Scott mourns the death of his special spreadsheet

Scott:
I am in love with a tentacled starbeast called G'runtleth'up that compels me to worship it and offer sacrifices to it of my own free will and has nothing to do with the ethereal ichor tentacle it has plunged into my brain. All will love G'runtleth'up and die!

Michelle:
you're still all cut up about the tragic death of your spreadsheet, aren't you?

Scott:
Its clone just doesn't feel the same. Oh sure, it looks the same and does the same things and works just as well....but it doesn't feel the same. Its a Midwich cuckoo spreadsheet.

Scott explains Moron

After discussing James's ability to speak Moron...

James: "Hi, yes, its about the email you just sent out, can you explain it a bit more clearly please?"
IT Support: "Whut?"
James: "*sighs* Email sending you me has no smart. Means whut whut?"
IT Support: "Ugh. Email says you no have magic thinking box gogo. Me fix!"
James: "Why magic thinking box has no gogo?"
IT Support: "Baaaad juju. Sacrifice for magic thinking box sky god! Must have squiggle!"
James: "Whut whut squiggle?"
IT Support: "Squiggle! On paper! Say 'you for have magic thinking box working now, is ok!'"
James: "Oh, so if I sign the form then I can get access to the software?"
IT Support: "Whut?"

Scott wants his colleagues to go away

Ok, enough of this. If you're an investigator and you can't investigate our own systems to get the information you need then its probably time you looked for a job more suited to your skills. Like maybe as a street light.

Investigator: "I can't find any records for this business!"
Me: "Really? I searched [records management system] and there's over a hundred records in there."
Investigaor: "I can't find any of them! You're lying!"
Me: *sends screendump* "Look. 134 records found just using a simple name search. Could be more if you do some more complex searches."
Investigator: "Oh. Well. I can't find the person linked to the business in [client management system]! It doesn't exist!"
Me: *sighs* "Run an address search on the business. Have a look at the names that turn up linked to that address."
Investigator: "I don't really know how to do address searches."
Me: "Oh look, they're replacing a street light outside. Why don't you go down and pretend to be one?"
Investigator: "Yaaay! I'm a street light! Woowoowoo!"

Scott's work email gets to be too much

Tempted to put the following automated reply on my work email to cope with the huge torrent of incoming emails. Perhaps it will reduce the flood:
"Your email has been waylaid by pirate marmosets who are demanding a ransom before they release it. I consider their price too steep. Negotiations are expected to be long. Do not expect a quick reply to your email. Do not try calling me to obtain progress regarding the pirate marmoset negotiations as they have seized that as well and have figured out how to throw faeces down the phone line. Do you want phone faeces? I didn't think so. Do not attempt come to my desk either, for they watch it constantly with their beady little marmoset eyes and will react with extreme violence. Do not anger the marmosets. We live in dangerous times. Fear the wrath of the pirate marmoset."

Scott writes a job ad

"The weasel uprising has begun; do you have the elite cheese skills to compete and win in a world overrun by weasels? We are looking for an experienced mustelid wrangler, with at least 5 years experience as a pasta burgler and with knowledge of IT systems such as Spork+, WangMountain, and Unix BeardOS. We are offering an enticing remuneration package with target-based bonuses of peculiar proportions. If you fit the bill (note: weasels do not have bills) forward your CV to our automated response bot for consideration."

Scott is having a bad day

Rebecca: I'm certainly not going to spend my time at work until just before Nigel's birthday dinner... so thought it'd be nice to go to a pub or cafe somewhere... and have a drink or two before dinner. Elephant and Wheelbarrow at 5pm good for people?

Scott: I may be there as early as 3:30 depending how the rest of this day goes. You can drag me to dinner if I've drunk myself under the table by then.

Rebecca: So, having a fun day then Scott darling?

Scott: It started as a barrel of monkeys. Then the monkeys died. Then the barrel started to smell. Then the dead monkey residue leaked from the barrel into the water supply for the nearby orphanage and all the orphans died rather horribly.

