Workplace Warrior

Beautiful e-mail

2006-12-21T13:44:00.000+02:00

On the basis of currently not having much to do what with the Christmas lull, I thought I'd share a recent e-mail I received.

Spot the problem.

From: ***** *****
Sent: 20 December 2006 01:56 PM
Subject: HELP, ALL MY E-MAILS ARE COMING BACK!

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: RE: DECEMBER 2006 PAYMENT SCHEDULE

Sent: 2006/12/20 01:55 PM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

kim@********.co.za on 2006/12/20 01:50 PM

There was a SMTP communication problem with the recipient's email server. Please contact your system administrator.

, Recipient unknown>

Interesting concept

2006-02-20T10:47:00.000+02:00

If you've ever been one to want to know what others think of you, these following links might be quite interesting to you:

If you think I'm a jackass, fill out this one: http://kevan.org/nohari?name=Mburr

If you think I'm actually not half bad, fill out this one: http://kevan.org/johari?name=Mburr

DNS for the biglose

2006-02-03T12:06:00.000+02:00

If you've read through my prior posts, you would most likely have figured out that I work at a computer company, no names mentioned. We "specialize" in, amongst other things, "Connectivity/Network support".

Don't let that fool you though. Last week Monday, whilst on leave, I was called in for an "emergency". We'd supplied a server to handle a company's VPN networking. And for some reason, it wasn't working properly. So that led to me having to drive out to Alberton to sort out the problem.

Upon arriving, I noticed that the computers weren't logging on to the domain server across the VPN. They were XP boxes, and were logging on in offline mode. And for some odd reason, this was a major mindfuck for everyone at my company. The response I received from them was something along the line of, "ZOMGROFIL MICORSOFT HAAAAXXXXX!!@%". Obviously they missed the memo on XP's biggest corporate selling point.

Anyhow, I managed to talk the boss through enabling remote administration on the server, which I could ping through the VPN. And subsequent to that, I logged onto the server, and took a look at the services. Guess what? No DNS server service had been set up. Gee, no wonder the DNS wasn't being broadcast to those machines. No wonder the domain controller wasn't being seen by other ip ranges.

So I set up the DNS, and phoned the engineering manager. After telling him what the problem was, he responded very intellectually, saying, "ROFLMAYOLOLZ BUT TEH PEE SEE R TEH LOGIN 2 TEH DOUGH MAIN!!!1!".

"Yes, I know they are on the one ip range. But there's a difference between DNS server and domain server."

"ROFL IT R LOG ON????"

"No, it's in offline mode."

"ZOMGH4XXX0RRR3D!!!!!!"

At about this point, I tried to change the topic onto that of farewells, since obviously I was the only person that half knew what a DNS server did. I just wanted to get rid of the man and go sleep.

The moral of this story though, is that the only two people in this company that seem to have the foggiest about DNS are sitting in the sales section.

Web content

2006-02-03T11:50:00.000+02:00

Today is one of those days. It's the type of day where you fantasize about life in a mental asylum, with your free white jacket, your arms strapped up behind you, bouncing off comfy padded walls all day, and being able to freak out the interns without fear of repurcussion. That would be the life.

Anyhow, I came in somewhat late this morning, since I have to rely on other people for the content I need at the moment. And I was subsequently berated by one of the people who are supposed to give me said content. He'd been waiting for me for two hours apparently.

So I waltz into the office, sit down at my desk to work, and what does he do? He starts playing Backgammon.

I'm not asking much

2005-11-14T23:00:00.000+02:00

After a rip-roaring few weeks, which saw me managing to get the morons in Durban ousted, because they're simply not interested, another travesty of logic has occured.

I don't ask much. But please, please, can't the company I'm at find someone in the IT industry who actually has any fucking clue as to TCP/IP and the software side of networking?

Maybe I've something of an attitude problem, but I feel it above and beyond the call of duty to explain to someone how TCP/IP works, and how user accounts and domains work. I've actually had to do this over the past four days.

