Allow Me To Disconstrue

Because Booh Booh

     Or similar.  Yes, I realise this is neither English nor Gibberish, but bear with me.  You see, I have been working on an Intro that deals with mechanical metrics and descriptions, and that also includes positively Shakespearean levels of revenge and performance, along with industry-specific utilitarian targets. Art!

Tomato-too-too

       Yeah, take that tomatoes.  In this tale we well be describing Industrial Automotive Narrator, hereafter IAN, whom dealt with - you may be ahead of me here - industrial automation such as conveyor belts, high-speed sorters and autonomous robots, in an hideous combination of electrical engineering, computer coding and mechanical physics.  There is so much here that it will be the whole of today's blog.  Art!

When things were going well

     IAN had been Lead Systems Architect for 6 years in the happy time before Buyout, working at Medium Executable Hub, hereafter MEH, heading a team of 4 junior engineers, whose edict was Solve The Problem Before It Begins.  

      As 90% of these tales begin, this one began when the original owners decided to sell up and retire, and they were acquired by a Hedge Fund.  This means the new owners had 0% knowledge of the industry, but 110% arrogance about running it.  Enter COrporate Stereotype Honcho, hereafter COSH, whom 'spoke exclusively in buzzwords' and had teeth that shone brighter than the sun, and whom was now in charge of IAN.

     If you feel that this is not going to go well, congratulations take a biscuit.

     COSH fired 2 of IAN's team, more to make a statement than out of any utilitarian means, which IAN argued about since it made them reactive to failures, not proactive, nor could you automate maintenance.

     All of which COSH completely ignored, because COSH.  Art!

     Then came the saga of the Programmable Logic Controllers, computer systems that automate mechanical processes, The business already had expensive but very robust versions, and of course - obviously! - COSH took offence at 'expensive' and decided to use much cheaper generic knock-off versions, because it would improve the bottom line in Q3.  IAN provided detailed criticism of this choice and that Q4 would see profits nosedive thanks to machine trouble.

      COSH immediately took umbrage at this and declares IAN a 'mechanic with a keyboard', as if it were a criticism.  IAN's refusal to purchase the dubious PLCs for MEH rendered COSH purple-faced with rage, so he ordered them himself.  Art!

     For 3 months the business had serious issues with time-outs, halts and delays thanks to the dodgy PLCs (see above), so IAN wrote and ran a script on his work laptop that fooled them into continued operation.  

     The vendor for this hardware was being hired by COSH in a not very subtle move to sideline IAN, and you can imagine COSH rubbing his hands and tweaking his moustache ends (if he had a moustache).  IAN was also quiet-quitting, getting fed up of having to work 80 hour weeks to keep the plant going.  Art!

No, it isn't supposed to look like that

     Then came the crash.  The cheap-bottom PLCs suffered melting under factory conditions, causing a crash that stopped the production line completely, for which COSH instantly fired IAN, blaming him for sabotage.  He demanded the latter's badge and laptop, which IAN closed before handing over. 

     Closing the laptop shut it down, so the Python script IAN had cobbled together stopped working, and the HDD encrypted itself.  The vendor who was supposed to replace IAN confessed/admitted/revealed <delete where necessary> that they knew nothing about software or firmware and sat there sucking both thumbs.  

     None of this was IAN's concern, nor was the MEH plant's inability to get the production line up until 4 days later, costing millions in lost production and penalty clauses.  Ooops.  Art!

    A very expensive engineering team was flown in from MEH's original equipment supplier, all the way from Germany.  They spent 2 weeks resolving things and the first item on their menu was binning the low-quality PLCs and buying in the ones that IAN wanted, costs be damned.

     COSH survived by blaming IAN and his 'sabotage' and the Hedge Fund Fools, who knew the price of everything but the value of nothing, believed him.

     FIVE YEARS LATER 

     IAN has moved on to bigger and better things elsewhere with a competitor.  MEH, on the other hand, was doing poorly, and had never fully recovered from Crash Day.  The best staff departed.  The Hedge Fund, having found out that buzzwords do not benefit business, were looking to sell MEH.  IAN's new employer were looking to acquire, and seeing him as a 'poacher turned gamekeeper', they put him in charge of the acquisition.  You may see where this is going.

