THINKBLOG Current
Contact Thinkbot @: thinkbot@thinkbot.co.uk
2nd Sept 2113
Had to put up with one of GAT's favourite pastimes this evening - shouting at the telly. When I say 'shouting' I mean a whole string of unhelpful comments if you are trying to watch a drama or action thriller. Examples:
1. Character takes overdose - GAT: 'He/She's obviously read the rest of the script.'
2. Couple kiss for the first time - GAT: 'Well, that got the orchestra going.'
3. Hero leaps from building to building - GAT: 'I wonder how many stunt men ended up in hospital before they got that one right?'
4. Hero is being pursued and shot at. and missed. by 100s of trained soldiers, main battle tanks, attack helibots, air to ground airbots, with rockets & missiles - GAT: 'Try stopping - they might be able to hit you then!'
Eventually other members of the family forcefully evict him from the room.
30th Aug 2113
Continuing on the theme of budgets, I'm sure many of you know the Children's game 'Simon Says'. Well, in the grown up (this is disputed - Ed.) world of corporate reality, its equivalent is 'SOXbot Says'. Like Simon, you have to obey the SOXbot unquestioningly if you want to stay in the game/company. They are both gods whose will is irrefutable, omnipotent and beyond our weak human understanding.
The SOXbot enforces the corporate financial religion known as SOX. (Click on SOX for further info . . Sorry! Of course that should have been: SOXbot says click on SOX for further information).
Examples of SOXbot says:
'SOXbot says the CAPEX (application for a capital spend) for G56,000 to build a new prototype Digbot must be split into 492 separate CAPEXs - one for each sub-assembly.'
'SOXbot says the CEO must sign a stores req for getting a G0.50 100pF capacitor out of stores.'
Worst of all, if you get a financial bod on the ropes in the never-ending battle between Reason and Finance, he or she simply invokes 'SOXbot Says' to win the argument, and if you still resist by sticking pitifully to the concept of reason you risk being visited by the SOXbot Inquisition.
27th Aug 2113
It's the budget silly season! Although I regret the association of the word 'silly' with 'budget'; the word 'silly' deserves better, much better. But that's by the by. Globalbot Corporate Affairs helpfully emailed everyone with the revised rules for conjuring up next year's budget:
To: Managers
From: P L Onker, Director of Corporate Affairs
Please note the following changes to budgeting for a range of corporate items:
1. Internal Fixed Robot Moves
Fixed charge of 5,000 Globos per move
2. Training for Programming the Forkliftbot
Fixed charge of G470 per person
(Blah blah . . . .)
23. Phone calls
For fixed line to Cl2 mobile (same country), 0.39 Globos per minute
Fixed line to Gooseberry (same country), 0.12 G
Gooseberry to private non-Cl2 mobile (within continent), 0.24 G
(etc to about 40 permutations, implying that the manager should predict all phone calls for all categories for the 12 months starting in 2 months time).
And thus, to my favourite:
45. Biscuits now have stock records and units consumed during customer visits will now be charged to departments on a per biscuit rate:
2028564 OPTION (QUANTITY SELECT): Custard Cream, 4 cents per biscuit per person
2028565 OPTION (QUANTITY SELECT): Jammy Dodger, 7 cents
2028566 OPTION (QUANTITY SELECT): Chocolate Bourbon, 5 cents
2028567 OPTION (QUANTITY SELECT): Happy Face, 10 cents
2028568 OPTION (QUANTITY SELECT): Malted Milk, 3 cents
2028569 OPTION (QUANTITY SELECT): Rich Tea, 4 cents
2028570 OPTION (QUANTITY SELECT): Digestive, 6 cents
Deviations from the above Corporately approved biscuit options will not be chargeable.
Book to GLA 243058 'Customer Consumable'.
It will be considered bad form if employees undercut Globalbot Corporate.
Clearly, in the interests of preserving cash, it would be wise to minimise issues of HAPPY FACEs and JAMMY DODGERs; in the event of an unexpected inventory write down, HAPPY FACEs will be issued to all staff FoC.
22nd Aug 2113
New security measures at Globalbot:
To: All Staff
From: Constance Breach, Director of Security
Due to the current levels of global paranoia everybody is needlessly tightening up their security. We have no option but to follow this trend to maintain such gravitas we still have after the various fiascos of the past few years. To facilitate the illusion of increased security we have introduced a new badge system.
