Thirteen
Caliban
A really good Executive Secretary is a treasure to any executive.
Ingrid Holtz was an exceedingly good Executive Secretary.
Good enough, as it happened, to have been hired on by Off-World Mining & Exploration at Stefan Ebensburg’s insistence, when he was hired away from Heidelberg Polytechnic, where he had been running a petroleum drilling operation. Ingrid was old enough to be Ebensburg’s mother, indeed she should by rights have retired years before; but her sense of loyalty had brought her from Berlin to Heidelberg to the North Atlantic oil fields, and now to Tarbos, all as the secretary to one man.
And now, after all these years, she was about to earn her retirement pay, in spades.
Two hyperphone messages had arrived in the Director’s office, in the space of one twenty-six-hour Caliban day.
The first was an account of the destruction of one of the lost cargo ships, the Beluga, from the ship’s sole survivor. Crewman-First Giorg Konstantin survived six weeks in a tiny orbital shuttle before being picked up by an OWME passenger liner headed in the opposite direction.
The second message was from Earth, from an old friend of Herr Direktor Ebensburg’s at Heidelberg Polytechnic. Doctor Hans Richter was a physicist working on cataloging interstellar matter, gases and particle ratios, with the intent of improving the efficiencies of the Gellar drive tunnels used in OWME ships. His analysis of the sketchy reports gleaned from survivors of the stricken ships had uncovered something remarkable.
“Mein Gott.” Holtz copied both messages, set them to forward, and checked her note file for the locator address Herr Ebensburg was using on Tarbos. The messages would take a week or more to arrive. Hopefully Herr Direktor was checking his message cache regularly.
To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.
Way too short.
Thanks for the story Animal.
I’m still hungry.
Portion sizes these days…
Buy the books, get fat on a great story
Just the tip.
From the dedthred re: Flock cameras.
I watched a video about them and it had one of my favorite internet media techniques. Whenever that youtube channel has an ad/sponsored content in their videos they (I assume it’s them, maybe it’s youtube?) put a progress bar/timer at the bottom of the screen so you can tell when they’re back to non-shill content. That video (about Flock camera) had a supposed “sponsored content” segment that was https://www.amazon.com/CRAFTSMAN-CMCG400M1-Cordless-Small-Grinder/dp/B07KGNQPGF
Have Sawzall, will travel. https://www.amazon.com/Milwaukee-Sawzall-Brushless-Cordless-Reciprocating/dp/B08WG2HC81/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=2C6Y5J9X42JKZ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.K2QJRZSS5w3AWdZLgb50f1DTnCn0SsJpYqwzsvhPfEdFz95jEprQKN97Yi-_6ocr89YHvedyBl-MCSjAY8CS85K1LpQ-89FrtJp4T8ZZMrBq69x8gu9FgOVOhHdtO80dNgel1owUmBkrU9EF0d_lXEzTDqoedrmotuXPkbHDTIaD_IcHNk-dzWYMXhvLu9Xpvem7XKWpGuqwRqh6fcRCXQ.Ba9Ihu0An7KPNms1Vf_sDdJqfCh-kwUSf8EEMK-qSfQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=m18+sawzall&qid=1767033060&sprefix=m18+sawzall%2Chi%2C199&sr=8-3
Sawzall with an all-purpose blade designed to cut through studs and nails is good for any type of removal project.
Be sure to wear your Italian Spiderman costume when removing cameras!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhHhXukovMU
I prefer the 9’ 18tpi torch blade for all general car body/tin demo. 10tpi for wood demo. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-9-in-18-TPI-TORCH-Medium-Metal-SAWZALL-Reciprocating-Saw-Blades-10-Pack-48-00-1788/307654517
Looks like the 15 pack is the best deal, I’d a thunk buying in bulk would be the way to go but the 100 pack more per blade than the 10 or 15 pack. You can get ten 15 packs for 2$ more than one 100 pack.
Notice they had no problem with the cameras monitoring (and leaking info – they are a terrible company) when it was his fellow citizens. What a piece of shit
That was my exact reaction when my city council voted not to extend its Flock contract. It was all about protecting the noble illegal immigrants, and absolutely zero about a principled stand on civil liberties or the citizenry.
Both and here. Happy to see those go away, period. Automated location tracking and mass surveillance can piss up a rope.
Appreciate Animal providing up with these stories!
I second this!
One of these days, I want to respond to a user request with “No.”
I had a boss who claimed I should always find a way to say yes. I told her no.
And she made you sleep on the couch that night, didn’t she? 🙂
My default is “yes”… making things happen is my job… Somehow “security’s” job is to make things not happen. Still, there are some corners we don’t cut without buy in at a high level. “We can only implement that with a Corrective Action Plan.. and/or a Risk Acceptance filed… hmm people don’t seem to want the RA with their name on it.
I’m sorry your request does not comply to standards, would you like help to redesign the request so that it does conform to standards?
That is better than the “I can do that… it won’t work… how about we discuss what you need?”
Last week I had a “well that is a O365 error… I have no idea if it is our O365 contract/config giving that error, or the vendor’s O365 contract/config.. good luck, here is the contact info of our O365 engineering team” Our O365 is a hybrid arrangement so you can’t immediately point fingers either way.
In response to a question about, “When we use your recommended configuration, we don’t like how it impacts [other application], can you make any recommendations about that?”
“I’m sorry, but no. It’s not our application, and I have no knowledge of it. You would need to talk to that application’s support group.”
Naw, this is absolutely something that comes to my group and is something we handle.
I just didn’t care for the tone of the requestor. I’m not actually saying no, but I am brushing off the “Requests for X must be submitted via this form, not email.”
This reads like a Dilbert strip.
There are words that I know but when put together they make no sense to me. I understand the shape of the humor but not the humor in context.
Lets put it this way – I’m not refusing the request, I’m just requiring proper procedures be followed.
That’s the humor shaped bit I get.
I’m so separated from the jargon it may as well be an alien language.
Requests for X must be submitted via this form
Here’s a link to the Service Now catalog item you can use to request that.
Threedoor:
There’s always the Jargon File.
We’re mid-switch and I was really hoping ServiceNow would be much better than Salesforce, but it’s just somewhat better but bad in its own unique way (TBF, that may largely be due to the people on our end doing the implementation).
I can do it right or fast but not both.
You decide, Boss.
slumbrew:
I absolutely loathe my company’s implementation of Salesforce for support tickets.
I’m 90% certain it was the decisions the company made though.
No, SN sucks. SF sucks. They just suck in their own ways.
“I hate to say anything negative, but: no.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvuetnVoxIs