spiffingwheeze

As an IT department, you probably have a project office stuffed full of PMO staff. PM’s, admins, people who are in specialist roles, like those in charge of laughing at timesheets.
They spend most of their time bored to tears, or squabbling over methodologies, denouncing agile, whilst attempting to mate it with waterfall approaches to produce mutant offspring, and hiding in plain sight.
They also have a genetic compunction to invest heavily in project management software. Preferably this should be unheard of, unwieldy, unsuitable for use on any agile, waterfall, or mutant hybrid approach, unreliable, and, perhaps most importantly, never used.
Up until recently this compunction could be realised by purchasing boxed software and then carefully placing it upon a shelf from where it could be viewed in its shrink-wrapped glory. Occasionally it could be dusted. As upgrades are purchased at expense, the box containing the previous version would then be usurped, and the old version hidden in a cupboard to mature for a minimum of 5 years before it was ready to be placed lovingly in a skip with full honours.
If needs be, like anyone asked questions about why it was sat there, it could be hastily installed, and half-hearted training done, before it was then possible to let it fall into disuse and be ignored once more. The breaking of the shrink-wrap was almost unforgivable though.
Meanwhile all the project managers would be happily knocking out plans in Excel, and regularly transposing these into Powerpoint, so that important people could ignore them.
Sadly, with the advent of Software As A Service, an important aspect is now missing from this approach.
One key aspect: The dusty shrink-wrapped box which serves as a beacon of thrilling secret shame at money wasted, no longer appears.
To address this, vendors are rushing to implement OAAS: Ornament As A Service.
In the shining future, PMO staff will be able to view a stylised representation of the shrink-wrapped totem, available via a portal, to be stared at for as long as they keep paying.
The future is now. Never let it be said that your unused software is “Neither use nor ornament”.

I make a new drawing of this in the back of every notebook I start…
There is no escape!

The world of IT. Where, it has been opined by some, it is possible to spend your days in a never ending version of that now defunct and inappropriate boyhood game of indigenous population warriors v pioneer types stereotypically wearing big hats and openly carrying holstered revolvers

I found this picture.
I remember “improving” it a long while ago.
Can’t remember why. Some random abuse of someone’s DIY post on FB probably.
I should probably print it off and pop it into a random flatpack box next time I’m in a blue and yellow warehouse somewhere, breathing in pine dust.

So, you find yourself needing to use the office facilities to, you know, drop off the kids at the pool. Snap one off, etc etc.
This may apply to men only, as, by legend, ladies never take a dump at work.

Having occupied trap 2, in a typical 3 trap set up, and going into trance so that you can ignore circumstances, and the fact that a thin divide separates you from your neighbour, you can just about deal with the indignity of it all, and commence the bombing run.

At this moment, the occupant of trap 1 produces a sustained musical note from their barking spider of such regulated pitch and sustain that all that seems to be missing is a pianist hitting the same key, and a singer repeating “me.. Me… Meeee” until they’re ready to start work on a tune . I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, applaud, or shout out a request.

Whales…

Saddened by the death of the pod of whales on the east coast.

Depressed by all the morons grinning away taking pictures with the corpses. Some of which were defaced with spray paint of messages about the environment. There. Dignity in death.

Now they’re being loaded up to go to landfill. Apparently they don’t smell nice.

All in all. Depressarama.

And yet. There’s the part of my brain that seems to be controlled by Loki, that is playing out the possibility that the unfortunate creatures got there courtesy of the same route as the whale which suddenly found itself sprung into existence above Magrathea…