On arrival at reception, visitors will be asked several questions in ascending order of threat to Globalbot:
1. Are you a terrorist?
2. Are you a competitor?
3. Are you a customer?
4. Are you a shareholder?
Depending on the responses the visitor will be issued a red, green, yellow, or orange badge. Red badge holders will be restricted to the green areas marked on the site map unless blindfolded and accompanied, whereupon they will be admitted to the yellow areas (as marked by the orange signs on the blue doors at the periphery of the green area). Green badge holders will be allowed unaccompanied access to the red, orange and purple areas beyond the green doors (as indicated by the red labels), but the orange areas remain off limits unless accompanied by a Globalbot employee with gold clearance. Yellow badge holders are allowed access to all areas (green-orange) except red if cleared by a red Securibot. Orange badge holders are as per yellow except clearance must be obtained from a orange or green Securibot depending on whether entry to a green or orange area is required respectively.
Hope this is all clear; if in any doubt please deny you know the person requesting access.
If you come across someone you do not recognise and who is not wearing a badge, please direct them to the canteen.
21st Aug 2113
Appraisal time! And don't we all love it: the angst; the Mickey Mouse preparation form; the inevitable outcome of '2. Satisfactory - performs most tasks well with a few areas to improve.'
(The other categories are:
1. Good in all areas, can raise the dead, time travel, etc
3. Unsatisfactory, needs to improve everywhere on everything, and soon!
4. Consistently out-performed by all other mammals)
The most original comment came from GAT after someone wondered why appraisals always seem to get a few weeks later every year, 'Ah, yes, that's HR's policy - Appraisals shall take place annually or every 14 months whichever comes last.'
16th Aug 2113
GAT is off work this week doing a a bit of redecoration with a little help from the DIYbot. DIYbots are very good at technical things, but obviously need to be told what to do. (This presupposes that the DIYbot owner knows what he/she wants - a pretty substantive presupposition).
Anyway, skirting board was required, so the DIYbot got hold of some NO MORE NAILS , which almost worked, and lead GAT to suggest some potentially exciting new products:
'ALMOST NO NAILS'
'A LOT LESS NAILS'
'NO MORE NAILS (but keep the screws handy)'
And, whilst researching this erudite subject, he stumbled across a history debating the effect 'no more nails' would have had on an ancient method of execution:
What? No sealant gun?
13th Aug 2113
Crazy non-green labour-saving gadgets #108 - 'The Electric Sundial'.
Carbon footprint can be recovered by adding the 'Solar Panel Power Option'.
10th Aug 2113
Hello, I'm back! Back from a
week of joyless camping in the rain at Mawgan Porth
with the family.
But the dodgy weather did mean there was 'good' surf. Amongst many observations
of my fellow humans made last week, I marvelled most at the all pervasive
marketing surf-hype which rendered every body board, surf board, or wet suit as
'PRO' or 'EXTREME' or 'SURF WIZARD'. This conjures up images such as . . . .
or 
,
whereas, by observation at the shoreline the grim reality appeared to be . . .
or
1st Aug 2113
GAT has a colleague called who is obsessed with the instant world of the Gooseberry. He walks around looking at his Gooseberry and has, over the past few months, fallen over low hedges, low walls, kerbs, small children, people sleeping in the corridor, etc. Anyway, we were privileged to receive his last Gooseberry text message today . . . . 'I've walked off the edge of a cliff , , , , , , , '
PS, I've off for a week's camping with the tribe so will blog again in a week or so.#
Happy Hols!
29th July 2113
A big oops-a-daisy-dumpkins today when GAT wrote in an email, 'Bear with me today as I'm dancing less a laptop.' Meaning his laptop had ground to a halt and had been taken into intensive care by IT. Unfortunately, the grammar auto-checker amended his message to, 'Today I'm bare with a topless lap-dancer.'
24th July 2113
GAT was on an interview panel for a Finance vacancy today. Being a wily engineer, he had thought up a typically horrid question:
'Please could you tell us about an instance where you made an error, what the financial consequences were, and how you recovered from it?'
This is nasty, the candidate has only unhealthy options:
1. Claim no such instances had occurred (whilst realising no one will believe it).
2. Admit to such a faux pas, but only one with just the right amount of limited consequences and a neat recovery plan (if the candidate manages this then he/she is probably good at fiction).