     ANYWAY one of IAN's findings was that maintenance costs at MEH were high and that staff turnover was also high - usually an indicator of poor management.

     MEH was bought out.

     

     IAN was now Head of the Transition Team.  The first COSH knew of this was at the first TT meeting, where IAN walked in and took lead position at the table.  COSH, looking much older and worn, predictably frothed at IAN until given his business card, which rendered him pale and silent.  Technically IAN was now COSH's boss's boss, thus placing him considerably higher in the pecking order.

     Again, you may see where this is heading.  There is a twist, though.

     IAN went through MEH's metrics.  Art!

     They were not good.  The maintenance budget was up by 200% and uptime (time where the production plant was running) was down by 15%.  There had been a saving of 12% on Capital Expenditure, whoopee! but a 40% increase in Operational Expenditure, oooh downer.  Which, translated, means they were cheaping-out on machinery costs, which was driving up maintenance costs.

     Then comes the vengeance/revenge/justice <delete where necessary>.  COSH is moved from his office to a cubicle, put on a Personal Improvement Plan and given the title "Legacy Support Coordinator".  His brief was to document every single error that had occurred at MEH for the past 5 years, explaining the root cause of same.  IAN knew this was beyond COSH's technical ability because he simply wasn't a 'mechanic with a keyboard'.  

     IAN let him stew for two weeks - closet sadist there! - until tackling him in his cube, where COSH had unsuccessfully been trying to bully junior engineers into doing his analysis.  They universally refused, knowing a broken reed when they saw one.  Art!

Not quite what I was after but I'll let it stand.  No Tazer for you today Art.

     Now, remember that 'vendor' that COSH had been using?  They were called TechSolutions, and were owned by <drum roll> his brother in law.  Can you say CONFLICT OF INTEREST?  As well as FRAUD? because TechSolutions had been overcharging by 40%, and no doubt giving COSH kickbacks as well.  

     This gave IAN a perfect reason/justification/excuse <delete where applicable> to fire COSH 'for cause', meaning he would walk out of MEH with nothing but a cardboard box of desk objects.  

     They later sued TechSolutions for breach of contract and fraud, just to spread the misery around a bit.  

     IAN got MEH back into a viable business again within 6 months.  When another logistics firm asked him for a reference for COSH, who had applied for a position there, his recommendation to 'check his vendor relationships very closely' instantly sank the application.  Ooops!

     There you have it, an epic in 1,214 words.

Fire From Above

Which, If It Happens

Will be genuine fire, from above, not from below, which would make it magma, or molten rock instead of faerie flagration.

     OKAY!  I am going to try and combine the events of over 80 years ago above the contested skies of Occupied France, and what is happening in Occupied Ukraine, and blend the two together.  Art!

     Lest ye be unaware, the Teutons from June 1940 were holding Continental Europe in their scrofulous grip, which inspired the Brylcreem Boys of the RAF to mount what they bizarrely called 'Rhubarb' missions.  These were aggressive low-level attacks on anything they happened across that might possess benefit for the Teutons.  As time went on these raids got bigger and reached further into Occupied France.  Art!

     By mid-1944 these raids had grown so much in size and intensity that they had become part of the roundup to D-Day, becoming essential in shaping the battlefield before the invasion occurred.  .  There was a laundry list of targets that needed to be whammed - excuse the deep technical terms - in order to grant the invasion forces the greatest possible chance of success.  Art!

South Canadians amending Teuton rail schedules

     Flippant I might be, accurate I am also.  Choke points such as rail marshalling yards, bridges, viaducts, cuttings and tunnels were attacked, leading to a collapse of Teuton railway transport from 70,000 available wagons to 10,000.  In practical terms this meant that Teuton divisions, that would have been sent in by rail to Normandy, had to march there on foot, and all their heavy equipment such as tanks, artillery pieces and trucks, went by road.  Which took far longer and made them horribly vulnerable to air attack.  Art!

