visit our investigations so far clearly reveals that there is no immediate survivor or even a relation to the deceased and as such, there is no immediate next of kin for further claims of the deceased fund as we have long been expecting someone to come forward with an applications. Further information's /verifications from reliable sources too have confirmed that the deceased customer supposed next of kin were all in the plane with him died with him.this is where the bank come in to do bussiness with who ever is interested.

Plane Crash Web site!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This fund is now ready for transfer into a foreign account, whose owner will be portrayed to our bank as the beneficiary and a next of kin to the deceased customer. The foreign account owner will impost himself appropriately as the next of kin to the deceased and respond positively like a true next of kin who wishes to speed up the release and transfer process of his inherited fund. Kindly be aware too that if the over-due fund if not claimed by the end of next quarter, the National Treasury and Bills of britain will take over the ownership of the fund in line with the National Edict Act of 2000. We do not want this to happen as it will not augur to our best interest, having worked all our lives in the banking sector, that is why I contacted you for us to do the deal together with absolute confidence, so that you will be portrayed as the bonafide beneficiary and an immediate next of kin to the deceased. I will give you further directives, advice and all needed information's required for this transaction as soon as I receive your positive response. Similarly, if you accept to carry out this transaction with us, we have resolved offering to you 30% of the total sum as commission, extra 10% of all proceeds to be generated from subsequent profit-viable. 5% of the total fund will be set aside to re-imburse all expenses incurred in this course of this transaction. This transfer will automatically be affected within 7 working days. Be rest assured that with the underground work i have laid so far, that this transaction carries no risk and no extra burdens on your part, except the above mentioned nominal roles you are required to fulfil and similarly will be required to maintain absolute information secrecy throughout the duration of this transaction, because discussing and exhibiting it with a third party might jeopardise the entire transaction.

I will give you directives and all needed information as soon as I receive your positive response. Kindly understand that we could not carry out this fund-transfer on our own, based on the simple facts that we are civil servants and presently bank staffs and this office excludes us from operating foreign accounts, moreover conducting such magnanimous transaction from the same place where we belong to/coming from will raise eyebrows on our side and the truth is that this fund belongs to a foreigner, and as such demands same as next of kin.I am looking forward to receiving your interesting response on this project as this will greatly enrich the both of us at the end. please you are required to reply this message as a matter of necessity.
(ali_dongo26@yahoo.fr)

Best regards,
MR ALI DONGO.

(Account Audithor B.O.A)

And my reply:

Dear Mr Dongo,

Felicitations from your grateful correspondent in England!

Your electronic missive reached me like a shaft of glorious sunshine in a very dark hour and has filled my heart with joy that there are such lovely, trustworthy people in the world who are at great pains to do good things and benefit others.

While I am deeply saddened to learn of the death of your client by plane crash I applaud your efforts to see that his financial estate is properly disposed of and I am willing to do all I can to assist you to this end. In short, Mr Dongo, I would be very willing to accept the money you so graciously offer me though I do, I admit, have a few concerns as to how its transfer to my holdings might be instigated.

You see Mr Dongo, due to a rather extravagant combine harvester accident 10 years ago I have since been closeted away in a nursing home, a broke and lonely man. I am virtually a paraplegic as my encounter with the combine harvester efficiently removed all of my limbs and my left ear making it impossible for me to wear normal glasses. I have had to have a special pair made that utilise the elastic from a pair of swimming goggles. I am told it looks ok but the elastic does tend to chafe my forehead. As I am unable to write in the normal way I must communicate with the world by tapping out words on a keyboard with a stick that I hold in my mouth. This is very time consuming – hence the long delay in my writing back to you. I do hope I am not too late and have not missed the gravy train.

Due to my disabilities all of my financial arrangements are handled by a trustee that I have employed for this purpose. Before my accident I was a famous racing car driver and had accrued a great personal fortune and I have been living off this for the last decade. So you see, I am used to handling great sums of money and would not be intimidated by the amounts involved in your proposed transaction. Unfortunately my accountant and indeed my Swiss bank manager – both rather sober fellows – might question a sudden influx of funds from Burkina Faso. Is there any way we can break up the money into smaller amounts that could be deposited into my account over a period of months? This would arouse far less suspicion. I must be careful not to attract attention from the authorities, you see, after I was accused of funding a diamond smuggling operation in South Africa a number of years ago. These accusations were entirely false I can assure you and my acquisition of gem stones since that time has been purely legal and without personal blemish on my part.

