With the kind permission of Randy Glasbergen (RIP)
Tag: error
Adventures with wildlife #163
Bruce was the smartest pup amongst his siblings and had heard the Aesop fable about the hare and the tortoise. Sadly his rather limited grasp of analogy and metaphor meant that there was no chance whatsoever of the family enjoying fresh meat this evening.
War is hell #65
The idea of trying to create a military vehicle with all the flexibility of the Swiss army knife was not in itself, a bad one. Unfortunately the design team tasked with creating the vehicle was rather too literally minded; resulting in a heavily armoured device capable of removing stones from the shoes of 30 ton horses and opening 12 metre tall bottles.
Moments in automotive history #152
Early attempts at self-driving technologies were not a complete success; the difference between steps and a gentle slope seemed to be a particular problem for the first recognition and navigation systems.
Just another day at the office #329
When he confessed that he had forgotten to bring the hurdles Johann thought that, as the “new guy”, maybe his boss would cut him a little slack. It turned out that the offer to allow him to “make good” on his foul-up wasn’t quite as generous or forgiving as it sounded.
Sorted #56
War is hell #30
Wrong side of the tracks
Yesterday France’s national rail company, SNCF, confirmed that it had ordered 2,000 regional & suburban trains that are too wide for many station platforms.
A spokesman for the RFF national rail operator also confirmed the error, first reported by Canard Enchaine. “We discovered the problem a bit late, we recognise that & we accept responsibility on that score,” Christophe Piednoel said during a radio interview.
Construction work has already begun to reconfigure station platforms to give the new trains room to pass through, but “hundreds more remain to be fixed,” he added.
The confusion arose when the RFF transmitted faulty dimensions for its train platforms to the SNCF, which was in charge of ordering trains as part of a huge modernisation programme.
The RFF mistakenly only gave the dimensions of platforms built less than 30 years ago, but most of France’s 1,200 platforms were built more than 50 years ago. Repair work has already cost 80 million euros & looks like generating jobs, profits & embarrassment for some years to come.
Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier blamed an “absurd rail system” for the problem, referring to changes made by a previous government in 1997. “When you separate the rail operator (RFF) from the user, SNCF, it doesn’t work,” he told parliament.
“I may be a little late home tonight, darling…….”
Disappointment
View from a Rhino House: “Baby it’s cold outside….”
In Sweden yesterday police were summoned to disperse an angry crowd of job-seekers outside an employment office in Stockholm – after it asked over 60,000 people to attend a recruitment meeting.
“Something has gone wrong with the mailing list…it has set off a very messy situation at the city office,” said Clas Olsson, acting director of the employment office & master of the obvious.
An e-mail invitation to a recruitment meeting that should have gone out to about 1,000 job-seekers went out to considerably more, in fact to all the registered job seekers in Stockholm, police said.
A huge crowd of people arrived to attend the meeting & crowded into the alley where the labor office is located, spilling-over into the adjacent street.
Unsurprisingly the mood of the crowd began to turn nasty & office staff decided to send for help, bringing police to the scene.
“When we got there it was very crowded & there were some upset feelings,” Police Inspector Ulf Lindgren said.
The cold chill of hard times felt in a very personal & physical way, methinks.
ThursdayAgain 
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