Quick and dirty


*Edit* First FP, Thank You!
(Thu 10th Jan 2013, 9:57, More)

» Faking it

I am a robotics genius (or so the Japanese think)
A few years ago as a fresh faced graduate I a got my first “proper” job in a secondary school. The school was run by a power hungry bastard who got a bonus for keeping staff wages down, hence my starting wage of £11,100 per year for an IT Tech with a degree. Oh well I thought, I needed the experience and as it turns out having the three years there did help me get my current B3ta friendly job on much more cash. However my faking story changed my life for the better.

One of our senior management people had witnessed an Australian school build a cheap and cheerful robot that could be controlled over the Internet. He stated getting ideas. In October 2005 he came to me and said “Phil (for that is my name) I started a collaboration project with a Japanese university promising them that our school had built a robot that could be controlled over the Internet” “Oh” I said “Why would you tell them something like that” “well” He replied “I saw the Australians make one and thought our students could do it too.

Now I digress here to explain why this was a stupid thing to say. The town I live in has one of the the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country. The school I worked at was in the bottom three schools in the county. It was a school of thieving little shitbags. Robot building was never going to happen.

Sooooo back on track. He tells me that it needs to be controlled over the web and that a replica Mars landscape will be created and the Japanese will attach a drill to the robot and drill around.

“So Phil you know IT right? Build it for me”

“Ummmmm I don’t really know much about robots how long do you have”

“It needs to be done in about 4 weeks so I can fly to Japan for two weeks and show it off to them”

Coals to Newcastle I thought. “Four weeks, sorry it’s just not enough time”

“I’ll take you with me!”

“Four weeks it is then, but I’ll need an open ended budget”

“Done”

Of course I really know nothing about robots so I type “WiFi enabled robot” in to Google and come up with a company in Canada run by Chinese people who build robots with WiFi. I ordered one for about £2000 and had it sent over. I took off all the labels and used the schools laser cutter to make vinyl logos of both the schools and stuck them on instead. A quick mess about with the control program in VB removed the company’s logo and put in the schools logo. Set up a web vpn, called the Japanese and they were soon remote controlling our computer that in turn controlled the robot “that I built”

So three weeks later I am on a plane to Japan. I have an 11 hours flight to explain to the students “how they built the robot” so when they gave their speeches they would sound genuine. At this point they had never even seen the thing.

It was so high tech that there was no way that we had built it. It had sensors for everything, auto patrol made, returned to its charger if it went flat, it could detect human presence and tell you how many people were in a room. It looked fantastic. They were NEVER going to believe we built it.

So we landed in Kyoto and were driven off to our accommodation. We were there for two weeks and were treated like kings and queens. Everything was amazing and it truly changed me as a person (but that’s another story) When I went shopping with the Yen I’d scraped together they wouldn’t let me pay for anything, I was followed around by three guys who just kept buying me stuff.
Then it came to it, a half day of sharing projects.

The bloody thing didn’t even work properly.

BUT they were impressed, VERY impressed. They started rethinking their drill to make it better because of how well we had built this thing.

After the two weeks of sightseeing and half a day of work were over we flew back, later that year the Japanese flew over to get some more details on it so they could make their drill. Then a year after our original trip we were invited back for another two weeks. So we did it all again. Took it over and pretended we had built it. They paid for everything. I got yet another “Once in a lifetime” trip and two weeks off work paid in full that didn’t come out of my holiday because I was technically at work. This time it went over even better because I got it working.

When we got back we were in the newspapers over there and over here. I was pictured with the robot and hailed as “The schools own Robotics Expert” Yeh right on 11 grand pah. It opened doors for me and now I have a much better job on much higher pay.

So there you go, I spent someone else’s money and faked my way to 4 weeks in Japan on full pay, everything I tried to buy paid for, food and accommodation paid for (expensive restaurants every night) and had some amazing stuff to put on my CV and a great reference and newspaper clippings to back it up.
The robot now gathers dust as no-one can use it, it never got a drill attached.

I still know fuck all about robots.