Regarding your proposal that I act as next of kin, I agree that this sounds the most expedite way in which to deal with your monetary problems. But I worry that it would be all too easy for my claim to be proved as false and my links to your diseased client proved as tenuous. To this end I will employ a legal expert with whom I have a long standing personal acquaintance and who, for reasons I do not wish to discuss, is not currently permitted to practice in the UK or Europe but is more than capable of providing me with all the necessary documents that will prove beyond any contestation my claim as next of kin to the diseased.

So much so I wonder if we might not renegotiate the 30% cut that you have so kindly offered me. As the legal next of kin I believe my cousin would rather the majority of his personal fortune stay within our close-knit family. To this end I wonder if 70% might not be a more realistic sum with 30% for your good self, Mr Dongo, to cover all of your administration costs? I am sure we can discuss this further and come to a mutually satisfactory conclusion.

I shall sign off here as my jaw is beginning to ache. My stick is not padded, you see, and keeping my teeth clamped for such a long period of time has a detrimental effect upon my molars. My dentist has warned me never to attempt novel writing or he will run out of enamel.

Before I go though, Mr Dongo, I must ask one more question that is pressing heavily upon my mind. I am sure you have been asked this many times before but I am afraid I must presume on your goodwill and ask it once again: are you in any way related to Ali Bongo, the Great British entertainer and master magician of huge renown? Are you indeed a member of the magic circle? Do you know any decent card tricks? Maybe we could set up a web cam for a future interview and you could show me some sleight of hand during our warm negotiations. This would be sure to bring a smile to my face although I will be unable – through no fault of my own – to applaud your most sterling efforts.

I look forward to your illuminating response.

Yours most sincerely,
Sir Reginald Wormall, MBE, OBE.

Please Sir, Kindly Take Receipt Of This $9 Million Dollars

As some of you will know, whilst launching a new blogging project recently I had cause to publish an email address of mine online. Only a Yahoo webmail account but still one that I use frequently.

I didn’t think anything of it to tell you the truth. I doubt it was online for more than a day or two.

But by God have I been deluged with spam mail.

Nothing about Viagra or sex techniques to make my woman “cry like a baby with ecstasy as I keep going all night without stopping” – well, I could write a book about that myself, couldn’t I?

Just loads and load of emails from various gentlemen in Burkina Faso who, it seems, wish to enlist my aid in helping them out of a rather sticky financial quandary. They’ve obviously heard that I‘m a financial whizz and regularly move immense sums of money into and out of my bank accounts without rousing any kind of suspicion whatsoever.

Take Dr. Alim Hadi for example. The poor man is the trustee of a monetary estate worth $9 million. He’d like to release the money to me as it seems I am the next of kin to his client who died in a plane crash with all of his family in July 2000. The account has lain dormant since then with nobody coming to claim the money. Nobody at all. The money has just sat there all this time. Unmolested. Wow.

Apparently I am entitled to 40% of the above sum which he will happily see transferred into my account provided I supply him with all of the necessary banking details. Of course I must keep this all top secret. And delete the email if I am not interested. Confidentiality is very important. As a high roller like myself fully understands.

Yeah right.

I think what insults me the most (though of course none of this is particularly personal) is the assumption that I’d be stupid enough to fall for it. I mean please. Next of kin to a previously unknown African branch of the family?

Mind you my granddad did spend time in Durban during the war so it’s quite possible he got up to some naughties with an African beauty of big bosomed persuasion whilst on shore leave...

Hmm. Whatever.

The thing is Dr. Hadi, you’re not even trying. Your attempts to screw me are clichéd and formulaic. At least be a little more inventive. A little more theatrical.

I want to see photographs of the crash site. I want to see mortuary pictures of my long lost relative laid out on the slab (something for the family album). I want a lock of hair or a fingernail – hell, the whole finger if possible (who’s going to notice its absence?) – something I can get DNA tested. And I want paperwork. A letter from my great granny perhaps talking wistfully of her elicit liaison with the late denizen of Ouagadougou and exhorting him to one day get in touch with the UK branch of his family should he ever fall onto hard times but especially should he fall onto good.

