IT Phone Home

Sorry, Couldn't Resist It

Also, having that as today's first title allows me to use a photograph of ET itself.  Art!

     Conrad has seen the film and his fusion-powered pumping unit was not moved one picometre.  To him, the extra-terrestrial looked like a set of ambulatory gonads th

     ANYWAY this Intro is about a splendid tale of malicious compliance, overweening vanity and office manglement, ended with a big fat dollop of schadenfreude - everyone's favourite aperitif.

     To set the scene, Our Hero worked in an office unless his organisation needed work done on hardware out in the field, which happened only occasionally.  On this occasion his company - he was deliberately vague about exactly what they do - had acquired a business in New Mexico, several states away from OH's normal workplace (for this tale takes place in South Canada).  Art!

New Mexico, situated north of Old Mexico

     It was a 14 hour drive to his new location ('Murica is BIG) and Surprise! when he arrives his cell phone has no service; the provider just didn't have any towers in the area.  He informs the nearby office - which is still a 45 minute drive from the new hardware site - that he needs a cheap phone for the next two weeks.  They say it'll be there the next day.

     Next day he turns up at the office and goes to collect his new phone; instead the facilities people direct him to the new Project Lead, who had come aboard with the acquisition of the new offices.  OH's first assessment of this chap is not repeatable here since we value our SFW status; suffice it to say that PL comes across as a bottomhole who is highly satisfied at being a bottomhole, as such people tend to be.  Art!

     "Are you the one who wanted a phone?" is the first query.  OH assents.  PL then states that nobody else has a phone and OH isn't going to get one, either, just use the office Wifi if you need the internet.

     Cue MalCom.

     Remember that 45 minute drive from hardware site to office?  When OH installed the new hardware, each unit needed to be activated to confirm integration had been effected.  With a phone he could have done this on-site, instead of taking 90 minutes to drive back and forth for each unit in order to activate from the office - and if integration failed then he had to troubleshoot, which added in even more time.

     The two-week job thus took six weeks to carry out.  HQ were very angry at OH being unavailable for an extra month.  His costs in fuel, his pay and motel accommodation came to about $17,000.  HQ then added onto PL's budget everything they'd had to cover with OH being absent, which totalled over $60,000.  All this over a $200 mobile phone.

     There is a happy ending: PL was promptly fired for wasting resources.  Ah, that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling more than ET ever could!

     

Alexander Graham Bell, the source of much of the world's misery

From Wabar To Ubar

You ought to recall that Conrad mentioned this mythical lost city in connection with "The Singing Sands" only to discover that there never was such a place <sad face>.  There is, mind you, a lost city named "Ubar" that features in the Koran <happy face>.  Art!

     It was legendary scholar, soldier and self-promoter T. E. Lawrence who coined the phrase "Atlantis of the sands" for Ubar, when the Bedouin legend of this city came to be known in Western circles.  It had been, they said, a city of enormous wealth, and equally enormous sin, so that eventually God destroyed it by fire.  There were no maps that showed it's location, which didn't stop explorers trying to find it.  An expedition in 1992 claimed to have found the city's site, a claim which is still hotly debated amongst academics.  Art!

  Conrad did ponder that Ubar may very well have existed in Biblical times.  It may indeed have been destroyed by fire, which is not the only culprit that wipes out city-states: war, pandemic disease, famine, earthquake or simply the changing of trade routes can all cause a city to be abandoned.  Then time and the desert sands would soon erase all trace of it's existence.
     And with an item like that you can guess what's going to be next ...

"The Sea Of Sand"

When we left the Doctor, he was pacing The Temple's roof and eyeing the newly-repaired trans-mat -

Detachment Leader Sorbusa led a dozen technicians onto the trans-mat platform.  This time they would go back to Homeworld in force, him with a bodyguard to prevent any 'misunderstandings' by superior technical staff.  

     Privately, he was pleased that the repairs had been carried out in record time; less than seven hours.  He was less pleased in the repairs being necessary in any case, from an alien saboteur.  Patrols had discovered where the alien had hidden, in a specially camouflaged shelter next to the currently quiescent HQ building.  Perhaps he ought to Eviscerate a minor technician, blame them for the lapse in security?

     The warning siren blasted out three times.  Sorbusa braced himself for the transfer, only to see an instant before transmission took place, and with utter astonishment, a small object come flying off the roof of the HQ building and over the platform.

     "Stop -"

     " - the transfer!" he shouted, the first word uttered on Target World Seventeen, the last two on the transfer platform of Homeworld.  The object - an alien creature - having been caught in the transfer field had come along too, and fell at speed among the party of technicians.

     A cat amongst the pigeons indeed.

More Delicious Schadenfreude!

Don't forget, it contains zero calories and should be part of every well-balanced diet.  Here we have a couple of howlers from that BBC Have Your Say about the Darby ballfoot game between The Manchester United and Manchester In The City.  Art!

     I should point out that there were 3411 Comments before it was closed.

L

Comment posted by limirl, at 16:46 2 Octlimirl

16:46 2 Oct

Is there a footballer who deserves a slap more than Bruno Fernandez, the whining never stops. He must have driven his poor mum demented as a kid.

T

Comment posted by TechtonikShyft, at 16:00 2 OctTechtonikShyft

16:00 2 Oct

Yay, Utd scored three!

The six goals conceded was a bit of a problem though.

That Lord Peter Wimsey Crossword

"ELAND"

     That was the solution that I forgot all about omitting.  Well, now you know and your restless indignation can be quelled.  Let's have another.

     "Of this, concerning nothing, much; Too often do we hear of such (3)"

     I'll give you the answer, as this is one I might have gotten, given the nod to the Barf Of Avon: ADO.

Finally -

Hmmmmmmm it looks exceedingly windy as I peer out from my Sekrit Layr.  A fair amount of sunshine, partly because high winds are shooing the clouds along at a smart clip.  Conrad's usual constitutional to Lesser Sodom might have to be undertaken in <gulp> shoes, not his regular Crocs.  Well, with shoes I shouldn't get stones underfoot, which happens EVERY SINGLE TIME with the Crocs.