Subway Vultures, And Surprising Opportunities

[Thurisaz]

So, to start with the rant...

 

...my dear wife Islington (darn it, I knew there was something on my to-do-list - make her post here again ), as a student at Hildesheim university, has a railroad flatrate all across the German Federal country of Nethersaxony. As a train goes from close to where she lives to nearby Hannover main station, this means she normally can travel pretty much everywhere in Nethersaxony without paying a single cent.

 

Enter last weekend. After a generic heathens'n'witches meeting we got invited to a little bit of private party in the suburbs. Me, I had purchased an all-day-ticket for the trams anyway, and she had two unused reserve tickets in her pocket, so we attended.

 

As we got moving to get home, we just caught a tram going downtown. After about two stops she suddenly said quite loudly "Shit! Forgot to stamp my ticket! Remind me please, dear, that I get out next stop to do so!"

 

(The last time she regularly traveled by tram, not all of them had those stamping machines in them - including the model we sat in then)

 

Three seconds later, one of the travellers flashes his ID card at us "Ticket check!"

 

Now let's see. Either this shaved gorilla is so fucking deaf that he's not qualified for the job anyway, or he clearly heard the "smoking gun" type evidence that she didn't want to cheat. But noooooo, what's truth and honesty compared to 40 bucks?

 

Had she not said anything prior ot him getting active, I'd have had to grind my teeth and think "damn bad luck". But this...!

 

(At least she kind of got her revenge later, in the train to her house. Promptly we encountered some other ticket-checkers...

 

Railroad vulture: "Your ticket please."

Islington: "Your ID card please."

Vulture (after about three seconds of stunned silence): "That's gotta be a joke, right?"

 

And then she let loose... suffice it to say, do not infuriate a Celtic druidess-to-be. NEVER. )

 

On the other hand...

 

...that very same day I happened to hear of a potential contract partner for the company I work for. Inasmuch as the one I talked to could describe it's about a server (farm) that has to handle 150 clients without problems, but currently crashes at about 120. A new partner is desperately being sought who can make the server handle that amount. Some development work will also be needed.

 

The bad thing is that while our company does have some developers, there aren't many of them, so this business is quite possibly too much for us to swallow.

 

On the other hand, if what I heard leads to a new contract for us... and if I can convince our CEOs to grant me a measly 1 % of total earnings...

 

...suffice it to say that the potential partner is the German Federal forces, the server (farm) is meant to keep track of up to 150 military units (location, speed and heading) at the same time, and we're talking about a total of € 650,000,000.

 

Let's see, one fucking percent of that...

 

Yeah I know, I'm daydreaming... but still...

 

(Hey, my direct superior already confirmed to me that, if this is gonna work, I can count on a reward... the only question is "how much"...)