Once Again -

We're Being A Bit Different Today

For today we return to the hot-button topic of The Adventures Of Artie Schickelbaum and his wife Gardenia, as inspired by lots of ridiculously foreign or obscure solutions to Codewords over the past month.  I shall, as per our previous outing, highlight and en-fuschia these words with a definition to boot.

     In their first outing, Gardenia had moved from Australia, where she was living, to New York, where Artie was living.  Conrad never bothered to give an explanation about this domestic arrangement.  Art!

Deep space mining robot

     As you should surely remember, Artie was a veeblefetzer repairman, a trade always in demand as the mighty veebelfetzer is everywhere.  I can't remember what Gardenia was.  Work from home nanny?

     ANYWAY, Artie was offered a two-year contract to repair and maintain veeblefetzers at the Freeport McMoran mining facility on Amalthea, one of the moons of JUPITER (Largest planet in the solar system, 5th from the Sun.  Over 16 major satellites and possesses a planar ring system.  Orbits at 778 million kilometres from the Sun.  One Jovian 'day' is 9.83 hours, and a Jovian 'year' lasts for 11.86 years).  Art!

In Roman mythology, the king of the gods

     As for Amalthea, it is the most cerise-coloured object in the solar system (CERISE: A moderate to dark red colour, from the French for 'Cherry').  

     The money was fantastic, a million dollars per month, including the six-month trip to get there and return.  Yes, it took that long, even with the brand spanking new fusion flux engines (FLUX: A flow or discharge, as with a neutron flux found in thermonuclear reactions.  From the Latin 'Fluxus' meaning 'Flow').  Art!

Amalthea.  What, you were expecting a potato?

     The FM mine was dug into, and constructed on, the Gallileo Massif, named after the scientist and the probe.  (MASSIF: a geologically distinct mass of rock or a series of interconnecting masses forming the peaks of a mountain range).  It's on the other side of that photo.  That's why you can't see it.  Honest.

     Before even stepping aboard the thermonuclear-powered spacecraft, Artie had to undergo extensive survival and spacesuit training, having to repeat actions so many times they were inculcated as muscle-memory.  (INCULCATE: To instil by forceful or insistent repetition.  From the <hack spit> Latin 'Inculcare' meaning 'To tread down').

     Gardenia was a bit put out that she wouldn't have her hubbo's company for two years, but the prospect of him returning as a multi-millionaire sweetened the deal and she had plans on what they could spend his money on.  Art!

     To help pass the time she learned to play the dulcimer (DULCIMER: a tuned percussion instrument consisting of strings of graduated length stretched over a sounding board and SMOTE with a pair of hammers.  From the Italian 'Dolcimelo' meaning 'Sweet') in what was patently the author reaching.  SMOTE: The past tense of SMITE, meaning to strike with a heavy blow).

     One of the consequences of her moving back to New York was her accent, which had taken on an Antipodean twang thanks to her time spent in Wellington, except she had to keep informing people that she was not a native Kiwi. (KIWI: nocturnal flightless bird of New Zealand, genus Apteryx, having a long beak, short legs and weakly barbed feathers.  Or a New Zealander, of Maori origin.  Also the 'Kiwi fruit' thanks to the resemblance, re-branded from the 'Cape Gooseberry' in 1959).  Art!

Also the national symbol of New Zealand.  No, I don't know why either

     

     In a fit of boredom, she joined the New York Liberation OrganisatioN or NYLON, which had quickly dropped their original New York Liberation Front, as that acronym brought unwanted applicants.  As part of their para-legal paramilitary training in case the day came when NYNY became an independent state, she learned how to drill, use a gun and lie in ambuscade.  (AMBUSCADE: An ambush or to lie in ambush.  From the French 'Embuscade' from Old Italian 'Imboscata').  Art!

     Thanks to the deep pockets of it's members, NYLON was heavily armed, even running to a battery of artillery, consisting of the war surplus M2 howitzer, as above (HOWITZER: A cannon having a short or medium barrel with a low muzzle velocity and a steep angle of fire.  From the Dutch 'Houwitser' itself from the Teuton 'Haubitze' which came from the Czech 'Houfnice' meaning 'Stone sling.) and thus great for firing over NY buildings.

