» In the Army Now - The joy of the Armed Forces

Not really an army story but forces none the less
My Father used to be a Flight Engineer on Nimrod's (a marinetime search and rescue plane) and was shipped over to Florida, USA for an an 8 week training course and a general whose search and rescue team is the best event.
Part of the training course was to drop torpedos at undersea targets and to see who could do the most damage from different altitudes etc using non live torpedos. Well during the event the helicopter crews would take the mick about how ancient the British technology was and wind my fathers crew and others up no end. It could have been sorted out fisticuff style, but being British they thought they would be a little more cleverer and sort it out McGyver style. During the course they seized there opportunity to shut up one particular helicopter crew, by launching a torpedo at a "small target" where said helicopter was hovering above filming to event. Only said torpedo was not programmed to fnd the underwater target, no, it leapt out of the water about 10 meters before the helicopter hitting it under the belly, knocking the winchman (or somebody similiar) out of the helicopter to fall into the sea, and the helicopter of course towards certain doom. It took no time for the nearest British helicopter to come over pluck the Sceptic Tanks out of the water return him to base and win the praises of the senior military men running the exercise, which shut the helicopter crews up for the rest of my fathers stay.
The official report came out that explain that it was not my fathers crew fault, but in fact the helicopter crew being too close to the water and the torpedo seeing them as a bigger target than the original one. Nobody even knew that the little buggers could jump so high.....
(Thu 23rd Mar 2006, 20:41, More)

» Clients Are Stupid

Once had one of the most annoying users
Used to work in London and then moved to Oz, during the move I had to look after my replacement that my boss had hide without asking for my advice. He was supposed to be in charge of looking after the user base of 35 people and said that he had worked in much larger places and could handle this place very easily. I showed him all the systems, telling him the passwords and left him to start his new day as tech support. Within 10 minutes I got this fone call from my boss telling me that the idiot had come up to the MD office and in the process of trying to sort out a problem he had managed to delete all his documents and even managed to remove them from the recycled bin as well. When asked why he did this, he replied he thought it was the right thing to do as the computer was running low on hard disk space and the My Documents folder took up the majority of the space. Needless to say he still works there and I get the odd call from my ex boss asking me to fix his mistakes as they consider him to be a good asset who makes the odd mistake every now and again. Plus I think it helps being the son of the MD.
(Sun 28th Dec 2003, 23:37, More)

» Tightwads

Best Cost Cutting Method Yet
I know of this company based in Hong Kong who is sacking all of it's workers and replacing them with Chinese workers. The ironic thing is that the workers being sacked are Chinese themselves. How do you explain that one to your wife?
(Wed 29th Oct 2008, 21:44, More)

» You're a moviestar baby

I was in the Oasis Video when they played at the Manchester City Ground
I am seen a number of times as the crowd shots are shown as I am at the front of the crowd. I was in a crowd of thousands and looked very crushed indeed. Was also in NME center spread of said concert, where one shot has me looking direct @ the camera looking bored as hell as I was being poked in the ribs by a 15 year old lass trying to get her breasticles out.
(Fri 12th Nov 2004, 6:05, More)