     The French Resistance also struck Teutons with lethal force, but its most effective role was in providing information to the Allies, thanks to having a hundred thousand eyes and ears in occupied territory, no single one of which was vital, but which overall gave an enormous nuanced picture.  The Teuton's attitude and behaviour in the occupied territories, being of utter medieval barbarism, meant that there was no shortage of Resistance volunteers, a paradox they never managed to solve.  A kind of 'Beatings will continue until morale improves' mindset, if you will.  Art!

     Operating under an aerial umbrella does apply advantages, being that you do not labour under the problems that your neighbour has.  During the campaign in Normandy one of the Allied generals went for a joyride - excuse me, a 'battlefield reconnaissance' - over the Teuton lines, where he was unable to see any viable targets; when he flew back over Allied lines, there were innumerable depots and supply dumps and parks, all plainly visible.  When he commented, he was told that this was how air superiority worked - the Teutons had no choice but to camouflage everything up the wazoo, whereas their own kit feared nought from enemy air observation or attack.  Teuton convoys usually had a 'Luki-Luki' man scanning the skies on at least every other vehicle.  They couldn't prevent an Allied air attack but could mitigate by sounding the alarm.  Art!

     What you see here as a headline is the Ukrainian equivalent of what was called 'Big Week' in the lead up to D-Day, where the Allied air forces deliberately cleared the skies by wiping out the Luftwaffe, which was outnumbered, outclassed and outdated.  It never recovered and was a broken reed during the Normandy campaign.

     What the USF are doing is deliberately targetting Ruffian air defence systems and destroying them, meaning follow-up drones experience no interference or interception.  The 'Atesh' resistance movement in occupied Ukraine will be feeding details about what the Ruffians have located where and when, all the information being funnelled to the USF.  Art!

     I should point out that the Ruffians were only able to produce a handful of these systems per month, and that they cost on the order of $10 million each at least.  Given Ukraine's destroying the Kreminy El microelectronics plant in Bryansk  - akin to the Allied strategic bombing of Nazi Germany - they may have lost the ability to replace these systems at all.  Art!

     Ruffian fuel train.  Art!

     Ruffian fuel train on fire.  Once again, Atesh may have been involved in passing on information about the train's route and cargo.

     This is actually worse than it seems, because fuel tanker fires like this destroy the track beneath them thanks to the high temperatures and long duration of the fire.  For your information, the single track railway in Zaporizhzhia that was blocked by a burned-out fuel train is still blocked - and that dates from AUGUST 2025.  Art!

     This graphic ought to make pro-Kremlin warbloggers wince and change the subject.  It shows how the 'kill zone' for Ukrainian drones has increased by a factor of three, meaning only part of Crimea and a fragment of the Donbass is out of range.  If you want another Allied Normandy analogy, look to the creation of airfields on liberated territory as soon as possible after D-Day, which by default increased the range of the fighter-bombers stationed there.  Art!

     Check back in on April 1st, when Telegram is shut off for good in Mordorvia and the occupied territories.

     Conrad could probably wring a few more long paragraphs out of this subject but is feeling merciful and will pass on.

I Hope You Have Already Eaten And Quite A While Ago

For Lo! we have another horrid photograph of King Piggy, as I take great delight in defaming and ridiculing the ugly fat biffer.  Art!

     You can see the delicious contrast between his sepia-toned face, his baggy saggy eyes - more like sacks than bags if we're honest - and his delicate pink ears, and a No Man's Land of hair in between that isn't either pink or orange, more a greyish fuzz.  His fringe also seems to be exhibiting signs of becoming an independent sentient creature.

In The Land Of Mordorvia Where Shadows Lie

 - and so do the state authorities.  Apologies for banging on about Ruffia in another item after defaming them in the Intro, but the 'Jake Broe' vlog that I pinched a couple of pictures from had an interesting update about Starlink.  Art!

