Phantom Server

Boss: Terry, did you disconnect that license server?
Me:  Yea.  It’s been down for an hour.
Boss: I can still connect to it.
Me: How?
Boss: Well, I can ping it.  What do you think’s causing it?
Me: Honestly?  Internet gnomes.
Boss: Gnomes?
Me: Well, maybe faeries, but rarely do web faeries work on the business levels.
Boss: So, gnomes?
Me: Yes, gnomes are well known for finding packets destine for disconnected computers and ferrying those packets to the appropriate computers.  That’s why my iPhone works in some train tunnels.
Boss: So… what do we do?
Me: Act quickly to get the server back online, otherwise, the gnomes will get tired and turn against us.  Remember that day we had 10kbps upload to the offsite server?
Boss: Yes.
Me: We angered them without offering tribute.  They extracted their pound of flesh.
Boss: Hm…

I love knowing I’m going to be fired.