Yes, That Is A Sly Dig At A Certain Institution
Which might wear a police uniform and speak with a South Canadian accent. Technically it was the motto of the Los Angeles Police Department from the Sixties onwards, which other Police Departments across the continent have adopted, as it was quite concise and cool. Art!
Yeah, it's that guy from "Band Of Brothers"
I must say, it's a long way from the traditional British policeman on the beat, armed only with a bit of stick and a caustic sense of humour. Nobody could ever accuse "Z
ANYWAY that's what this Intro's not about. What we have here is another case of manglement, taken directly from Quora, that web solution to writer's block if ever there was one. Art!
This, gentle reader, lest you be unaware, is a laptop. One of the mainstays of modern office work; Conrad has one of his own that was sent to his home once <coughcough>S took over the DWP contract. One presumes that they were able to tender a much cheaper bid than anyone else because their staff would be Working From Home, thus no overheads for a bricks-and-mortar office, especially one in the beating commercial heart of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, where a square foot of office space can cost upwards of £150,000 pounds*.
When these items are supplied to a person WFH, they arrive as a tabula rasa (which is Latin for "scraped tablet", back when a tablet was a sheet of wax on a wooden frame, not a small handheld computer). They may have applications already loaded, but not critical data; that gets input by the WFH user. Art!
That bowl ought to contain PORRIDGE!
The story related by Original Poster was that his contract was ended early, because manglement thought his position was surplus to requirements and could be done by someone else. Note the word 'thought' here, as they very obviously did not carry out this function.
Before informing OP, who was WFH, they withdrew his server access, which meant that his THREE YEARS WORTH of data was not backed up automatically, again proving that thinking was not high on their agenda. If at all, because OP had repeatedly warned his managers that he couldn't access the servers from home (that right there is today's title). The company's IT department ignored this problem, and even if they had responded it would probably have been "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"
All it would have taken was a visit to the base office but - once again - manglement. Art!
Don't suggest he could have gone ahead and paid a visit himself - any pass code or smart card he needed for access would have been revoked and I doubt he'd even get to Reception.
It gets worse. Yes, it can always get worse. You see, the HR manager, whom OP described as 'dozy' (quite an insult in This Sceptred Isle) ordered that his laptop be delivered back to the company in the same data-free state it had arrived in. When challenged by OP, she confirmed this in an e-mail, which had consequences later.
So, the company had no back-up of his data, and he had just deleted all the files, folders, e-mails and accounts from his laptop.
Six weeks later he got a polite phone call from the company's Managing Director, asking where those three years of accounts data had gone and could they have it back?
The short answer was no; the slightly longer answer was that OP had forwarded on the e-mail from Dozy about deleting all data. Art!
There was no upshot from this for OP. What could the company do - fire him?
They could, and did, fire Dozy. The employment agency that got her the job were also struck off the list of approved suppliers.
OP (who may be exaggerating) says it cost the business £8 million. Which is not unreasonable and required less than £250,000 per month in turnover or profit or accounts receivable.
OP was careful not to provide any identifying details so Conrad has not been able to discover what company he was contracted to, and they've probably gone out of business by now anyway, with manglement that bad.
"The Big Parade"
I bet you missed this yesteryon, and here it is again, even if you didn't. Especially if you didn't.
But I digress.
The inevitable
happens, and the troops marching in line are caught in enfilade and a whole
section goes down. Art!
Their next session
of battlefield joy is to be shot at by Teuton artillery, except – like the
machine-gun – they are using French 75mm guns.
At this point Dad is throwing peanuts at the screen, only to be scolded
by Mom and told to set a good example.
Art!
You can tell
by the muzzle attachment. Trust wise old
sharp-eyed Conrad.
By this time
night had fallen, and the company had suffered such heavy casualties that it
had to go to ground in shell craters, being unable to press on. So much for the glorious myth of sweeping all
before you, hmmm?
Whilst finding
accommodation in a shell-hole, our three heroes suffer the attentions of a Teuton
‘Minenwerfer’, their over-engineered version of a mortar, and props to Vidor’s
props man, they got a real one. Art!
 |
| The real thing in better lighting |
Conrad Is ANGRY!
As per usual, you just haven't seen it expressed in the blog much of late, so here's a catch up. Yes, it's all about those Codeword compilers, the scabrous wretches.
KAZOO: What the infernal eternal Dog Buns! is this doing as a solution? I shan't dignify it with the Collins Concise definition, because that gives it entirely too much credit. As far as I'm concerned, it's a noise-stick. Art!
HOBO: Excuse me? Did I miss the memo that we're now devolving into specimens that use South Canadian slang? Art!
Hobo jungle or Ruffian camp? Only you can tell!
"City In The Sky"
The Doctor is still nosying for an unstated insight into how the Big Crash began.
Seven years ago the Americans decided to
send down one of the two shuttles docked to their spheres, to carry out the
‘Ah – let me guess - paraffin and either liquid oxygen or hydrogen
peroxide were to be used instead?’ said the Doctor, unable to resist an impulse
to show off.
‘Kerosene, actually!’ sniffed Devi.
‘They’ve had terrible luck.
Storms and explosions and theft by the locals.’
‘Hmmm. I wonder, I wonder,’ mused
the diminutive Timelord, quietly, still managing to make Devi look at him
sharply. ‘Tell me, can you copy data
from the old logs onto a disk I can use on a portable player?’
There was no saying where the Doctor had gotten to, mused Ace. He’d cast her adrift, if only
temporarily. What he doubtless intended
was for her to get a worm’s-eye view of Arcology One, then report back to him
when he found her again, having gotten information he couldn’t be bothered to
acquire. Or, more charitably, that he
wouldn’t be able to obtain thanks to his celebrity status.
"Theft by the locals" yeah right. I smell a red herring.
Let Me Exploit Aunty Beeb Once More
With another of their now-rare photo exhibitions. I wonder how the power struggle between the We Will Have Photos and the No Fripperies parties is faring? I sense the WWHP may have attained a temporary ascendancy. Art!
Courtesy Matt Mills McKnight
Our South Canadian cousins appear to have inherited the ability to queue from we British. Well done, chaps, you see you can do it if you try!
This is the egress traffic from the Burning Man Festival, which was plagued with the worst rains in the event's thirty-year history. A howlingly ironic name.
Finally -
Still hot outside, yet there are fleecy clouds preventing anyone from getting a full solar sizzle, so I may yet trot down to Lesser Sodom and see what's going cheap. Deodorant, one hopes.
* Perhaps
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