And most of all I want a huge, obsessively detailed family tree laid out on parchment and an episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” reserved for my very public reconciliation with my long lost African brothers – something in the style of Roots would be fine.

Give me all that and you can have my sodding bank account details with absolute pleasure. And, if I really must, I suppose I’ll accept my 40% cut of the $9 million. After all it’s what my cousin, Kunte Kinte, would have wanted.

*Sigh* Global families. Don’t you just love ‘em?

P.S. Can I just say that I am not available for babysitting?

Who’s The Daddy?

As some of you will be aware, in addition to my full-time local authority job (which I’m currently underpaid for – see my previous post) I also run my own part-time web design business.

It’s just a small concern – hardly a global corporation or liable to give Bill Gates any sleepless nights – but it’s all mine.

When I started it three years ago I did so with a glad and excited heart. No more working for idiots and gits, I thought to myself. I’ll be my own boss. I can do what I like and tell the twats to get lost.

Of course that isn’t the case at all. You still end up working for idiots and gits. Anybody who’ll pay you for the work basically. And while you’re producing work on their behalf the idiots and gits are still, technically, your boss.

Sigh. I never did like Status Quo.

However, after a while you begin to sort out the good clients from the bad and you start to develop a long memory and good instincts.

How does that help?

Well, I had trouble about a year ago with a real a-hole who gave me months and months of grief and hassle and actually managed to make my life a complete misery. However, I persevered and managed to build him a tiptop web site. Once it went live, however, he started being awkward about paying my invoice and quibbled over the price we’d agreed upon months in advance. This was at a time when I just did not need the extra hassle – Karen was having a difficult pregnancy and I needed my time and energies to be directed elsewhere, not chasing welshers.

Things got nasty and I came within an inch of taking him to the small claims court. But in the end, he coughed up. He paid. And he even attempted a little humility.

Yeah like whatever.

Then this week, out of the blue, he got back in touch with me. A real begging email. Seems he has loads of updates that he needs putting onto his web site but nobody wants to do the work for him.

Oh really? I wonder why?

At last, being my own boss finally came into its own. I owed him nothing. I was holding all the cards (aces naturally). And there was only one barrel and it wasn’t me that was over it.

I told him no.

Effing marvellous!

It’s a sensation that can only be matched by being the filling in a Kirstie Allsopp* and Michelle Ryan* sandwich.

*Please feel free to insert the “bread” of your choice though I don’t recommend anything too crusty...

Death Wish

What’s in a letter?

Picture the scene if you will... it’s Friday afternoon, it’s 30 minutes before knocking-off time, you’re tired, you’re bored and you’re desperate to finish off the last of your work and head home for the weekend...

All you have to do is email your department manager with some info he has requested - in this case an inventory of building equipment - and then you’re almost in the home stretch and can practically taste the free air of the weekend.

You begin to compose the email. You don’t want to appear too informal - he is after all the big boss of your department. Clearly "Hi Dale" is too chatty, too casual for what is after all a very slight but very formal working relationship. "Dear Dale" is much the safer option. Respectful, full of old style reverence and it can’t possibly offend anybody.

Unfortunately you’re so tired and eager to get away from the office that your typing skills are on the skids. An innocent finger slip - unnoticed in your haste to leave the grind of the workplace - substitutes the "r" for a "d"... and suddenly instead of "Dear Dale" your email begins "Dead Dale".

But you don’t notice until... Oh God. It’s been sent. And there’s no way to recall it.

You slope off home hoping that the famed dyslexia of this particular section boss will perhaps render the faux pas unnoticed...

Unfortunately you arrive at work this grey Monday morning to find a print-out of Friday’s email placed in the middle of your desk with the mistyped word highlighted big and large in bright red marker pen with a massive exclamation mark beside it...

What do you do now?

Keep your head down and hope the incident is soon lost amongst the normal flotsam of the day and make a vow never to rely solely on the spellchecker to pick up your typing errors ever again?

Or meet conspicuously with black suited Italian businessmen at lunchtime and make good the veiled threat?