Do's and dont's.....

When moving office, installing a new broadband line, buying a router and a shedload of wireless peripherals, it is most important to follow the installation instructions ‘to the letter’ especially as the entire stable of computery are AppleMacs of varying ages and operating systems.

When receiving the top secret ‘Username’ and ‘Password’ over the phone from the provider, it is most important that extra special care is taken to write it down correctly. Because, as everybody knows, an incorrectly written down password will mean days of frustration, a completely buggered up weekend, a few box files becoming airborne and GBH to a computer mouse.

When ringing the provider up on a snowy Monday morning, it’s important to stay cool, calm and collected, even when you’ve been hanging on for hours and hours, pressing buttons till your fingers bleed and listening to menu instructions till your brain fries. It’s especially important when going over the username and password, letter by letter, number by number, upper case by lower case – because, as the user manual says, ’It’s vital to type in the correct username and password’. - Because if you don’t, then the system will never, ever get up and running.

And it didn’t, no matter how hard I tried..

When talking to the person at the trouble shooting office of the provider, it’s important that all the ticks, all the boxes and all the typed instructions are correct and checked. I have, they are. But still it won’t bloody work.

It is also mostimportant that you do not say "Oh f*cking hell, what d’yer mean "Sorry, that lower case ‘ell’ should be an upper case ‘eye’. Do you know how many f*cking hours I’ve spent twiddling with the settings on this installation screen – and all the while you’ve been giving me the wrong f*cking password, you f*cking moron!"

When you have been extremely pissed off – and pissed upon, it is most important to vent the glottal, exercise the spleen and exorcise the pent up frustration of dealing with jobsworth divvies – and thus helping to avoid a heart attack or commit homicide, don't you think?.....