SuburbanAdventure

The actual printers in our office don’t work yet but we found a somewhat close but hard to find printer.  My first set of directions weren’t clear enough so I provided the following:

Go up the stairs everyone uses to make phone calls because it’s the only place that gets more than two bars that used to empty into the front door of the giant freezer that had a “NO EXPLOSIVES” next to an “EXPLOSIVE-RESISTANT FREEZER” sign.  Exit the loud door and walk past filing cabinets plastered with art from Publisher 95 corresponding to the last time this “precious data” was used.  Make a left before the soul-sucking morass of cubes and then a prompt right at the giant empty koala head.  Make a prompt right before the line of coffee stains and listen for cursing, crying and grinding to find the printer.

As part of the move, several “sytem improvements” have been spawned.  So far, I’ve noted the following:

1. Outlook waits about 30 seconds after opening before prompting the operator for a password during which time one can send and receive emails, view calendars, and create appointments.
2. McAfee no longer does background updates and includes such useful prompts as “would you like to update now? (If you click “NO” the update will occur in 30 seconds)” and a splash screen to tell you when the update’s complete that goes away automatically after infuriating you for 10 seconds pegged to the front of the desktop.
3. All the web shortcuts on my desk now depict the logo for Netscape Navigator.
4. Our desktops are now automatically backed up once a day but the initial backup will take me several days due to the amount of local data during which I’ve been getting “backup error!” messages that stop the backup and restart it.  All I need is one 96 hour day and everything’ll be fine.
5. It also appears to take less personal information to reset my password after muffing it three times than it does to reset it with my full arsenal of personal information.

Today was the day of the great computer migration where we’d switch from Novell to Windows.  The migration was a failurepile inside of a sadnessbowl but the thing that really got me the fact that they took my f*%@ing network cable.  Really?  You had to take my 3′ cable and replace it with a 50′ one?  I could take the slack of my cable, kick out the window and repel to the first f*cking floor with it.  That’s re-effing-diculous.  Then, when I ask, you tell me it’s because of the migration?  I’ve met simpleton mutes who made sense than that.  How did we get the Keystone Cops of tech support to do this?  Then you tell me I can have a static IP but it’ll change periodically?  Then it’s not f*&$ing static is it! Gha….

I’d tell the story of them holding up the migration on a coworker because they didn’t know what network port on the wall he used.  There’s two, one about six inches from his computer and another that’s visible from his desk only via periscoping binoculars. Guess.

On my way to Teejay’s after helping do buddy tags at camp, I received a call from the spouse of an august camp staffer.

Her: I’m trying to get in contact with <staffer name> and I couldn’t find the right number.
Me: This is the personal number for me.  You realize that?
Her: Yes, you’re marked for emergencies.
Me: Oh… Well, what do you need?
Her: I need to get in contact with my husband.  He left something here that he shouldn’t.
Me: (Knowing her husband has a chronic medical condition), if it’s a real emergency I can drop it off, what is it?
Her: Oh, dear no.  He just forgot clean undewear.

As the shooting sports director he should be able to rustle up something.   Although, I thought that forgetting underwear ended at the age of about 12.  Looks like there’s simply a “golden half-century of underwear recall” between 12 and 62.   Only 37 years left, myself.

I went food shopping the other day for the first time in over a month and acquired two mules worth of food.  But with the oven broke, our options are limited.  So, I decided to play it subtle.  During unloading:

Dad: Stewwing potatoes, stew meat, chicken stock, chili mix, Crockpot Delights, and stuff for the toaster oven.  I guess I should look into getting a new bake element for the oven if I ever want to use a fork again.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!

I have a beautiful framed lithograph of Magritte’s Son of Man which has been leaning on the wall from my desk:

Son of Man

A lot of people laugh at it, I’m not sure why.  The best guess I’ve heard so far was that it was a portrait of Steve Jobs.  Anyway, I wanted to mount it but could only find a finishing hammer and a small sledge.  I chose the sledge.
Bad News: The sledge beat out the plaster.
Good News: the evidence is now nicely covered by a beautiful framed lithograph of Magritte’s Son of Man.

There are a bunch of networked drives to which each CAD person gets selective access.  Today, these permissions were done… apparently.

Tech Guy: Done, sir.  Each of your CAD workers has read/write/modify access to all drives.
Boss:  Whoa… They shouldn’t.  I sent a document outlining each person’s access.
Tech Guy:  *Checks Blackberry, sees missed message* … Well, wouldn’t you want your workers to have total access…
Boss: No.  *Hands tech 2″ binder outlining CAD permission policy*
Tech Guy: But each of these permissions’ll take 15 minutes to do, you sure you don’t want…
Boss: Now.
Tech Guy: You should learn to trust your technicians.

I’m confident that his final statement wouldn’t have made it out had my boss possessed laser vision.

So a mass email was sent out that the building is losing its water from 4 AM to 6 AM Monday.  My coworkers started chattering about why their time was wasted with the message not realizing how this could cripple a portion of their work staff: me!  That’s the quality time where I check email and then read Wired magazine on the can.  It’s when I make ice cubes and take a really long time to wash my hands because one soap dispenser has nice soap.   It’s when I setup the office report cover slip ‘n’ slide!  Now when am I going to get a headstart on not doing anything important?

My office has been migrating from one backend to another as we depart from our previous corporate mothership.  The transition has gone as smooth as the breakup of the British Raj in India and my boss delayed our team’s rollout a week as we’re effectively useless without both a functioning printer and web access.  We expected the tech person to arrive at 9 AM today and he rolled in around 4 PM:

Tech Guy: Sir, I’m here to do your migration.
Boss: Ok, who do you want to start on?
Tech Guy: I was told there was one system.
Boss: There is, one system consisting of 7 users using 13 computers.
Coworker: And three printers!
Coworker 2: And the big scanner!
Coworker: And our phones!

Then, like a recently potty trained child that just pooped themselves, the tech support guy let out an “uh oh” that could have been used in a Pampers commercial.   He kinda shuffled a bit and then left to “get help” which I assume gave him time to change his pants.  He came back empty handed so it looks like our office will have to wait a week to be crippled by his incompetence.

There was an empty box of Heineken’s in the trash today.  Either work has gotten a whole lot better or a whole lot worse for some people.