You've been Googled

I am hoping like hell that 'bing' turns out to be crap. Because I won't use it.

Not for any logical reason, just because I haven't forgiven them for Vista.

I will not bore you all the actual problems with running the dog of a thing. What really pisses me off is that it was forced upon me. I needed new hardware. Why could I not have my old operating system on my new PC? Windows Whatever It Was (pre-Vista) had served me perfectly well, and wasn't that old. Why was it so unreasonable that I should expect to be able to choose? Couldn't I at the very least be given the choice to buy with no operating system at all, so I could have put my old one on? Apparently not. I must be forced to purchase an endless supply of frequent crashes and inexplicable stalls.

Impotent fury festers. Besides, its rare to have the opportunity to happily nurture resentment and turn the other cheek to the advances of that harlot Forgiveness without hurting a flea. Why would I want to give that away?

I found myself with a dilemma, though, after the nightly news have furnished the Big M with about 5 minutes worth of free advertising. What if 'bing' is actually better? A lot of my work depends on internet research. If it was good, there was a very real prospect of being forced to comply. The very thought makes me break out in a rash.

So I thought I would run a simple test and ask them both to find something obscure. I 'binged' myself. It sounds like a mild assault, like having a ping-pong ball bounced off your head. Then I Googled myself. More of an aural tickle, I think.

To my everlasting relief, I found that 'bing' disdains me as much as I disdain it. It most ardently prefers an American sociologist of the same name. Google knows the sociologist, and the kindergarten teacher, and the lawyer in Ohio who share my name, but it knows me as well.

It wins. Phew.

Yeah, fuck you, too, Richard!

It all started because I have a terrible deadline looming that I am struggling to meet. Spending four hours on the internet searching looking for good mobile phone deals was therefore inevitable. I have always been a pre-paid kinda gal, but I do love a gadget so, and there was these lovely ones, all shiny and lovely. All I had to do was sign up to a little teensy weensy little 18 month contract and pay them a little bit of money up front. Just £8.50 a month and a new Lovely Shiny Shiny would be mine. Delivered straight to my door. Easy. Nice. Shiny.

Besides, if I actually purchased a phone, it meant that the four hours that I had just spent tooling around on the internet was not time-wasting, but responsible, well thought out consumer research. I was good, not bad.

I filled in all the little boxes on the screen, and they said they Lovely Shiny would arrive the next day. I would have a new Lovely Shiny and a phone contract, just like a grown-up. I was excited. Then, a couple of hours later, they sent me another one saying that I wasn't allowed to give them my money. Not this week. Last week, of course, Virgin Media was happy to sign me up and install cable internet, TV and telephone for about three times the amount we were talking about now. This week, nada. They were kind enough to offer me the opportunity to pay some credit check agency in Essex twelve quid for the priviledge of telling me why I was no longer worthy, but apart from that, I could fuck off.

I was a little hurt.

Resilient little bunny that I am, I found another deal with another company the next day. In fact, this one was WAY cheaper, so the day before's events seemed like a little caress of luck(so much for my consumer research of the day before). All went well. They asked me more questions, which I found encouraging. The address bit took some time,because they wanted three year's worth. I decided to gloss over the Sydney flat and the brief soujourn in Morningside and stick to just three addresses for the last year. After that,there was just the Elwood Hibiscus Palace.

This time I got two e-mails. First, telling me that they got the form. Secondly, telling me my order had been lodged and I could expect my Lovely Shiny forthwith. Gadget greedy, I dreamed of all the things I could do with my new gadget. I couldn't actually think of any that would be particularly useful, but whatever they were I would be able to do them in style.

Having run out of distractions, I actually did some work. Then another email arrived. And a text. They didn't want me either. A double-barelled rejection from this lot, just in case I was in any doubt. The odd little episode of rejection I can handle. The mini-series, however, I was finding unpleasant. To give them their due, though, they at least had the good grace to tell me that the problem was not having lived in the UK for three years. And they didn't try and charge me twelve quid for the knowledge.