     This is dated February 2024.  So for at least two years the orcs were using Starlink illegally for comms on the battlefield and behind it.  Then Elong Tusk woke up one morning and decided this made him look bad, so - Ruffian Starlink usage ended, immediately.

     Cue shrieks of panicked indignation from the orcs, who then tried to blackmail and bribe Ukrainians to register Starlink, a measure of how badly they were affected.  

     Cue also a response from the military authorities, probably trying to cover their bottoms and prevent Peter The Average from finding out  how badly things were going.  Art!

     A right pair of Pinnochios.  Allow me - Art!

     You can see the drop off in Starlink activity across Ukraine, showing that 75% of usage in Ukraine was by the orcses*.  Art!

     Conrad wondered who this 'Doug Madory' chap is, and if he speaks with any technical background.  Well, yes, rather - 

"Doug Madory is an American Internet routing infrastructure expert, who specializes in analyzing Internet Border Gateway Protocol routing data to diagnose Internet routing disruptions, such as those caused by communications fiber cable cuts, routing equipment failures, and governmental censorship"

     More credible than the Pinnochio Pair.

The Universe Is Stranger Than We Can Imagine

This has been proven since the discovery of exoplanets thirty years ago.  With the introduction of Hubble and then the James Webb Space Telescope, we have been able to conduct image searches of planets that have been discovered by either occlusion or gravitational influences on their parent star.  Art!

     Meet L 98-58 d, a planet 35 light years from Earth that is markedly different from what scientists had been led to think about small rocky planets.  Prior to L, they would have been classified as either a 'gas dwarf', which is a planet having a rocky constitution and a hydrogen atmosphere, or a 'waterworld' having an ice surface and deep liquid oceans.

     Not Ol' L 98-58 d!  No, this planet has a crust of lava, on top of an ocean of magma that extends down to the core, and which is rich in hydrogen sulphide.

     So if you were to walk on the surface, the overwhelming smell would be of rotten eggs.

Finally -

Going out with a Biercism again.

"Self-Esteem, n: An erroneous appraisement."

Chin chin!

*  Variant spelling they hate hate hate.  Tee hee!

Twin Political Sub-Rug Bulldogism

No, I Am Not Going To Apologise For Being Obscure

For that would be 1) unworthy of the blog and 2) pandering to those whom do not have a perspective greater than that of a lobotomised goldfish.

     You see, I am recalling an observation from one of the sharpest political wits that This Sceptred Isle ever produced, namely Winston Churchill, and his analysis of what went on inside the Kremlin during the Cold War, and even before.  Art!

A dogfight

     "Kremlin political intrigues are comparable to a bulldog fight under a rug. An outsider only hears the growling, and when he sees the bones fly out from beneath it is obvious who won."

     What am I talking about?  O I thought you'd never ask!  You see, for nearly two weeks now, there has been an internet blackout in the very heart of Mordorvia, and the orcs there have long been looking puzzled and fearful - not angry, as they are credulous and witless sheep.  Art!

    I am going to be resorting to notes I have made from 'Jason Jay Smart' and his Youtube channel, and a certain amount of witter from teh Interwebz.  You can view this as being underneath the rug as the bulldogs fight.

     SO!  one conspiracy theory is that the internet death in Ruffia is because the latest satrap to acquire the crown in Iran is <checks> Mojtab Khamenei, and the Israelis and South Canadians and a lot of Iranians all want him dead dead dead. They have not been successful in this endeavour, only removing one of his legs in situ.  Thus, his single-legged carcass has been flown to Barad Dur for medical care.  Cue enormous e-methods of preventing his presence from being revealed, or King Piggy would be disheartened.  Art!

As humourless as his dad, except less so

    The second conspiracy theory is that the Israelis and South Canadians tracked down the Iranian regime's echelon of leaders by following them on teh Interwebz, and then delivering truckloads of bombs directly on their heads.  Putinpot, being as worried about his epidermis as any other authoritarian dictator, has closed down the Mordorvian internet to prevent anyone delivering a bomb directly to his bony bonce.  True?  False?  Exaggerated?  Like I said, bulldogs under a rug.