Can't they just go buy TCP/IP for dummies, or something?

Captain Voicemail, to save the DAY!

2005-10-18T15:52:00.000+02:00

Two weeks ago, at about 8 pm, on a Sunday, or a Friday or something very unworklike, I received a phone call from one of our guys in Durban.

"Man, y'know, this printer, is not working. Says something about print spooler." - Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. That tells me a ton. I asked him if I can phone him back.

After a little deliberation, and actually getting through my pressing work at hand, much telepathy and much questioning led me to come to the conclusion that it's probably malware of some sort.

So I phoned the guy up, left him a voicemail, telling him to download Microsoft AntiSpyware, and install the latest virus definitions on that computer, do scans, and see if it fixes the problem. Easy to follow instructions, I would think?

Today, two and a half weeks down the line, he phones my manager, with the exact same problem. So my manager gets him on the phone, and I chat to him. The conversation ensues - "Sham, did you get my voicemail?"

"Yes man, I did, but y'know, I don't have that software."

"What software?"

"No man, y'know, the AntiSpyware. I don't have it."

"Uh... ok... download it?"

"From where?"

"The Microsoft website...? It is free, and all that."

"So like, must I just search for it?"

"Yes...."

There are some days when I wish I could push a button on my cellphone, and have a tiny piece of C4 charge located in someone else's cellphone blow their head off, because obviously they're not using it.

2005-09-26T09:49:00.000+02:00

Mondays....

Mondays....

They're those days where you just find yourself sitting at your desk, staring into space like some kind of hallucinogen-ingesting hippy. You park off at your desk, spending time staring at the development console you're supposed to be working in, staring at your half-full caffeine-intake-coffee-mug system.

Mondays and I get on fabulously. Envision a braai with both George Bush and Saddam Hussein in attendance. Add beers into the equation. They're the type of day where I find myself making sure I leave the teaspoons I use to stir my coffee in the kitchen, lest I be tempted to bestow upon someone a new breathing cavity.

They're the type of days where you can't even get in to the office and make yourself a cup of coffee before someone phones you on your cellphone with some bullshit problem.

Estimated time of actual useful functioning: 1pm
Estimated intake of coffee necessary to function: 3 more cups

LOLZHAVESUMCASH!!@

2005-09-21T23:33:00.000+02:00

Today was beautiful. I got tipped more for some freelance stuff I'm doing than I get paid, basic-wage-wise, per day.

Crazy three weeks

2005-09-20T14:32:00.000+02:00

I arrived back in Johannesburg from Durbs yesterday evening. My entire weekend was spent fixing up Kwa-Zulu Natal's Nu Metro branches. Quite ironic, really, how two sales representatives are the last line of defence at a company that employs "software technicians".

But let's rather start from the beginning. Let's take a ride back in time, to last week Wednesday night.

It was a Wednesday night like every other. I'd been to gym, and was feeling quite relaxed, at ease, and at peace. I arrived home, went through my usual routine, and then proceeded to try and sleep. Unsuccessfully, I might add.

Insomnia hit, and I struggled with it for most of the night. I eventually got to sleep at around 3 am, and woke up at 9 am, a bit late for work, but I'd already made arrangements for that inevitability at the beginning of the week, given I'd been battling with my insomnia for awhile now.

Anyway, the boss phoned me as I was climbing into my car, wanting to know where I was. "We've got a virus problem, and I want you to take a look at it.", he said. So, I made my way off to the office, and arrived at work, to confront the boss.

"No, we've got a problem at Nu Metro Menlyn. There's a virus on their network, and we weren't blah blah bullshit yada yada blah yada yada." were how the excuses he made registered in my mind.

"So let me get this straight....", I said, "You had two people on site yesterday for the entire day, and they weren't able to fix the problem? One of them was Lennie?"

