Dispatches from the Bone Yard

[Doktor Howl]

New job.  Turns out that helping crazy people who treat other crazy people isn't really my thing.

So I am now employed by a drone start up similar to the one that produces Hornet drones for Ukraine, except that it is run by absolute basket cases who are hundreds of miles away from me.  I have the facility.

The facility is one of the military bone yards right off of Davis Monthan AFB.  So there's a building and 150 acres of old military aircraft.

I have named the actual bone yard employees Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde, because they roam around in a maze and are always hungry.

On the design side, there's me, Billy, Rodrigo, Jessica, and a couple of grad students who don't yet have names, because they haven't proven themselves as yet to be actual bipeds.  Then there's a couple of facility nerds, a receptionist, and a janitor.

The fun parts:

1.  We are off the city grid except for electricity.  We operate off of a septic system and a well.  The well is downhill from the septic system AND the washdown yards on the AFB.  So our water is full of poop and cadmium.  It is used only for flushing toilets.  Otherwise, water bottles.

2.  On the subject of water bottles, one of the bosses bought a bunch of semi trailers at auction to store environment-sensitive parts in.  When the trailers got here, they were completely full with 50 1,100 kilogram pallets of Niagara bottled water.  The boss thought this was great, and canceled our water bottle resupply.

However, these bottles had a use-by date of 5/24 and were stored in trailers in Texas.  As a result, the plastic bottles have degraded and now the water has a ton of phosphorus in it.  This makes it taste horrible and has the added fun of giving you a rather extreme case of the shits, which is the opposite of hydration.  Obviously, nobody will drink it.

The boss doesn't give up that easily.  He got free water and he'll be damned if he'll throw it away.  So he wants it stored on the racking, instead of putting parts there.  Each pallet, as I said, weighs 1100 KG, and they'd be two pallets per shelf.  The racking is rated for 625 KG/shelf (total).  The engineering factor would bring that up to a maximum possible load of 900 KG.  2200 KG is, last I heard, more than 900 KG.

We aren't doing that because I hate interviewing new hires, and the janitor dislikes cleaning squashed people off of the floor.   

This particular saga is ongoing and promises great hilarity.

3.  The well is haunted.  More about that later.

4.  I have now been here a month, and the spec for the drone we're supposed to design is locked in engineer hell.  By which I mean the engineers in California were hired on the cheap and were process engineers in their previous lives.  They don't know what they're doing.  So we got started without them, using the power of sick minds and boundless initiative.

I have named our first project "Lola Montez," which, given the nature of the drone, gave everyone the heebee jeebees.  Including me.

Stories to follow.

[Faust]

They gave him weapons again, despite our petition





Lola Montez the serial courtesan?
I'm picturing a drone doing the bug bunny in a wig and heels for the supreme leader

[Doktor Howl]

They gave him weapons again, despite our petition

Only I can be trusted with horrible sneaky fucking ground drones.

Lola Montez the serial courtesan?
I'm picturing a drone doing the bug bunny in a wig and heels for the supreme leader

Well, you know.  Spider Dance. 

[Doktor Howl]

So I needed a component from an E15 naval AWACS out in the yard, so I send Clyde.  He's a big boi.  He crawls in and gets stuck.  Inky and Pinky try to help him.  Inky goes in through the crew escape hatch and ALSO gets stuck. 

Before I get to the next part, it's worth mentioning that it's 50 degrees out there. Centigrade.

Pinky decides to use the scissor lift to get in through the cockpit to unstick Inky.  Guess what?

Blinky seems to have a functioning brain, so he runs into the building and tells Billy.  We all go out and eventually get everyone unstuck. 

Turns out that Clyde got stuck because when they were previously pulling parts out, they left access panels around and wire harnesses hanging all over the place.

I never got my fucking part.  So I just sent Rodrigo out to get it.

The eschaton should not be this hard.