     She wasn't so fond of the attitude some of her fellow male members exhibited, being over-fond of machismo (MACHISMO: Exaggerated masculine pride, from Mexican, from the Spanish 'Macho' for 'Male'), which she combatted by standing haughtily, arms akimbo (AKIMBO: With hands on hips and elbows projecting outwards.  From 15th century English 'In kenebow' meaning 'In keen bow' as in a sharp curve).  Art!

     At the same time as Gardenia was learning how to field strip an AR-15, her hubbo Artie was learning that Amalthea orbited close enough to Jupiter to experience 'tides'.  Not as in Spring or Neap (NEAP: Of, or relating to, a Neap tide.  From the Old English 'Nepflode', a tide occurring in the 1st or 4th quarter of the Moon) tides, but gravitational ones that squeezed the moon and deformed it's surface.  Art!

KM's mine on Amalthea

     Okay, I think that's enough wibble for this Intro.  I didn't use APSE or ASBESTOS here, so they may crop up again if I write about Artie and Gardenia again.  You may not enjoy reading this, but I had great fun writing it.

Less Text More Pics!

Of late I have been listening to music vlogs on Youtube whilst I craft words of wit, wisdom and wonder, meaning tha - what's that?  THE BLOG!  The blog, of course - obviously! - for those denser than depleted uranium.

     So, here's a screenshot of one I was listening to last night.  Art!

                              

     It has minimal animation and runs on a loop.  Conrad, being Mister Sensible, was rather worried about that young lady's safety and well-being as there is nothing to hang on to, the surfaces are wet and it looks like a long way down.

     From

     Currently running another one in the background.

Heeeeere's Jake!

One of my go-to vloggers on the Special Idiotic Operation, Jake Broe, of the Youtube Channel - you may be ahead of me here - 'Jake Broe', has been taking a holiday for the first time in 7 years.  He's posting occasional short vlogs of him in Sorkland and one short came up on - "Did you ever see a UFO whilst you were in the Air Force? as a Commenter enquired.  Art!

     Short ansewr: no.

     Longer answer: he'd love to have seen one but in all the 6 years of his service it never happened.  Sorry.

More Not-So-Gentle Shoeing

There's an absolutely ghastly video clip on Twitter of late that I cannot possibly post here as it's definitely NSFW.  See, we do have standards.  Just not many.  ANYWAY AGAIN let us put up another illo of King Piggy looking less than jiggy.  Art!

     I have been merciful and only used 'Large' as I am not convinced you could withstand 'Extra-large'.  A sterling example of why Your Humble Scribe dubbed him the 'Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbut'.  If this is him supposedly 'aging backwards' then allow me to age forwards.  Garnished from Twitter.

Calling Putinpot And Belousev

If you're not familiar with the second name, allow me to explicate.  He is the Ruffian Defence Minister, brought in to replace the previous incumbent, the utterly useless Shoigu.  Art!

Shuggy and Belly

     Supposedly, Belly is there to clean house and root out corruption, thus enhancing competence and credibility.  In reality he's been undercutting Shuggy by arresting and imprisoning all his protegés, because all Ruffian generals are corrupt and rotten to the core.  He can hardly arrest them all as it wouldn't look good, but the orc army might conceivably run better with them gone.

     ANYWAY ANYWAY as you should surely know by now, Mordorvia has burned through nearly all it's Soviet era stockpiles and has trouble fielding anything mothballed later than 1960.  So!  I have the perfect answer for you.  Art!

     A steal at $1,500 each.  

Finally -

Another Biercism.

"Defenceless, adj: Unable to attack."

A Plank State Versus A Rank State

Do Not Be Fooled!

You might be forgiven for thinking that this title had to do with the Teuton physics genius Max Plank, and his discovery of the quantum state, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1918 and which is still ringing the changes.  Art!

     That's Max with the tash, and yes he's sitting next to his best friend Albert Einstein.

