Girlie’s Xmas Annual – Part I

Hello World!  

And welcome to Girlie’s Xmas Xtravaganza !

Well, the Festive Season is upon us and Girlie Geek Productions has been hard at work to bring you extra lolz.

We freely admit that it’s been far too quiet on this blog recently.

So now (drum roll… ) for your general delectation and delight, we bring you not one, not two but three snippets of humour to help get the party underway

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Colour Mag

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Traditional Forensicator’s Xmas Quiz

Limber up, you Lab rats !  Answer the following questions as honestly as you can then count up your answers and see what category Forensicator you are !

1:  A solicitor calls wanting vital picture evidence off a mobile do you:

a) Tell them it’ll be £700 + VAT and it’ll take 30 days to process.

b) Ask for the make & model and give a truthful prognosis on likely results.

c) Tell them it’ll be 60 quid – just chuck it in a Jiffy bag & post it to the Lab.

2: You hear the Met contract is up for grabs, anyone pitching for it has to do a test case.  Do you:

a) Set the Lab’s best Rottweilers on it whilst charging their time to big-budget clients.

b) Take it too seriously & worry they’ve put Stego on there for a laugh.

c) Con Russ May into thinking it’s a real case & pay him to do it for you.

3: You win a large LE contract. Do you:

a) Sack the staff then get them back in on short contracts to maximise profits.

b) Rejoice for 15 minutes then worry that the weight of work might impact on standards.

c) Grab all the students and wannabies you can get your hands on to populate the mobile lab – they’ll only have to push buttons, anyhow.

4: The following statement describes how your organisation sees digital forensics:

a) It’s a gravy train – charge as much as you can for as little work as possible.

b) We eat, sleep and breathe forensics & have little else in the way of conversation.

c) Forensics? No time for that. Too busy making vacuous comments on Twitter.

5: The annual F3 conference is on.  How do you spend the time?

a) Visiting all the vendors just to hoover up the sweeties and freebies.

b) Virtuously on Day 1, pie-eyed on Day 2 & completely wasted on Day 3.

c) Dolling out booze and forensic goodies to favoured police officers in an attempt to curry favour.

6:  A nice fat civil case comes up but the box for analysis is a MacBook Air.  Do you:

a) Suck your teeth, whinge about how difficult it’s going to be and double your normal quote.

b) Dig MacQuisition out of the storeroom, pronto.

c) Know naff all about Macs but take it on anyway.

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Now check your score:

Mostly As – You are a medium to large scale forensic shop with nice modern offices in a reasonable location and enough contract work coming in to feel smugly secure. Good luck when you lose your main LE contract.

Mostly Bs – You are a small shop constantly taking on too much work for too little money and being way too thorough to cut much profit but you’re happy because you love the job and your clients think you’re heroes.

Mostly Cs – You are Kraptech Forensics.

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Part II coming after the break…

The Dickens of a tale

No one conjures up the sense and spirit of the Victorian era or, indeed, the traditional Christmas like Charles Dickens – probably the best loved author of his time and far beyond. Tremendously successful in his own lifetime, he nevertheless had to publish his famous ghost story ‘A Christmas Carol’, himself and made little money out of it, despite its immense popularity.

The finished work appeared in 1843.  It seems, though, that he was tinkering with the idea at least a year beforehand.  At that point, the focus of the tale was a small, seedy little forensic shop, somewhere in the midst of England’s dark, satanic mills.  Here the main protagonist, Ebenezer Scrotes, plied his dubious trade.

That Dickens knew anything of digital forensics has shocked literary circles.  Yet the distinctive style of the master in this previously unknown manuscript, has convinced many that it is, indeed, by that illustrious author’s own hand.

Now read on…

The Ghost of Christmas Past

Business was dead, to begin with.  There was no doubt about that. The phones lay silent.  Outside, the snow more silent still.  It twinkled, irritatingly, in the last, thin light of the sun.  At least it was irritating to Scrotes, who was seated in a large chair near to the office window.  He looked on the scene and glowered.

The Rotary Club sleigh had pulled up at the pavement opposite and now started to blast out carols from its tinny little speakers.  Someone wearing a Santa hat got out of the front of the float and stood on the street, beaming.  Scrotes could see him mouthing: ‘Merry Christmas!’ to passers by who stopped to exchange pleasantries and drop a few pence into the offered collection pot.