Then another e-mail arrived. Right back at the start, I had sent Verging Meanier an e-mail to ask if I could just add a phone to my already purchased bundle. Yesterday, they hadn't replied. Today, 24 hours after Virgin Mobile had told me to fuck off and take my business elsewhere, they replied. They advised, in that annoying Virgin chirpy-chappy prose that makes you want to slap the little fuckers, that they would absolutely LOVE to help me. Was I aware they had a deal for as little as £8.50? All I had to do was call their Sales Department and they would sort it all out. They would have rung me, they said, except I hadn't given them a phone number, i.e. the phone number that they had provided me with the week before.

I toyed with the idea of writing back to tell them that I was aware of their £8.50 a month deal, having tried to purchase that very deal the day before, but by this time I was half convinced a balaclava-clad swat team was downstairs in an unmarked van preparing to storm the flat and take my internet away.

A minor aside. I was allowed to VOTE here from the moment I arrived.

To cut a long story short, I therefore remain a pre-paid girl, and by all accounts am doomed to remain so for another two years. No Lovely Lovely Shiny for me.

Fuck you, too, Mr Branson.

The Definition of Panic

The definition of panic, dear friends, is when your stupid Windows Media Player (let the guilty be named) tells you that all of your music is on your computer twice, and then you remember that you put stuff in a 'public' folder, because your stupid computer thinks that your part-time worker self and your fooling around freelance self are two different people altogether (which they kind of are, I like to think, but I digress..).




The definition of panic, is when you do actually check, and Windows Explorer shows you a happy little list of folders in BOTH your 'music' folder and your 'public music' folder, clear indication in anyone's language that there are files in both. Deluded, I was. Deceived and deluded. So, in order to keep your little laptop the lean mean fighting machine that it needs to be in this dog-eat-homework world, you press 'delete' to erase the material in your 'public' folder, ignoring the little voice in the back of your head that is querulously murmering 'Hang on. No way is your hard disk big enough to fit all your music twice.'





The definition of panic is when the warning that the thing is about to delete 8,136 items makes no impression on you whatsoever except to make you feel rather smug and self-congratulatory about the fact you have accrued 8,136 items of rather eclectic and diverse musical joy. This vainglorious buzz lasts just long enough to quash any uneasiness prompted by your computer telling you that it will not put these things in that safe little Half-way House for Wayward Files, the Recycle Bin. It will instead delete them - completely and irrevocably - without further ado. This is precisely because it is a rich and lovely collection of such impressive volume. This is because you are now homeless and all your CDs are stored away in an asbestos-soaked shed in the middle of Brunswick, and your only access to your music, lovingly collected over years, is via your computer. Yes, it seems size does matter.


The definition of panic is when you check back in your music folder to find everything gone.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Everything, that is, except one empty Beck folder. Oddly, the Microsoft gods decided to let that stay, as a hollow reminder of all that had been and was now no more.


But wait. No need to send flowers.



The definition of relief is when you realise that you acually backed up your computer before you left the UK, because you remembered that if your laptop got nuked by some feral device bent on protecting the world from Terror you are fucked, both professionally and personally. Professionally for obvious reasons. Personally because all your photos and music, and therefore the best parts of oneself, would be erased forever.



So, as I write, a shiny little back box about the size of a Moleskine notebook with a reassuringly steady blue light on the side is painstakingly giving my machine back its soul - or at least 6,812 parts of it. This is going to take it 59 minutes apparently, which seems a little unfair given that the accumulated musical wisdom of 41 years of listening pleasure took me a maximum of two clicks and well under 59 seconds to destroy. I am a little concerned about the mysterious attrition of about 1,200 items but, hell, seven eighths of a soul is better than no soul at all.


Back up, my friends, back up. Disaster is but a mouse-click away.