     Sadly, the glittering intellects on display do not emerge later in this Intro, as we continue into Part 2 of the saga about MISSC, DEVIOUS and IDIOT, from 'Ripe's vlog..  Go back to yesteryon's blog if you need those acronyms explained.  In this case, IDIOT has the intellect of a plank, which is where today's title comes in.

     To recap a little, IDIOT had hired an outsourced agency to carry out the work of MISSC's original 8-man IT team, who were given 1) Two weeks notice and 2) the duty of bringing the outsiders up to speed on everything they did.   Art!

     IDIOT then instructed the team to delete everything from their laptops, at which the team collectively baulked and enquired what, exactly, 'Everything' meant.  IDIOT, challenged, got irate and ended up telling them to 'DELETE EVERYTHING'.  He was stupid enough to put this in an e-mail because the IT people were absolutely covering their bottom.

     What IDIOT probably meant was 'Delete all your personal shizzle' but that's not what he instructed, is it?

     DEVIOUS, doing a bit of humblebragging, listed what systems his team had created over the years: custom database solutions for clients; an internal project management system; a client portal for customers; automated back-up systems; documentation archives; an internal wiki and a monitoring stack.  All of it was deleted from their laptops, making sure to avoid client data as that would have been crossing a line.  Art!

     The list of deleted software was impressively long: Project management system; time-tracking database; internal wiki; the monitoring stack of Python scripts; automated report scripts; all integration software that helped different systems communicate with each other.

     Then there were the back-up data files.  These would provide business continuity in case of catastrophic system failure.  DEVIOUS didn't touch these actual files as, once again, that would be crossing a legal line.  However - a word you surely knew was coming - they did delete the automation scripts, the schedules, and most crucially of all, the documentation mapping that linked clients to databases.  Art!

     Monday morning at MISSC began badly and went downhill from there.  Support tickets could not be raised, client reports had not been sent out, the back-ups had not been run over the weekend.  The project management files were gone and there was NO documentation.  Ooops.

     By Tuesday the slurry had hit the air-conditioning.  Art!

     IDIOT tried calling the IT members, unsuccessfully, as they'd all blocked him.  According to a contact DEVIOUS still had in accountancy, an emergency high level meeting was held, whilst the outsourcing team sat and gawped with awed horror at how little they could do.  This meant the imposition of financial penalties for non-deliverance, leading to one client leaving the business and a year-long pitch to a million-dollar potential client tanked, leading to them walking away.  Ooops.  By Thursday 3 more clients had lodged complaints.

     MISSC hired an external IT analyst, who came in and cast a leery eye o'er the troubled landscape, whom asked some verrrry pointed questions.  He whaled on MISSC for the lack of documentation, for the lack of a proper transition, and wanted to know why DEVIOUS and compatriots had been sacked - after being ordered to delete everything.

     IDIOT's e-mail chain instituting this order was dug out and the CEO fired him on the spot.  A bit late when he'd allowed IDIOT to muck everything up for 6 months with no proper review process.  Art!

    By week three the outsourcing team quit, citing total lack of documentation and support.  Seven clients ditched MISSC and they couldn't acquire new ones as their name had become toxic.  Rank, even.  

     DEVIOUS and mates, meanwhile, were hired by a competitor firm and given both a free hand and copious wages, and are living life large.

     MISSC, on the other hand, shut down.  The CEO sold the sad revenant to a private equity firm whom ransacked what was left.

    IDIOT went through another 3 jobs in 2 years - making it 5 in 3 years - and is now unemployed.  I hear they're always hiring at MacDonalds, IDIOT.

     In a coda, DEVIOUS informed that, a month after leaving, MISSC tried to sue them for unauthorised deletion of company data and computer fraud.  The lawyer they retained retorted with a packet containing IDIOT's e-mail chain, the audit logs of what was done and when, that they used explicit authorisation and validated data access.

     They never heard from them again.

Conrad Has A Bit Of A Beef

With Factbytes, whom are guilty of that cardinal sin: mis-identifying a tank.  I mean, what is the world coming to when you cannot trust entities to get it right?  Art!