Lennie happens to be the company's lead software technician, and I found out today that he had the tools on-site to fix the problem. Hell, I fixed the problem with the tools I had when I got on site. So what the rollicking monkeymosh was the problem? I'll tell you. Laziness.

So off I go to Menlyn, along with my cousin. We were the last line of defence, the people called in to fix problems that nobody else can. And guess what? I found out today that we're both employed as sales representatives. Quite ironic, really, that the "sales" team knows more about fixing viruses than the Engineering department.

Anyway, we find out that the majority of the infected machines were running out of date service packs, and didn't have certain necessary hotfixes loaded on them. Not only that, but their virus packages were outdated too. Nice one, Lennie. According to him, he didn't know about the computers in the back, and only worked on the ones in front. But those were also improperly configured. And this guy gets paid between three and four times what I do.

Come 9pm, we walk out of there, the entire Menlyn Nu Metro branch sorted out. Was it difficult? No. Could Lennie have done it if he gave a fuck? Yes. So why did we have to go out there after Lennie had been there? Fuck knows.

Guess what my weekend consisted of? I'll tell you. A return ticket to Durban, along with my cousin, to fix all Nu Metro's KZN branches. And we did. How many hours of overtime did we work? 56 in total, 28 each. How much am I getting for it? R722, before tax. How much does he get for it? R470, before tax. How much is Lennie's daily basic wage? Most likely around R450.

Am I the only person that sees something wrong with this equation?

Keyboard error

2005-09-01T12:25:00.000+02:00

Someone requested my technical expertise yesterday. They were receiving a keyboard error upon booting up their computer, and couldn't figure out why.

I checked to see if the keyboard was plugged in. It was.

Then, like the golden, surreal white light that shines through St. Peter's pearly gates, it hit me.

"Take your file off of your keyboard."

Time's a wasting

2005-08-30T14:10:00.000+02:00

I'm parking off here doing sweet nothing. It's partially my fault, since I didn't check the HDD size of the machine I was given. The harddrive is a whopping 3 gigabytes big. So, after installing the various development programs I need, I received a delightful pop-up bubble in the bottom-right corner of my screen, further emphasized by the lovely beep that Windows XP let out.

To sum up the message it conveyed, it basically stated I had 170 megs left free on my C: drive. I blinked, I sighed, I got upset. These machines were rentals, and were supposed to have at least 10 gigabytes of disk space on them. I can't even install a second hdd, since there isn't a molex connector for it.

So, being a true visionary, I sail my ROFLyacht into the uncharted waters of the Engineering department, looking for a molex power connector splitter. I turn to the one engineer, and ask him if he has a molex power splitter. "Molex, what's that?"

"A power connector. You know, like those you get on PSU's.", I replied.

"Oh, you mean those. No, we don't have any."

I'm sitting here, doing fuckall, because I can't read my website design spec. I can't read it, because I don't know what the headings are. I don't know what the headings are, because the design spec uses Word Art. The reason I can't view Word Art, is because I don't have enough HDD space to install MS Office!

Fill in a requisition form?!

2005-08-29T10:45:00.000+02:00

What a way to start off a Monday....

As of two weeks ago, I started using the work machine of someone who had left the company. Her machine is a Pentium 3, 800mhz machine, and I'm sorry to say, vastly superior to the machine I was given. It was roughly 350% superior to the "work" machine I'm sitting on, which just happens to be a Pentium 2 something-or-other. I think they dug this fossil up during some or other excavation. It is so obviously a relic from some by-gone prehistoric era when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, and computers still ran on vacuum tubes. Anyhow, she left her new job, and came back, in a record time of two weeks. So I got screwed out of a "decent" computer (decent for this company, anyway).

So, as a result, I needed to pull a machine from stock. What did I get told to do? "Draw up a requisition form...."

The store manager told me to draw up a requisition form.... "You have to be fucking kidding me?!", I found myself thinking. You see, I don't mind paperwork. Paperwork is an understandable and necessary part of corporate bureaucracy. But, please tell me, HOW THE ROLLICKING CLUSTERFUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT HE HAS AND HASN'T GOT IN STOCK?!