Scott does not has

Excitable employee: "Look! Look! We has found a frauds! Yay! We can has investigate!"
Me: "Hmmmm....no, you cannot has."
Excitable employee: "Cannot has?? But, but....is frauds!"
Me: "Cannot has. Is lame frauds. Is unimportant frauds. Has better things to do."
Excitable employee: *pouty face*

Scott writes a letter

Dear Ms Arse-Marmot,

Thank you for your ignorant screed of 08/02/2011. Had you chosen a boyfriend without a criminal history longer than Shane Warne's love letters to himself and the intelligence of a festering arse boil, you wouldn't be facing the prospect of the love of your wasted life having his arse kicked all the way back to Ireland, but you did so sucks be to you. Seriously, did he honestly think he could get away with it? Have you drunken goat fondlers not heard of facial recognition software? Pah. Get off my damn rug and take your noxious oozings with you.

Love and cheeriness
Mr F&$k You With Goats
Dept of Monkeys

Scott and text fields

After a discussion about text fields in Access:

Scott:
A text field is where letters are grown. When they eventualy ripen they're harvested by the farmers, stored in letter silos and eventually shipped to publishing houses for distribution.

Scott finds out what else James doesn't want to do

James: (after being away from his usual day job for 4 weeks)
*pout*

*pout pout pout*

Don't wanna.

Scott:
Don't wanna what? Bungee from the top of the Eiffel tower using Burt reynold's moustache as a bungee cord? Dance naked in front of the offices of the Young Liberals to Warrant's "Cherry Pie"? Sail a boat made from love, toilet rolls and koalas to Whitsunday Island where you'll establish an artist's retreat that will one day give birth to the "Rampant Bollocks" movement? Slide down the Matterhorn using a singing Gordon Brown as a toboggan? Regurgitate a fully grown walrus in your manager's office which will then proceed to read the weather reports for Marrakesh for the last 500 years? Entertain the Pope for a day using nothing but a rubber band, a banana and a very flexible assistant? Bracchiate through the houses of parliament while being chased by a small hunting party in pith helmets that want to arrest you for aggravated assault with a battery powered chicken? Train orcas to tapdance? Insert live tapioca puddings into the ears of a news reporter while they're live on air? Approach strangers on the street
and ask them to donate their nose hair for scientific experimentation?

James:
Well, those, and coming back to work.

Scott:
Oh. Personally I actually want to do all those things I listed. I should take some leave.

Scott complains about cold toes

Rebecca:
Scott and James cry when I put my feet on them in winter

Scott:
They be ice. Icy toes of frozen death

James:
ICY DEATH TOES!!! ATTACKING MY BITS WITHOUT MERCY!!!

Scott:
"You're listening to the drive time commute show and that was Icey Death Toes with their new single 'Numb Bits Drop Off'."

James:
Coming up next, it's the Frozen Scrotes with their brand new hit "Aaargh Get Away From Me".

Scott writes a story

Scott:
Gah. There's this new fantasy novel out called Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes, and I keep seeing it in bookshops and mentioned in blogs and every time I see it I misread it as "Tome of the Undergraduates".

I think my title would make for a much more interesting book

James:
Excerpt...

Skarek felt his rage blossom into something powerful and dangerous, a thrumming current, like an unseen rush of water felt through a stone wall. "Oh yes," he muttered, "my rage makes me powerful." A glow filled the edges of his vision, a dull orange pulse. He felt as if a forest fire were raging at his back. He turned to his nemesis, that fool Belosuk, and spoke with a voice like thunder, like hammers on anvils, like the groan of the earth itself.

"Do the f--king dishes NOW, Bel!" Skarek reached forth, effortless, extending only a single finger, and Belosuk's bong vanished into vapour.

"Jesus, Ska!" Belosuk shouted. "I'd just packed the cone!"

Scott:
As Derek approached the lair of the beast he could feel the fear begin to rise in him. Wozza had returned from here half the man he had been and what happened to Boz was the subject of much whispered conjection in the mead halls of the campus. "They say only his uggboots were found!" "I heard someone found his head in the Great Refectory, still wearing his fedora!" "The Librarians took him! They took him and buried his corpse in a place no one ever goes: the Welsh Philosophy stacks!"

Nervously fingering the talisman the witchwoman had given him, he took a nervous step down the darkening hall. With each step his heart beat faster; with each step the urge to flee screaming out into the night became stronger. His feet became heavier as he walked, the air thickened with scents emanting from the dread portal of the lair: marijuana, tweed and, underneath it all, blood. The stench filled his head 'til he thought it would burst, yet at the very moment when he thought he could take no more he found himself standing before the portal itself. The portal of death and madness.

Swallowing compulsively, he knocked once a pushed it open revealing hell.

Textbooks piled on textbooks disappeared in great towers beyond his ability to see them. The dirt compacted floor was riven with great cracks from which roaring flames burst, while hanging from the walls on hooks where the still writhing forms of undergraduates that had not submitted their papers on time. Dominating it all was great desk, stained with blood and scored with the marks of a thousand knives, while upon on it teetering in great heaps were back issues of the Green Left Weekly. And there, behind the desk, was the object of his quest.

It sat wreathed in smoke and darkness, an indistinct form possibly that of a man and possibly of something much, much worse. It watched him, waiting.

"Um" squeaked Derek. "Um....I would like to ask, uh, to ask....for an extension."

For moment there was no response. For a moment there was a flicker of hope, then with guttural growl the beast of shadow leapt at him. Before he could react, before he even had time to piss himself in fear, he found himself pinned to the ground, a great taloned hand clasped around his neck, the beast's indistinct face pressed close to his. The growling grew worse.

Clutching his talisman even tighter with his free hand he brought it between the beast and himself. "Please" he gasped, "I have a note from my doctor..."

The growling stopped. There was a pause in which Derek was sure his beating heart was the only sound in the world. Then a slit split the beast's formless head where its mouth would be and revealed rows of shiny, needle sharp teeth in the cruel parody of a smile.

"Well then" said the beast in a voice that made his bowels somersault "let's see what we can do for you, Mr Derek...."

Scott has a menagerie

After bitching about inconsiderate colleagues

Scott:
I hope you yelled at them

Rebecca:
and then stabbed them to death

James:
...and fed their remains to that judge on Masterchef.

Scott:
...and in turn fed that judge to a herd of ravenous barracudamice.

James:
The bumblebeaver is the world's busiest animal, it is true, but the little-known and yet widely-feared barracudamouse takes the record for being the world's hungriest.

[And then from a discussion about food]

Rebecca:
over peppering is bad

James:
Too much pepper might make the barracudamice sneeze, and then there'd be chunks flying everywhere at near-sonic speeds.

[and then back to the main silliness]

Scott:
The world's strangest animal, however, is without a doubt the creampiethon. This rarely seen ambush predator drapes itself in coils around its prey and smothers it in cream.

James:
We could do millions of these...

The piguana, and its miniature breed, the guinea piguana...

Rhinocerodents, which infest your walls and leave holes in the skirting boards the size of Kombi vans...

The spocktopus, a deeply logical creature with green blood, also the only animal other than humans able to raise one eyebrow...

The squidiot - a pale soft-bodied human which loves to get into political arguments it can never win; it escapes without having to
admit defeat by ejecting a cloud of ink and running away...

Scott:
The ballpointpenguin, which write stern letters to the editor when threatened by carnivores...

Fryingpanthers, reknowned for their culinary skills...

Motorcyclops, the leather clad hoon of Greek legend...

The paraleagle, the only raptor with understanding of criminal law, often seen defending other raptors in mammal-murder cases...

Scott needs weird

Rebecca:
essential? You need your weird?

Scott:
You know the old adage: a weirdo a day keeps the baleful psychotic dwarf from lurking under the desk and chewing my PC cables.

Scott likes computer products

Rebecca:
I have a new email address

And using Lotus Notes again is the suck.

Scott:
As an official IBM employee you're not allowed to say that. Remember, Lotus Notes is a fully featured data recording and manipulating tool that can be tailored to meet the specific requirements of each work place, provided that the specific requirements were developed by a goat sniffing lunatic with a Barry Manilow obssession.

