A rant

One of my greatest hates is MP3 ringtones. I remember when the first phones came out that could play beepy tunes, and that was bad enough. But when they started to be able to play actual music, that's when the real pain started. I just don't see the appeal of repeatedly listening to the first few bars of a usually crappy tune blasted out of a tinny speaker which is only capable of reproducing the treble frequencies. Today, someone had left their mobile in the office and we were subjected to the first 40 seconds of 'Welcome to the Jungle' by Guns N Roses three times, and once, a Chemical Brothers track. Normally I'd like both, but not when all you can hear is the treble frequencies. I've been known to hunt down an offending phone in the office before now and switch it to silent, that's how much I hate it.

My phone has the normal ring sound (not the Nokia tune) and I thought quite hard and carefully before setting a custom text message sound. This is the Pipe Warp sound from Super Mario, and is short and distinctive enough that I recognise it.

Rant over.

On the plus side, my home e-mail address seems to have stopped receiving spam, which is good, and I had a fun and interesting day with the AIX and backup systems in work. Also the new helpdesk system went live today, which, despite a few hiccups, is already infinitely better than the previous Lotus Notes based system.