BOFH: Will the last one out switch off the printer? BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns >beedle< >beedle< >boop< >beedle< >beedle< >boop< Sigh. >beedle< >beedle< >boop< "Hello?" "Hello, Simon?" a close-up of the Boss's hairy throat asks. "Yes?" View from office roof garden "I was just thinking – did we turn off all the printers?" "Yes." "Are you sure? I was …
It's amazing that so few people actually notice their own picture on video calls, even those who wander around with narcisticks for their selfies every few minutes. The most common arrangement seems to be with the camera low down, pointed up (so a good chance of backlighting darkening their face, which sits half off the lower part of the screen).
And that's no counting those who actually forget their camera is on and everyone on the call can see them...
I really really do not want to see what the kids are doing (one I know is part of a startup developing their video game - so they are naturally locked down), one is a PhD student whose department is shut down and she is also the only person in the shared house, and the other is working in a pathology lab at Manchester - and rather bury. Speaking to them however I do enjoy.
I have a webcam on top of one of my monitors in my home office.
When I dock the work laptop it is set to use that camera. I don't like video calls a lot normally so I keep the camera pointed at the ceiling. Even should I inadvertently accept a video call all they will see is the ceiling.
I'm working at home at the moment and although I am managing to shower and dress before starting work shaving has become a bit intermittent and I desperately need a haircut.
I did test the set-up recently and scared myself when the cam was on.
Monopoly might be bad, but if you're a typical geek, hell is trivial persuit.
After 35 questions in a row , you delibratly get one wrong to avoid having to eat one of the pieces....
And then bang your head in despair when the next player gets a question like "In what year was the 1066 norman invasion?" ........ and then gets it wrong.....
For me, it's one of a few less popular board games. All of them sound fun. Probably all of them are fun. Except that all of them are played with the same people, and I haven't played any of them before. These people can make many games much less enjoyable because they think they can teach me the game without having me read the instructions, they don't know how to structure documentation, and they really want to win the game which they are definitely going to do because I don't understand how it's played yet. Somehow, these people can suggest complicated games that take hours to learn and, when I suggest that I'm planning to go to sleep tonight, offer the alternative of monopoly, which is just one step above deterministic.
We have the cheater's edition, where cheating without getting caught is rewarded. Ah, capitalism in all its glory!
We tried Monopoly several nights ago - it was like playing a board game with 3 Peter Rachman clones. Tonight we are trying Cluedo, so I will probably end up in the study with the wine bottle.
I caught the still not quite ex Mrs Oncoming Scorn, paying her out-goings from the bank, while pocketing all her incomes.
The rest of her family had never caught on to why she always insisted on being the bank, then she also insisted that it was in the rules, my challenge of "Here's the rules - Where?", basically lead to the game being abandoned & total ban on board games being played with her as the banker.
Icon - PH as loadsamoney on tap.
Clench your fists, then extend just your little finger/pinkie.
Keeping your remaining fingers and thumbs closed, insert your pinkie fingers into your mouth and use them to 'hook' your cheeks apart from the inside - the corners of your mouth should be as close to the pinkie knuckle as possible and the fingertips should touch the inside of your cheeks.
Left pinkie then pulls left cheek left, right pinkie then pulls right cheek right which also results in your mouth being stretched...maintain the tension and....
then say the word 'Banker'.
I wouldn't count on that. Either someone ends up with a much better monopoly than everyone else and wins almost instantly, or you get into a stalemate where nobody owns a monopoly because they're all blocking others' monopolies but the players are too invested in their own chances to do anything about it. At one point during my childhood, I was playing with some people who were far too competitive so, when I finally achieved a monopoly, I added just enough houses to it such that, on average, people would pay me the amount of money they had earned since the last time they landed there, meaning that everyone's balance stayed static while mine climbed slowly but surely. They still didn't give up until we ran the bank out of the big bills. Ah, the freedom of youth where you can waste eight hours moving tokens and it's just an ordinary rainy summer day.
Off-licences and supermarkets.
I think the rule about "two per customer" includes two boxes of 24 cans not just 2 cans. If so, and if we're allowed to shop for "essentials" [such as another 2 boxes] once per day, "beer o'clock" is just about all day, every day.
It's party time at the coronapocalypse. Have fun and enjoy virtual, contact-free hugs.
Our Curry Day was Wednesday. Curry Madras at our canteen was to die for. Long lines of factory employees trudging eagerly through the Midlands rain, followed half an hour later by the office staff. Happy beaming satiated workers and office staff wending their way back to their workstations (but still bloody raining). Those were the days, until the beancounters (who also partook of said curry) decided that the canteen was not making enough money, so had to be shut down. :-(
With no access to a coiffure merchant I've started turning all Neil from the young ones and got out the dried lentils. Amazed at their ability to generate some 10 or 20,000 times their own volume in methane. Might grind some up chickpeas for my own gram flour and try Onion Bhajis with Tarka Dhall for breakfast tomorrow to ensure plenty of room to check the labels in the drinks section in the supermarket later!
Once, when my gorgeous, wise and lovely wife was in hospital, I found the hospital "restaurant" and made the usually gross error of entering it. For the first and only time I found something that was not only edible but was bloody marvellous.
Pork crackling. I don't know how they managed it but their version of it on that occasion was superb. So much so that I went back for thirds.
I was still sad about my lady but I also got rather well fed, too.
Weirdly, they didn't serve it with the sludges given to the patients.
