Lazy Guide to Net Culture: Monday blews

Published on Monday 27 February 2006 15:54

Mondays suck. In fact Mondays are sucktastic suckathons of ubersuckiness served on a salad of suckinghood with a suck jus.

I'm sorry to bring this up. But Monday is Lazy Guide day and I am writing this through the medium of a profound desire to be on holiday, preferably up a hill somewhere. Maybe Bla Bheinn (isn't it gorgeous?)

My mood has not been aided by the vast amount of spam I've had to wade through this morning. For some reason Canadian and Mexican "pharmacies" appear to be in vogue just now, as are spams that purport to come from my work account. I took the day off on Friday set up an autoreply saying I'd be back today. You know the sort of thing: "Stewart Kirkpatrick has undergone total ego loss. He will return on Monday. If you have any queries in the meantime, please contact an infinite number of monkeys and one typewriter."

This was a mistake. Remember I mentioned that I've been getting spam that apparently came from my own account? As I result have just been confronted with a paper trail of a conversation between my computer and itself. I'd received an offer of dodgy software from skirkpatrick AT scotsman DOT com. My email had then replied to it with the out of office message, which then dropped in my inbox and was greeted with another autoreply, which then dropped in my inbox and was greeted with another autoreply and so on, descending into an eternal loop that would have made MC Escher dizzy.

I have yet to raise this with the scotsman.com IT Helpdesk, largely because of the restraining order but writing about it has eased my pain somewhat. I also have raised my spirits since paragraph four by listening to Christy Moore's Viva La Quinte Brigada on repeat.

But no sooner have the words: "No pasaran, the pledge that made them fight," got me fired up then I am thrown into the slough of despond.

One thing in particular gets my goat: seeing large corporations giving a kicking to the little people. One such doing is apparently going on at the moment. An online campaign has started to help a website designer called Paul Dell who claims that the computer giant Dell is taking legal action against him for trading under his own name. Here's the intro to a blog started to support him:

This is a blog created by friends of Paul Dell. Paul is being sued by Dell Computers for lots of money. His crime? Using his own given name in conjunction with what he does for a living. Paul creates web sites. His domain name describes this perfectly -- www.dellwebsites.com. Let's help stop this corporate ridiculousness. Help Paul fight and win. Next time, it may be you the giant comes after.

It will be interesting to see if Dell's action actually comes to anything or if commonsense prevents the PC giant from making a huge public relations blunder.

• The Lazy Guide will be taking a well-earned break and will return refreshed in three weeks.