Sunday 20 January 2008

What Do You Call 10 Auditors At The Bottom Of The Ocean?

A good start, that's what...

Yes, I'm back.

I've sorta been preoccupied with work the last couple of weeks, because it's time for our external audit.

This happens every year, but it's such a traumatic experience that we all head for the nearest pub when it's over in order to erase it from our memories, so that when it rolls around again with jarring inevitability the following year, there's a rush to get all the paperwork together, with incidents and accidents, threats and allegations - you know, the usual.

It's hellish.

And, mightiest of men or not, I'd rather face a frenzied Xylak horde any day.

But don't get me wrong - auditors are people too, with their own hopes and dreams.

And audits have their place; it's just that each year they seem to find a new way to make more work for me to make their work easier.

They tell me it's to make my work easier, but never look convincing when they say it.

I may be a little more cynical for the next couple of weeks...

Tuesday 1 January 2008

True or False? You Be The Judge...

'Afternoon, everybody, and a Happy New Year to all.

I've been tagged by Becca (Yay!) to provide seven things about me that may not be true. Unless they are.

Let's see:

1. I taught Jack Bauer everything he knows about perimeters.

2. I once performed a minor service for Her Imperial Highness, The Empress Catherine The Great, whose hand in marriage I had the honour to decline.

3. I possess the uncanny ability to cause streetlights to go on or off as I pass by. Something to do with the presence of argonite, I'm told.

4. I accepted a Nobel Prize in Mathematics for my pioneering work in proving that 1=2, a formula immediately adopted by the worldwide accounting profession. It hangs on the wall in my bathroom.

5. My favourite food is a dish that cannot be prepared from any ingredients that occur naturally (or otherwise) on Earth, but that can be had in only one restaurant in the Xylak sector of Neptune City. It consists of a - no, I can't really describe it, except to say that it tastes a lot like chicken...

6. I beat the Kobayashi Maru test without cheating. It was easy.

7. I recently developed a design for a new type of engine that runs on vegetable oil rather than fossil fuels. It has a built in popcorn maker for optimum use of the fuel. The major auto manufacturers didn't seem interested, but I've had a number of enquiries from the snack food industry.

So there we have it. Seven facts (or not), make of them what you will. As for tagging, everyone I would have pegged has been got already, with the exception of my sister, so Ray - here's one for you...

A New Chapter...

 In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Dr. McCoy describes himself as having been, "...for the past 27 years, Chief Medical Office...