So I handed him a requisition for a P4 3.2 with a gig of dual channel DDR 400, as well as other specs that I knew for a fact he didn't have in stock. Then, when he clicked that I don't have storeroom stock telepathy, he was a bit more understanding and accomodating.

I never could get the hang of Mondays.

Corporate therapy

2005-08-15T15:19:00.000+02:00

I've had a blast today. Today has been far better than my ordinary Monday mornings. I've been practicing what I term corporate therapy.

To elaborate, if one was to describe corporate therapy according to the way I personally define it, the description would go into how to stay sane whilst at work on a Monday morning. Moreover, it would list the way I would go about staying sane whilst at work, on a dreary, boring, Monday. Perhaps it would be better for me to detail my Monday morning, and how I've been exercising "corporate therapy".

It started off with me firing up PuTTy in order to get onto IRC. At this point, I realised just how Datapro's international routing was fucked beyond all recognition (Their London peer was seeing its arse). So, like a true time-waster, I spent the morning trying to ascertain if it was a virus or trojan that was in part killing the bandwidth. Doesn't seem like it. You never know, though, what with the shit the people in this place open on their computers, and the router configuration.

So I spent the morning sipping coffee, playing around with the server, doing sweet nothing. I could sum my morning up in a few words: coffee; sandwiches; IRC; laggy internet;

Later on, I started ridiculing Backgammon Boychee. I asked him, in front of the "sys admin", what HTML was. The sys admin fell over laughing.

"Sys admin?", I hear you say. Well, technically, he's not a system administrator at all. He's a salesperson. By virtue of the fact that they're too cheap to hire a full-time sys admin, he's the sys admin. He knows more than the technicians that get paid to know that kind of shit. I can feel the irony seeping the life out of my veins as I type this.

Over and above that, I've been waiting two weeks for a design spec. Talk about efficiency.

SACGA

2005-08-11T15:37:00.000+02:00

I'm not sure how many of the people that read this know of http://www.worldcybergames.co.za, and the subsequent event they're going to be holding. Well, that's moot. It's a gaming competition that I'm going to be participating in. (Yes, I'm a geek. Sue me.)

Anyhow, what's quite ironic is that another gaming-related ripple has surfaced in the past few days, in the form of SACGA. We've already got Penquin running around handling the WCG contract, and that's bad enough.

So, the question I want to pose to those who are interested is this: "SACGA: Good or bad?"

Let me give you some "background" on SACGA to fill you in. Before I read the post, and had only heard about them, I did a google search on local webpages for the acronym SACGA, in order to find out more.

At first, I was quite taken aback. Who in the South African Cotton Ginners' Association wanted to influence gaming? Had we transgressed on some unspoken sheep-raping rule at a LAN held on a farmstead or something?

But then, "Hold on.", I asked myself. "Maybe it's the South African Compressed Gases Association, upset at the fact that LAN2K held a LAN and a braai indoors, simultaneously.". A far-fetched guess, but entirely possible.

Or perhaps it was the South African Citrus Growers Association, out in full force to protest the bad eating habits we seem to display every single LAN.

Eventually, through some fantastic investigative skills on my part, (I bumped into the iDentity guys at gym and they told me all about it) I conclusively determined that SACGA, the South African Computer Gaming Association, had a forum on SAIX. Inspector Karlos, to the rescue.

Anyhow, I took a look at their "founding" post, and upon reading through it, a number of questions were subsequently raised by my split personality #47. Let's air them.

I quote, "SACGA will be an association falling under SAWU ( South African Wargames Union) which has a direct affiliation with the Sports commission. They are also a founding member of the new body that will be replacing the Sport Commission."