     Whichever tank they mean, possibly either the Centurion or the Pershing, the tank above is not one of them.  It is the 'Challenger', a 'stretched' Cromwell hull that had 6 road wheels instead of the original 5, and a turret mounting the frightening 17-pounder gun.  It went into production in March 1944, well before the end of the Second Unpleasantness, but was only used in small numbers and the production run only came to 200 vehicles.

     Get yer act together FB!

Beneath A Burning Shoreline

No!  We are not talking about the Cherry Ghost album, as that is titled 'Beneath THIS Burning Shoreline'.  Art!

     No, what I came to inform you is that Tuapse, the Ruffian refinery and depot bordering the Black Sea, has been hit by the Ukrainians again.  I think this is strike number 5 but am a little unsure as it's been malleted so many times already.  Also slightly amazed there is anything left to burn.  Art!

     Something is on fire, which is good enough for me.
     Whilst we are on the topic of Mordorvia-malleting, allow me to poach a clip from 'Professor Gerdes Explains', where he utilised a map graphic by the inestimable 'Clement Molin' - hang on a minute, allow me to check - yes I am Following him, just had to make sure.  Art!

     I counted 31 hits on vehicles here.  These are the tributary roads that forward supplies to the orc occupiers in southern Ukraine - or, not any longer.  This lack of supplies may have emboldened the Kozaky to push south from Zaporizhzhia  where they are making small acquisitions of terrain.  Art!

     There must have been a few very high-value targets in there, or a lot of mid-level ones, because they got hit with Stormzy and the Ukrainians are verrrry selective what they use them against, as they don't have many of them.  It might have been one of the SCALPs they got from the French but my jingoistic heart feels it had to be a batch they got from GREAT BRITAIN*.

Someone Was Inspired By Ruffia!

Just not in a good way.  Art!

     Meet David Rush, a high-level member of the CIA.  So high, in fact, that he was able to get the South Canadian government to send him 303 gold bars, totalling $40 million, for 'work related expenses'.  Somehow the bars ended up in his home, alongside $2 million in cash and 35 luxury watches, so David is now gracing the inside of a prison cell until his trial comes up.  
     One wonders what he was thinking; under Trump there is unfettered corruption at the very highest levels, but not lower down, and it's asking a lot of your employer to not notice a third of a ton of gold going missing.

     We may yet learn more.

Finally -

THEY'RE DOING IT AGAIN!  Art?

     This is about as un-right as you can get.  It's the wretched Covenanter, as you can tell by the radiator mounted on the hull front.  It was hopelessly unreliable and it's armour was far too thin and it overheated and -

     You get the picture.  FACTBYTES GET SOME FACTS!

*  Stick that in yer pipe and smoke it, Lavrov!

A Blank Slate Versus A Bank State

If You Want Me To Be A Bit More Pseudy -

You can substitute 'Tabula rasa' for 'Blank slate' as it's the <hack spit> Latin for the same meaning.  Aristotle, being Greek, would have used the phrase 'Agraphos pinakas'.  He was referring to a metaphor where the human mind was perceived as a blank wax tablet, unmarred by the marks of any styli*.   Which we will surely come to later on.  Art!

     A wiki written in blood, sweat, tears and oil, the 't' being missing as someone's just gone off to make it.  We will come back to this later.

     OKAY so our tale of both manglement and malicious compliance is today taken from one of 'Ripe's 'Malicious Compliance' vlogs.  It's narrated by DEVeloper Instigating Overall Undoing Software, hereafter DEVIOUS.  Not foreshadowing too much, am I?  He worked at a Mid-Sized Software Company, hereafter MISSC, totalling no more than 40 staff, working in his IT team of 8.  Art!

IT teams are boring.  Have a giant atomic tank invading the Phillipines

     DEVIOUS informs that his team generated about 75% of the company revenue, an interesting metric if 20% of the staff are achieving this.

     ANYWAY statistics aside, DEVIOUS had the manager from Heaven, whom he could not praise highly enough, and who had built the team from scratch, supporting it and helping to hit splendid targets - 98% client retention rate amongst others.     

     What usually happens in situations like this is that the boss is promoted upstairs to a different environment, or gets poached by the competitors.  Not here.  Their manager was killed in a Road Traffic Accident when hit by a jack-knifing truck, which came out of left field and flattened his team.  Art!

