Grumpy Techs

I’m not a big football freak.  Sue me.  But I did enjoy the Super Bowl commercials this year.  The E-Trade baby was priceless.  Stevie Wonder in the VW commercial was hilarious.  I wanna wear me a Sock Monkey costume to work. Even the Denny chicken commercials were thought provoking (as in, “Damn, I wanna go get me a ‘Grand Slam’ now!”) And, finally, I about cried when for Jeffrey in the Intel lunch break commercial (well, “cried” only because he’s a robot and I’m a rejected geek and I know how he felt. Buck up, little bucker!)

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I had so much fun (did I?) writing the first “day in the life of” that I thought another one might be suitable considering the day I’m having thus far. This is a standing post for today, i.e. I’m writing just about everything that happened as they happened.

8:15am – I was actually having an enjoyable morning since the curmudgeon is out this morning. I got a call from the employee in charge of the “lockdown system.” This system basically locks all our doors in the threat of an emergency. Of course it’s never worked right; the door magnets don’t always sync up w/ the security software. Now, the curmudgeon relishs on keeping most of the information to himself. Redundancy and contingency just don’t exist here. That being said, I managed to bring the system back up by “guessing” the respective passwords and ensuring all the workstations were communicating with the server. Fortunately, the curmudgeon isn’t one for changing passwords and likes to use one or two for everything.

8:39am – I picked up the problematic laptop that one of the “big bosses” was having after pestering him for three days. The hard drive went bad so I’m replacing it. All of a sudden, I get a phone call from him asking me if I’ll back up his personal email on Outlook. Now, I’m sure we all know how to save a PST file but because we don’t use Exchange/Outlook for our business email, I told him that I’d do my best but no guarantees. The guy actually started crying and begging me to do what I can. I offered to bring him a Kleenex.

9:12am – I receive a “frantic” phonecall that the printers have “disappeared” from one’s computer. Wow, that must be some kind of miraculous occurrence. I’ve never heard of anything just “disappearing” from one’s desktop. I informed the caller that I’ll get to them just as soon as I can but that I’m working on a couple of other things at the moment. Apparently that wasn’t good enough because this person had *another* coworker call me to tell me of the first person’s plight. Needless to say, I told the second person in the time I just spent “wasting” with her and telling her what I told the first person is time I could have spent addressing the previous issues so congrats on being moved down even further in the queue. (Good thing my mid-year review is next month!) Fortunately, it was something as simple as the print spooler filling up with BS files so a quick purge and restart of the print server fixed that.

10:30am – Finally getting caught up on things when a coworker asked me if I have a tape measure he could use. I look around at all the IT gear and grinned at him. “I guess not,” he says before walking to the desk next to me and rummaging through our network tools. I *politely* suggested he contact the Maintenance department since they probably have…umm…TOOLS. “Oh, yeah, good idea.” :::sigh:::

The rest of the day – OMG, the rest of the day was boringly lame.  I bet if I rack my brain I’ll think of something dumbass-y.  Hmmm…..  Nope, nothing’s there.  On to tomorrow.

Current Mood:  grumpy

Certainly not in the way any pervys might be thinking, mmm’kay?

Based on the last two posts, I’ve been at work for pretty much 48 hours straight with the exception of about five hours of sleep as you might have read here and here. Right about the end of my second day, one of the “wolves” decides to spend a bunch of time talking with the curmudgeon about our department. The curmudgeon goes on to glorify how great *he* is and how much *he’s* done. Typical for him, yes. I just sat on the other side of the cube wall (yes, he’s *also* in a cube), listening and hoping he wouldn’t say anything too exaggerated or enough to mess the rest of us up. The kicker, however, is when he introduced the wolf to me and asks him “have you ever met Grumpy Tech before?” to wit the wolf replied that he did, of course, yesterday. (Now, Curmudgeon, have you forgotten that you were here for about 30 minutes yesterday and bailed right before the big meetings started because you had to attend a personal gathering which, in your words is “much more important than being here”? Hell, it’s your paycheck, Dude.)