3. Prevaricate and/or object and walk out; neither are good tactics in an interview,
4. Remain silent thus giving the interview panel the message that the candidate has committed so many errors that he/she can't decide which one to talk about, or that there has been an error of such magnitude that it is impossible to articulate.
21st July 2113
Please find attached the hidden agenda for next week's meeting. If you'd like to make any additions of amendments then, by all means, don't let me know.
16th July 2113
'I can never find anything on my laptop!' wailed Helen to Gerald one day.
'Do you want me to have a look at your folder structure', offered Gerald.
'Would you? Thanks.'
My Documents
Which contained:
My Documents
Which contained:
My Other My Other My Documents My Documents
Documents Documents II (not other) (other)
Each of which Which contained:
My Documents
Which turned out to be the middle one at level 2 above.
So Gerald gave up and just limited himself to renaming the highest level folder:
My Labyrinth
15th July 2113
Hello! Just got back from the RIAT Airshow at Fairford. There was an historic F-22 Raptor display. The Raptor was developed in the early 2000s and was one of the last military planes to have a g-force prone human pilot limiting its performance. Anyway, it gave an awesome display.
'He must be crazy to fly in that!' declared GAT.
Bizarrely, the Raptor demo pilot had been interviewed in the programme and his other plane was a restored Sopwith Camel, one of the first ever military planes, 'You just have to be plane crazy to fly it!'
And thus, did I conclude, throughout the entire history of manned military high-performance aircraft, the pilots were all crazy.
10th July 2113
Globalbot Secures Spontaneous
Noodlebot™ Repeat Order
Monday 10th
July 2113
Filton, Europa -- (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Globalbot.Corp. (CRASHDAQ-100), a supplier of advanced robotic equipment and related automated technologies for the global robotics industry, today announced that it has received a repeat multi-bot order for its cluster Noodlebot® from Noodles-R-Us, a major Asian noodle producer.
The Noodelbots will be fitted with patented enabling Long-Arm™ technology for ultra-high aspect ratio (U-HAR) noodle production. Globlabot’s Noodlebot was selected as there are simply no viable competing technologies and major robotic equipment competitors of Globalbot have repeatedly stated, ‘We really can’t be bothered developing a Noddlebot [sic]’.
‘I just can’t believe it!’ lamented Dr Mee Pok, President of Noodles-R-Us, ’Our current Globalbot Noodlebots are just complete dogs and we’re inconsolably distraught at having to place a repeat multiple order with this shower.’
‘We‘re delighted,’ commented Graham Cracker, CEO of Globalbot. ‘To secure such a significant order when we’ve pretty much done nothing at all to support the previously installed base should be credited to our abysmal but clearly effective sales and support operations. We’d completely forgotten Noodles-R-Us even existed.’
Note to editors: You can currently view a Noodlebot in the skip behind building 07 via the Globalbot Filton webcam network (assuming it’s up), but please note we will extracting it shortly for shipment to Noodles-R-Us.
Safe Harbor: This press release contains statements, some of which may be true, but many may be pure fiction, then again maybe not, we just don’t know (or care). However, they certainly contain expectations and beliefs and involve innumerable risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. You should not rely upon these forward-looking statements as predictions of future events because Globalbot cannot foresee the future nor, indeed, does it keep adequate records of the past. Globalbot deny all statements containing the words "mee," "Chopbot," "joke," "pok," "noodle," "lament," “safe”, “harbor”, "ostrich," "order" or "distraught" or the negative of these words and phrases or other variations of these words and phrases or comparable terminology.
8th July 2113
'Unless you can prove it won't work we'll assume it will,' said Marketing to GAT today.
It reminded me of that age-old favourite, the Tree Swing Project:
Link to the source site - Thanks!
6th July 2113
Slowly, the ultimate horror dawned on the panel - the interviewee knew far more about the advertised role than them.
4th July 2113
Here are a collection of statements made about GAT recently by Helen:
'You're too old for converse all-stars'
'You're too old to wear a hoody'
'You're too old to pretend to speak like a dalek'
'You're too old to have long hair'
'You're too old to go on the bouncy castle'
Hmmm . . . I think I detect a common theme . . .
3rd July 2113
Learned today that we'd sent some poor young engineering undergraduate down to the Weldbot shop to gain some experience working with Weldbots. In particular, the student should learn everything there is to know about:
1. Tin bashing
2. Welding
3. Swearing