After spreadsheeting my company out of a logistical disaster I got promoted from temporary agency worker, tasked with throwing stuff into the cavernous expanse of large lorries, to logistics and office manager.
It came with my very own office, which easily accommodated everything I needed, and everything else I'd managed to acquire was boxed, palletised, shrinkwrapped and forklifted to the furthest flung bit of storage space.
The boss had no idea I was living in his factory, but some of the others noticed my timekeeping had improved beyond my abilities, and had correctly joked I must be living there, but never did it occur to them that I was.
Living rent and bill free was heaven and over the course of about six months I had saved enough money to move into a lovely rented flat in a nice part of town, and enough spare to secure that future for quite a while.
It isn't for everyone, but when you're precariously balancing on the bottom wrung of a rickety rotten ladder, a safety harness certainly steadies the nerves, to dare to lift a foot off and place it on the next wrung up.
I've actually had something similar happen. Some mandarin mandated that all printers MUST be turned off to save power because he saw somewhere that printers draw a lot of current. So everyone runs around turning printers off before going home for the night. Fast forward a few weeks and they want to know why the printers are no longer auto-ordering consumables using the system that audits them once a day out-of-hours to see if they need any consumables.
See if you can guess why.
This is why they have power-save. Which these days works remarkably well, and explains why you occasionally have to wait for the thing to warm up before it prints if you print at an unusual time.
Please please please can we have some more BOFH to keep us sane in these crazy times?
How's Simon doing WFH? What time does he start drinking? Where's he getting his onion bargis from? How do you wrap someone in a roll of carpet whilst maintaining social distancing rules?
Serious questions for serious times.
BOFH needs to sleep and recuperate sometime.
With the kill-bot activated and roaming Floor Level 2, maybe with some thermal security cameras feeding it targeting information .... or maybe someone with the BOFH coding skills could re-skin 'The Works' as a pretty and addictive online game, like Pacman, where teenagers navigates the kill-bot around a maze, with a layout just like an open-plan office, eating fat security guards and middle-managers to protect the food supplies?
Is Simon-land the new name of the office now he's fortified it and reverted to savagery?
What will the first explorers to breach the threshold in eeeeaargh! *Splat* the first explorers found a greased floor and slid into a vacant elevator shaft. Will the next be any <WAAA WAAA> Is that a halon alarm? What can it...
Security has checked the building 5 months ago and thought there was nobody left inside, so they locked up.
Yet, for some strange reason, there's a daily delivery by Just-Eat at the garage to the basement. The delivery boy was warned about some strange security features at his current delivery address,
He was also instructed to go to the garage door, say his name and what he is delivering, and place the delivery on the trolley in the yellow circle that is 2 feet behind the garage door when it opens.
The route to this basement garage door has been altered over the last months, motion-detection camera's have been added, and suddenly there's a disturbing >hhhssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss< from the far right corner (you know, that piece of the driveway that is always in the dark), and an LED display lights up.
The words "TARGET ACQUIRED" flash momentarily on the display, followed by "ANALYSING TARGET", and "LISTENING”.
The delivery boy gasps for air, as the display suddenly turns red and an alarm sounds. He remembers what he needs to do. "Hi, Leandro here, from just eat. I have your order of Tzatziki and 6 pints of lager for you"
The red LED display changes to "RECALCULATING", but the alarm is still active. 3 Seconds later, the alarm comes to a halt, and the display turns green, showing the words "ORDER RECOGNISED".
The garage door opens, Leandro sees a strange trolley 2 feet behind the garage door. It seems to be able to operate on its own, there's several mainboard showing, a spaghetti-like mess of wires, some batteries and an electrical engine. When he places the order on the trolley, the front wheels jiggle a bit, turning left and right and a soft hummmm of the electrical motor is audible.
He wants to stay and look, but all of a sudden, he hears the disturbing >hhhssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss< from all directions except the garage exit, and multiple red LED displays are showing the disturbing words "TARGET ACQUIRED, COUNTING DOWN FROM 5".
When Leandro steps back from the trolley, the garage door closes, and the kill-bot that was outside is now showing a friendly green LED showing "THANK YOU. HERE'S YOUR TIP" and an arm is extended, with a 2 pound note attached to the end.
Inside the building, at a redesigned mission control, a man is looking at the CCTV camera's with a disturbingly satisfied grin on his face, the main screen is showing a self-propelled trolley with a plastic bag and a 6-pack of lager moving around the building on its way to mission control. Upon leaving the garage, it passes the heatsensors. Good, only the plastic bag on top are showing heat (apart from the recognised battery and engine of course). The trolley is allowed to enter the elevator, while the main screen is now showing the camera's inside, above and below the elevator. The elevator doors open, the trolley exits and steadily makes its way to mission control, while the elevator plummets to the ground floor at enough speed to make sure anything at the bottom of the elevator shaft will not be able to escape and will be crushed, but not fast enough to self-destruct,
Seconds later, the trolley passes the mission control door and continues to a small but heavily enforced door, it opens automagically and the trolley enters a small room, just big enough for it and the contents on its tray. The small door closes, and >WOOOSH< is heard inside the room, a decent amount of CO2 is released to expell the oxygen (Halon was tested before, but it added a funny taste to the food). After a couple of minutes a second door opens, allowing the trolley to finally enter mission control.
"Aaaah, tzatziki and beer, what a way to start a weeks work. Now all I need to do is to find a way to keep my food warm, while still being able to detect any people trying to enter the building using the trolley."
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