On the second day of my summer unrecovery ...

[reddragdiva]

I have a cold. Blergh. Think I'm going to iron a couple of shirts and go to bed.

The coffee at work is really shitful instant. Something will have to be Done about this. Plunger in the desk drawer or something.

Spent the afternoon getting inducted. Work may solve the bank account problem - they get foreign employees in the same situation all the time, so they have it down to a fine art. (And once I get the account, I can take it away from NatWest, because they suck festering dingo balls.) First payday is September 25th, with all the September pay in a lump. It's fairly safe to assume that I will be out on Friday 27th and Saturday 28th ...

I haven't slithered through the work firewall yet (SOP for access to the world appears to be to dial out with a laptop) and don't have a PC of my own at all. So after tomorrow evening I have no idea when I'll be reading my email again. Not too long, I expect.

Comments

[simonb.livejournal.com]

WRT bank accounts my personal preference is for SMILE - the online part of the Co-Operative bank. They have a nice Java based client for accessing them and they also have a 24/7 number you can call to harass as real person if you need to :)

Crap coffee

[blarglefiend.livejournal.com]

Coffee here is a bit dodgy, too. Not quite at the International Roast level of badness, but probably something evil like Nescafe bought in bulk.

I've taken to buying myself tins of Jarrah coffee substitute. The stuff that comes as a fine powder with creaming foo in it. The "Vienna" (vaguely cinnamon-flavoured) version isn't too bad, and it's better than the crap supplied by the school. I treat it as being a sort of weird-tasting Milo with a bit of caffeine in it.

(Why not a plunger? Because it's too much hassle to deal with storing coffee grounds in the freezer and all the figuring out who owns what that goes along with that, and there's decent coffee available in the caff downstairs anyway.)

[kraant.livejournal.com]

So what does the firewall allow through? if it allows any TCP/IP ports then you can have PPP over an ssl stream.

[reddragdiva]

While I could hack my way around it in such a manner, I suspect it would have career-limiting effects if noticed. (It certainly would on someone else if I noticed.) I suspect something involving the use of powers I already have but haven't fully investigated would be a safer idea :-)

[giolla.livejournal.com]

Plan, a certain person, who isn't me, has said they'll kill you if you make them look bad ;)

The coffee drought here however is over so there has been much rejoicing and tempers are much improved.

[reddragdiva]

Hacking around such limitations is just so, I dunno, unstylish. Particularly when I probably have rightful authority.

Not that I have ANY time for such things - finding knowledge in a departing consultant's brain is like, like, a very hard thing ...