IDIOT at the gates

     Here is where MISSC manglement proved to be bottomholes.  They had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how their expired manager had built, supported and run his team.  They had options: promote one of the team to a management position, training them into the role; move in one of the other managers from within MISSC; bring in an outsider skilled in the same role; bring in an InfilleD Industry OuTsider, hereafter IDIOT, with no experience of MISSC's business.

     The C-suite selected option four.  VERY WELL YOU HAVE CHOSEN DEATH!

     IDIOT proved they were a blank slate in short order.  As insecure bottomholes looking to make their mark tend to do, they wanted to imprint a lasting presence on their MISSC IT team, and did it by denigrating the team at their first meeting.  Way to build morale, dude.  The Hannibal Lecter And Machiavelli School of Management Development, hmmmm.  Art!

Conrad unsure which is Macchy

     IDIOT began to institute changes, such as time-tracking, and CC-ing e-mails, which the IT team found both needless and demeaning, as they were all consenting adults capable of managing their own affairs workloads.  

     Then IDIOT called the team into a meeting, where he had decided to reduce their salaries from between 18% to 25% and tol

     DANGER WILL ROBINSON!  DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

     Conrad guarantees he did not run this past HR, because doing this is - how can I put it? - HIGHLY ILLEGAL.  You cannot arbitrarily reduce people's salaries, even if you want to as a South Canadian manager whom sees all employees as indentured servants.  Art!

"But it will save costs!"

     Then, four months into IDIOT's reign of meh, came one of the semi-annual problems that occurred every so often amongst MISSC's customers - a database crashed.  Not merely crashed, crashed at the weekend.  DEVIOUS to the rescue; they logged-on and reconstituted the database within a couple of hours. 

     Of course - obviously! - IDIOT took offence at this remediation being carried out without them being informed, because a manager with absolutely no experience in the field and no idea what's going on needs to be involved thanks to -  thanks to - no, I have no idea either.

     They were incandescent with rage, which is a bit out of order, as DEVIOUS might well have called IDIOT to come sort things out, them being a manager and all.  Art!

IDIOT at the scene

     You are surely aware of the rubric 'If it ain't broke don't fix it', which of course an idiot like IDIOT ignored, because he had to justify his existence and salary, so he gleefully informed the IT team that he was going to replace them with an outsourced agency at a fraction of their salary.  This was six months into his reign of meh, and all his petty interference and malice had been totally unchecked by senior managers, who seem to have simply let him do whatever he wanted.

     Well, it's not wise to let an inexperienced numpty make technical decisions over work he does not understand, and this is going to be proven in Part 2, as I leave us on a cliffhanger.    I bet you can hardly wait.

"21 Days" By Angelo Caravaggio

Why yes, I do have a criticism of this work that I'm currently reading.  Ol' Ang does subscribe to one of the canards about the Normandy campaign in that he blithely mentions that Canuckistanian Sherman tanks were inferior to the Teuton models.  Despite mentioning Prof Buckley's 'British Armour In The Normandy Campaign', which completely rebuts any such claim, as defending, especially in the dense bocage country, was always a lot easier than attacking.  

     Oooooh thunder!

     ANYWAY Art!

A Sherman

     One training innovation the 4th Armoured Division's Lake Superior Regiment carried out was to strap rifles firing tracer bullets to their anti-tank guns on exercises.  Fired at tanks on the move playing the part of the Teutons, they showed how accurate the anti-tank guns were.  They also made a loud noise when hitting the tank, meaning that the crew got to appreciate how accurate anti-tank fire could be.

Bring It On!

I was browsing my news feed and of course King Piggy is in there, hogging the limelight as he is wont to do, except it's not in a good way.  Art!

     That's quite a mild photo of DJ Tango, considering.  

"Sudden end forecast: Michael Wolff says Trump’s presidency could end without warning, driven by his taste for drama and desire for historical legacy."

