Happy Birthday Me

Well, nobody from IT has arrived at my desk yet – clearly that cunning codeword “Foofoodilly” was worth inventing.  I did invent it, didn’t I?  Sorry, my memory’s not what it was – it comes with being 56, you know.  Why yes it IS my birthday today!  How kind of you.

Your humble scribe.  Who is 56.  Or did I tell you that already?

Shakespoke

By now you ought to know the loathing I have for Windbag Willy Shakespeare.  I speculated that he got paid by the word, and I may have been right.  I mean, why spout out “But soft, what light from yonder window breaks?  It is Juliet -” when you could succinctly put it as “Hello Juliet”.  Yes yes yes I do blather on here, except nobody’s paying me and I don’t put myself around as the acme of perfection in the English language*.  Let us lay about the Bark of Avon.  Commence!

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Well, yes, Bill, but that’s rather a cheat.

It’s a gestalt process when you smell a rose,

You use all your senses, not just your nose.

You do too use all your senses – have you never had rose-petal tea?  Jolly nice, if a little pricey.  I may have to revert to that if Darjeeling goes out of volume production.  

Close enough

As further evidence of Bill’s propensity to babble on, look no further than his insults:

“The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!”

This is Bill’s way of saying you’re a poltroon.

It’s a long-winded way of throwing a fit.

He could just as easily have said “You git”

     I rest my case for the moment.  Rest assured I’ll be back, I’m having entirely too much fun with this.

Conrad.  Having fun.

So You Want To Press The Self-Destruct Switch?

I bet you’ve never sat down and worked out the design specs for a self-destruct system, have you?  Currently I’m working on a flow-chart for the safe operation of such a system, but I do already have a text version and here it is –

     Just think about it.  You have considered the worst-case option – everything has gone pear-shaped and there will shortly be a knock at the door from UNIT or the FBI any moment now.  So!  You need to get rid of all the evidence, your incriminating minions and any embarrassing witnesses.  Here is where the Self Destruct Button comes into play.  Hang on – let me just chck that Ben Folds is still alive – Phew!  Yes he is, it was just a touch of flu - Those design specs in more detail:

     RELIABILITY:  your SD needs to work with 100% reliability with no provisos or doubts, guaranteed.  No tricky software or mechanisms that have 157 separate moving parts – a handpull lever requiring 40 Newtons of force to move will do just fine.  Make sure it’s situated at height – it wouldn’t do to trip over it and blow yourself to Kingdom Come un-necessarily.  The “40 Newtons” bit is to also ensure that it doesn’t trip in a stiff breeze or if some idiot stumbles against it; you never know with minions after a heavy weekend’s drinking.

I happen to know this fella's reading this item and making notes ...

Cassini Carefully Crashes Catastrophically

Actually I am anticipating events somewhat.  Cassini, lest you be unaware, is the far-distant satellite scouting Saturn, not a drunk driver.  It has been out there a loooong time – 13 years, in fact.  Although elderly it is still quite hale (much like Conrad, who is 56 today – did I mention this already?) – so I’m sure you are asking yourself why are they getting rid of it?

     Well, there are quite enough things flying around space without adding to the total.  More pertinently, Cassini is going to run out of manoeuvring fuel soon, turning it into a potential planet-buster. 

     Actually that’s only in the demented dreams of the conspiranoid loonwaffles; yes, Cassini does have a payload of plutonium, 74 pounds of it, which if it were a fissile warhead would make a bang and a crater.  Not enough to do more than scrape a planet’s surface; you tend to find conspiranoid loonwaffles have little inkling of nuclear explosive yields. 

     What that payload would do, unquestionably, is contaminate any planet it hits.  This is bad, as there might be life on a couple of the Saturnian moons, Titan and Enceladus.  Bad practice to go poisoning your nearby neighbours, doncha know.

    So!  Cassini will be sent plunging to it’s doom into the atmosphere of Saturn, to be crushed and/or disintegrated and/or burned to a radioactive cinder.

     A pretty awesome way to go.

Behold the beast

*  Though a flattering Comment wouldn’t go amiss