Unconnected snippets.. my company car, the leasing company is so tight they only change one front tyre, the other one has tread left, so the flat tyre sensors which basically count wheel revolutions via the ABS system see one wheel with a circumference 36 mm greater than the other, and insist there is a flat.
Quite apart from safety issues, it’s a fucked up way to save a few bucks, but like all systems, it is a system that can be hacked, come Monday morning the tyre with some tread left is going to meet my cordless drill and have a nail inserted right near the sidewall, where punctures can’t be fixed.
This is and always was the essential definition of hacking, making a system that is not designed to do what you want it to do, do what you want it to do.
Hitlery Clinton does it, when internal email systems are backed up and archived, and as Snap sang in I’ve Got the Power, if “you don’t want that” then you just use a different email system.
Work send me an email with a load of shitty attachments that I’m supposed to print and scan and send back so some third party outsourced mofo can do some security screening so I can be sent on some bullshit jobs, no fucking problem, when they ask where they are and chase me up I just tell the HR bitch straight, my fucking scanner is dead…. *they* have no intention of all the employees posting *them* hardcopy that *they* then have to scan in and save to pdf and yadda yadda yadda… this is all about externalising effort, and you hack that by making it not work in ways that aren’t even mentioned in my employment contract, much less are enforceable… what’s that, I must own a fucking scanner that can scan to pdf? Sure, buy me one, bastards.
When / if they offer to buy me one, it better have linux drivers, or if they find one with linux drivers it better have BeOS drivers, or if they find one it better have … you get the picture.
Monkeys tend to find common solutions to common problems, when a co-worker tell me about how he deals with the fact that HQ ships routers and switches without any patch leads of rack/cage nuts in the box, he says “I steal everything spare from every site I go to” so he has enough when HQ ships a box without… (don’t even go there about asking for this shit from HQ) .. of course he isn’t the only one, *everyone* does it, which is why two things are a fact.
1/ No site has spare patch leads or cage nuts
2/ No box is ever shipped with patch leads or cage nuts
Because between the two, as HQ knows, the job still gets done, and they save 99 cents a box in parts, and don’t get me fucking started on stereotypes, IF the fucking place has a resident IT guy they will come in one of four fucking flavours, all variations on the dress like jesus / stallman / west coast hipster / apple fag meme, and they can all go and fuck themselves because none of them are capable of maintaining a decent tidy fucking rack with patch leads all labelled up and a network map on the doors, and if you can’t do that, then ya ain’t shit, no matter how fucking leeet you think you are.
*EVERYONE* no fucking exceptions, has learned one lesson and one lesson only, and that lesson is that I only care about the particular box or system I am working on, I don’t give a fuck about anything else or the system as a whole, outside of any I/O between said system and the particular box or system I am working on.
It’s the monkey thing above stealing patch cables and cage nuts from one job so you can do the next one, it’s also known as the tragedy of the commons, and it is why everything is getting creakier and less stable.
At work we have what we used to call an “asshole creeper”, after every job he rings the fucking skanky wimminz engineering die-rectum-or to inform the bitch that he has done the job and everything is cool, as a result, he is constantly getting high fived by her to the rest of the engineering team , why can’t ya’ll be like my boy Cleetus here…. now Cleetus himself, he ain’t that good, to be fair, he ain’t that bad either, just the usual slap dash could do it better if he tried but more interested in looking good than doing good shit… but, what Cleetis is, is someone who is conforming EXACTLY to the corporate environment and climbing that ladder mercilessly, and playing the skanky wimminz engineering chief ho at her own game, and winning handsomely.
Meanwhile there are guys like myself, and “Tom” and “Dick” and “Harry”, older guys, more old school, unlike Cleetus, we have NEVER taken a customer’s network hard down accidentally, and we feel no need to report directly to the skank ho chief every time we do what it says on the tin, so we get wholly ignored in the monthly high five lists, which, is exactly the way we want it, it is now a point of honour.
There is an unofficial competition between us to be the last one to get an honourable mention in the monthly missive, my scanner being dead should keep me safely behind the pack for the next month or three.
Another one is my policy of only ever replying to corporate emails that are addressed to me personally and me only, send something to the “#old farts engineering group” and I ignore it… officially at least…
So on to domestic bliss, and the wimminz wot I are fucking lately, which it has to be said (cue cries of oh noes, he done gone git cunt struck) is basically the same bitch, but she is a good bitch, and my bitch, and for all her plus points, there are some things that will forever show the differences between men and wimminz and niggerz.
So, me being a romantic old fool, I go and buy the bitch a nice new pink upright vacuum cleaner, colour aside it does the job really well, and the colour means I never have to touch it, and she for her part bought me a nice german wet and dry vac for the workshop, which I like.. lots.
So, back to the pink upright, I have told her, several times, never ever ever use it on anything except hard floors or fitted carpets, never use it on the loose carpet lying around, cheapo trailer park rug style, on the hard floors, because it sucks the edges up and wraps the carpet threads around the brush and then the brush jams and 2 seconds later the belt has burnt through, which it is supposed to do to save the motor.
Took her a week to burn through the belt it came with, so she orders two more, I fit one, and a week later she gets through another belt, this time on a boot lace.
I fit the last spare, warning her that this machine is made of plastic, and never intended to be taken apart and reassembled this often, and so two days ago she goes back over the loose carpet and does it again.
Two more spare belts to be ordered by her at her expense.
WILL. NOT. LEARN. CERTAIN. THINGS.
This is the essential difference between men and wimminz and niggerz, they are not capable of learning from small mistakes and experiences, and then act all surprised when the big one blows up in their face, and the writing was on the wall for months.
