Help and Support

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Thank you for calling. You have reached Kapitano's IT helpline.

Press #1 if you're too fucking lazy to read the help file.

Press #2 if you didn't realise there was a help file, thought the menu item "Help" was there for decoration, wouldn't bother to read it anyway, and wouldn't make the effort to understand it even if you did.

Press #3 if you want me to explain everything about computers to you in five minutes flat without introducing you to any new concepts or strange words. Because they scare you.

Press #4 if your problem is "It won't work".

Press #5 if your problems is "The little box stopped flashing".

Press #6 if you don't really want a solution - you just want someone to blame, because that's how you deal with problems.

Press #7 if you've decided the internet's gone down.

Press #8 if you're not sure what the message saying "Your device is now ready to use" means.

Press #9 if you want to know what an "X006104793-d" error is, and you think I must know.

Press #A if you want to know how to count in hexadecimal.

Press #B if you've got a virus from visiting porn sites but you don't want me to know you've got a virus because I might work out you've been visiting porn sites.

Press #C if you want me to tell you how to stop your wife finding out you've been visiting porn sites.

Press #D if you want to become a L33T H4KR.

Press #E if I've already explained to you several times that a CDR is not a hard disk just because it's round and inflexible.

Press #F if your 10-year old computer won't work after your 15-year old son installed 20 cracked games that it can't possibly run.

Press #G if you think hexadecimal is for wooses.

Press #H if MS Office 2007 doesn't look like MS Office 97 and you're confused. I don't know how to use Office 2007 either - I use '97 because it does everything I need and doesn't crash.

Press #I if Norton has crashed your system after I explicitly told you not to install it because it would crash your system.

Press #J if you think I'm intimately familiar with every single type of mobile phone ever made.

Press #K if you want to try Linux but keep all your Windows programs the same.

Press #L if you think I know anything about Linux because all computer stuff's the same, right?

Press #M if you think you want to do a mailmerge on your CPU.

Press #N if you think your computer is "too defragmented".

Press #O if you're absolutely convinced that your operating system is Windows 97.

Press #P if you've checked out all the operating systems and want to use "Windows Me". Not "Windows M.E", "Windows Me", 'cos it's for "me".

Press #Q if you just want to ask me a lot of questions so you can pretend you've consulted an expert on what you've already decided to do.

Press #R if you think "it might be a driver problem" but you've no idea what a codec or a DLL is.

Press #S if you want me to install telepathy and precognition on your computer so I'll just know what you want.

Press #T if a website has just offered you a free laptop and you're too thick to work out whether it's a scam.

Press #U if you use your computer to host a creationist website, and think it might be possessed by the devil.

Press #V if you think I don't know you call me a pathetic nerd behind my back.

Press #W if you rely completely on your computer, but refuse to learn how to use it because you're above that kind of thing.

Press #X if you're such a brainless douchebag you think it's funny to phone up tech support with a nonsensical problem and put the result on youtube.

Press #Y if you called me to solve a problem that's just solved itself.

Press #Z if you work in tech support yourself but can't figure out what's wrong with the computer you own. Welcome brother.

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Left, Right, Left

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I've got difficulty with left and right. Not politics - hands, or rather directions.

If you ask me to point to the right, I'll probably point left - unless I've spent a confusing few seconds reminding myself which hand is which. I've always been like that, and it's never been a big problem.

Well, apart from a failed driving test and a habit of getting lost in corridors.

I'm not left handed, in fact I'm extremely right handed. For what it's worth, my father is ambidextrous, and my favourite teacher at college described himself as right handed even though his right arm had been paralysed for decade - he had the neatest whiteboard writing I've ever seen, all with a retrained left hand.

Actually the main problem is when other people, knowing I tend to transpose directions, saying right when they mean left, hoping I'll retranspose. That can get quite confusing.

"Where's the pen?"
"It's to your right."
"Do you mean right-right or Kapitano-right?"
"Um, I mean it's on the left."
"Ah. Do you mean my left or your left?"
"Gaaah!"

I used to try to break the pattern...but then I discovered there's a perfect place for mirror-universe people like me - the classroom!

I'm a teacher - at least I am when there's any work - and I'm quite expressive with my hands when I'm explaining stuff, always drawing diagrams in the air. My last head teacher said it made me an unauthoritative teacher - but then, he was a prize twat and really boring teacher.

