BOFH - 2008


CHAPTER 1

There must be something in the water. I've got a shocking case of nominal amnesia which I can't shake and the PFY just isn't helping. True, being locked in a lift for several hours (until I'd fed sufficient pound notes through the doors to the PFY) just prior to the holidays didn't help, but I'm never really any good at getting back into the swing of things after time away from the workplace. It's as if the mind just spins down and needs a couple of days of doing something mildly taxing to get one's thoughts back up to speed again...

"What's happening?" the PFY asks in response to the blank expression on my face as I survey the login prompt in front of me.

"Can't remember my password," I sigh, tapping away on desk impatiently.

"You can't remember your password?" the Boss asks cheerfully after wandering in unannounced.

"No. In fact, when you've got around 40 10-12 character root passwords to remember you're lucky to remember any of them. Which is why I..."

"Write them down?" the Boss prompts.

"No I encrypt them and store them on my desktop."

"And you can't get into your desktop!" he chortles happily.

"No - because I changed my password yesterday as it had expired. All I can really remember is that it's something that you get hit with?"

"A car?" the PFY says helpfully.

"NO, you get hit with it," I say. "I know I'll remember it soon, but I just can't remember it now. I remember thinking that it was something that I'd never forget."

"Yet still you did," the Boss chuckles.

"What about hard drive?" the PFY suggests.

"No, would be way too simple. Anyway, I remember that the password was long," I say, scanning my memory for further information.

"A Microsoft update via dialup? An Oracle streamlined install?"

"No, No! This isn't helping! I'll have to think of something else. Though... I think it also had something to do with the Boss."

"Management?" the Boss suggests. "Responsibility? Team Player? uh..."

"Git!" the PFY chimes in. "Tosser? ArseBandit? Trainspotter?"

"!" the Boss gasps, wordlessly.

"Oh, you mean this Boss?" the PFY gasps, going for the late (and crap) save.

"It was something about... I don't know... the boss... being hit... and... um... electricity... Yes! Definitely something about electricity!"

"Well that certainly narrows it down," the Boss says sarcastically. "But think - how did you come by the password? Can you recreate the process you used?"

"I'm not sure. I was thinking about a new password, and then I was also thinking about something to do with hitting, you, and then electricity - but I can't remember how they all came together."

"Torch," the Boss gasps. "You can hit someone with a torch, it's electric and I own one!"

"In that case we could use car as well" the PFY says dryly. "Or vibrator."

"Right!" the Boss snaps decisively. "I..."

"Just jokes," I say calmly. "We're all friends here. Now back to the password..."

"What were you thinking about?" the Boss repeats.

"Give me time," I say calmly. "It'll come to me... I was looking around the office for inspiration..."

"And you saw this," the PFY says, holding up a cattleprod.

"No..."

"And you thought of me?" the Boss asks.

"No ...The door blew open."

"Yes?" the PFY coaxes.

"And it banged into the wall where that big dent is, which reminded me..."

"...OF THE TIME I PUSHED THE DOOR OPEN, BUMPED THE BOSS INTO THE CATTLEPROD YOU WERE TESTING AND HE FELL BACK ONTO THE WALL!" the PFY gasps happily.

"YES!" I cry. "And it was a pass phrase based around that!"

"Accident?" the Boss suggests.

"No... No, I can't get it."

"Try and recreate the sequence of events in your mind's eye," the Boss says, airyfairily. "Does that help?"

"Ummmmmm... Nope."

"Maybe it's tactile? What about if you hold the cattleprod in your hands?" the PFY says.

...

"No, nothing. It's too distracting having you both shout suggestions at me. I'm sure it'll come to me if I just have a few moments to myself to think..."

"Ok, I'll go get a coffee - so you're not distracted..." the PFY says.

"Okay," the boss says. "And I'll be quiet." "Quiet as a mouse. I'll just stand over here out of the wa-"

>Click< >BUMP< >KZERT!< >CRASH!<

"That was it, H1l4r3us!" I say, as I step over the Boss and tap away on my keyboard.

