Captain Kirk's Blog IX

January 14, 2268

Why Are All These Lights Blinking, Beeping and Flashing?

I am surrounded by a myriad of control panels with lights and switches and not one of them is labeled. How are we supposed to tell which button is which? I tried to check my Spacebook page the other day and nearly hit the self destruct. Tried to flush out the sceptic tanks and got a nasty text from the mirror universe that their transporter was flooded.

It's not just me, poor Scotty had to run a transporter with Heisenberg compensators (Something none of us understand.) with a bunch of unmarked switches and a row of blinking lights.

I don't know how Sulu drives this thing, although he never did like labels.

I tried to requisition a few post-it notes from Starfleet but they just said we're "paperless" now that we have talking computers. How can you build a starship and not label anything? Damn engineers, straight out of a Dilbert cartoon, except Scotty, he's the illegitimate lovechild of Sean Connery and Scrooge McDuck. (And a good enough sport not to take a swing at me if he reads this.) I swear I am going insane with all this blinking, beeping and flashing.

Commander Adama

Tell me about it!

I once tried to launch vipers and dropped the New Years Eve balloons in the Space Disco. Fortunately the Cylons were confused enough to give us a chance to remedy things. I thought I was going senile, but realized Tigh wasn't doing any better when he accidentally turned up the gravity on the Pyramid court during the Final Four. I think it was accidental, although a lot of money changed hands.

Admiral Adama

Maybe if you'd spent your last refit putting on labels instead of installing a Pyramid court you would have lasted more than one season. I heard the Seventh fleet never fired a shot, just emptied their trash and erased a couple of 8 tracks. Although we could have used at least one label, a bright shiny one that said "THIS IS A CYLON!"

Captain Picard

It's the damn bureaucracy really. I checked the records and labels were ordered for Enterprise B, but didn't arrive before Enterprise C. By that time Starfleet had switched to Mac and the whole thing was irrelevant. I put in an order a long time ago for bridge consoles that didn't blow up whenever the ship was hit in any place. (I know we had this discussion, but I'd like to add, what do shields do anyway?)

I imagine somewhere out there is a 26th century Enterprise that actually works.

Captain Morgan

Arrgh! You get your ship and you don't get upset. God you are a bunch of whiny little bitches.

Captain Stubing

You tell 'em Morgan. I never complained about anything and my ship worked smoothly for years. Never got boarded by anybody but Charo.

Captain Crunch

No, this time I think our often shirtless colleague has a point. I say flog all the engineers and maybe they'll put alot more time into their work and less into their D&D characters.