Presentation Never Changes

Since the ascension of our Holiness, Lord Gates, when PowerPoint was first introduced to mankind, too many humans have been forced to sit through the constant stream of colorful slides filled with text. During the war for the attention of the millennials, for a brief moment, Prezi was thought to be the new champion, with its seamless flow of giant texts, to tiny a** pictures, back to humongous rotating letters, and back to slightly angled and edgy Youtube videos; but no, PowerPoint remained strong, even with the mounting effort from Google to replace it with Slides and the promise of easier distant collaborations (and we all know how effective group work is). On 2018-12-04, in the Hobbit-sized Keck 3, PowerPoint was once again wielded to mesmerize a curious crowd. Life goes on, but presentation never changes. 

Окончательное падение cwd00691

Comrades! Rejoice, for our glorious Hasselblad 501CM will be restored and shall join us in our final battle to capture cwd00691! The mechanical unit might be old and bogged down by dirty crumbling leather specks, but like our CLIRWater Motherland, it shall persist along our other decade-old hardware and put an end to that annoying Pauba Ranch map! Sure, we were set back multiple times going against the grain in the last 3 months, even with the employment of the newer, flashier Canon EOS Rebel T6 DSLR with its 600ppi setting, but we shall not surrender (because we need our paychecks) and we shall march right back to the gate of the Camera room! For the Noir Army is the strongest! Для Родины!

01001101 01100101 01110100 01100001 01100100 01100001 01110100 01100001

Operations officer’s log, Stardate 96487.89. We have been tasked with updating the new memory core of the USS CLIR with metadata, presumably to better catalog the files from the CLIRWater optolythic data rod. So far, it has been proven to be extremely difficult to work with, unlike the standard isolinear ones. Needless to say this will be a tedious assignment, something even the Borg might find irritating. The wrap reactor has also been experiencing some new technical difficulty, our deuterium injectors are quite outdated and Starfleet Command has not responded to our request for a new M/ARA. With any luck, we will complete inputting all the metadata before experiencing any wrap core breach.

Magnitudine Rerum: Fermentum PDF/A Exitus

Once in a while, you may encounter problems when upgrading your standard PDF files to the more desirable and archivable PDF/A format such as a reduction of 75% in file size, typically on cold days and resulting in lower resolution. You should understand this particular issue is quite common and may not be your fault; after all, the Omnissiah moves in mysterious ways. Fortunately, the Adeptus Mechanicus (you may know us as IT) is here to provide you with the correct rituals to appease the corresponding Machine Spirit. First off, always have a backup in case the original file is corrupted during the conversion process and the Machine Spirit needs a new shelter. Purge the soulless file to the pit of Recycle Can at the top left corner of your Machine. Next, continue to duplicate the pristine file and repeat the conversion ritual until the Spirit shines with a blue aura. Remember to praise the Deus Mechanicus at the end for such blessing: Do not question the ritual; to break with the ritual is to break with faith. Hail the Omnissiah! He is the God in the Machine, the Source of All Knowledge.

Area Man Done Scanning Box #2

“This is it, I’m free,” exclaimed V, the local drone #1191. “After 2 months feeding the deadbeat Epson scanner with illegible documents from another century, I can finally reshelve this stupid cardboard box and move on to more meaningful tasks,” said the average meatbag before converting files from one type of PDF to another.

Recycle II: Data Strikes Back

As mentioned before, Willis S. Jones and associates had this habit of recycling papers the worst way possible. For the discharge measurements, it looks like Mr. Jones was transferring raw data to another set of (medium rare) spreadsheets. However, instead of using a new piece of paper when messing up the numbers (which he did quite often), he just added stuff left, right, up, down, making reading the documents a rather difficult task. Even after typing out the data out on a supposedly clean (well-done) piece of paper, he still penciled in more information. So kids, remember, save all your crap in one place, preferably with backup copies.

It’s Raining Men, Hallelujah!

According to the rainfall charts (rather than the spreadsheets, Sandman must have been on vacation), water either came in excess in two separate occasions in a year or nothing at all during the long seasonal drought. Makes one wonder what kind of lifeform could have survived for so long in such a crappy environment (definitely not those pompous palm trees). No wonder people fought over the precious liquid resource (before the non-polar oil brush off the moody water), whether they wanted to be involved or not (sorry Jake); just hope that the weather was more stable back then.

Xerox, the hero we deserve, but not the one we need

It seems a paper shortage was a thing a century ago since Willis S. Jones frequently recycled them, but in the worst way possible for archiving. So there’s a pile of spreadsheets of rainfall data for two sets of locations from 1912 to 1920, one handwritten and one typed copy for each location each year. Here’s the problem, half were written or printed on old letters or lists of some sort (marked 3, 4, 5, couldn’t find 1 and 2); the rest were on some random stuff like the pre-Internet spam mail from a movie theatre company (hope they fared better than MoviePass). This may not be the best use for a time machine but if anybody got one please throw Mr. Jones a pack of printing paper. Then again, at least he didn’t have to deal with Paper Jam (aka 2k Chaos God, aka 2016 Carly Fiorina).