Ok, am I the only one that's a teensy bit unsure about whether they, or SAWU, are a founding member of the new body cited to replace the Sport (sic) Commission? Anyway, they haven't run up to me and mugged me for my milk and cookies yet, so I've got no beef with them. What miffed me a little is the post reads a bit like it's SAWU's legal right to administer "Computer Gaming". The constitution makes provision for anyone to undertake any business endeavour they please, however, as long as it is deemed legitimate.

I read through the rest of the stuff, and was quite puzzled. They didn't list the objectives of the organisation. I found that pretty weird. Eventually, through brilliant intuition, I managed to empathically sense the presence of a SACGA channel on irc.shadowfire.net. (Actually, a friend private messaged me)

Being the champion of cluelessness that I am, and not knowing exactly what it is that SACGA proposes to do for gaming locally, I soared through the proverbial clear azure IRC sky in my roflcopter, bringing it to a well-calculated landing on the #SACGA runway. Thereafter, I pressed a button to turn off the rotors, and opened the cockpit door.

I stepped out of my roflAPACHE, and surveyed the surrounding area, slowly taking regard of what my ocular senses were telling me. I felt like Steve Irwin lurking about in the Outback, and I'd just spotted a nest of baby crocodiles.

And I proceeded to hound them like a rabid journalist on crack cocaine, in search of answers that would decrypt the great mysteries of the universe that had been spawned in my mind by the posts on the SAIX forums.

And to indirectly quote:
1. They ARE undertaking affiliation with SAWU;
2. They ARE undertaking avenues in order to register SACGA;
3. They DIDN'T name their official spokesperson;
4. They WILL facilitate provincial and national trials for Battlefield 2 and Joint Ops;
5. They first WEREN'T, for lack of interest, and now ARE coming to WCG this weekend;
6. They ARE ironing out a framework;
7. They refused to give a guesstimate on how many players in the form of events organisations already are in the industry.

Now to give you my subjective take on what I've indirectly quoted:
1. They're trying to fall into place under SAWU.
2. They haven't registered SACGA yet. (see point 2 above)
3. They still haven't named an official spokesperson.
4. They ARE championing the causes of games that have little multiplayer support both locally and abroad. (see point 4 above)
5. They AREN'T interested in CS:S, FIFA, or WarCraft 3, or the event WCG have sanctioned. (see point 5 above)
6. They ARE proposing racial quotas for national team selection.
7. They haven't done their market research enough. (see point 7 above)
8. They ARE going to implement a framework: they just don't know what it is yet. (see point 6 above)

And, to top it all off, my concluding point: Noble intentions, bad execution?

I leave you with a quote from one of their members. "Too many peeps think this is the be all and end all of computer gaming, and re-reading the info post, I see that it does come across as being that."

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are completely and totally true in my own little world, and I reserve the right to subscribe to them. If they don't show up as such in your world, perhaps your perception isn't backwards compliant, as I do use outdated standards of logic that have subsequently been deprecated given society's modern moronicism. IRC logs are lies implanted on our computer systems by the government. Chicken isn't really white meat, but rather blue meat made look white through government HAI2U satellites, light prisms, and refraction. No, I do not do drugs.

Monday bloody Monday

2005-08-08T15:44:00.000+02:00

I don't mix well with Mondays. I tend to have this vacant-glassy look for pretty much the entire duration of a Monday. People talk to me, and I'll feel myself respond in slow motion, like a Pentium 2 running Windows XP Professional with service pack two. Boredom, service pack two, and slow-ass Pentium 2 computers go hand in hand, I assure you.

As I write this, I'm funnelling coffee down my throat and listening to hard house, in order to get my brain ticking over at a reasonable pace. I won't lie. I'm parking off, doing next to nothing.

Why? Because I'm tired. I'm tired to the point where I can't think straight. Assuming I could get away with it, I'd build myself an impenetrable fortress in the corner of the office, using office furniture and cubicles to reinforce and create the walls, and sleep until home time. Given my surname is Buys, (pronounced base) I'd christen it the Buys Base, a last bastion of hope for logic, a beacon of light in the corporate world so shrouded in the darkness of stupidity.

