The gulf between IT people and Hoi Polloi

The gulf between IT literate people and the rest…

So I went to a law firm yesterday to talk to them about the security implications of allowing remote working from home PCs etc.
Sure enough, they had gone and piloted a number of SSLVPN boxes, because they didn’t want to have to manage loads of client software etc.

What was the problem then?
Well, they’d discovered that none of their lawyers could navigate through modern browser settings to install the ActiveX objects required to run the endpoint scanners etc that these systems use to check your machine before allowing access(!), so they had been forced to get all their home users to install gotomypc or somesuch so that the IT people could remote control the guy’s PC, click “yes” on the pop-up warnings in the browser, so that the teleworkers could work “clientlessly” and “without constant IT management”

For fuck’s sake!! Have none of these people ever used a computer??

naivety

shocking really, but it's only today that i realise that the whole world of non-commercial internet/blogs/podcasts etc is as big as it is.
Spent the whole day working from home , just reading in on the lives and blurbs of the rest of the world.
There was I thinking that because I'd read just about every page on www.radium.ncsc.mil (no point clicking it there's nothing on the / page) I knew all there was to know

It's only today I realise what an arrogant fool I've been. Jeez, my world is so limited, it's sad really.
http://www.radium.ncsc.mil/tpep/epl/entries/CSC-EPL-94-006.html is an absolutely classic piece of kit though :-)

drifting through the summer with a mind full of the past

havent written in this for a while - almost forgotten about it really, but then I was struck with a sense of maudlin and so thought it best to write it out instead of drink it away.

We've had old friends of mine from my schooldays staying the last two days - two sisters, both of whom are and have been crushes for as long as I've known them, but for different reasons.

The older of the two, who I'll call sw1, was my best friend's girlfriend when we were teenagers, and I lusted after her in a terribly unrequited teeny way. Time has moved on, and after a marriage and two kids she is still super-glam and gorgeous, but my tastes have changed in the meantime, and although I love her dearly as a friend, my old attraction just isnt there any more, for which I'm glad.

sw2 however, has become so much more beautiful as the years have passed it aches me to behave normally in her presence. My wife noticed last night, and thinks it's cute of me to actually have feelings that I express, however repressed they are.
This is mainly because, correctly, she knows there's no threat of me acting on it, and moreover, reciprocation is not there either.
Doesn't change the stupid flustering I feel as we sit across from each other last night, drunk on cheap french wine, talking about who and how we used to snog twenty years ago...

Now of course I sit here with the chill realisation that I have turned into the sad lonely middle aged man I always swore I never would.

It's not the same feeling as depression, and it doesn't have the same twisted pleasure I get from self pity.
This feels much more like a sense of loss and regret - but lighter somehow, as though its intensity had been diluted somehow into a sheen of what it might be.

I've noticed my interest in porn has disappeared, which is odd indeed - cant explain that one at all.

===
Talking with them made me think back to all those people from school days, and this led to a couple of things.
First, I read Ben Elton's novel 'Past Mortem'. Great read, especially for someone of my generation, though the identity of the murderer in the whodunnit bit was obvious half way through - otherwise though a great read.

That book then led me to revisit friendsreunited in the hopes that I would hook up with voices from the past - but of course it didnt.
Noone I wanted to hear about had left profiles or notes - which dropped me back into the wallow I was in before.

Ahwell...

back from france

they really know how to eat there - fabulous