But if I'm facing the class, and tend to use spatial metaphors when explaining things, and tend to count things off on my fingers right-to-left...then our left and right match. It's surprisingly helpful.

Unless of course any of them have trouble with left and right in which case...Gaaah!

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Totally Tubular

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I have an alter-ego on youtube. If you're really bored you can find out who it is, but rather than regale you with snippets of my shining brilliance in the comments, I thought I'd share some of the responses to my brilliance.

Which are, in their own way, sometimes brilliant:

"If i didnt here the word of Lord how who i have faith in him you silly man you must be a none believer." - isaiahact

"You have snubbed your nose at God" - bornagain001

"If saying it's so and presenting a verifiable reference doesn't make it so, then saying it isn't so without presenting one, as you've done, has even less credibility. You're self negating." - Bandershot, homeopath and purveyor of word salads.

"The Bible ultimately described a sophisticated pharmacological means to make gold into a medicine." - HomeopathicDana

"Yeshua the meaning of the hebrew name of jesus. Messiah's personal name means Salvation" - isaiahact, master etymologist

"The knee-jerk shunning of contemporary Homeopathy doesn't make faith-based ancient Allopathy medicine any more powerful or provable in the correct treatment and cure of chronic diseases." - mohanaturo, more homeopathy and a second helping of word salad.

"WHAT IS PROOF? Everything I show as proof will be rejected by those who are CONSUMED by their own SIN." - bornagain001

"There's more nazis in Islam than the rest of the world put together." - hetrodoxly

"You wouldn't believe the results of my tests. If I videoed the leaf curling from what I claimed was ammonium carbonicum 12C, how do you know I wasn't just using am. carb 1X?" - Bandershot again, this time explaining why (a) making a leaf curl with water would prove homeopathy and (b) why he won't do the test.

"here we go again with the conspiracy theories. The Church was never under constantince" - kiddo500

"Darwin was reportedly cured of a mysterius long standing ailment by homeopathy.", Bandershot neglecting to mention that (a) Darwin wrote that he wasn't cured, (b) the same homeopathist was later responsible for the death of Darwin's daughter.

"You are assuming that a religion can change." - MartinJWillett

"why do you keep coming back check it yourself jesus means yeshua in hebrew and Emmanuel is a title name meaning God with us check it yourself and you seem to ignore the scriptures i sent concerning the divinity of jesus stop cherry picking yes jesus had a human nature was born of a virgin raised from the dead he was with God from the beginning making him to be the son of God read the whole of chaper 1 dont you believe God has sons" - isaiahact, showing marginally more grasp of punctuation than theology.

"Fuck you stupid ass cocksucker. Your one of the gays Bill is talkin about. You like it in your ass" - EW8S93, in comments about an anti-homophobia routine by Bill Hicks.

"If you thinkn brown actually was able to predict the lotto numbers then your head is stuck up your arse" - EagleEyeSC, in response to an explanation of a magic trick to "predict" lottery numbers.

"A crack is what was used to get a car going [...] You're not even 30 years old" - HomeopathicDana, who has difficulty with basic arithmetic, and ironically doesn't know what a "crank" is.

"repent, sinner! believe in Jesus Christ and be saved!!" - personal message from want2rock247, fundamentalist and paranoid conspiracy theorist. Double the trouble.

"God is the Author of marriage, as ordained from the beginning [...] you can pretend to be like us, but in the eyes of God, your "marriage" means nothing." [...]
"where's my prejudice? you're the one who falsely charged me. i think what you do is wrong" - want2rock247 again, demonstrating his grasp of joined up thinking.

"The only argument "skeptics" (atheist in your case, maybe big pharma shill, too) can come up with is to cry "fraud" when confronted with the unpalatable facts." - den151redbank, who suspects GlaxoSmithKline are paying me to comment on his videos.

"fuck u bitch. plus why the fuck u Messeging me faggot!!!" - Acelera1500, who doesn't know the difference between a comment and a private message...er, and wants me to be his bitch, I think.

What can I say? Stupid turns me on.

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Baddest Rap?

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This is a rap. I wrote it tonight after a post-sex chat with my sometime fuckbud - it's about his dreams and aspirations. It's meant to be ironic, but it's not meant to be funny. The thing is, I'm not sure whether it reads like a joke.

