if Phillip K Dick did steampunk

Last night, my wife and I watched 1950's "So Long at the Fair", a Jean Simmons film I had never even heard of.

Set in 1889, it shows a wealthy young woman and her brother on their way to the Paris Exposition. They check in at their hotel, after which they go to the Moulin Rouge, where they have a grand time before turning in to the separate rooms. Next morning, the young woman gets up, walks over to ber brother's room.

Except that there's no room. There's no door where one used to be. Everybody in the hotel says that she came alone, and that they never saw any brother of hers.

Interesting little film.

like Billy Pilgrim but without Valerie Perrine

These days, I'm working on a project with a tight deadline - or trying to when I'm not being tripped up by the incompetent contractor thrashing around in the same database. I was told that the target was February 11. Early this afternoon, I found out (and apparently was the last person to be told) that all of that date's projects would instead be deployed on February 18. Then, one hour later, my team lead said that my project would go in later in March, due to problems with the team that'll provide the new feed to us. One hour after that, during a meeting my target was changed to April 8, but everybody else would stick with February 18. That meant removing my changes now, and redoing all my testing after February 18. One minute after I was done archiving my code changes, the other team had retracted its earlier statement, which meant that my project could be deployed in February, but my team lead couldn't tell me if it'd be on February 18 or on February 11.

Why can't they run the government like a business?