Got in this morning with the boss panicking that our web server was down, and citing all sorts of evidence to support this fact.  I turned on my computer, and noticed it failed to log into messenger.  My relief was palpable - fuck his evidence; the probability that both the office connection was down AND the web server was down was too small to consider.

So I went about trying to diagnose our problem.  After tracing things through for a good 30-40 minutes (why is the firewall dropping these packets - is that correct behaviour?), I finally discovered the problem: the boss had dropped some stuff onto the gateway's network cable, ripping it out of the wall.

That man is the epitome of clumsy sometimes.  Lessons learnt:

1. When he says the server is down, it could mean just about anything (actually, I already knew this).
2. No cause is too simple to go unnoticed.

Things which are always hilarious:

• Covertly providing a running commentary on somebody's actions, culminating in the phrase "Abort, $name, abort!"
• A punchline that consists entirely of puns (minimum of 3)
• A long meandering lead-in that results in an extremely sub-par punchline, unbefitting to the 5 minutes expended on the set-up.  This is funniest a) if you're drunk, b) if you're the one telling it and c) if you're sure you will never want to have sex with anyone present.
• Any joke with the punchline "A wonky"
• Pun-based jokes that fit so cleanly, naturally and unexpectedly that they are a beauty to behold.
• Pun-based jokes that have to be so ridiculously contrived and long-winded in order to support the punchline that you begin to wonder how the writer summoned the tenacity to complete all necessary aspects of the set-up.

• Pun-based jokes that are somewhere in the middle.  They're just shit.
• Jokes ostensibly targeted to your profession, but where closer examination reveals it works just as well when told about firemen, poets, or seal-clubbers.
• Girls trying to tell a joke where the names, order of words or events is important to the punchline.  (amiright fellas etc).
• Jokes involving current political events.  Especially when told by flagrantly homosexual comedians whose sexuality is clearly orthogonal to the situation in hand, and yet somehow seems as though they find it significant.
• Lists of "20 signs that..." where there are only two or three good ideas which the creators mistakenly felt would be better expanded with 17-18 fillers.  And that self-referential one at the end is neither unexpected nor funny.  Please note that this diary is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

I remain happy to receive spam, as long as it follows the example of the most recent message, originating from a sender named "Ernest Marrow"