In my own little mind, I like to think of myself as logical.

In truth, my mind is more focused on an unrelated meeting I have tonight than on work matters here. It's sort of like how most men zone out when oogling a woman's breasts whilst she tries to discuss religion, or something equally serious, with you. Someone at the office will talk to me, and I kind of have this nagging feeling that something slightly important is going on, but I really can't be bothered, because I'd rather park off and oogle mammary glands, metaphorically speaking. Except instead of staring at mammary glands, I'm staring through my computer monitor, looking semi-busy.

Any straight males, and/or bisexual/lesbian females will know exactly what I mean.

My stupidity sense is tingling

2005-08-05T15:23:00.000+02:00

There's an aura of stupidity permeating throughout the office. It's getting stronger as the day wears on. I feel like a superhero, finely attuned to the pervasive evilness of stupidity, and primed to fight it off with healthy doses of my "Super Powers", those being: Logic®, and Sarcasm©. Not to mention I'm pretty proficient at performing Google searches with efficiency, and RTFM'ing.

One of the ladies that works here is leaving after today. I'm going to strip her desk of her hardware, stationery, furniture, and so on, and build myself a proverbial batcave. I wonder if I'll get away with knocking over cubicle walls and redesigning the PacMan-esque structure of the office environment so that the four 16-colour-spectrum ghosts don't eat me.

Photos to follow.

Can I scan in a few IQ points for you while I'm at it?

2005-08-05T13:41:00.000+02:00

I've actually become quite fond of one of my co-workers, in a round-about kind of way. He's taken on a new meaning in my existence. Whenever I desperately need comic relief, almost in order to maintain the slight grip I have on sanity whilst at work, fate seems to make him oblige.

I watched him fill in an online survey the other day. Fuck knows why he was filling it in. When an option to select how long he'd been using the internet came up, he selected, "7+ years.". I pray to god he selected that option because he knew I was watching and wanted to enlarge his e-penis.

Ironically enough, it was him who defined Hotmail as the language that webpages are structured from. He has a laugh that is so unmistakable. I think that laugh, and his naturally loud personality came about as a self-preservation technique. So that his mother didn't lose him as a child....

He spends a good portion of his day playing backgammon over MSN, when he should be out working. I've come to term him, the "Backgammon Boychee", in a kind of behind-his-back-make-him-out-to-be-a-superhero tone of voice. Because that's what he is. In his exclusive narrow view of the world, he's the superhero. And everyone should know that.

Anyway, Backgammon Boychee had his laptop stolen a couple of weeks back. Fortunately, he had an Excel print-out of vital sales figures, which he asked Dora, the boss's PA, to scan in. Much to his puzzlement, the file type he received it in was .jpeg.

He then queried Dora, asking her why she didn't have the common sense to scan it into Excel....

Maybe he should stick to backgammon.

_____________________________________________

Glossary:

boychee, noun; (pronounced, boy`chee)

A play on the Afrikaans word, "boytjie", which means boy. In my own personal narrow-minded fashion, boychee is defined as a guy that reckons he's the shit.

Usage: (in a sarcastic tone) - "That guy's so cool, hey. He's such a fucking BOYCHEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Hotmail for the win

2005-08-04T11:32:00.000+02:00

Wikipedia defines Hotmail as, ".... one of the most popular free "webmail" e-mail services, which are accessible from anywhere on the planet via a standard web browser."

I was having a chat to one of the salesmen in the company yesterday. We were discussing the product roll-out he's involved with. Eventually, the topic went off on a tangent.

"So, what're you messing about with there?", he asked me, pointing to my computer screen.

"It's a .pdf file. It has an index of .html commands which I just wanted to scoot through since I'm musing on ideas relative to the company intranet.", I responded non-chalantly.

To which he responded, "Oh, Hotmail. I know Hotmail well.".

