Meanwhile ...

... outside the office ...

Proactive co-worker

Me: "Good news, $ApplicationDeveloper; upper management has finally approved the purchase of that source code management tool you suggested"

App Developer: "No rush; I managed to kludge up a valid license key".

The commitytee is convening

Tomorrow's topic: Unlocking the full potential of shpehl chekk

Survival secured

Today, on two separate trips from my office to the main admin building (across the compound) and back, every single chick that crossed my path was up the duff.

It would seem that we're not on the road to extinction just yet.

Kinky co-worker

Allow me to set the scene for you: We have just returned from an extremely tedious presentation by one of our vendors. Things haven't gone well; the "state of the art" application they were demonstrating crashed a couple of times, and the vendor's account manager didn't even attempt to pretend that he had so much as glimmer of a clue of what he was talking about. To top it all off, he also stumbled for minutes to answer even the simplest of questions. Our collective, albeit silent, Pull your finger out already hung in the room like thick London fog in an Agatha Christie novel and didn't exactly improve the general atmosphere of the event.

After the demo from hell, we're having a quick debrief, mainly to let off a bit of steam. Now, to fully appreciate the significance of what followed, you must understand that the tech expert (let's call her Billie) who was with us is, in defiance of all "tech geek" clichés, quite probably one of the cutest babes in the entire Southern hemisphere. Billie is the kind of always-happy, kind, and simply beautiful girl that incites very unprofessional thoughts in even the most respectable man (and probably a couple of women).

So we're all sharing our not so kind views on both the "state of the art" product we were unfortunate enough to be bored with, and the bumbling dork who presented it. And without warning, Billie announces (and I quote): "Seriously, guys; I soooo wanted to fire a rocket up his ass!".

Thank you, Billie; that moment, and the mental image that's still popping up, almost made it all worth it.

New Office

Well, my backup – office anyway. Wi-Fi coverage at work has been extended to cover most outdoor areas, including the vast lawns between the office buildings. So whenever the sterile air-conditioned blandness of my usual crime scene domain gets too sticky, this shall be my refuge.

Fun with a geographically challenged Helpdesk

Yes, we all heard of the poor helpdesk worker being tormented by a not so bright user about this Anykey the computer is prompting him to press. Well, stupidity works both ways.

At work, most of the software we need is delivered to our computers electronically; if we need something that's not part of the standard build, it "just" takes a helpdesk ticket to get it. So, lucky me received a brand new state of the art machine, and all the non-standard apps I need are in the list of electronically available products.

But that's as far as my luck would go.

Only two days after lodging the Can I please have the stuff I need to do my job ticket (yeah, these guys from Global Helpdesk are really fast), the message that the requested apps are ready to install pops up. Happy and without a shred of suspicion (I know, my mistake), I click Install, and the next thing I see is:


I want my old computer back.

(For the nitpickers: In my request, I deliberately left out the release version, naively believing that they would send me whatever is available for our site).

And tomorrow, I get to chase up the other application I need, the one for which they closed the ticket without bothering to send me anything.

I predict that some time early May, I get to work productively again.