"You're welcome," the PFY says, helping the Boss extract himself from the wallboard.

"And I'm in!" I gasp happily at the Boss. "You know I think that whole recreation idea of yours was a winner."

"Now you can help me with my password," the PFY says. "It was something to do with a spade, a sack of quick lime and a roll of carpet in the work van..."


CHAPTER 2

Isn't it always the way that at the beginning of the year, when your enthusiasm for work is at an ebb, that the Boss decides it's a good time to get someone in to talk about some piece of software that you just don't want to use?

And isn't it also always the case that when you get someone in to talk to you they're not only an expert in the product but also (sadly) a complete enthusiast who would quite happily adopt the software's illegitimate babies and raise them as their own in a silicon paradise - if only they had a chance?

And even worse than that, when you get the enthusiast in they've had hours and hours to think about the long and involved ways to tell you about how they optimised the application so as to get a teensy weensy bit more performance out of it by converting the raw code into processor-specific code by removing all the #IFDEFs and maintaining an ever-increasing number of branches of the same code?

And they can still remember (and will recount to you in excruciating detail) EXACTLY what they were doing the MOMENT they heard that version 2.7 of the software was released...

...and be slightly offended when your response is "Probably drinking at the pub".

And the problem with enthusiasts is that they simply cannot understand how it is that you don't want to sell all your worldly possessions and come join their roving band of software improvers and make the world a better place... This is made worse when they appear to be the only expert in the country and are desperate to get someone else enthused so as to form a pressure group for the adoption of the application...

. . .

So it is that the Boss has lined someone up to tell us all about how we're going to install an application which will link our websites, calendars, email, financials, HR, etc, etc to one clearly understandable homogenous mass with some new software that has just been released into the Open Source world.

Moreover, the Boss is not at all impressed at our protestations about the robustness of the software development and release lifecycle of this project which, from the look of the webpage, consists of someone saying "I've got a good idea!!!"

And so it is that a conference room is booked, audio visual gear is installed, biscuits purchased and a server machine configured to the exacting requirements of our expert.

Of course the true horror is revealed when we discover that the required OS is such an obscure version of Linux that it probably only has one contributor (to match the Google result when we go looking for it). The install notes describe the branch as "Linux's best-kept secret" - and once the PFY and I finally work our way through the convoluted install process we agree to keep it that way.

And of course no enthusiast is ever going to use the release version of any prerequisite software when there's a beta version that's been available for at least a day, so the PFY and I waste another couple of hours trying to nurse the install script to life under the new version.

Several emails later we have the system up and running and let our expert know that he can come in an do his demo any time...

...which is when the Boss tells us that he's sold the idea to senior management and that once the explanation and three-day tutorial is over we'll start running up the software in the company...

"Did he say three days?" the PFY asks, gnawing on a knuckle. "I thought you said it'd be half a day tops if we agreed with everything he said, didn't ask questions and erased the server as soon as he'd left the building."

"I admit I made a slight miscalculation on the amount of our time that might be made available to him, but I'm sure that as software experts with a history of successful open source installs in the past we can lock him in the basement until the whole idea blows over."

"Ah yes," the PFY says. "In fact, I think that's where we installed the server."

"B2, over in the far corner room."

"The electrical plant room with the dodgy light and even dodgier bus-bar cover?" the PFY asks.

"The very same."

. . . One day later . . .

"Where the hell is he?" the Boss asks. "He was supposed to be here two hours ago! I bought biscuits."

"I shouldn't worry, I'm sure he'll be here eventually," the PFY says, just as the lights dim slightly.

"Then again, perhaps we should flag the whole thing?" I add as the basement smoke alarm beacon illuminates on our building monitor.

"But what will I say to senior management?"

"Just tell them you're doing an analysis of needs and that you'll need each of them to fill in a quick 20-page questionnaire... no one will ever mention it again."

"I... OK then. But I'm keeping the biscuits."

"What biscuits?"

Sigh.


