So, they decide to open a new branch – well, the guy who manages the new branch experiences an error on the website (error on our side, turns out that some of the code didn’t take new branches into account), so he calls me for help.

It turns out that this chap is not too bright…

Luser: “I’ve found an error on the website… (yadda yadda)”.
Me: “OK… can you know exactly what you did to cause the error?” [When fixing bugs, it helps if you can reproduce them, you see...]

Turns out, he doesn’t understand what I’m asking for, so I decide to take a simpler approach…

Me: “OK, this may help – next time you get the error, can you take a screenshot of your browser window showing the error, and mail it to me?”.
Luser: “What’s a screenshot?”
Me: *facepalm*

So, I search Google for a screenie-making tutorial, and mail him the first link that comes up, telling him that that’s how you take a screenshot, and that he should mail the screenshot to me when he’s taken it. The reply comes through two days later – the screenshot was of the guy’s Outlook window…

It took me several more days encountering similar stupidity to get the information I needed to find and fix the bug…

The prankster who defaced ANC president Jacob Zuma’s poster and placed it on a pedestrian bridge near Virginia Airport, Durban, will be fined or face jail time if caught, the IEC said on Thursday

Clearly inspired by an e-mail that has been doing the rounds for the past month, someone added a mask to the poster and scrawled the word “Zumatello” alongside Zuma’s image.

The poster was then placed on the pedestrian bridge over the southbound carriageway of the M4.

The reference to Zumatello, for the uninitiated, comes from the cartoon series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which featured four turtles whose names Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello were borrowed from Renaissance era artists.

The Independent Electoral Commission says there is nothing funny about defacing any election posters.

Tension between rival parties was highlighted when a similar election poster of Jacob Zuma was defaced in Umlazi recently.

The ANC in KZN called on police to investigate, but no formal charges had been laid.

Just two months after that incident two men were arrested for plastering their business adverts on an ANC poster in Johannesburg’s city centre.

The men were taken to the Johannesburg Central Police Station and charged with contravening the Electoral Act, which makes it illegal to conceal or remove any voting or electoral material.

The charges included malicious damage to property and contravening the Electoral Act.

IEC spokesperson, Mawethu Mosery, who had not seen the poster in question said: “Misrepresentation of campaign posters is a matter that deeply concerns us.

“We will not tolerate such behaviour.”

Mosery went on to say that if it was concluded that another party was responsible for the defacing, the party would have to pay a fine of about R200 000.

However, if it was carried out by an individual with no political ties, there would be no option of a fine and the offender would face up to two year’s imprisonment.

Seriously – don’t people know what a sense of humour is any more?

Upon Googling it now, I found that this one has been doing the rounds on several other blogs for a while now, and I have no idea who the original source was – this blog was the first thing that came up in my Google search results, so that’s what I’m putting.

Apple Computer announced today that it has developed a computer chip that can store and play high fidelity music in women’s breast implants.

The iTit will cost $499 or $599 depending on speaker size.

This is considered to be a major breakthrough because women have always complained about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them.

Hence, this immortal Google Talk conversation:

Andrew
holy shit
there’s a lot of jobs for programmers

Me
so stop being lazy and get one!

Andrew
working on embedded c/c++ systems for the freaking army

Me
oh.

Andrew
at least i’m british born and can get clearance, so I can still apply for the silly things
coz they specifically ask for that.
but there’s the question, do I want to work there? o_O
sure, if I put a bug in a website, someone gets pissed off, but an accidental bug in a rocket launcher?

I’m still wiping the tears from my eyes at the thought of Andrew putting bugs in rocket launchers – the results would be similar to the results of my lack of skill wielding banana bombs in Worms…

“So”, you may be asking, “what’s up with the random blog post title”? Nothing random about it – let me explain. Given that I have PHP and MySQL at my disposal as far as my web hosting goes, it makes perfect sense for me to chuck out the old static pages and go with an open-source content management system. Now, the two obvious choices are Joomla! and Drupal, and yes, it’s pretty much six of one, half a dozen of the other as far as choosing between them goes. I have Joomla! experience but no Drupal experience so that may well end up being the deciding factor. If you believe that you can convince me otherwise though, leave a comment; I’d love to hear what you might have to say.

I had a lot of issues in my personal life; a noteworthy one being a certain Office Freak – for those who post on my forum, see me personally, communicate with me over GTalk or IRC, I need say no more. For those who don’t, let’s just say that this person made every day of my job living hell. That’s all that needs to be said. Fortunately, at the end of last year, we did an office reshuffle and I got given two absolutely awesome people to share a new office with, so I’m really happy about that – I do feel sorry for the new people who have to share the office with The Freak. I do still keep a convenient stash of death metal in my office for occasions when it gets lost and wanders in; fortunately I’ve never had to use them this year as I have the impression that he’s somewhat scared of me now owing to how often I played those CDs at full blast last year. It takes a lot for me to take the trance CD out and replace it with the death metal one, so you can imagine the near constant frustration that I endured.

Well, here’s hoping that it gets fired soon enough, because it doesn’t do any work.

The other reason is one of time – between work, my church band and related activities, and looking after three forums in what spare time remains, I didn’t have much time for anything else. It’s not as bad as it was previously, but things are still pretty hectic – I really need to take time out and decide what’s important to me and what I should rather stop doing. Also, the whole mess with CTI didn’t exactly help either.

That being said, I believe that this blog of mine has been sorely neglected, and I really need to start posting more stuff on here.