Caliber, Rustler, and Many Other Disasters

The book cover

### Characters

Harvey Warderwar, Edward, Brinewood, George, James Culleck, Eric, Williams, Grinshov Altik

## Book Info

Caliber, Rustler, and Many Other Disasters is the fourth book published by the What is Happening company. It still is one of the most well-respected books in the WIH community, not only because of its exceptional formatting (cream paper, 0.75 margins, great cover photos) but because of the incredible plot. This is the first book written by the WIHS company that has a theme of office comedy. It's still very interesting to read, and it's fairly lengthy as well compared to Secrets of the Shopkeeper, coming in at 117 pages, or 26,000 words.

The first edition had a slight problem with the spine. Amazon threw an error upon the review process, stating that the text on the spine was too close to one edge. The WIHS company had to go back in and edit it, and in doing so, they changed the font because the old one was just too hard to see. The old font was [Luke] Castellan, and the new one was Impact, like the cover font. That's why the new version is often referred to as Version 1.5, although nothing else was changed.

## Plot

We are introduced to Harvey Warderwar, a software engineer who works at Rustler Technologies Incorporated, in the beginning of the book. It is evidenced by the power outage and the grudging way Harvey treats his job that he doesn't like working at Rustler at all. This book also takes place about a decade before the time it was published, meaning that all the computers are running Windows 8 and using Skype for Business.

Then, in the second chapter, things get worse when Harvey goes to work. He is chewed out by his belligerent boss, Edward, many times, and a new disaster springs up: the Destination innovation crew that Rustler has hired has gone completely out of control, vandalizing the Rustler building and forcing the CEO, James Culleck, to take action. In the midst of all this, Harvey has just discovered that his team wants him to build a new product, hard drives, because Rustler needs to "take on more sales". Harvey disagrees with this and begins to feel overwhelmed.

And then, a few chapters later, the building's air conditioner units go out, and Edward and Herbert, one of Harvey's coworkers, get into an argument at the one o'clock lunch meeting about which air conditioner to purchase. When they finally do decide on a new set of units, the curious George (no pun intended) destroys them all by flinging a pen into the compressor fan, and the Rustler company is forced to drop yet *more* money on a new set of air conditioners. Unfortunately, the management is not aware at the time that the blower fan has also gone out, as a result of George's screwing around, and later on, Harvey of all people is put on the job of ordering a new blower fan, whiel at the same time trying to build a hard drive.

Things go on in this crazy fashion for a while until Caliber, a fellow software company, partners up with Rustler, and things totally spiral downwards into hell. Caliber gets mad about how Rustler treated them upon the merging process, and a huge war is started. Every day, Harvey comes into work and is greeted to a completely vandalized lobby, most of the time done by Caliber employees, and things take a turn for the worse when a Russian scammer, Grinshov Altik, takes control of Caliber and augments their abilities, drawing them towards destroying Rustler. The Rustler security team out in San Diego gets infiltrated by Grinshov, and later on the entire building collapses after someone presses a "Help" button that *actually* self-destructs the entire building.

Thomas, a security agent at the San Diego building, returns home after the disaster to find an angry Rustler customer yelling on the local news channel about how he purchased a Rustler hard drive that had a sticker on it, saying "I AM A HARD DRIVE". This is an Easter egg that was last mentioned earlier in the book, when Harvey saw a hard drive bearing the same exact sticker rolling off the product building conveyor belt in the Rustler building. Then, later that night, Grinshov himself comes to Thomas's house and demands answers from him about Rustler, who happens to be accompanied by the same guy who was yelling on the news channel.

Eventually, Rustler and Caliber come to a truce near the end of the book, Grinshov is subdued by the FBI, and things return to normal. During all of this, Harvey has applied to two different jobs, and by the end of the book, he has switched jobs at a different software company.

## Back Cover Blurb Text

*"All Harvey Warderwar ever wanted was a nice, predictable career as a software developer at Rustler, Inc. But between his tyrannical bosses, Rustler's lagging sales, and a questionable merger with rival company Caliber, Harvey is thrust into a corporate war he never wanted. As if that wasn't enough, things take a turn for the worse when a scammer tries to take control of the new conglomerate and tear it apart from within. Will Harvey reach his breaking point before he goes down with the corporate ship? Or will he find a way to save his employer from the clutches of the scam artist and claim the satisfying career in tech that he's always wanted?"*