‘Bah,’ said Scrotes, ‘Humbug.’

Mr Ebenezer Scrotes in Seasonal humour

In the room behind, the one member of staff made to stay on duty past midday, who, until then, had been totally absorbed in a game of Angry Birds, raised his gaze.  He, too, looked outside and smiled, wistfully.  He was thinking of the excitement that would be going on at home, at that moment.  The children squealing with delighted anticipation.  He wife, run ragged, desperately trying to get them to watch ‘The Snowman’ DVD for the fourteen millionth time.

‘Can’t wait to be with my wonderful little family’ , he Tweeted, as quietly as he could, keeping the Android under the lip of his desk.

‘Christmas a humbug, Mr Scrotes?’ he ventured, ‘You don’t mean that, I am sure.’

‘I do,’ said Scrotes and he made a fist of his right hand and shook it without bothering to lift it from the arm rest, ‘Bloody religion.  Hate it.  Cause of all the world’s problems… and all of mine.. ‘

Oh dear, thought Smallbutt – for that was his name – here we go.  It’ll be the off-colour Pope jokes again in a minute.

‘Christmas isn’t just about religion, anyway,’ Scrotes ranted.  And, thinking the observation marvelously erudite, Tweeted it, on the instant.

‘Come, now,’ tried Smallbutt, amiably, ‘There is no need to be dismal.  We have every chance of winning that LE contract that Kraptech have just lost…’

Scrotes’ pudgy fingers were punching something out on the keyboard in front of him.  Smallbutt  glanced at the Twitter feed.

‘Hardly time to to s**t , here, we’re so busy.  Busy, busy, busy.. ‘

That would fool the opposition.  In any event, he’d relied upon similar updates doing so the rest of the year.

‘Humm.. Kraptech.. yes..’ Scrotes suddenly replied and his hard-bitten, bully-boy features started to warm, for if he had known what it meant, he’d have invented the term Schadenfreude and sold it on to the Germans. ‘Serves the silly b*st*rds right.’

Privately, though, Scrotes had had a grudging admiration for Kraptech’s tactics on that contract bid.  It took balls to get analysts you’d just fired to come back in for the day of the Police look-around in order to give the impression of a thriving, fully-staffed lab.

‘They almost got away with it, though,’ he said, now, out loud, ‘If that bloke hadn’t turned up for interview with the same Force and let the cat out of the bag…  ‘

He mused on the idea for a moment or two before adding, ‘Well, we’d better bloody well get a look-in.  I had enough coppers drinking my Sake at F3.  Best futsuu it was.  Not that that lot would appreciate it.  They owe me for those Faraday bags I gave them, too..’

He was interrupted by a knock at the door.  Before Smallbutt could extract his corpulent frame from behind the desk and go to answer it, the sound of young voices started to waft in:

‘God rest ye merry, Gentlemen

Let nothing you dismay.. ‘

‘Merry?’ bellowed Scrotes, leaping up, ‘What right have you to be Merry?  What reason?’

He threw open the door to reveal four kiddies, not one above the age of ten and all muffled up against the bitter cold, for an icy fog was descending.  They shrank together at the sight of the great mountain of a man before them, face flushed in anger, the glare from the strip lighting above bouncing wildly off his bald pate.

‘Please, Sir,’ started one, voice trembling, ‘Collecting for the homeless.’

‘Tell ‘em to go to the Sally Army,’ returned Scrotes, and slammed the door.

‘That’s a bit harsh,’ said Smallbutt.

‘I give to charity when I please,’ said Scrotes, ‘Bloody Seasonal blackmail.’

He shuffled back to his chair and settled into it, feeling rather more self righteous than before.

‘Bah,’ he said, at length, and then, ‘Humbug !’

And as the darkness closed in and the last shoppers scurried away and Smallbutt finally headed out into fresh falling snow towards a noisy, welcoming home, he thought of the carol singers, and their astonished, innocent faces.  Glancing quickly over his shoulder, he looked back towards the office door.  It was ghostly, now, half lost in the thickening fog.  He thought of those Christmases yet to come and shook his head.

‘God help us, every one!’

Mr Dickens in 1842 with his amazingly innovative steam netbook