"Have you tried using our Lotus Notes software?"
"Yes, and it blows."
"Ah, that would have been the old version! I think you'll find our latest release meets all your needs and then some!"
"Yes, but only if I'm an insane one armed gerbil herder that only travels by pogostick and writes long diatribes to national newspapers about aliens, lizard people, mind control rays and how the US government will be replaced by a race of sentient spoons that will enforce mandatory accordion ownership."
"Ok, yes, fair point, but if you are that one armed gerbil herder think how wonderfully Lotus Notes will organise your diatribes!"
"I am going to stab you now."

Nadia:
And do you get a computer to go with it?

Scott:
Silly, of course not! This is IBM, only customers get computers. Staff have to make do with a monkey, a chisel and a stone tablet. Staff used to chisel their own emails but that was seen to be an OH&S issue, so now every IBM staffer gets their own macaque to chisel emails dictated to them. Its quite efficient and only approx 25% of emails end up being about poo flinging.

James:
I initially read that as "staff used to chisel their own entrails".

I was momentarily disturbed.

Scott:
Mmmm auto-extispicy.

Nadia:
Mmm spicy entrails. Pulverized entrail empanadas anyone?

Scott:
There's absolutely no way in hell I'll be able to explain to my staff why I'm giggling at my desk right now. They'll think I've gone insane.

Scott has sinus goblins

Scott:
Its like there's goblins in my head making noises

James:
Fetch me a kebab skewer and I'll get rid of the goblins for you.

Scott:
I fear for my brain. Specifically I fear my brain being stabbed due to your overly enthusiastic sinus goblin skewering.

Michelle:
you two are being very disturbing again!

Scott:
But you haven't heard the song about it yet

Michelle:
sing it for me at lunch...

James:
I think it goes:

See the little goblin
See his little feet
And his little toes-y-woes
Isn't the goblin sw- AAARGH!!! GET THAT SKEWER OUT OF MY NOSE!!!

Scott:
Oh I am a sinus goblin and a I sail the sinus seas!
With my trusty sinus spoon I fill your sinuses with peas!

James:
Sounds a bit like a sinus pirate...

Scott:
You've not seen the jolly roger sticking out of my left nostril?

Scott is hungry

Scott:
Verily, thy cries of nom flounce 'round mine ears and lo! multitudinous voices of avarice awaken. Arise, arise ye lords of nom and descend upon thine tasty morsels, gathered from lands divine. Possessed, I nom and nom and nom again, til belly's cravings ended be.

Rebecca:
Scott you is blogged

Scott:
Slain! Oh for your mighty blog has pierced mine form of spazz. Hark, can thy ears not hear the coldness? It comes swiftly, on tainted wings of sporks. I die! *dies*

James:
Me thinks thy protestations and feign'd expiration of mortality art over-acted. Verily, thy performance in its entirety doth reek of ham.

Nadia:
Alas! Poor Scott. We knew him quite well,

Though what he'd say next, you never could tell.
The world may be quieter now he's sloughed off this shell.
But we'll be laughing again when we see him in hell.

Scott:
Thy porcine insults doth smack of jealousy! Begone, foul fiend, I spork at you with all my fury! *repeated sporking*

James:
Knave! Varlet! Blackguard! Stale omelette 'pon which a goat hath shat! I have at thee with runcible spoon in hand, thou reader of Dan Brown!

Scott:
You dare?! Thou would dares't hurl Dan Brown upon my face?? I curse thee that thou may'st spend until the end of a days a character born from the pen of Stephenie Meyer!

James:
Thou doth wound me, sir! Verily, I hath but no resemblance to the grim yet sparkling literary regurgitations of that crazed latter day loon, whilst thou wilt surely be played by Tom Hanks in the movie version.

Scott:
Aye, for that's as may be, but beware Lord Sparkles for hath the witches on the hill not foretold in rhyme so crap that thine ownself would be played by Hayden Christiansen in a beard so false.

Scott and his penis

Scott:
A purring penis would be disturbing.

