The Song Remains The Same

If, That Is, By "Song" You Mean "Bad-tempered Rant"
There are certain constants in life - the charge of an electron, water being wet and First (the Accursed) providing a rubbish bus service.  They go on strike tomorrow, which might very well establish a dangerous precedent; all those people who use train, tram, bicycle, foot and scooter might find it way easier, cheaper and healthier to keep on using them, causing First to collapse and be liquidated.  
     Heh.

"Not funny!" hissed a First Bus spokesdemon

     Well, let me rivet you with today's installment of travel woe, featuring the 3 Mission Goals of any First bus service:  1)  Late.  How you can fall behind schedule after only leaving the depot 12 minutes earlier completely baffles your humble scribe.  It must be their years of practice.  
     2)  Slow.  Because this 24 is beset by dozens of schoolchildren heading for Ed. Campion High School, leading inevitably to -
     3)  Overcrowded.  We get a single-decker bus AGAIN so it's standing room only from Royton to Manchester city centre.  I can hear their management plotting about this:"Dirty passengers!  Getting on our buses!  Expecting to be moved from one place to another, the idle swine!  We'll show them!"

"CONRAD!!  How can - did you bug the office?"

     I am minded of the conversation four of us passengers had on the 409 last week, where Stagecoach's takeover of the First franchise was greeted with, I'm afraid to say, positively gleeful gloating.  No, it's not big but it is human.  If this franchise swap does take place then your modest artisan will have less material to work with and shall have to flog his imagination harder, yet this is a sacrifice I'm willing to make*.


Well I See, Sean Pertwee
The Metro partially redeems itself:  Sean Pertwee is interviewed.  Apparently he's in "Gotham" as the Wayne's butler, which I'll have to take on trust as I've never watched it.  he also wouldn't mind appearing in that dramamentary re-enactment series "Dotcor Who" for some reason, can't possibly think why.

Oh!  Oh, I see

     He also rather puts himself down, describing himself as "wayward" when younger because he worked as a roadie for The Cramps; which to stolid old Conrad is rather a badge of honour, gadzooks!

Car Versus Wall
Your humble scribe was tapping away on the keyboard in the Upstairs Lair when a distant yet pronounced Bang! came to him, borne on the wind.
     'Someone has overturned a wheelie-bin,' I mused, with an unpleasant sneer, 'And a full one by the sound of it.'

Conrad, BC
(Before Conscience)

     Wrong!  When Conrad debouched to the backyard (as the sun had returned and he wished to read) a car wearing learner-livery had been driven into the wall on the opposite side of the road.  At an angle, not head-on.  Folks were in attendance, rendering aid and comfort to the shocked driver.
     No striking photographs, I'm afraid, as it seemed a little ghoulish to exploit someone's (rather catastrophic) error.
     A conscience!  That's what that was.  Who knew?

Conrad, AC
(After Conscience)

Sentinel
No!  Nothing to do with giant mutant-mashing robots from the X-Men universe.  I am talking about the South Canadian Anti-Ballistic Missile programme.  Yesterday I went into the Sprint missile, an endoatmospheric interceptor so ridiculously fast that it's exterior glowed hotter than it's exhaust.  
     Today we have Spartan, a relatively sedate endoatmospheric ABM, making up for it's old lady status by packing a whacking big 5 megatonne warhead.  This missile was designed and intended to hit incoming Sinister ICBM's, presumably before they got to the MIRV stage.

ART!

     Sorry - Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile and Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles.
     Height of detonation for Spartan would vary but let's say 450 kilometres.

Not quite as terrifying as a half-naked Gerard Butler

     Now, nothing in the literature that I've read mentions anything about either of these missiles creating an EM - sorry, Electro-Magnetic Pulse - on detonation.  Once of the effective criteria for EMP is the altitude of any nuclear detonation, and 450 kilometres is quite an altitude, eh?
     There.  Now I've got you thinking!

The Old Dog Has A Trick Or Two Left In Him
The old dog is me, just to be clear.  Not to be confused with Edna, who is yet young in comparison and absolute terms.  Nearly two-and-a-half, if you must know.  NO!  Edna, not me!
     "But hist," I hear you call to each other.  "What's Whitey banging on about this time?"
     Leaving aside your shockingly irreverent attitude to my hair, I shall propound.
     My laptop had suddenly stopped working; the screen went to black instead of displaying Windows Whatever's Installed.  After a bit of cursing and kicking it around the room, I did the battery-detach and power-switch death grip and now - perfectly fine!
     The other issue was Bittorrent, which also decided to stop working, until a random click-fest logical deduction led to the correct "Open" option being selected.
     <snaps fingers at world>

Conrad, wise old dog

Edna, wise young dog

     Photographs provided only for purposes of comparison and not to be used otherwise



*  Aren't I noble