     Doctor Smart was posting five days ago about the mobile internet blackout, which as of the time I am typing this is now up to Day Fifteen.  The official narrative has changed, from being 'Routine Maintenance' to 'Security reasons', a move that inspires confidence in nobody.  Taking only Barad Dur and Saint Petersbug, the blackout affects 18 million orcs, who are now resorting to pagers, walkie-talkies and good old-fashioned paper maps.  In all, 63 regions have been affected, for a total economic cost of $12 billion, but it is apparently more important to keep the sheep in the dark than it is to suffer even more drain on revenue.  Art!

They lived so well.

     Then there is the censorship.  I know, censorship in Ruffia, who would have believed it!  All social media mentioning the mobile internet blackout is being censored, although the print media has been able to publish comments and articles about it, presumably because few orcs can read?  Art!

     Illo from Our Man In Moscow, Steve Rosenberg, and a rather cheeky Ruffian cartoon that may get the artist ten years in a gulag if the FSB get off their waffle-patterned behinds.

     Back to Doctor Smart.  Another reason for the mobile internet blackout may be an ongoing purge of the 'Old Guard', that is, the proteges of Shoigu.  The blackout would prevent coordination and cooperation between these threatened parties, as they get picked off one at a time.  Thus, less risk of a coup being staged.  Art!

Courtesy Dr Smart

     Shoigu lost a lot of power and influence when he was replaced as Minister Of Defence, and his move sideways to the Security Council was not a moment of mercy from Putinpot, it was leaving a scapegoat around whom could be thrown under the bus later on.  Bulldogs. Rug.  The four above are merely the most recent arrestees, out of a total of 17 Ruffian generals.

     Another interesting observation over these arrests is the lack of any official statement, which is a variety of state statement in itself, to keep the minions troubled and divided.  Doctor Smart noted that Vladimir Surkov, one of the architects of Putin's rise to power and methodology of ruling, has vanished of late, very possibly fleeing abroad to avoid arrest and punishment.  When figures of his stature and import do a runner, the regime is looking for scapegoats for a 3 day Special Idiotic Operation that has clearly failed.  Art!

How to strangle cats the Surkov way!

Another Not-So-Gentle Shoeing

I think I got this unflattering photo of Dozy Don The Nodfather from a Youtube thumbnail, cropping out the other two talking heads.  Was it from 'David Pakman'?  Quite possibly, he loathes Donnie Dorko quite as much as me, and makes an income from it, which is nice work if you can get it.  Art!

     Not the most animated of Presidents, is he?  You can just imagine him dreaming of cheating at golf, rather than being talked at by a lot of people who polish his shoes with their tongues.

     Nobody has objected to these less than flattering photos, so - they will continue!

More Fun With Fences

I came across this story on the Youtube channel 'RedWheel' and Lo! it concerned a fence and what befell it.  Art!

Literally

     This is the scene that met NEighbour Affecting Trash, hereafter NEAT, when she looked out into her backyard.  Their unpleasant neighbours, Scummy Losers & Unpleasant Munters, hereafter SLUM, had piled so much rubbish against the fence that it had collapsed, dumping a load of rubbish into NEAT's back yard.

     Despite being polite about it, then being firm about it, then pursuing them on social media, SLUM left their garbage fester for 5 weeks, until NEAT hired a removal team and had it all taken to the city dump.

     Predictably, SLUM were irate about this and threatened to sue for theft of the disposed of rubbish.  They unwisely contacted city compliance, who came to inspect and instantly ruled in NEAT's favour, because there was a whole lot of other dangerous and toxic rubbish lying around SLUM's back yard.  The husband sent a formal explanation that they would be replacing the fence section, and then neither of SLUM ever tried to communicate with NEAT again.  A happy ending!  In this case good fences make bad neighbours go silent.

I Hate Half A Story

Especially when it concerns TREE LAW.  Now, the original story here is one I picked up on attorney Steve Lehto's Youtube channel, about another bottomhole who decided to cut down another person's trees in order to improve his own view.  Art!

