Sickening, drunken, naked, gladiatorial rituals; an orphanage and a hospital

I read Deborah Orr’s article, My disillusionment with the British Army in today’s Independent, about recent revelations which show that our armed forces are a rather violent bunch of chaps at heart. Bearing in mind the kind of jobs that we ask these people to do, this is not such a bad thing. If there were hoards of Fuzzy Wuzzys goose stepping up Whitehall in highly polished jackboots, impaling babies on their bayonets and threatening the freedom of our press, the headlines in The Independent (and other paragons of truth and justice) would be rather different.

For the sake of balance, maybe Ms Orr should comment on the documentary Shipmates on the BBC. Last night’s episode showed the deployment of HMS Chatham, a Royal Naval frigate, to Sri Lanka last Christmas following the tsunami. The ship was deployed there at very short notice to assist in the relief effort, cutting short some well earned R&R in Dubai over the Christmas and New Year holiday. The crew (salt of the earth types each and every one of them) of Chatham took this task to their hearts. They abandoned the Aladdin’s cave of a Dubai shopping mall, shrugged off ideas of beers and night-clubs, focussed themselves, got ready and steamed full speed for four days toward the Indian Ocean. Every one of the sailors interviewed saw this as a chance to do some good, every one of them accepted their task and got stuck in to it with enthusiasm: the detachment of Royal Marines on board put their sickening, drunken, naked, gladiatorial rituals on hold and made themselves busy training the crew in crowd control techniques. They arrived in Sri Lanka, not knowing what to expect and immediately got to work rescuing an orphanage from the ravages of the tsunami and erecting a security fence to protect the children from the threat of human parasites in the form of child traffickers. They turned a frightened, angry, hungry mob into an orderly, good natured, British style queue. The ship’s chaplain, who I suspect has never been involved in sickening, drunken, naked, gladiatorial ritual (or maybe they are at priest school, I’m a civilian atheist, how should I know?), engaged the local kids in fun, play, music and games. The ship’s medical officer, with the wholehearted help of a bunch of the British Armed Forces’ finest, faced with a ruined hospital, simply rolled up their sleeves, raised it from the mud and started a clinic: all without the benefit of sickening, drunken, naked, gladiatorial, ritual combat. They did this in a professional, human, caring kind of a way, that we should all be rather proud of.

I would love to hear Ms Orr’s view on how HMS Chatham fits into “the stuff about the British Armed Forces being the best in the world”. I would suggest that it goes somewhere near the top of the list.

Hey, I ordered the ravioli!

When two developers with around forty years of progamming experience between them cannot find the cause of a bug in a program due to the sheer complexity of the spaghetti; when this type of code is not an exception, but the rule – would it be considered to be bad form if those developers said, “I told you so”?

Old lady wrestling

At the station this morning, like most mornings, there was a queue for tickets. There is one queue and two ticket windows with an occasional free standing ticket lady. Here’s how it works. You stand in the queue, shuffle forward, tut when someone takes too long, keep an eye on the clock and go to the next available window/ticket lady. Peace and harmony usually prevail as everyone follows these simple unwritten rules.

This morning however, a yobbish element upset the delicate balance of ticket queue etiquette. An old lady pushed in at the front of the queue. The chap in front of me didn’t seem to know how to handle the situation so I took charge and suggested that she wait her turn in the queue like everyone else. She told me in no uncertain terms that I should learn some damned manners. I challenged her to a stand up fist fight in the car park to determine just who has the best fucking manners but she chickened out and went to the back of the queue - pussy! I am pleased to report that she missed her train.

That’ll learn her!

Is it me, or is it hot in here?

Last week we had our annual fire safety video in which BBC newsreader Kate Silverton (phwoar!) pretends to work for our company and tells us, in words of one syllable, what to do in case we’re too stupid to get out of a fire. As far as I’m concerned you need to do only two things in a fire: stay out of my way and get the fek outta Dodge. Today we received an email instructing us to go to our training site and update our own training records to say that we had indeed watched the video. This proved rather difficult for a bunch of fire hardened IT consultants. Why? Well, user ID is a six digit number (I would have preferred my name), password is, erm, “password” (I would have preferred something more secure, like a six digit number) and then follow the easy to follow links. Ten screens of pure guesswork clicky pointy later we arrive at a screen which says, “Did you watch the fire safety video?” with two radio button answers, “Yes, I watched the fire safety video“, “No, I did not watch the fire safety video“. I answered NO in spite of the intuitiveness of the site and got a “Failed” mark against the course.

A bunch of genius web designers were paid thousands of pounds to design this piece of crap software. Quite frankly, my Grandma could have designed it better had she not been involved in a fire some twenty years ago – and they don’t piss about down at the crematorium I’ll have you know!

Everything a growing boy needs

Simon links to this New Scientist article about CoffeBeer. Not a bad idea but a little half arsed. How about, CoffeeSpliffBlowJobBeerCurrySleep?