Adventures of the nothing man

“you can’t make me even if you do pull a face like that….”Hello again, indomitable Cre8 here, Monday was almost a non event but for me putting the ITSY / NonSense / GFY (Go F%ck Yourself) system live, which I was fairly impressed at….Monday: 09:00:I’m in again, must arrange for some “sick” leave or interviews as I like to call it. I haven’t actively applied for another job now for days, and still I keep getting phone calls from “Secret” Recruitment Agents. Thing I don’t quite get is why they’re all so posh. It must be part and parcel of a careers day or something they have at eaton college.10:00:The phone rings, “hillo, it’s Simon brenton-smyth he’are from couldntgiveatoss recruitment…”, “hello” I thoughtfully reply, “I’ve just seen your excellent CV on Sodoff Jobsite” (god they’re really crawly aren’t they ?) “We’ve got this excellent role that we think you’d be suitable for”, brilliant, £90,000 a year, company car, running a company’s IT department, at my next door neighbours house ? err I think not..”It’s writinig Java code for a small company up in the outer Hebrides with a salary of £20,000 per year, you’ve got to admit that’s tempting isn’t it”, I mumble the normal “yeah great put me forward for it”, which is just code for don’t ever phone me again, “would I like a copy of the job spec? No no you keep it you never know when some numpty is going to give a monkeys enough to want it” and then I put the phone down.11:00: I have to admit I’m getting a little nervous, the NonSense cut over is going to happen at 2pm I’ve even persuaded Jilly Fringe (“Help” desk manager) to send an email out without authorisation. My god what is the world coming to, bypassing red tape, then I’m brought down to earth with the realisation that she’s going to re-type it, “for the lay-man”, “huh” I say, I don’t really know how much simpler it could be, my message reads:====================Message begins=======================
”Dear pains in the arse”, that’ll be changed “users” when it goes out, We will be implementing a new Internet Web proxy browsing solution in the coming days.
It is hoped that the new system will improve your web browsing experience.
No changes are required by you to use this new system however you may notice that certain messages are formatted slightly differently. Functionality and speed should be greatly improved.

If you encounter any difficulties in internet browsing please register this by sending an email to the following address; NonSense.Nooneisgoingtoreadthis@uk.dontbedaft.com


Thank you in advance for your co-operation
======================Message Ends===============================
Now how much more simple could you get, but no apparently “Mark Pasty, and Bill Zunpronoucable, have asked if I can modify it so it tells them a new system is being put in”, “ah I see” I reply not really seeing at all “so the sentence, “we will be implementing a NEW internet web proxy browsing solution…” doesn’t actually tell them it’s a new system”…I understand completely….When eventually the message goes out (about 11:15) it’s stripped of some of the more extraneous drivel I had put in to read;
======================Message begins==============================
A new Internet Web browsing service will be implemented today (15/03).

It is hoped the new service will eliminate problems that have been experienced with internet browsing.

The change will be totally transparent to you however you may notice that certain messages are formatted slightly differently. Functionality and speed should be greatly improved.

If you encounter any difficulties in internet browsing please register this by sending an email to the following address; NonSense.report@uk.dontbedaft.com

Thank you in advance for your co-operation
=====================Message Ends=================================
Now then the “in the coming few days” bit missing is going to bite me I know it is…

12:30: Lunch13:30: Back just walking in the office and the looks I’m getting..I check my fly to make sure I’m not embarrassing myself, but no all is well, I turn a corner to hear a familiar voice say “there he is!” they didn’t do the “get him” bit but I could tell from their voices that’s what they wanted to say.”Hello” I say quizzically, it’s Quiet Rob who pipes up first, “that new proxy system of yours doesn’t work”, “really?” I ask “no Portsmouth and Overton have no internet access”, “really?” I ask a kind of smug conceitedness in my voice indicating to anyone not really involved that I know something he doesn’t…”well what’s going to happen about it ? It’s really important…” and without breaking for breath, I can almost see the penny drop, “you haven’t put the new system live yet have you…”, “No” I’m half smiling, “ah well they still can’t get to the internet”, “great” I reply, “perhaps they’d like to phone service delivery and get them to fix their problem!!!” I love it when I’m right, I just love it.

14:00: DNS has been modified, with a 10 minute TTL (time to live) so I’ve got 10 mins before the world as the users know it ends muahahahahah…so it’s fag time. That takes up about 5 of those 10 minutes so I come back do a bit of browsing…3 minutes, check my achoo web mail for likely looking jobs, 1 minute, ok time to run up the performance monitor, the 10 minutes are up and wahay up go the graphs, web connections at about 300 fantasticimo.

15:00: 1 hour in and all is well-ish, trying hard not to think like that as it’ll all collapse in a big heap soon and then we’ll be in trouble. The phone rings at this point, it’s Quiet Rob (I can hear Invisible Dave in the background), “hello it’s me”, “jolly good” I reply, “are you busy at the moment”, “busy!!?, busy!!!? Am I busy!!?!???, hell no what do you want?”, “I wanted to ask you a question”,he falters, damn! He’s gay and I didn’t spot it, “ok ask away” I reply, “well we need you to come down here”,”that’s not a question” I say, “no but we need you to come down to the data centre to ask you the question”, he goes on, “right, ok”, I’m confused.

15:15: In the data centre with QR and ID they want my opinion on how to root the power cable for a rack to the floor, “well you could just use the hole in the floor next to the rack” I say simplistically, “oh that’s a good idea” they reply almost in unison, “that’s what we thought”, now I’m really really confused. The bent servers are still bent, sat on the desk looking sorry for themselves but they’re “Delluded” servers so I don’t actually care about them. Compress servers are much much better in my opinion, they actually look like servers, with flashy bing bang lights ‘n’ everything.

16:30: Make it back to my desk, NonSense, ITSY servers seem to behaving. I thought they would be handling 3,500 users but a so far they’ve only clocked 300 simultaneous connections. Now either we don’t have 3,500 users or the monitoring is completely bollixed and it isn’t actually telling me anything. Given that this monitoring was set up by the grand wizard, the later rather than the former could well be true!!

17:30: Home time, still nothing doing in terms of errors, quick run away before anyone notices….