This Legendary Bit Of Snark
Was, I believe, immortalised by "The I.T. Crowd" more years ago than I like to think. Conrad has always maintained that TITC was more a documentary than a sit-com, a view I maintain still. It does give me an excuse to put up a picture of same. Art!
As for that advice - welllll yes I do encounter it in real-life, working as I do remotely for a global organisation, where there are an almost infinite number of potential points of failure along the way. Our Team Lead, whom I will anonymise with the appellation "A", has told us frankly that, were we to contact the IT specialists for whatever reason, their first response is -
"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"
One gets the feeling that they're not really trying very hard. Six months ago, when I had a serious technical problem, they solved it. But didn't tell me. No, they told "A" who in turn told me. Nor did they inform that they'd also changed my password, I had to pester "A" before he got told the new password. Art!
"Have you emptied the cache and cookies?"
This is the second part of their catechism, but it would have made today's title very unwieldy.
ANYWAY all that is to preface today's real Intro, which concerns legacy software, design stupidity and the Covid clampdown, all whipped into a nice little melange. Art!
This is a stock photo, so imagine that it's really Minnechaug Regional High School in Massachusets, South Canada. The photo is there to illustrate the school's use of what they called 'Green lighting' which was an ethos not a colour. The lighting, you see, automatically adjusted in brightness according to need, meaning it would trigger on if it got too dark, or go off when it was sunny.
Splendid and simple, yes? For ten years, yes. Then -
Well, no. For, you see, 'twas in August when school staff and pupils noticed that the lights were on full, all day long. This was due to a malware attack on the software, which defaulted to a Standby Mode - in other words, being on at full brightness all day long.
"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"
Art!
More design stupidity. The lighting software was integrated as a bundle with all the other school software and thus couldn't be isolated and worked on. Not only that, the original vendor had gone out of business years before, sounding a bit like 'grab the money and run'. Not only that, the software itself had been sold on several times, and it required considerable detective work to track down the new owners. The company that ended up juggling the red-hot coal, Reflex Lighting, had their work cut out finding anyone who was familiar with the now twelve-year old software. They finally did, worked out a repair plan and then
COVID!
Lockdown gets imposed.
18 months after the fault occurred, it was finally resolved with a new lighting system THAT INCLUDED AN OFF SWITCH.
Here endeth the lesson for today. Or at least until one of us has a PC problem.
Chandleresque
No! Nothing to do with "Friends" I'll have you know. RAYMOND Chandler, thank you very much and here's a punch in the mouth to remind you that we're talking all hard-boiled, punk.
So, I've made further progress with "The Long Goodbye" and, true to my dinosaur nature, have been assiduously - not a word you expected to see today - making notes. Thus -
FRENCH FITS: Again, a phrase I'd not heard before. I could have guessed by context, since Philip Marlowe was trying to track down an alcoholic possibly being treated for same. It means 'Delerium tremens', or the shakes that a chronic wino gets when not on the sauce. Art!
I tried to Google and I think the hamsters decided I wanted a 'French outfit'.
NICK THE GREEK: This one took a bit of digging as all I was getting were results about Greek restaurants. This is the nickname of one Nikolaos Dandolos, who was a professional gambler, and a Philosophy graduate. He made and lost immense sums of money, because - gambling. Phil's sour comment - does he have any other? - was that he'd have as much luck finding the missing wino and beating Nick the Greek at a crap game. Art!
RIMLESS CHEATERS: Plural, so possibly spectacles or shoes. Conrad is famously and fabulously ignorant of anything to do with fashion, so they could well be shoes. Doctor Loring was wearing them, if that helps. Art!
Glasses. I see. Well, except not really. One can see why ''Rimless" but where does the 'Cheater' part come in? I'm typing this on my lunch-break so don't really have time to dig very deep on this. It seems to be an old nickname for spectacles, and that's all he wrote.
"The War Illustrated Edition 190"
We're coming to the end of the pictures I selected from this issue, dated September 1944, which may be good news, or bad. Only you can tell! Art?
Another of their faux 'coloured' endpieces, which I think are done by an assistant with a paintbrush and a pot of sienna paint.
What's the take-away from this picture? Only that this column of armour has absolutely no fear of air attack or artillery barrage, or they wouldn't be bunched up nose-to-tail. Recall the last picture on yesteryon's blog, where bunched Teuton transport had been caught nose-to-tail, and severely punished for it.
This is the rather dangerous liberation of Paris, where there were odd groups of Teuton stragglers about, trying to get out of Dodge before they got lynched, and Teuton collaborators sniping from rooftops in a state of high dudgeon that their meal-tickets were showing a clean pair of heels. In upper starboard you can see the panic that ensued once the bullets started flying. There is no mention of what happened to the snipers in TWI; one does not suppose that they retired to the country on a pension with a dog.
Making It All Wrightson
More of Bernie's artwork, and I still feel clever in tracking down the story first illustrated on the 'Print' website, since they didn't bother with attributions. Art!
Well, the title and cover tells you all you need to know about "Swamp Thing". It's a Thing that lives in a swamp. Doubtless it would prefer to live in a house with all mod cons, except I doubt Swampy has a stable income and a sound financial background. Conrad is unsure what the gap-toothed geezer with the gun is up to, either protecting the scarlet lady or threatening her. Probably the latter. Which may have made enough of a disturbance to bring Swampy along, to complain about noise pollution.
Just A Citric Twist In The Tale
Conrad was wondering yesterday afternoon how the Trump Media & Technology Group's shares were doing, except that I think the South Canadian stock-markets only open mid-afternoon here in This Sceptred Isle, so there were no Monday updates available.
Fortunately for all those interested in mockery and humiliation, they have now been updated. Art!
Yes, I'm a terrible person.
Finally -
I think that's enough scrivel for one day. Farewell!
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