Unless You Deal With Logistics Professionally
In which case you need a bit more backing than crossed fingers. Yes, we are into Part Two of the sorry saga about the complex dashboard we dubbed 'Colossus', the sole surviving expert in it's use, CLEAR, his valiant assistant VAC and the villain of the piece, Bottomhole Boss. Which situation might well be described as a CLEAR And Present Anger. Art!
Last we were here, CLEAR had been reduced in rank from Operations Coordinator to a humble Dispatcher, since BB had convinced themselves and their, in turn Bottomhole Boss, that undoing all of CLEAR and VAC's business solutions would reduce costs. Ignoring the fact that abandoning these measures would critically impact the business.
A dispatcher, I should clarify, would take calls from the Colossus system board and route them to the various field service technicians, acting as a kind of comms middleman. Who had been running the Colossus system board as an Operations Coordinator? None other than CLEAR. So he had been removed from a job that only he understood and worked - Bus Factor One. Art!
Which now became Bus Factor Zero.
The next day CLEAR sat at his new Dispatcher desk and logged onto the dispatcher terminal system, and waited. And waited. And waited.
Four hours later - which is an indictment in itself - BB approached and asked why CLEAR hadn't done any dispatching, since there were over 30 service requests sitting in the queue. That many and BB only just noticed? Where had they been for the past four hours whilst that queue was building up?
ANYWAY, probably whilst smiling sweetly, CLEAR explained that there weren't any entries in his dispatch system. Nada. Nil. Zero. Art!
When told to add them, probably smiling sweeter still, he informed BB that doing so was the Operations Coordinator's job, not a Dispatcher's. Ooops. Then, perhaps smiling with more saccharin than is healthy for a diabetic to be even typing about, CLEAR remarked that, given the disciplinary response he'd gotten the last time he'd done unauthorised things, he certainly wasn't going to do it again.
BB deflated like a punctured balloon. It began to slowly dawn on him that he'd shot himself in both feet and then inserted them into his mouth, because Bus Factor Zero. VAC had never been trained on Colossus, despite repeated requests from CLEAR on this very subject.
BB went and had an agitated argument with his BB, and then the HR minion was called in. Then they all trooped out and BB's BB ordered CLEAR to train someone on Colossus.
CLEAR refused. Such training wasn't part of a Dispatcher's role and would need at least a month of training if the assignee was good on IT. Ooops. Art!
CLEAR pondering on life
Next day they tried to make CLEAR take his old position back, which he defiantly refused, quoting back at them the harsh criticisms they had made before demoting him. Next day, another meeting, this time including a lawyer, where BB''s BB stated CLEAR either needed to accept the promotion or provide documentation about Colossus.
CLEAR continued to refuse the promotion and re-iterated that there was NO documentation, there never had been and he'd been telling them that for two years. Art!
Chaos ensued. With no computer system operating everything had to be done manually, using e-mails and phones, meaning dealing with a single service call took four times longer. Resolution times began to climb to a week or longer, and the first client complaints within a week, with the first cancellations a week later.
Colossal Corp took CLEAR to court, despite him being legally advised that they couldn't force him to accept the 'promotion' or compel him to provide documentation that didn't exist. Their allegation was that he was 'In possession of critical proprietary information, and refusing to share it, causing serious financial harm to the business'. Hmmm I bet Bottomhole Boss was sweating nervously at his business success in canning CLEAR and achieving Bus Factor Zero. Art!
The judge ruled in CLEAR's favour, stating that Colossal Corp had no right to the information he held in his head.
BB and his BB got increasingly petty, demoting CLEAR to Logistics Assistant, probably hoping that he'd quit. He didn't. He looked upon the chaos that unfolded, as resolution times hit a fortnight. By the second month after his demotion the division had lost 30% of it's clients and BB was aging a year per day. He tried to reverse engineer Colossus with IT experts, which failed thanks to nil documentation or source code. Then he tried to use an off-the-shelf dispatch dashboard, which failed to migrate data. Art!
CLEARly happy
For CLEAR the ending was much happier. He got a similar job with a competitor, a 10% pay increase and three weeks vacation for his honeymoon.
For that division of Colossal Corps, things went downhill, as reported back by VAC. They bought in a completely new dispatch system that cost massively, took six months to install (!) and by the time it was ready, nearly all their clients had ended their contracts. A year after CLEAR left, that division was merged with another and 30% of the staff were laid off, hopefully including Bottomhole Boss.
FYI, VAC was retained and is retiring soon. I love a happy ending.
The Tracking Algorithm Is Going Potty Again
Conrad suspects that Blogger is exaggerating my traffic stats by a fair amount, and I can prove it. Art!
14,300 visitors? That's a months-worth of visitors in one day. Art!
Well, there are at least 19 citizens of Mordorvia with taste and discernment. Don't forget, reading BOOJUM! in Ruffia is asking to be sent to the gulags and Conrad can never set foot there.
It's Not All Doom And Gloom In Mordorvia
The Ruffian newspaper 'Kommersant', which regularly features in Steve Rosenberg's Youtube analyses, is happy to report that one branch of Ruffian business is booming, to wit: the funeral industry. Art!
There are cheap cardboard coffins for the povs
In Q1 of 2026, over 500 new funeral businesses opened, a 38% increase year-on-year over 2025. One suspects that, perhaps, maybe, possibly, the SMO is involved peripherally ...
Some Of You Are Guilty
You know whom you are, go stand in the corner and look properly ashamed.
What am I wittering on about? O I thought you'd never ask! Art!
Another scoring 0% on 'Rotten Tomatoes', a howlingly unfunny comedy featuring - you may be ahead of me here - super babies. Conrad is steering well clear of this farrago, believe you me. Why does this film exist? I can tell you in one word: money. Art!
All this on a budget of $12 million, meaning at least $12 million profit, so some of you out there went to see this farrago at the cinema. That kind of profit guarantees that a sequel will be made, hence 'Superbabies 2' four years later.
You can take the pitcher to the well too often. Art!
Ha! A quarter of what the original made, on a budget of $20 million, as sequels always cost more than the original.
It's now 22 years since the sequel came out and our cinema screens have been mercifully free from baby geniuses. Phew!
Another Demolition Gone Wrong. Very Wrong
This one takes place at Liuchou in The Populous Dictatorship, where a 22-storey residential tower complex was due to be demolished. Art!
Courtesy 'Be Amazed'
As you should surely be aware by now, the plan, especially in a residential district like this, is to have the building collapse into it's own footprint. Art!
One second into the explosion and it already looks skewed. Not promising. Art!
Here the buildings have taken on a drunken stagger that resembles a fall into footprint in the same way a bowling ball resembles a feather mattress. Art!
I call that a total failure. The only thing that could make it worse is if the upstanding section fell over too.
Finally -
Walk us out, Ambrose!
"Abet,n: To encourage in crime, as to aid poverty with pennies."