The kicker: the wolf asks *me* for a local printer for him and the rest of the wolves. I just smiled kindly and told him I’d be leaving in a few minutes as I have class to attend but that the curmudgeon would be *more* than happy to assist.

Why is the back of my head getting warm?

Considering I’m *still* at “work” I figured I might as well do something productive.  After all, it’s a very nice Sunday evening with nothing but clear skys (I can just barely see them from the window).

So, immediately following the “setting up of the wolves” gathering, I was tasked to actually attend a critique meeting.  The meeting’s lead was pretty cool, probably because he doesn’t work for my employer and, since he has nothing to do with technology, i.e. doesn’t work in the field, he knew which questions to ask and which ones not, probably thinking the latter would make him appear stupid or ignorant (he’d be right, of course.)

The meeting followed with another meeting but I was asked to remain at my “post” “just in case something happens.”  So, while sitting at my desk, working on some routine server work (I know, I know; I actually broke down and did some “real work.” ::hanging head in shame::), someone walked by and asked me to clean up the copier room to make a good impression.  Not.  Kidding.  It was at that moment, I said to let me fire off a quick email, which I did, actually to my cell phone which promptly started to buzz.  I answered it and talked to dead air:  “Oh, yeah, I’ll be right down.”  I told the “princess” that I needed to address a problem on a server but perhaps the cleaning crew could take care of straightening up the copier room.

After that, I leave to attend the “reception” that my employer had to further impress the wolves.  I managed to get one sip of distilled water in before being summoned to get one of the wolves back on the Internet.  Needless to say, I had to do without eating dinner as I wasn’t invited to the “big wig” dinner although I was summoned to sit just outside the conference room while listening to laughter from inside from all the wine the wolves consumed at their dinner.  Think I’ll ask them to save me a bottle next time my evening is ruined.

Oh, I think I’m being called again.  Where’d I put my headphones?

I was tasked to come in today (Sunday) because a bunch of other companies within the same industry as my employer came in to critique my employer.  Without going into too many details (gotta protect the innocent and…myself) let’s just say that this type of thing happens every five years or so and then again every 10 years.  Considering the “big boss” is very new at the job, everyone’s a mess and in shambles because they must think those on the critiquing board have golden penises and vaginas or something.  I simply look at it as we all put our pants on the same way to cover our golden penis or vagina (“and/or”?  We won’t go there.)

So, these people are all sitting around the conference room table (did I mention that we spent $30k on that table because the last one was “chipped”?  Oh, and, by the way, we’re a “non-profit.”) with their laptops open just patiently waiting for me to come around and authenticate their laptops to the wireless network along with giving them access to one of our printers.  While I’m doing that, the questions and comments fly:

“Can we please get some power strips because I only have four hours of power on my battery?”

“Why didn’t you put an electrical outlet right there? ::pointing:: That’s what I would have done if this were my XXXXXX.”

“What do you mean you can’t give me access to let me listen to iTunes.  I gotta have my music!!! [to this I thought, "aren't you supposed to be meeting here?"]

“Excuse me.  EXCUUUUUSE ME!!!!  ::snapping fingers:: It’s IMPERATIVE I get on next!!! I have to send an important email!! [found out later the "important email" was to his wife asking her what kind of wine to take back home with him.]

“You don’t know my tech support person’s administrative password?  Why not?  Can you call him right now and get it? [first of all, this is a Sunday afternoon.  Second of all, I *really* don't think your IT department is going to give *me* *their* admin password.]

So I got them all settled and abruptly made my exit when who, all of a sudden, bumps into me but my curmudgeon coworker who promptly asks me if I remembered that we were to be here to get everyone all set up.  “First of all, I’m not your “bitch” and second of all, if I hit you in the face, would you sue me for age discrimination because I’ve kicked an old man’s ass?”

Instead, I think I’ll just automatically forward the group’s shared account credentials to point to Barney the Dinosaur’s website whenever they try to access the Internet.  Much more entertaining.