Yes, Another Stark Warning About Manglement With Blinkers On!
One wonders, oftimes, how the South Canadian economy manages to function, given the levels of incompetence, idiocy and financial impropriety that exist there amongst their managers. Their rank nonsense simply would not fly here in This Sceptred Isle, because we have effective trade unions and laws that prevent exploitation.
Allow Conrad to explain a little background about his experiences at Sainsbo's, where I was a corporate umil iobag for over five years. Art!
If you look hard you can see me waving from the 17th floor
Five months after I started, we changed our Recruitment database for a new one, because the old Oracle iteration had gone as far as was possible to take it. No, Sainsbo's didn't wait for Oracle to crash precipitously before deciding it was time to replace it; they took the decision in good time. Art!
Then there was the technology involved. Originally we were working off desk-mounted PCs, great big bulky things that had been present in the office for years. Overnight they were replaced with slim, trim laptops that were a lot faster as their design specs were up-to-date, not primeval. Again, this was a decision taken in advance of the PCs running slower and slower as they aged out - I think a single year in PC lifespan is the equivalent of twenty-five human years.
Yes, this involved capital expenditure. No, our Recruiting database did not collapse and cost the business hundreds of thousands in lost recruits, who subsequently went elsewhere. Art!
Onto our sorry story. Original Poster was a coder working for a company, when he decided to move on to greener pastures and thoughtfully gave them two weeks notice. This is a courtesy that South Canadian employers take for granted, as they will sack you, the hapless employee, on a split-second's notice.
They did not take it well. Original Coding Poster was told to clear his desk and was immediately escorted from the building, as manglement in these scenarios are always frightened witless that their turncoat treacherous back-stabbing ex-employee will nuke the servers or somesuch. Art!
Thus
In their paranoid haste, they neglected the facts that: OCP was the only person in IT able to do more than plug in a cable; they were the only coder in the entire building; since manglement had avoided updating either software or hardware, OCP had customised the inventory, accounting, security and control software to enable them to function; OCP was the only person doing back-ups and monitoring.
Ooops.
You can probably guess where this is going. Four weeks after being chucked out, the business came grovelling to OCP and begged him to come back, because nobody else could or would work in or on the legacy software they were now millstoned with.
He did go back, as a contractor on many hundreds of dollars per hour, far more than his old salary, which didn't save the business. They tanked thanks to not updating either software or hardware. Losing millions due to not investing thousands. IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT does have a habit of rendering said business extremely broke as in no money. Art!
Prescient!
O Goody!
As we should all surely realise by now, Conrad is a terrible person, and he loves nothing more than to wallow in the rivers of venom and vituperation that issue forth when the BBC rashly allows Comments on a ballfoot game. Today it was <checks> the Roman Villa versus Manchester Conglomerated (sp?). Art!
For clarification
There wasn't the span of insults that happen when the Manchester team lose, so let's hope they fail catastrophically next time, when the poison will flow like a river!
Cooking With Lava
No, I have not mis-spelled 'larva', because that would be disgusting. You can go eat squirming insects, Conrad will thankfully pass.
I think we may have covered this in the past, as it rings a faint and distant bell. It is a thing, Conrad assures you. Most often to be found in Hawaii, because they have regular flows of lava that behave themselves. Art!
Conrad not exactly sure what they're cooking. Possibly steak. Please note that the lava has cooled from red-hot, which is important, as any food within a foot of red-hot lava will burst into flames thanks to the radiant heat.
There is another island location where they have over 30 active volcanoes, meaning plenty of opportunity to try hot-stone roasting. Art!
Yes, award yourself 500 brownie points if you realised Conrad was talking about Iceland.
In fact these chefs would make sure they were very well away from any volcanic vents and definitely upwind of them, as volcanoes can and do produce toxic gasses. You don't want to try cooking near Gas Mark Death.
"City In The Sky"
The alien's miniature 'flying eye's have arrived in New Eucla. Small, yes, and also extremely dangerous as they use an infra-red 'death ray'.
However, in true dramatic style, we now switch to Ace aboard Arc One's spacecraft.
In her schooldays, Ace had occasionally participated in the “Balloon
Game”, where a group of people tried to come up with reasons why they,
personally, ought not to be thrown from an imaginary balloon so that the others
might live. She’d never imagined she’d
actually be sitting in the real-life equivalent of the Balloon Game, stuck in a
damaged spacecraft with insufficient air to even return to base, let alone
carry out their mission.
Barclay gave them the facts without any window-dressing: they had enough
air left to get to the Trojans and maybe
perform their mission. Then they’d
die.
He let this sink in for a minute before offering an alternative. Only one person would be at risk, though he
wouldn’t explain until they actually got to the Lagrange point and scouted out
what orbital rubble they could choose from.
After deceleration, Pangolin’s
radar warned them about their arrival at the Lagrange point. Ace looked out of the portholes and was disappointed
that they weren’t in the middle of a boulder-ridden midden in space. In fact,
she couldn’t see anything, the glare of earthlight prevented any object
standing out. Within minutes of arriving
Kurt pinpointed an irregular shape on the radar screen and Barclay nudged them
to within metres by skillful and gentle use of the verniers; they all paid very
close attention to his delicate use of the throttles and choke until he locked
them off.
Yes, they do have tanked suit air, enough to last a short while and certainly not enough to enable the original mission plan.
"The War Illustrated"
Well well well, what do we have here! Art?
These are the London Estuary Maunsell Forts, which we've featured several times already. However, here they are only a couple of years old, hale, hearty and whole. You can see the gangways between the towers that fell into the North Sea long ago, and the anti-aircraft guns mounted atop them. Conrad wonders how, exactly, they were erected. Floated out horizontally on a barge, then slid off into the depths to stand upright? at a guess.
We shall come back to this, rest assured Douglas Hurd.
Finally -
The Sunday Stew has been cooked, although about half of last week's remains as Conrad made enough for eight people. So I shall go down and box it up.
Chin chin!
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