Help me, Lazyweb!

So, if you want someone to climb up onto the roof of a three storey building to arse around with the TV aerial primarily, but also to check that the recent bad weather hasn’t dislodged any tiles, do you think a roofererer would be OK? Or, given that I really don’t care about the roof as long as it lasts while I’m there, but I do want to watch the telly, should I just find someone to do that? I don’t even know what they are called: “Telly aerial engineers”?

Can anyone on Lazyweb advise, please?

In other news, the Department has forwarded a Führer Directive prohibiting us from taking laptops out of the building in case someone goes all Ministry of Defence and loses heaps of sensitive data. Laughable for two reasons: firstly it rather obviates the need for them in the first place if you can only use them in a building that is already crammed with PCs set up for hot-seating; and secondly, it rather overstates the sensitivity of the information and data generated by this place.

I have worked for successive incarnations and iterations of the current Department, and the most we get to is ‘confidential’ a security marking that means simply don’t tell anyone outside until we’re sure it won’t embarrass the Government. Well, embarrassing the Government is slightly less dangerous than losing the technical specs of a main battle tank, or the identity details of a third of the population.

Showing the knee-jerk naïveté of the Department, I notice that there is no similar injunction against taking flash memory, data sticks, recordable CDs or DVDs, or even good old floppy disks out of the place.

Help me, Lazyweb!

So, if you want someone to climb up onto the roof of a three storey building to arse around with the TV aerial primarily, but also to check that the recent bad weather hasn’t dislodged any tiles, do you think a roofererer would be OK? Or, given that I really don’t care about the roof as long as it lasts while I’m there, but I do want to watch the telly, should I just find someone to do that? I don’t even know what they are called: “Telly aerial engineers”?

Can anyone on Lazyweb advise, please?

In other news, the Department has forwarded a Führer Directive prohibiting us from taking laptops out of the building in case someone goes all Ministry of Defence and loses heaps of sensitive data. Laughable for two reasons: firstly it rather obviates the need for them in the first place if you can only use them in a building that is already crammed with PCs set up for hot-seating; and secondly, it rather overstates the sensitivity of the information and data generated by this place.

I have worked for successive incarnations and iterations of the current Department, and the most we get to is ‘confidential’ a security marking that means simply don’t tell anyone outside until we’re sure it won’t embarrass the Government. Well, embarrassing the Government is slightly less dangerous than losing the technical specs of a main battle tank, or the identity details of a third of the population.

Showing the knee-jerk naïveté of the Department, I notice that there is no similar injunction against taking flash memory, data sticks, recordable CDs or DVDs, or even good old floppy disks out of the place.

Oh yes

...and while I'm at it: HAPPY BIRTHDAY to pauln.

Oh yes

...and while I'm at it: HAPPY BIRTHDAY to pauln.

Satire

I don't normally find the political cartoons in The Times to be very funny and sometimes I stare at them without even understanding what the cartoonist is harping on about. This one though, from earlier in the week is excellent. It sums up the entire Northern Rock fiasco precisely.




I particularly like the fact that Richard Branson is tempting it across with a bag of peanuts. I'm not sure how clear that is from the scan; you can get a larger version by clicking on it.

Satire

I don't normally find the political cartoons in The Times to be very funny and sometimes I stare at them without even understanding what the cartoonist is harping on about. This one though, from earlier in the week is excellent. It sums up the entire Northern Rock fiasco precisely.




I particularly like the fact that Richard Branson is tempting it across with a bag of peanuts. I'm not sure how clear that is from the scan; you can get a larger version by clicking on it.