No Apologies for length it was the best time of my life.
(Fri 11th Jul 2008, 9:55, More)

» Schadenfreude

If theres one thing that winds me up its people using mobile phones whilst driving.
I was waiting at a bus stop near my place of work at the end of the road, near a roundabout. A woman drove past, going about 10mph, window down, on her mobile. I shouted "Get off you phone idiot!" for it angered me so. She turned her head to face me and shouted "Mind your own fucking business!" before driving in to the back of the car in front which had now stopped at the roundabout. I laughed. He got out and wasn't fucking happy. I laughed. As she sat with a very shocked look on her face she said right in front of the guy "I've just had a crash I'm going to have to call you back" The guy called the police. I laughed and my bus arrived, I left the scene still chuckling.
(Mon 21st Dec 2009, 13:44, More)

» Dodgy work ethics

My ex boss bullied a very heavily pregnant woman
He told her that unless she took a very short maternity leave she wouldn't have a job when she came back, got right up in her face telling her to "play the fucking game" etc. The guy was an absolute cunt to everyone but I thought this was low. What he didn't know is that I was in the room fixing a PC. When he found out he took me to one side and gave me some bollocks story about how stressful his position was and when you are in charge of multi million pound budgets you have to be a bit of an ogre and then told me he didn't want me to mention to anyone what I saw.

She sued, I was a witness, she won, we both quit.
(Thu 7th Jul 2011, 14:17, More)

» Dad stories

Do these have to be funny?
Like many navy personnel my dad was sent to the Falklands. Unlike many others he did a lot of killing. The information we got from him about his experiences came in small drunken tales told through held back tears throughout my childhood usually involving the consumption of alcohol. It's generally felt within the family that some of the things he had to do out there were not exactly above board.

Family life was fairly normal until 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. My dad went from being a guy that liked a drink to a full blown drunk. He was always bought up to show no signs of weakness. His father had been in the navy and had bought him up hard. He was terrified of being sent to the Gulf and rather than show his weakness he drank and took it out on my mother, my sister and me. My sister was 7 and I was 9, my brother was only 2 so avoided it. We were all beaten for the tiniest thing. I was kicked across rooms, in to shelves and up and down stairs. My sister received similar treatment. My mother lost teeth, had her head put through internal walls and was beaten regularly. He didn't want to see us afterwards and for weeks at a time we would eat meals in separate rooms and only see him in passing in our own house.

My sister and I were scared of him but I cannot imagine how scared my mum was as she wouldn't leave him. 5 years later he was sent to America for 3 months. I was 14 by then and told my mum that it was time to go. She refused. I phoned around, arranged a house viewing, explained the situation to the letting agent and paid the deposit with the savings account my great granddad had set up for me before he died. I then told mum we were leaving and we did.

She never told him she was leaving and never told him where she had gone. She started to seem stronger, started to stand up for herself. She allowed him visitation but never told him where we lived. I hated the visitation, all he talked about was mum and how she had no reason to leave. He claimed he had never hit her, even when I screamed at him that he had hit us all and I had seen all the things he did to mum he would deny it. It amazing how people can lie to themselves and believe it. Mum lost all her friends, they were all navy wives and basically thought that if she put up with it for 5 years it can't have been that bad. Even her family stayed friends with him and he regularly visited my mums sister in London. He turned her whole family against her.

Then he was arrested for assault. A serious assault. I won't go in to details but it was the kind of assault that means jail time. Suddenly all the people that had thought we were lying for years were apologising, not bad only took 9 years. He was out on bail awaiting trail and I had moved to London ready to start my first week at university.

Then I got a call, it was 11pm the day before a big bomb scare near Clapham Junction in 2000. They had found him in his car, in his garage, hose attached to the exhaust. He had boxed up his whole life, hung up his uniform instructing us that he was to be cremated in it. He had made his last meal and gone to the garage with it. He was found with half a plate of food and a glass of wine. There were several notes left ranging from sober instructions to drunken scrawls blaming everyone he could think of as long as it wasn't him.

I started university two days later, I didn't go home for the funeral.

It was ten years this September since the suicide and though what he did to us for years was terrible I am starting to forgive him. I honestly believe that going to war and the fear of going back turned him in to the person he became. Perhaps if Iraq didn't invade Kuwait things would have been different and my mum would have more real teeth. Its made my brother in to quite an angry person who isn't scared of a confrontation, to me its done the opposite, I hate the idea of a fight, I hate the idea of war, I can't understand how in this age of technology we are still reduced to killing each other to sort out a problem.

If my dad wasn't sent to war, he would probably be alive today. There are more casualties than those who die on the battle field.
(Fri 26th Nov 2010, 10:02, More)

» Family codes and rituals

As a child when driving towards this village that had a tunnel
my mum would start whispering...

Coffee, coffee, coffee
Cheese and biscuits ,Cheese and biscuits ,Cheese and biscuits, Prunes and custard, Prunes and custard, Prunes and custard, Beef and carrots, Beef and carrots, Beef and carrots, Beef and carrots, Beef and carrots, Beef and carrots, Beef and carrots, Beef and carrots, Beef and carrots, Beef and carrots,

Then as we went through the tunnel she'd shout

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUP!

Now my wife looks at me like a nutter when I do the same thing.
(Fri 21st Nov 2008, 10:42, More)