Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts

[Rakaydos]

Yelling "Doggy" is a greeting.

Automatic responce:
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff100/fv00008.htm
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff200/fv00119.htm
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff400/fv00313.htm (Notably, DVORAC is able to delay and modify the responce)
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff600/fv00548.htm is the 4th robot to have the same responce. the "greeting procedure" comes from http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff500/fv00402.htm\

Edit: http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff700/fv00652.htm
Edit, with reverb: http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff700/fv00675.htm (and another involuntary response a few pages later, ruining an air of smug superiority)

Notably, the ships computer is NOT a Bowman model, and so never gives a doggy responce. same with this fellow: http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff800/fv00724.htm

Edit: I think this one makes my point clearer: http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff400/fv00394.htm

Edit: More rereading when I should be working turned this up: http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff600/fv00559.htm

[Rockphed]

My point was that they only do it in person. They might do it over a video link, but I doubt that they will do it just from seeing an image of Florence.

Are you trying to say something about robots seeing Florence as a person? You have links to a couple comics where robots mention that Florence is a person to them, but I don't see any text in your posts about it. I think Dr Bowman asking Florence if he is human is another datum in that line of inquiry.

And I try not to reread Freefall too often since it is very addictive. I think there is a page that auto loads all the comics to cut down on loading times, but it would still take a while to read. Not quite as long as Schlock, but a while nonetheless.

[Kantaki]

New comic

In this case thinking like Sam might not be a bad idea, Florence.

[Radar]

Also a The Mitchells vs The Machines reference. I also agree that having an emergency hiding spot might be a good self-preservence habit - especially considering what Florence has already been through.

[Rakaydos]

My point was that they only do it in person. They might do it over a video link, but I doubt that they will do it just from seeing an image of Florence.

Are you trying to say something about robots seeing Florence as a person? You have links to a couple comics where robots mention that Florence is a person to them, but I don't see any text in your posts about it. I think Dr Bowman asking Florence if he is human is another datum in that line of inquiry.

And I try not to reread Freefall too often since it is very addictive. I think there is a page that auto loads all the comics to cut down on loading times, but it would still take a while to read. Not quite as long as Schlock, but a while nonetheless.

I didnt reread up to that point, but I distinctly remember Clippy having a "doggy" reaction when reviewing what went wrong with Gardener in the Dark, before deciding to get Florence's head examined.

[Rockphed]

I didnt reread up to that point, but I distinctly remember Clippy having a "doggy" reaction when reviewing what went wrong with Gardener in the Dark, before deciding to get Florence's head examined.

I just looked through all the parts with Clippy between midnight and him abducting Florence and I don't see a "doggy" anywhere. I might have missed it.

As for today's comic, having hiding spots is always useful. Sometimes it is crucial.

[Rakaydos]

I just looked through all the parts with Clippy between midnight and him abducting Florence and I don't see a "doggy" anywhere. I might have missed it.

As for today's comic, having hiding spots is always useful. Sometimes it is crucial.

http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff2100/fc02070.htm

So, a bit earlier than I remembered.

[Rockphed]

Okay, that blows that theory out of the water. On the other hand I am surprised by how many of Helix's early actions made their way into the meme pool. You mentioned Tangent wanting to rub Florence's belly? Well Helix actually did it.

[Kantaki]

"You can be part of humanity without being human."
If only everyone was this inclusive...

[Willie the Duck]

Sam has gotten frighteningly good at recognizing corporate missteps in a very short amount of time/training. He's in no way wrong, but it's also kind of a, 'right, but how do you know that?' moment.

[Fyraltari]

Sam has gotten frighteningly good at recognizing corporate missteps in a very short amount of time/training. He's in no way wrong, but it's also kind of a, 'right, but how do you know that?' moment.

Sam is an excellent thief.

[sihnfahl]

Sam is an excellent thief.

And an excellent Rules Lawyer.

"This is perfectly legal to do!"

"But ... the law wasn't intended to be used that way."

"BUT! It's still legal. Intent is one thing; what it actually SAYS is another."

[Anarchic Fox]

And an excellent Rules Lawyer.

Yep. I'm delighted by Sam finding accounting an inspiration and resource to improve as a thief.

[Kornaki]

In defense of the station manager, I have heard some horror stories about centralized warehouse management lighting more money on fire than it would cost to just buy everything again new.

[Thomas Cardew]

I get the intent is to portray management as useless and out of touch here, but most of these changes aren't necessarily bad. Training departments ARE redundant, the majority of the training you receive can/should be handle in department. Extending maintenance could be the right choice given that station just experienced a drastic reduction in use/ performed work. Equipment wears out less quickly when it is not being used as frequently. Reducing staff is appropriate if the problem was 'we have too much work that needs to be done simultaneously' and the workload has dropped sufficiently that you have enough time to space things out.