________________________________________________________

HTML, as I define it, is an acronym for, "Hyper-text markup language", the language in question being a web standard that is normally regulated by the W3C.

Salutations from the server room

2005-08-03T12:16:00.000+02:00

Yesterday morning, I came into work, and happened to be greeted by the sight of the server safe room door, it being open.

The company I'm at hosts their own Microsoft Exchange Server, over a 64k DigiNet leased line. Nothing really wrong there, save for extortionate connectivity costs. Their router has an open Telnet port, for "remote administration.". I cringe whenever that thought enters my mind. Feel free to relay through it without enabling any security priviledges, if you port scan the right ip range and find it. Chinese routers for the lose. Two years back, I told them to close their router. Two years down the line, they still lack the knowledge to do so.

Why don't I close the port, you ask? Because they're not giving me the password, in spite of me complaining repeatedly.

Anyway, getting back to the story.... Naturally, I was curious as to why the server safe was open. Someone was busy doing something server-related, and having been around for a couple of months, I know that spells trouble. There's only one person in this company that I trust to go into the server room, but that's besides the point.

I step inside, to see the server stripped of its SCSI harddrive. "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot....", I hear myself think, as I walk off, looking for the server admin.

Calmly, I make my way to the kitchen, to check if he's there. He isn't. No big loss. I put on the kettle with a view to making myself a cup of coffee. As I stand there, waiting for the kettle to boil, the system admin walks in. I give him a saluatory nod.

"The server fell over."
"Uh-huh.", I reply.
"It downloaded and installed Service Pack 2 last night, and proceeded to see its ass, because it ran out of disk space.", he calmly states, in a tone that shows that he gives only marginally more of a fuck than I do.
"Ok, and we proposed to the manager, what was it, a year back, to upgrade that machine?"
"Uh-huh.", he replies.

At about this point, the propellors on my ROFLcopter start to spin all by themselves. My ROFLcopter warms itself up, and starts lift-off sequence even without me at the controls. I let out a maniacal laugh, and all my co-workers who happen to walk past the kitchen at this point give a look that confirms they think me insane. They're right.

The next four hours are fairly uninteresting. We got the server back up, thanks to the good graces of God, Norton Ghost, and a bigger SCSI hdd.

But there's a moral to this story.

Don't let fucking morons manage your server budget lest they decide disk space unimportant on an Exchange server.

Linux images

2005-08-02T12:22:00.000+02:00

I took it upon myself to take a look at the unused Linux box in the server room yesterday. Cutting edge technology, I assure you. If ever anyone has verged on creating a sentient piece of hardware, I assure you, that box is it.

This specific Linux box is fussy. And when I say fussy, I mean it would be easier to explain to a PMS'ing woman why you forgot your one year wedding anniversary. I booted it up, only to watch it fall over and reset over and over, doomed to forever loop through self-testing followed by half of FreeBSD start-up, only to fall on its ass and reboot again, ad infinitum.

I saw it in my heart to take pity on this box. I've relocated the wounded animal to a new habitat, at my desk. Finding a copy of Linux in this office, though, is like searching for a panda bear in the Serengeti. You can do it, but you'd be fucking stupid to.

So... last night I downloaded a Debian CD image with the intention of burning a Linux install disc....

Any idea why I'm writing this post, and haven't cut an install disc yet?

BECAUSE THE COMPANY DOESN'T HAVE ANY BLANK CDS IN STOCK!

In the beginning....

2005-08-02T12:20:00.000+02:00

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

On the eighth day, man created the workplace, and retarded bureaucracy. Man supplemented it, by enforcing management roles undertaken by uninformed clueless opinionated fools, and by implementing a joyful policy of sectioning of workers, by placing them in cubicles.

My name is Karl. I'm a twenty-one year old, currently contracting on a part-time basis to an IT company, the name of which shall go unmentioned.

And the ephiphany I've had today, which I feel needs sharing, is that God most definitely has a sense of humour. One need only look at the corporate working environment.