What do you think?

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Got to get some money 'cos I
Got to get away, to
Find another kind of life I've
Got to find another place, I'm
Gonna get a better job to
Pay the rent on better digs, and
Buy some clothes that don't look bad and
Give up on the funny cigs.

Get new friends who treat me right, don't
Lie to me or rip me off, re-
-spectable and decent 'cos I'm
Feeding from a richer trough, so
Now that I'm a catch I'll date a
Girl who wants to marry me, we'll
Move into a bigger house and
Plan to start a family.

Weekend breaks in Paris, winter
Holidays in Rome,
Growing old together with our
Children in our sweet home, I'm
Mapping out my future I'm de-
-termined to succeed, the
Dreaming stops tomorrow yeah but
First of all I just need

Cash to start it up...

...I'm fucked.

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In Stereo

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Why do we expect disabled people to be nice?

Why do we expect fat people to be stupid, young people to be rebellious, and old people to be complacent?

How many smart fat people and dumb thin people do you have to meet before you realise there's no correlation?

Or doesn't it even work like that? It's quite possible - even common - for a white person to show no racism at all to actual black people they know...but to be casually racist about black people in the abstract.

Why do we expect "crazy" people to be bigots...but expect people with "mental health problems" to be tolerant - even wise and serene? Sometimes a name change really does make all the difference - between a negative stereotype and a positive one.

All the christians I know are fairly decent people - they just believe an invisible magic man in the sky will change the laws of nature for their convenience if they ask him hard enough. All the atheists I know are fairly decent people - they just have different delusions, sometimes about vitamin pills or the dignity of manual labour.

But all the batshit insane, hate spewing, deeply ignorant and fuckwitted people I meet on the internet...call themselves christians. And the ones who take them down with evidence and logic call themselves atheists.

Now, two thoughts:

(1) It's quite possible to hold an image of a group of people in your head, know it's not accurate, not treat the people as though the image were true, but still have the image.

(2) Some stereotypes are personal and idiosyncratic, stemming from individual experience.

For instance, there's an absurdly (wonderfully) large number of curry houses in this town, and the staff are almost all Bangladeshi - often from the same family.

There's a particular way they tend to behave to customers - smiling and welcoming, but somehow timid, almost camp. Result: that's how part of me expects everyone from Bangladesh to behave, though it's not a shock when they don't.

Of course, there are always people who like to tell you they're much too advanced to have national stereotype in their heads, and anyone who does must be a racist, and one step away from being a fascist sympathiser.

Leaving aside the illogic of that reasoning...I don't think I believe them. If they've lived for a year in Bangladesh and met lots of different kinds of people there, maybe they don't have a cartoon in their heads for that country. But what about Pakistan? Or Afghanistan? Or Iran?

Finally, sometimes I like the stereotypes people have of me. And sometimes I play up to them.

I'm European, so I'm sophisticated (but only if you're American). I'm British, so I've got the accent of a thousand supervillans from a lot of really corny films. I'm English, so I'm eccentric. And gay.

Though if I were disabled it seems I couldn't be gay anymore - but I might be nice.

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About one second in the mind of Kapitano:

I should put something on the blog. Oh I know, I'll go on a date and write it up.

That's not why people go on dates.

Oh yeah.

And I don't like going on dates.

Oh yeah.

And I'm happily single.

Oh right, yeah. I forgot that.

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My Eden

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It's more fun to figure out how to do something than to do it.

I just spent fifteen minutes working out how to watch 53 episodes of I dream of Jeanie for free - if you're in America you can do that anyway on Crackle.com, but over here you need to get past their stupid location restrictions.

Not that I have the slightest interested in watching I dream of Jeanie. It manages to be lightweight even by the standards of other supernatural sitcoms with inexplicable gay followings.

Last night I got to watch two free scenes from a porn movie (Oral Exams 3, I think) for some promotion or other. Figured out a way to record the stream, set it going, and went for a cup of tea while the somewhat above college-age college class were sucking off the noisy janitor. Might watch it later, if I don't get some of the real thing.

Some day I'm going to figure out how to bring down the corrupt governments of the world and end poverty forever. But not if it takes more than an hour to do.

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