     The story dates back to late 2023.  The defendant, Grant Haber, had hired a team of tree-fellers to trespass on his neighbour's property and cut down 32 healthy mature trees in order to better his views.  One has to wonder at the morals and scruples of a business willing to commit trespass in order to secure a payment.

     ANYWAY the court accepted a plea deal, specifically on the charge of not obtaining a permit to fell trees as per local legislation, which cost Haber $13,000.

     HOWEVER, this is not the  end of the tale.  

    You see, the Borough Prosecutor believed that Haber would be on the hook for replacing the felled trees, and at around $30,000 each, he might be paying up to $1 million for full restitution.

     Except that the story dates from two years ago and there are no further updates, which is annoying, to say the least.  I am sure a settlement hitting a million dollars would feature in at least local news media, yet nothing.

     Bah!

Finally -

Rounding things off with another Biercism.

"Gipsy, n: A person who is willing to tell your fortune for a small part of it."

More Of Fence

You Will Be As Delighted As I Am

When I inform you that I re-discovered the original story about a fence in dispute between The Fencing Master and BONE - BOttomhole NEighbour*.  I can now inform you that the colour scheme used by TFM was 'highliner yellow, blue and green, with slabs of black and brown', which sounds as unpleasant as it looks.  Art!

     Also, BONE hated this colour scheme so much he spammed the whole HOA subdivision with an e-mail complaining about it and trying to drum up support - which is what led to the two other neighbours* copying TFM's colour scheme.  Conrad was also right about the ending, BONE moved out a few months later.  

     Digging a bit further into fences as a topic, it seems there's almost as much material about them on teh Interwebz as there is about TREE LAW, since fences are usually associated with property boundaries, which are, again, a source of much dispute.  Art!

     This style of fence is known as 'Good Neighbour*'.  Why so?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Because it looks the same from both sides, meaning there is no 'bad' side that looks unsightly after installation, so your wrathful or wonderful neighbour* has nothing to complain about.

     The state of California - excuse me, CALIFORNIA, because saying it loudly annoys King Piggy - even has laws pertaining to neighbours* and fences.  The 'Good Neighbour**Fence Law California Civil Code ⨖841' requires adjoining property owners to share the upkeep and installation of boundary fences, unless they have come to an alternate arrangement.  

     Now we come to the meat of the matter in today's Intro, a dispute between neighbours over boundary lines and fences.  ILLEGAL fences!  Art!

     There are two characters here, SAintly Mother's Mother ('grandmother if we're being formal), hereafter SAMM, and BOundary Bottomhole, hereafter BOB.  It's,  important to note that SAMM was elderly and frail, yet she had a spine of brightest vanadium steel.  There is no mention of a Mister SAMM, so we can presume she was a widow, or BOB might have taken a few swipes to the jaw.

     First point of contention was their backyard fence, which was as old as SAMM and in a derelict condition, for which see above.  It supposedly marked the boundary between their properties, except that when SAMM approached BOB to contribute to a new fence, he immediately refused, saying the fence was on her property so it was her responsibility.  

     Then, fatefully, SAMM had a fall, and at her age this meant being hospitalized for several weeks.  When she got back home, SURPRISE! because BOB had built a fence 5 feet into her backyard.  Art!

BOB gloating.  Just wait, BOB, just wait

     Not only that, he'd sent her the bill for erecting the fence.  You see, BOB had decided that whilst SAMM was out of the way, it was the perfect time to claim the boundary line was five feet adrift of where it had been and enforce it with a fence.

     SAMM did not pay the bill.  In fact she hired a surveyor, who confirmed what she thought: the boundary line was where the original tatty old fence had been.  Having spent months in disputes with BOB, who was living down to his full name, and being old and frail, she decided to stop complaining and resort to direct action.

     How does a lady of advanced years and delicate state  take on an abusive bottomhole?

     With gardening.  Art!

