You Know How It Can Be -
You get up early, catch the bus, suffer an additional fifteen minutes thanks to roadworks, get into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell at 08: 20 for a 09:00 start, set out on foot wearing a jacket that's essential because it's COLD at the bus stop at 07:05 yet which causes you to wear a fetching layer of sweat by the time you hit the office (thanks to five flights of stairs). Art!
With added SFW underwear
That's Hermes, the patron saint of travellers, and a demi-god who derives malicious amusement from interfering with Conrad's quotidian sojourning.
ANYWAY I strolled into the office and Alex, Team Lead, was there, looking slightly perplexed.
"You're on holiday, Rob," he explained.
Ooops. There had been an e-mail the day before asking if anyone was interested in taking Wednesday off as a holiday, and Your Humble Scribe responded instantly "Yes", because getting back into this work ethic business after a three-month holiday was hard. Nothing more was communicated out and I thought that was it, turned down.
Except not. Art!
Conrad: surly, truculent, surly and confused
I had even determined that 'An Event' was on at the Arena, and so had my Dinky Manbag to hand, stuffed with a surprisingly large number of items, for all it's diminutiveness; because large rucksack-wearing folks have to leave via the rear entrance, adding another 7 minutes to their journey. Art!
 |
| With ruler for scale |
I then splashed out on a tram ticket and got as far as the 409 into Oldham Bus Station, which is when Hermes woke up and started tying Fate and Destiny into knots.
<short pause as tea is sorted>
Toasted bagels with garlic mayonnaise chicken, if you must know. Art!
The bus driver refused to let anyone on here, as he was waiting for his relief driver, telling them to catch the 409 that had just come in after us. This vehicle ended up rammed, so Conrad demurred. Then, salting and lemoning the wound, another 409 drove past.
'You'll have to get the next bus,' informed our driver. 'The relief driver's only just walked in the office.'
We all get off and patiently wait. The 09:27 fails to turn up.
Our driver gets back in the bus, changes his sign to 'Sorry Not In Service' and drives off.
Wait, what? If I can't get no satisfaction and you can't get no relief, where does that leave the passengers?
Waiting, that's what. The 09:37 doesn't turn up.
The 09:47 turns up five minutes late, which is almost as good as on-time for First Bus. Art!
"Normal sssservice will be resumed whenever we feel like it" said the First Bus spokesdemon
Conrad does not relish tomorrow morning's traffic if those roadworks are still present, because Hermes likes his ante meridian antics. We shall see!
For all that, I did get to return a couple of books to Oldham Library - where they no longer charge for overdue books! and have a quick trawl in Sainsbo's for more loose-leaf Darjeeling (only four packets available), and a quick scan in a couple of charity shops. Then it was back home to do the weekly shop and take Edna for a trot; most remarkably there were no other dogwalkers present. Art!
Half as much again as a normal day. Righteousness prevails.
A Glimpse Of An Unknown World
Once again, Your Humble Scribe cannot remember exactly how he got down this rabbit hole, only that it was there. Art!
Model railways, don't you know. Conrad is very hazy about what a 'flood loader', never mind the 'Rotary Dumper'. Perhaps a picture or two will elucidate. Art!
A noticeably empty wagon enters the tower, which might be a flood loader. Hang on - Art!
So they appear to load open wagons by depositing the cargo from above. Right. Art!
Loading begins Loading ends
The Rotary Dumper is self-explanatory and a few pictures from it's sequence of operation show why it is both Rotary and a Dumper. Art!
Loaded wagon arrives Rotary dumper rotates with the wagon upon it Gravity does the rest
All the work of EMD645, should you want to check them out on Youtube.
You may be thinking "Pshaw! Utter nonsense, can't possibly exist in real life." O yeah? Art!
Psych
The Travails Of Manglement
We've not had one of these popcorn-scoffing monuments to massive managerial <thinks> miscompetence for a while, so have at this one.
Original Poster was one of 11 staff, in a company where he was the Customer Operations Manager. They were abruptly cut down to 6 staff, supposedly due to contracts not being negotiated, yet still had to do the work of 11 people. Art!
Hmmmmm they were having to do the work of 11 people? But business had supposedly slowed down? Sounds more like a cost-cutting exercise to me. After a month of working 65 hours per week or more, OP asked for a 12% raise, and was laughed out of the office, being told there was no money in the budget for this. Art!
O but there was money available - the salaries of those 5 staff who were fired.
OP, impelled by this rebuff, promptly started looking for work elsewhere. He immediately got an interview and was hired for a job paying twice what he'd been on. Like a good employee, he handed in his two weeks notice.
Next day he cannot log into his computer, and is marched in to see the General Manager, who says he is fired immediately. Obviously they didn't like getting the two weeks notice and thought they'd be petty.
O but what's this? Next morning his ex-supervisor rang him and asked him to come back, same salary as the new job, until they can find a replacement for him. You see what being petty-minded vindictive little bottom-holes gets you? Art!
OP very reasonably asks why, if they're now willing to match salaries, they refused his 12% request? (I told you they had the budget). He counters that he wants to come back as a contractor on $225 per hour, and when the ex-supervisor acts offended, hangs up.
Over the next few days OP gets 12 texts and phone calls, all desperately begging him to come back. Obviously the business had no idea what he actually did and cannot find anyone to step into his shoes; if they hadn't been so childish they'd have had 2 weeks for him to train another person up.
Putin's On The Fritz
One of the good things about being a totalitarian dictator is that the fawning sycophants that surround you always but ALWAYS laugh at your jokes. Or else it's prison, torture or death, or a combination of all three.
ANYWAY, the Fun-Sized Foot Fiddler gets his reported cracks at the expense of others printed in world media, at which point we can point and laugh.
Take his quote about Ruffian political exiles: "They gather in Prague, let them drink beer there, there are a lot of female sex hormones in it". Art!
The Kremlin Gremlin is notoriously abstemious when it comes to alcohol, so he's pretty obviously not got a clue what he's talking about. Czech beers and lagers have a well-deserved reputation for excellence. It also seems that Bloaty Gas Tout has conflated a chemical used in beer, 'Phytoestrogen', with 'Estrogen', because let's face it, his knowledge of chemistry or brewing is 0.0%.
Phytoestrogen is weaker than estrogen by a factor of 5,000 and to get any hormonal effects one would need to consume 140 gallons of lager per day.
Sorry, Dimya.
"Intelligence In War" By John Keegan
A recent purchase from a charity shop, and well worth it.
In this work Mr. Keegan looks at how intelligence information (not intellect, in case you were wondering) has affected military operations over the past two-hundred odd years, and the first example he gives is that of Admiral Nelson, who was trying to intercept the "Toulon Armament", that being a French invasion fleet bound for Egypt.
The date was 1798, meaning all communication was limited by visible range, calculated as being twelve miles between ships at a maximum. Art!
Nelly's flagship
Even if the Toulon Armament consisted of 300 ships, it was a mere speck in the midst of the Mediterranean. Intelligence information could only reach Ol' Nelly via ship from Britain, a voyage that took up to five weeks. He could put into harbour and see if British consuls or agents of the Foreign Office had news, which was not guaranteed, or attempt to seize French or neutral vessels to see if they had more up-to-date information. He had to scad about the Med for months trying to catch up with Nappy, until finally cornering the French fleet in Aboukir Bay - which is another tale for a different kitchen.
I think that's quite enough wibble for one day.
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