Becoming a leaner organization is not a bad thing. Now bring me the forms I have to fill out to have her taken away.

[Willie the Duck]

In defense of the station manager, I have heard some horror stories about centralized warehouse management lighting more money on fire than it would cost to just buy everything again new.

I get the intent is to portray management as useless and out of touch here, but most of these changes aren't necessarily bad. Training departments ARE redundant, the majority of the training you receive can/should be handle in department. Extending maintenance could be the right choice given that station just experienced a drastic reduction in use/ performed work. Equipment wears out less quickly when it is not being used as frequently. Reducing staff is appropriate if the problem was 'we have too much work that needs to be done simultaneously' and the workload has dropped sufficiently that you have enough time to space things out.

Becoming a leaner organization is not a bad thing. Now bring me the forms I have to fill out to have her taken away.

It's almost like running a business is an intricate and challenging endeavor where situational factors play a huge role and there is no one perfunctory solution to all problems.

I get it. This part of the strip is a combination of early Dilbert* and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court**. It's not at all an unreasonable power fantasy for a nuclear engineer turned comic artist. Doesn't work as great for someone who spends their work day doing the station manager's job and managing several self-styled geniuses who would identify with Sam (and to their credit, are quite brilliant, even if they too don't have simple solutions to institutional problems that management somehow didn't realize). Overall, I kinda dig the way this is going, so long as I recognize that the station manager, like Kornada and the robot antagonists, is significantly more of a cartoon than Florence and Winston and his family and such (and deliberately so). That said, to me it is something of a wasted opportunity in that a 'dwindling factory town' in space would be a wonderful venue for a no-specific-antagonist storyline -- things are being run well, but there simply isn't enough business to support everyone present who wants employment, how do the plucky protagonists turn around the town's dire straights?
*where a cagy and underappreciated engineer is smarter at running a business than the incompetent managers and executives above him, and has to watch the operation veer close to total collapse because people didn't recognize his brilliance.
**where a charismatic genius finds themselves in a court of fools and actually gets to solve everything by dropping some mad brilliance upon them.

[Rakaydos]

That said, to me it is something of a wasted opportunity in that a 'dwindling factory town' in space would be a wonderful venue for a no-specific-antagonist storyline -- things are being run well, but there simply isn't enough business to support everyone present who wants employment, how do the plucky protagonists turn around the town's dire straights?

To be fair, this storyline led up with "The station is costing more to run than it should." The situation you describe is entirely predictable, and should not meet that restriction.

Now, I need to resist the urge to reread the entire story arc, while at work.

[Thomas Cardew]

It's not at all an unreasonable power fantasy for a nuclear engineer turned comic artist. Doesn't work as great for someone who spends their work day doing the station manager's job and managing several self-styled geniuses who would identify with Sam (and to their credit, are quite brilliant, even if they too don't have simple solutions to institutional problems that management somehow didn't realize).

That's part of why it rings false for me at the moment. As a current nuclear engineer, part of my fantasy is to no longer have to waste time in corporate mandated trainings that exist only to (A) protect the company from a potential lawsuit not to convey useful information (B) prove that the training department is doing something.

Signed as someone who had to take a 'lead safety' training session which took a minimum of 3 hours to complete and boiled down to : 'Lead is heavy, don't move more than 1 brick at a time. Lead is toxic, don't lick the bricks. Wear gloves while handling. Wash your hands after handling the bricks. Or looking at the bricks. Or thinking about the bricks. In fact, just go wash your hands now.'

[sihnfahl]

Now, I need to resist the urge to reread the entire story arc, while at work.

Short summary...

Moon transfer reduced traffic to station, so less income.

Management starts cost cutting measures to reduce expenditures.

Missteps along the way result in needed maintenance being not done, cargo airlocks unavailable, leaking pipes, messages being sent to positions are being deleted instead of forwarded to the person who has the responsibility now, double shipments of materials (because for some reason they can't get the company that double-shipped and double-billed to pay the return shipping costs), multiple systems offline and the power 'tagged out'....

In addition, the station manager even admitted he was 'encouraging' people to leave their positions so he could replace them with robots (who don't have the expense of food, water and air). However, the existing engineers refuse to leave and give up their position unless the robots are paid the same as they are (which would include the food, water and air allowances). Not to mention they weren't doing regular preventive maintenance since the job of fixing various things were outsourced... and the outsourcers stopped working because it was taking -forever- to get paid!

[Radar]

Sam is an excellent thief.

And advocates sustainable theft. Understanding that requires at least some knowledge of how a business is run. Otherwise you cannot estimate how much you can safely steal.