     She planted blackberry bushes all along the newly erected fence.  Within two years they had covered the fence on her side, and she took pains to throw blackberry seeds over the fence onto BOB's illegally-acquired land.  By Year Five they had totally covered the extra ground BOB had stolen.  He tried to get rid of them by digging them up, but they grew back from SAMM's side every time.  SAMM's grandson informed that she has been gone a few years now, but her Blackberry Revenge Plan continues to <ahem!> bear fruit as the bushes still sprout and re-seed on BOB's property.  Art!

     One of the Commenters stated that blackberry bushes are extraordinarily hard to get rid of, requiring that they be cut back, the stems burned to ground level and chickens imported to consume the seeds.  There is corroborative advice on Google - 

Rampant, invasive Himalayan blackberry bushes can be controlled by cutting, digging out root balls, and consistent maintenance. For large infestations, cut canes to the ground, use machinery to till, or use goats to graze the area. For long-term control, remove all root fragments, as they can regenerate

     Looks like BOB is going to have this problem in perpetuity.  Tee hee!

I warned you, BOB.  I warned you!

DIFTII

Normally this would only be 'DIFTI' for 'Destroying It From The Inside' but I feel compelled to add 'Idiotically' to this one, because it concerns an utter chump.  His name is not mentioned, nor is his employment status, so we'll dub him Jack The Sack.  Art!

     What you see here is Boeing's Everrett facility in Washington, where Jack worked - hopefully past tense, for Boeing at least, for reasons we shall see.

     Jack was working on an Excel  spreadsheet, and he had trouble formatting it, the poor dear.  Rather than raise the issue with a senior or raise a ticket with IT, he did the most obvious thing possible NOT REALLY and e-mailed the spreadsheet to Jill, his wife.

     Jill did not work for Boeing.  Jill should not have been able to view the document and Jack shouldn't have sent it.  Major data protection breach here, as Jack shouldn't have been able to send it.

     Why was this a big deal?

     Because of the hidden columns.  Jack seems to have been a complete tyro with Excel, as there were birth dates and Social Security numbers for 36,000 Boeing employees present, unseen.  Art!

     Doing a bit of closing the stable door post-bolted horse, Boeing confirmed that the info had gone nowhere else after Jill received the spreadsheet.  Still, they felt obliged to offer everyone potentially affected free credit evaluation for two years, at a cost to the firm of $7 million.

More Of Beer Here

I detailed yesteryon about how Conrad collects beer cans and bottles that look interesting, regardless of what they taste like.  My collection has been run down over the last year, but last weekend I got another two new cans.  Here's the second one.  Art!

     Unlike the Shindigger can, this one does not list the ingredients.  It does give the address for '7 Brothers', which to my surprise is another Manchester address: Salford, Manchester M50 1DS.  Art!

    This is the brewery from the outside on a sunny day, and one hopes that the people who came on bikes are going to either walk home or stick at one pint.  Art!

     Meet the shining spotless metal interior where they make the brews.  That's a lot of beer here.  Also - 

SEVEN BRO7HERS BREWING CO is a family-run brewery located at 63 Waybridge Enterprise Centre, Daniel Adamson Road, Salford, M50 1DS. Founded in 2014 by seven McAvoy brothers, it features a taproom, offers Saturday brewery tours, and produces craft ales. The site operates on weekends, providing fresh beer straight from the tank

     Perhaps one for the summer diary?

Good News!

Conrad was browsing his news feed this morning and came across an item that had him a-whooping and a-hollering.  Quietly, so as not to worry the neighbours.  Art!

    Missing Doctor Who episodes rediscovered in private collection

     Woohoo!  Only two episodes, but that's better than nothing.  We are told they are 'The Nightmare Begins' and 'Devil's Planet' of which I know nothing but rest assured I am going to go dig right now.  Art!

     This is the tenth episode of "The Dalek's Masterplan", a twelve-parter featuring the obnoxious motorised dustbins.  Art!

     'Devil's Planet' is the 3rd episode of TDMP, and I don't have a title shot for it.

Finally -

Going out with a Biercism.

"Fridge,n:  A fashionable church."

*  NOTE CORRECT SPELLING

**  Okay I've rubbed it in enough.