Thursday, March 20, 2008

N.A.V.Y.

When I joined the Navy many moons ago, I quickly learned that the name of the service was really an acronym: Never Again Volunteer Yourself. It was a lesson that I continue to forget.

"Hi, Monkeys. $MegaCorp has a new support contract with Microsoft and we don't talk directly to Blackie and his department anymore. Instead we follow $MSprocess. We need a couple volunteers to be our internal contacts."

Well shucks, I'd been dealing with Blackie and his gang and had acted as a go-between for a lot of my fellow monkeys for years. This could be another rung on the ladder to the position of ESSM (Extra Super Senior Monkey) and the additional 20 bucks or so a year that such an esteemed position offers. The more projects like that I accept, the fewer tickets I have to take. Works for me.

With a second round of nagging mails our chief hooked another sucker, none other than Lenny. I pointed out that I hadn't had the training. "That's OK. We'll get it to you in the next couple weeks."

Suzi can't wait a couple weeks. She sent Lenny a request to file a ticket through $MSprocess and CC:d me. Lenny's note arrived not ten minutes later. "REC, I didn’t get chance to attend the $MSprocess training. Could you please log this issue on this occasion?"

Before I could laugh, up popped our annoying-as-fuck IM app. It was Lenny.

14:27 lenny: hi REC
14:27 rec: hey
14:27 rec: I think it's a hoot
14:27 lenny: is it?
14:28 rec: We both suckered ourselves to do this, neither one of us has a bloody clue, and no help or direction is being offered
14:28 rec: If I didn't laugh I'd have to cry.
14:28 rec: So I'm laughing.
14:28 lenny: kool

Ten minutes later came a mail with some links to what will undoubtedly be some very protracted, painful Death-by-PowerPoints with some fuckknuckle or another droning on and on, in an incomprehensible accent which appears to have been designed to do nothing other than rape the English language. If I'm really lucky, however, there'll be a link to the actual PPT slides and I can dodge what appears to be a total of some 11 hours of this particular circle of hell.

That'll have to wait, though. I have some tickets to answer. Somewhere in Estonia a fuckwit is trying to modify the contents of the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes
key. On an IBM BladeCenter. A blade which is running Solaris 10.

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In compliance with $MegaCorp's general policies as well as my desire to
continue living under a roof and not the sky or a bus shelter, I add this:

DISCLAIMER:
The views expressed on this blog are my own and
do not necessarily reflect the views of $MegaCorp, even if every
single one of my cow-orkers who has discovered this blog agrees with me
and would also like to see the implementation of Root Cause: 17-Fuckwit.