Backup Strategy

This terrible business with Snob Duben and the spider assault has reminded me of a few things.  My effort to demonstrate the level of my resolve may have crossed the line.  It was not professional for me to threaten him with spiders.  That is not the AcMo way.  We don't like spiders here, so it was more an implied threat than an actual one.  His imagination did the rest.  However, I'm concerned that we'll be hit with another hostile workplace suit in the near future.  What pains me most about a possible lawsuit is that Snob Duben doesn't even work here!

Playing hardball is always a gamble.  Sometimes you're the bat, and other times you're the ball getting hit out of the park.  I prefer to stack the odds in our favor, so we enhance our bats and use only slow motion balls.  It makes it difficult for us to do anything other than hit home runs.  Since nobody knows we manipulated the situation, we appear to be superhuman.  We don't ever do anything to discourage that perception since we hope it will become the reality.

Just as I was beginning to feel sorry for Snob and the terror (SPIDERS!) I put him through, something strange occurred.  In what could only be considered by him to be a fortuitous mishap, the hard drive that held his contract data melted before I had a chance to run a backup.  This data included all of the files that served as additional leverage in case the spiders weren't enough.  I could write a new contract with better terms for AcMo and he might not notice, but most of our leverage has burned.  This is a real issue that impacts every business that uses a computer to store documents, and thus it represents another potential revenue stream for AcMo to exploit.  Without real leverage, most businesses can't stay in business.  We haven't determined how this happened yet, but the initial investigation indicates the failure was not an accident.

HDD failures and security breaches are common yet unfortunate occurrences.  We do our best at AcMo to safeguard against both.  Our backup protocols exceed the industry minimums which puts us into position to guarantee we probably won't lose your sensitive data, and if we do, it would be weeks before we figured it out and notified you.  In our defense, we have a lot of other things we need to monitor, such as the date of our next test session and which customer's vehicle we'll be "testing".

Backups need to be for more than just data.  Human intelligence within the organization needs to be preserved as well.  The operations manuals might tell an FNG how to do the job, but the knowledge gained from experience won't necessarily make it into the manual.  This was on my mind today as I considered AcMo's upcoming tactical operations.

Since I hold the details for all of AcMo's operations in my head, I need a personal backup strategy.  I had thought my brain was hack proof until I learned about the critical vulnerability in our previous tin foil supplier's product.  The problem is that our new formulation tin foil hat prevents me from getting anything done or having any memory of doing it.  This is not helpful to our ability to preserve AcMo's operational procedures.

If something happened to me, the employees would be lost.  Without direction, AcMo would plunge into chaos.  I had thought that partnering with Snob Duben would give me the sacrificial pawn I needed, but I was wrong.  I am going to need to think on a larger scale.  I will need an entire army.  The general can't risk going into battle.  All it would take is for me to suffer a traumatic brain injury and AcMo would be finished.  The only way I can minimize the risk of that happening is to stay off the battlefield.  And I'm going to start wearing a helmet all of the time.

Even a successor in training wouldn't be enough to prevent total system collapse.  No, the only way I can guarantee the continued success of AcMo is to stay in my offices as much as possible and let other people fight our battles for us.  This is not Hannibal's time (not Lecter or Smith, but Hannibal Barca) when military commanders were expected to actually be part of the fighting.  That doesn't fly in modern times because a general is now expected to control from a distance.  In fact, that has given me an idea for a new revenue stream.  Private Military Companies (PMC) seem to be popular these days, and it seems like now would be a great time for AcMo to join the trend.  An AcMo PMC would provide the perfect proxies to fight our battles and spread brand awareness and goodwill in the process.  We already have strategic bases across the country from which the AMPMC can operate, so all we really need to do is find enough mercenaries private military contractors to staff them.

Because some of our revenue streams have involved the manufacture of psychological weapons, we have an adequate arsenal to start our newest company.  All we need are the mercs PMCs.  Craigslist would have been my default site for staffing, but I'm beginning to think the quality of the merchandise listed is not up to AcMo's standards after having so many problems.  Everything we try to buy on Craigslist ends up being wrong.  The vacuum cleaner I thought I just bought ended up being a coin operated lawnmower.  That was not in the description.  I'm having trouble figuring out the best place to buy the soldiers.  This will require additional research before I can get AMPMC staffed.

Starting tomorrow we will be improving our backup strategy and anti-intrusion security across the AcMo empire.  We hope to make security breaches extinct even if we have to do it one vulnerability at a time.  Maybe we'll work on our PMC next week.  I'm excited to get some troops on the board so I don't have to worry about risking my own health in this upcoming battle.  I may even be able to remove Snob Duben from the sacrificial lamb group.  I can't decide if I should take the spider off of his back though.