     I've read the article but, Mr Wolff doesn't explain how the sudden end might come, either as a physical or political falling off a cliff.  Apparently Fat Caligula is lonely, the poor dear, and paranoid, which is not to say that everybody doesn't hate him, and what bothers him most of all is not being able to run for a third term.  Although he did make a recent crack about staying in office until 2032.  Make it to the end of 2026 first, Decaying Orange Landwhale.  Which term lament is why he's resorting to vanity architectural projects.  Dunno why because he'll be out of office, a drooling vegetable or dead before any of them get completed.

     So, Mr. Wolff, will it be window or teapot? O how silly of me, that's in Ruffia!

Back To Charley And His War

We return to the fag-end of the Somme campaign, where Charley and his mates had been trapped in a dugout by the Teuton 'Judgement Troopers' and things were looking very grim.  Art!

Sterling art by Joe Colquohoun

     For your information, that's a Teuton 'Minenwerfer', of medium class, a small artillery piece they used in lieu of a mortar proper.  It was a massy beast, and could not broken down as per the British or French mortars.  So, it could be mounted on two wheels and be hauled around by the team, using a leather harness.  They were usually dismounted before firing, otherwise they were unstable and this one as depicted must have had excavations under the wheels to accommodate.  Art!

Finally -

Going out with a Biercism.

"Repentance,n: A sentiment which rarely troubles people until they begin to suffer."

*The plural of 'stylus'

If I Were To Say 'The Oroville'

You Might Well Think I Was Rabbiting On About -

Seth MacFarlane's sci-fi parody, which I admit/confess/boast <delete where applicable> that I haven't seen, and which successfully spoof the 'Starry Trex' franchise whilst not being mean or nasty about it.  You might say partly an homage as much as a satire.  Art!

Unseen but still on your screen

     But no.  There is that extra 'O' to take into account.  If you had let me continue, I would have ended with 'Dam', because in this Intro we're going to be discussing another item from 'Be Amazed's 'Expensive Mistakes That Ruined Companies' vlog, the same one I used as the backbone of our Intro on BEARRS.  In this one we are confronting the forces of nature instead of untrammelled human greed.  Art!

     I remember covering this w hen it happened, all of ten years ago, and it was an horrifying drama where the end was unknown.  BA now has 10 years of hindsight to work with, whereas I was somewhat constrained at the time by having to take things one day at a time.

     As you can clearly see, one of the striking things about Oroville was the enormously long spillway, which is where problems began.

     But I get ahead of myself.

     Oroville is the tallest dam in South Canada, standing at 770 PROUD IMPERIAL FEET high, and was built between 1961 and 1968, costing $123 million in total.  Art!

Oroville under construction, with puny humans for scale

     

     The dam was built in order to prevent flooding further downstream, which had occurred in 1955 and 1956, where the Feather river and others flooded and caused $200 million in damage and losses, killing 112 people along the way.

     Things ran smoothly for 49 years as the dam nonchalantly handled all the hydrographic events nature could throw at, until February of 2017, when it couldn't.  There had been extremely heavy and sustained rain and snow for four days, from the 6th of February to the 10th, depositing 12.8 inches of water into the reservoir's drainage basin.  Operators released water down the 930 metre long spillway to drop the lake level.  Art!

     Then the surfacing of the slipway began to crack and collapse, exacerbated by the water flow's speed and mass.  Once a hole like this appears, rapid erosion takes place and - Art!

Looks pricey if you ask me

     There's nothing to scale this, but believe me, you could put a house in that pit.  It widened into a crevasse 250 feet wide, breaching the side of the spillway and thus allowing water to flow freely over the hillside.  Art!

During and after.  Looks even pricier

     You will be delighted to know that there was a backup system, an emergency spillway to the starboard of the main dam, if you were sitting in Lake Oroville.  It was pretty basic: a concrete weir that allowed water to top it and wash down to the Feather River, and it had never been used - that being the 'emergency' part of it's description.

     The main spillway was shut down - allowing sight of how much damage had been caused - and water began to top the emergency spillway.  Only problem was, it eroded the hillside ridiculously quickly, threatening to undercut the weir and collapse it.  So the emergency spillway was shut down and the main one opened again.  Oooops.  Art!