Rebecca:
Yes, like... "Ah, what's that? Oh, its Scott's contented penis"

Scott:
And that's not a phrase I want to hear very often. Though "Scott's contented penis" would be a good name for a band.

Rebecca:
Well maybe "contented penis" remove the "Scott"

Scott:
No, it has to be "Scott's contented penis". If you can have "Butthole Surfers" you can have "Scott's contented penis"

Scott on James's excel goodness with dwarves

James:
It needs to be said sometimes: damn I'm good.

After years of wondering I finally applied myself to working out how to make a column in an Excel spreadsheet automatically number itself so that a print-out will have row numbers, and have those row numbers appear automatically when new rows are added and (most importantly) not break when a row is deleted.

It took me ten minutes. I suppose I just got lucky on the Google searches and Excel help searches.

Amusingly, my solution is much better than Microsoft's official one, which breaks when you insert or delete rows in the middle of the list.

So yeah, I rock. I am Captain Excel!

Scott:
Indeed, you are an excel god. Which means, of course, I'm going to pester you even more with inane questions.

James:
I can tell you how to automatically number rows. :D

Scott:
Which i actually need to know since I've been tasked with revising the monster spreadsheet I built for the cancellations team 2 years ago

Michelle:
see - there is a purpose to James going off and learning things about Excel

Scott:
Indeedle. Now can he tell me why the previous updater of my once glorious spreadsheet decided to obscene things to it?

James:
Foetal alcohol syndrome?

Michelle:
whoever it was was an idiot

Scott:
Correct! A winner is you! George, what prize is our lucky contestant winning tonight?

Thank you Alfred, tonight's lucky winner a small psychotic angry dwarf that will stare balefully at him from under his desk while he works and occasionally bite his PC power cable.

James:
I'll come back next week and see if I can win something that won't cause nightmares.

Michelle:
I knew we couldn't keep you off dwarves for long

Scott:
I'm going to turn it into an internet meme

James:
It will be huge, and dwarf all others...

Scott:
*canned audience laughter* Well you can certainly try but we all know how likely that's going to happen on Shub-Niggurath's Wheel of Soul Destroying Torment, Australia's favourite quiz show!

James:
"AAAAAaaaAAAAaAAArgh!!! Oh god make it stop! Make it stoooooop!!!"
"...is that your final answer?"

Scott and dwarves

Scott:
Can we have a new PA please? Our current one is a sucky dwarven prima donna.

James:
You and psychotics dwarves. It getting to become a habit.

Scott:
I can give it up any time I like.

James:
Don't make me stage an intervention...

Scott:
I'm not addicted to psychotic dwarves! I just need them from time to time to get by, you know how it is...

James:
It'll get to a point where you need one or two dwarves just to wake up in the morning. Next you'll be going to the horse races just to follow the jockeys around. You're on a downward spiral!

Scott:
I only need one or two psychotic dwarves to get me started in the morning. Sure, I may occasionally need a another one round my midday, but I need psychotic dwarves to keep me on top of the game. They keep me sharp and in control. Hell, with the stresses people face in the cut throat world of bureuacracy I'm not the only one doing a little angry dwarf from time to time!

James:
I hope you're at least using clean dwarves and not sharing them with others. You can pick up all sorts of nasty bugs doing that.

Scott:
I only share my dwarves with people I know

Michelle:
I now has a nice clean desk, with no clutter, no junk and no dust - however, I will soon have to move around to my new desk (once Rachael packs up), and unpack all my junk and return to chaos

Scott:
And dwarves, don't forget those.

Michelle:
how could I forget the dwarves?

Scott:
You could if you had the shakes from psychotic dwarf withdrawal.

James:
Remember the Dwarven Alamo!

Michelle:
*throttles James*

puhlease - no bad dwarf jokes...

Scott:
What about good dwarf jokes?

Michelle:
there are any?

James:
Why did the dwarf cross the road?

The torment Scott for its own nefarious purposes.

Scott:
*Knock knock*.
"Who's there?"
"Psychotic dwarf."
"Psychodatic dwarf whoarrrrgggh!!!" *squelchy stabbing sounds*