Besides, Sam being good at understanding financial scams and schemes is nothing new. After all, he was the one that realized, what was Kornada's plan (technically Clippy's). He was reading up on financial scams for a long time. After the accounting class, he simply has a more detailed knowledge, which gives him better judgment of where the problems are.

[Ibrinar]

Oh is he hoping for it to fail so it drives humans from the station and he can just get robots? Would just need a way for him to survive himself.

[Rakaydos]

Oh is he hoping for it to fail so it drives humans from the station and he can just get robots? Would just need a way for him to survive himself.

He might not have connected that dot to his spreadsheet yet.

[sihnfahl]

Oh is he hoping for it to fail so it drives humans from the station and he can just get robots? Would just need a way for him to survive himself.

Only certain humans! Any easily automatable task that's handled by humans can presumably be handled by intelligent robots.

However, the things that require 'a human touch', will remain.

He'll only shut down life support in the areas where only robots will operate (docks during loading/unloading, maintenance areas / corridors, etc). All human-occupied areas will retain life support (residences, hydroponics, the central mall, administration), but they won't need as much as now because there will be fewer humans to supply.

[Radar]

Oh is he hoping for it to fail so it drives humans from the station and he can just get robots? Would just need a way for him to survive himself.

I think he is hoping that humans will be driven away before the station fails beyond repair.

[Rakaydos]

Methinks this arc will climax with Sam directing a mob to chase SOMEONE ELSE, and it will be a character moment for him.

[Willie the Duck]

Oh is he hoping for it to fail so it drives humans from the station and he can just get robots? Would just need a way for him to survive himself.

He might not have connected that dot to his spreadsheet yet.

"Shouldn't be a problem! I expect the LS failure to occur without any loss of life. After all, we do extensive emergency protocol traini...<checks leger> uh-oh!"

[Rockphed]

That's part of why it rings false for me at the moment. As a current nuclear engineer, part of my fantasy is to no longer have to waste time in corporate mandated trainings that exist only to (A) protect the company from a potential lawsuit not to convey useful information (B) prove that the training department is doing something.

Signed as someone who had to take a 'lead safety' training session which took a minimum of 3 hours to complete and boiled down to : 'Lead is heavy, don't move more than 1 brick at a time. Lead is toxic, don't lick the bricks. Wear gloves while handling. Wash your hands after handling the bricks. Or looking at the bricks. Or thinking about the bricks. In fact, just go wash your hands now.'

I think you are saying that this guy is doing what most sensible workers wish they could do. I know i have said things like "why do I have to take the stupid training every three months". My stupid training was only 15 minutes each time, and we charged if to the customer who mandated the training, but it was still stupid.

Mr Mushroom is making me think of engineers who think they know how to play the market because they understand numbers. They tend to end up broke and confused.

[Thomas Cardew]

I think you are saying that this guy is doing what most sensible workers wish they could do. I know i have said things like "why do I have to take the stupid training every three months". My stupid training was only 15 minutes each time, and we charged if to the customer who mandated the training, but it was still stupid.

Mr Mushroom is making me think of engineers who think they know how to play the market because they understand numbers. They tend to end up broke and confused.

Yes. I understand that his point is management is out of touch and making poor decisions. BUT, I find his examples poor and ill-fitting with my personal experience in the author's prior field. The organizations I've worked at that failed the Amazon test WERE the ones with dedicated procurement departments. The ones that provided the most time-consuming and useless trainings WERE the ones with dedicated training departments under HR. And I've tossed plenty of perfectly good (insert maintenance part here) because the regs say we place this every 12 months instead of every X operating hours.

Depending on when in my career I was writing a work power-fantasy comic, the evil incompetent manager would not necessarily be the one cutting bureaucratic positions and removing petty tyrants. It would be the "safety culture" slogan spewing manager who has realized that best way to ensure there is never an accident is to prevent anyone from doing actual work by wasting their time with constant mandatory reviews and training sessions.

[Anarchic Fox]

Yes. I understand that his point is management is out of touch and making poor decisions. BUT, I find his examples poor and ill-fitting with my personal experience in the author's prior field...

Depending on when in my career I was writing a work power-fantasy comic, the evil incompetent manager would not necessarily be the one cutting bureaucratic positions and removing petty tyrants. It would be the "safety culture" slogan spewing manager who has realized that best way to ensure there is never an accident is to prevent anyone from doing actual work by wasting their time with constant mandatory reviews and training sessions.

You can err in both directions. Freefall draws on decades of Peterson's experience as an engineer, so I'm guessing he saw more waste due to spurious downsizing than waste due to redundant positions and/or excessive oversight. If he had gone to work for a different company we might have seen the antagonists you're familiar with.

[Fyraltari]

I mean, that checks out.