Spillsbury D'oh

     I can tell what you're thinking - yes, this is going to be an expensive resolution.  For one thing, the county had evacuated 188,000 residents downstream of the dam, just to be sure.  Art!

     Conrad remembers being verrry impressed with the speed and scale with which the South Canadians responded, in their best 'Git 'r done' fashion.  What you see above is them rebuilding the spillway from scratch.  Was it cheap?  NO IT WAS NOT!  Art?

Hopefully those diggers give you a sense of scale

     That's the net total.  Since nobody died, you could, perhaps, ask the 188,000 non-unalived people to chip in $59,000 each and that would cover it.

     Only joking!  Well, we've had 10 years of faultless operation of the new Oroville Dam spillway, so I guess we just have to wait another 39 years to see if it's up to scratch.

     O I just did a bit of digging about insurance - the dam, as is typical of South Canadian mega-structures, is not insured through a commercial agency.  The costs were met by Californian state funds and FEMA - Federal Emergency Management Agency.  Nor would the evacuees be compensated, unless they had specific insurance terms covering 'loss of use'.  ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT!

     Thank heavens I live at the top of a hill.

     

'Leviathan Wakes' By James A. Corey

Ah, me, I remember being accosted by Tom, when I had just begun at HR in Sainsbo's at Arndale House, when I had this tome in hand and was reading it whilst waiting for other staff to arrive in the Training Room.  Hard to credit that was at least 8 years ago.  Art!

     Cover art by Daniel Dociu, a Romanian artist.

     Enough time has gone by that I only vaguely remember the plot, which is good as knowing what happens before I turn the page is a bit of a downer.

     If you want a plot precis: Hom. Sap. has taken all the ills of Earth and exported them to every corner of the Solar System.  Then an incredibly destabilising bit of alien technology turns up -

No thunderstorms so far.  Somewhat disappointed.  Let us continue.

LOGISTICS!

Which, amazingly enough, we have not defined as per the 'Collins Concise English Dictionary'.  So!  'The science of the movement, supplying and maintenance of military forces in the field.'

     There you have it.  I now want to supply an excellent diagram of Teuton tanks in all their variegated glory.  Art!

Courtesy 'Clint Warren-Davey' on Twitter.  Art!

     I count 44 different tanks there.  Clint wisely points out that this lot were a quartermaster's nightmare, with different hulls, suspension, engines, guns, radios, tracks, optics, etcetera, etcetera.  You, as a QM, had to carry all the spare parts to be able to repair one of these beasts.  Which is quite apart from having the engineers and kit to actually carry out replacements.

     Conrad sneers at the Sinisters for their profligacy with human life, yet they had wit enough to streamline their military production lines to produce the maximum number of minimum types, and they didn't bother to finish them to a high standard, either.  

Have Your Hurl Bucket At The Ready!

Conrad is deeply sad that he has to announce Donold Judas Trump is still alive - if only barely.  He's back in hospital again, to see if they can extract the excess Stupid and reduce bloating.  I don't hold out much hope.

     What I am leading up to is another ghastly picture of Pumpkinhead.  Art!

     Not sure what to call this one.  The return of Weregravy?  Melania is braver and more deserving of pity than you think.

Still More Logistics!

This topic has emerged from nowhere.  There is a Twitter clip of a Ruffian truck driver on the M-14 highway north of the occupied Black Sea shoreline, noticing numerous destroyed Ruffian trucks and commenting 'These weren't there last week.'

     Indeed they were not.  The Kozaky have managed to get their Firepoint drones, the large ones containing a kitchen-bin of HE, across the front lines and into the Ruffian rear.  Art!

     This is the Prof explaining about how the 'land bridge' into Crimea is now under threat from Ukrainian long-range drones, which have the range to get there and interdict the motorway.  Art!

     Courtesy the very excellent 'Clement Molin', a Twitter legend well worth following.  You may not be able to see the font here, so just allow me to explicate that Clement lists 45 hits on Ruffian trucks - in ONE DAY.

     Over on Telegram the Ruffian milbloggers are collectively voiding their bowels and shrieking, as this kind of logistical blockade has dire effects verrrry quickly.