The corporate day job, same shit, a company populated by wimminz and niggerz mainly, the only men left are we happy few pushed out to the fringes and largely ignored field engineers, who never grace HQ with our saintly presence.
We don’t steal patch cables and cage nuts from one job to do the next because we are trying to get the job done and make the customer and our employer happy, we do it because life is too short to waste any of it on the ball ache that is trying to talk to HQ and get shit sorted.
In my own private business, she (her indoors) was recently surprised, I had to show her the workings, which were that I have had a couple of what I class as “corporate” enquiries, so naturally I padded everything by 25% and gave them an estimate, not a quote, but a firm estimate and explained how it came about to the customer.
Quelle surprise, when these dweebs both come back to me with the only thing corporate middle men do, which is fuck all to do with spec or the product or anything else, suck teeth and say everything is great, except the PRICE…. see, to sell this to the customer / end user I’m going to have to get some discount.
So I play the corporate bollocks game and make nice noises about collaboration and working together and partnership, tell you what boys, because I have a great relationship with *my* material suppliers I can get you 18% off the materials and by changing the design *this* way (making it 7.5% smaller and therefore 7.5% faster / cheaper to make) I can cut 6% off my machine time.
Nice one, they have achieved their sole objective, now they are talking about samples, purchase order for one, provided it is good enough (the only point at which the product actually fucking matters) then it’s a pleasure to do business with you, cos you make me look good buddy.
Her indoors, being a wimminz, assumed that I’d be cutting back on MY slice of the cake to get the order.
I explained that that was not an option, my laser, my prices, my way or highway, but, the upside to being wise to the wimminz and niggerz in corporate land, and playing on the fact that nobody can do basic math any more….
Say the thing you want doing is a sign 500 x 500 mm, and I charge / quote you 10.00 bucks to do that thing, ex materials, and 10.00 bucks for the materials
Then you come back to me and say that shit is too expensive, can you cut it back some? You don’t mind tweaking the design, maybe making it a bit smaller, it just has to be cheaper, 20 bucks a pop is just too much, we are looking for closer to 16 bucks a pop.
OK, well how about we make it 10% smaller? 450 x 450 mm, that do you?
Oh yes please, gimme a sample.
Well, 50 x 50 cm = 2500 cm/squared, and 45 x 45 cm = 2,025 cm/squared.
2,500 / 2,025 = 1.2345etc so y’all got a 23% reduction in material area and therefore cost right there.
And the machining time, quelle suprise, that is a fairly constant thing, in terms of square centimetres per second, sure, I BILL YOU in machine time per minute, but that’s just marketing… so a 23% reduction in area also means a 23% reduction in machine time, and machine time is where I make my fucking money, so between the 23% saving in material, and the extra 10% saving I make between what I buy the material for and what I originally quoted you in price per square meter, I can actually RAISE my effective machine time per minute rate, because you are asking for a piecework rate.
Some cunt offered ME a house for 100, 000 bucks I’d tell them to fuck off.
If they then turn around and say tell you what, that house is pretty big and grand in every dimension, big rooms, high ceilings, you’re only 1.75 metres tall, who needs 2.5 metre high ceilings, how about we shrink it all by 10%, so for example your ceilings will be 2.25 metres high?
Well, 10% off is every dimension x 0.9, and since a house is a three dimensional item, 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 = 0.729, so you could sell me that scaled down house for 75,000 bucks, and make MORE profit than the full size one at 100,000 (assuming construction cost scaled linearly.. it doesn’t, the savings are actually better than that)
The new eco box houses with gardens the size of a hanky are HUGELY profitable, compared to a standard 1930’s style family house, it’s a marketing lie to say they are both 3 bedroom houses and the 1930’s one at 300,000 is too expensive but the new eco box at 175,000 is a bargain, the fucking eco box should be 50,000 if that.
It was the same back in the engineering days, irrespective, pretty much, of size or scale or capacity, one 4 cylinder engine block cost the same to make as another, and half as much as an 8 cylinder.
Yet, engines were priced on capacity, the Honda 400/4 engine cost the same to make as the 750/4, the c90 single cost 1/4 as much, but the 750/4 cost more than the 400/4 because it was BIGGER.
I used to ride harleys, shovelheads and the odd panhead or flathead, could never afford a knuck, which were cool at the time, and frankly speaking the 74 cubic inch / 1200 cc engine was big enough for any cunt.
Now you can buy 1600 HD and 1800 and bigger jap clones, the engines are still twins, so cost no more to make than an “old” 74 cube, and the sole “advantage” is bigger is better, especially on the price tag, … I know, I rode early 100 cube stroker S&S Harleys, they were in every way inferior to the 74 cube engine, if you only care about it being an actual motorcycle engine that does nothing but power a motorcycle, and ignore the penis envy shit, torque figures you can’t ever use, etc etc etc
Out back I’ve got a lowly 1,000 cc v twin, it’s been in bits for years, but frankly speaking even if it wasn’t, it is “enough” for a motorcycle engine… if it isn’t, then adding cubes is NOT the answer, you need to start subtracting something else, probably the asshole lard quotient.
I came into this piece with hacking life, and that all gets a lot easier if you keep your scope small and compact and lean and mean, back in the harley days I used to do a lot of FT (foreign touring) and camping, and camping on a motorcycle means a COMPACT and lightweight 2 man tent, a thin but good ground pad for under your bag, and a good quality compact sleeping bag, THAT WAS IT as far as environmental shelter and shit went, none of this shit about need a bigger tent.
You can still, just, buy some good old school shit.
If you don’t have one of these, buy one now…. as for personal recommendations, I’m only on my second one in 30 years.
