Pulp Fact
I arrived at work this morning to find the phone with a dozen missed calls and one of the management team in a panic trying to find the keys to the store room.
"Err, there's been a flood in Sales & Credit Control, do we have any spare PC's?"
"No"
"Ok, do we have any spare PC's?"
"Still no."
The conversation went on like this for a while. I had to unlock the store cupboard to prove the point.
"Look - none!"
"Oh." and he rushed off.
Soon someone with a little more sense rang me up.
"D'you think you could bring the pool car round 'cos we need to bring all the wet PC's which were on the floor back to the IT Suite and dry them out."
I duly drove the Skoda round to the offices and remember thinking that there wasn't much rain, if any, last night. I was intrigued. I arrived and the full extent of the problem became apparent, but first a little background...
Paper is made from fibre (in our case from recycled paper) and this fibre, which is almost (but not quite) at a molecular level is suspended in water and mixed by a device called a hydrapulper. The mix is in fact 96% water and 4% fibre (give or take) and is known as "pulp". This mix is light-to-mid brown and *just* holds it's own weight. The best way to describe it is as the very best quality quick-sand. When left its own devices it spreads to about 2" deep over an extraordinarily large area.
This large area was in fact the Sales Office, the new Sales Office.
For an as yet unexplained reason, the hydrapulper at 2am had suddenly decided to fill up the Sales Office instead of the wet-end of the paper machine. The pulp had overflowed, filled up the floor of the paper machine, flowed into the yard, across the road, down the path and into the offices.
As my friend once said when he drove his car into a French river "All of my luggage was half wet."
Yup, all of the PC's which were standing on end on the floor were half wet.
Do we hose 'em off now, or wait for the pulp to dry and chip it off later?
"Err, there's been a flood in Sales & Credit Control, do we have any spare PC's?"
"No"
"Ok, do we have any spare PC's?"
"Still no."
The conversation went on like this for a while. I had to unlock the store cupboard to prove the point.
"Look - none!"
"Oh." and he rushed off.
Soon someone with a little more sense rang me up.
"D'you think you could bring the pool car round 'cos we need to bring all the wet PC's which were on the floor back to the IT Suite and dry them out."
I duly drove the Skoda round to the offices and remember thinking that there wasn't much rain, if any, last night. I was intrigued. I arrived and the full extent of the problem became apparent, but first a little background...
Paper is made from fibre (in our case from recycled paper) and this fibre, which is almost (but not quite) at a molecular level is suspended in water and mixed by a device called a hydrapulper. The mix is in fact 96% water and 4% fibre (give or take) and is known as "pulp". This mix is light-to-mid brown and *just* holds it's own weight. The best way to describe it is as the very best quality quick-sand. When left its own devices it spreads to about 2" deep over an extraordinarily large area.
This large area was in fact the Sales Office, the new Sales Office.
For an as yet unexplained reason, the hydrapulper at 2am had suddenly decided to fill up the Sales Office instead of the wet-end of the paper machine. The pulp had overflowed, filled up the floor of the paper machine, flowed into the yard, across the road, down the path and into the offices.
As my friend once said when he drove his car into a French river "All of my luggage was half wet."
Yup, all of the PC's which were standing on end on the floor were half wet.
Do we hose 'em off now, or wait for the pulp to dry and chip it off later?
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