CHAPTER 3

The good thing about sales reps is that they're never too busy to come on site and explain a couple of their products to you if there's a potential sale in it. Better still when the IT consumables company replaces the grizzled veteran of "over a million 8 inch floppies sold" with Susan, a lovely young woman with a pleasant nature and the drinking habits of a CAMRA founding member...

So I'm ordering my second gross of cleaning tapes over a couple of quiet pints at the pub when the Boss trundles in with a sneaky expression on his face to interrupt my important work-related chatting up...

"Uhh... where's your offsider at the moment?" the Boss asks.

"Who?" I ask whilst giving the thumbs up to a third carton of cleaning tapes (which will probably be sufficient to see the company through to the next millennium).

"Your assistant."

"Oh him. He's probably still offsite doing those VPN client installs you asked for."

"How far's he got?"

"No idea," I say. "But at about 20 minutes a time plus half an hour travel he's probably almost done by now."

"So you don't know exactly?" he asks - attempting to make some sort of point. "What if you needed him to help you with something?"

"I'd ring him on his mobile," I suggest.

"What if he's had an accident?" the Boss asks.

"Then he's not going to be any help to me is he?"

"The point I'm trying to make is he should have a GPS on him – or at least the company vehicle should."

"You mean a GPS tracker," I say.

"They're... not the same thing?"

"One is used to help you find where you are, the other’s used to find where something else - like a company car – is."

"Oh, well I suppose in that case we should just have GPS units then."

"But what if the PFY's had an accident?" I ask.

"Like you say - he'd be no help," the Boss says, moving on. "So when can you get a GPS unit - a portable one?"

"We can do you one of those," Susan chips in, downing her pint of cider and flipping over a couple of pages. "A couple of hundred quid'll get you this one which has an SD card slot and a downloadable range of nav voices - from Spock to Billy Graham."

"I'll take it!" the Boss gasps. "Simon’ll fix you up with a purchase order..."

. . .

"What was that about?" the PFY asks, once the Boss has trundled off.

"No idea," I said. "He set a speed record in changing from caring about your welfare to not giving a rat’s..."

"It'll be Geocaching," Susan responds helpfully.

"Geocaching?"

"Yeah, it was mentioned in one of those Management rags a couple of weeks back. It's all the rage as middle managers from all over the place are ordering top-of-the-line GPS units as IT gear. I've sold out of all the top line models already."

"But why’s the Boss spending my budget on toys?"

"It's happening all over the place. The rag has their own geocaching page where employers can leave clues and coordinates for readers to pick up hints on job prospects – the theory being that if you’re good enough to solve the clues you might be a good prospect for employment."

"And this is popular?" the PFY asks.

"Oh yeah!" Susan responds. "We lost one of our people to a company just down the road! They just gave the salary, the GPS coordinates and a simple substitution code clue!"

"And he was gone?"

"Yep. He found the place in his lunch hour and was gone."

"Curiouser and curiouser..." the PFY says thoughtfully. "You wouldn’t know the name of the website would you?"

. . .

A few days later the Boss returns from lunch nursing a black eye, a bloody nose and a broken GPS, so we know the dream’s over...

"What happened?" I ask feigning concern.

"I... tripped," he says. "But I really need to organise a new GPS as the screen on this one’s broken and I have something I need to look up."

"Staring at the screen when you should have been watching where you were going?" the PFY asks, pulling a replacement unit out of his drawer.

"Something like that," the Boss says, leaving the broken GPS and wandering off with its replacement.

"Great stuff this Geocaching," the PFY says, pulling yet another unit out of his drawer. "You find the coordinates of some local night-shift working nutcase, post them - along with some clues that only the Boss could figure out – to the website then pay some kids to ring the nutcase’s doorbell every half hour or so for the next few days before running off... bloody fantastic!"

That’s technology for you – we’re always finding new uses for it!


CHAPTER 4

"What're they for?" the PFY asks as the Boss rolls in a trolley load of brightly coloured plastic bins.

"They're for our recycling initiative," the Boss responds. "Red for plastic, white for paper, yellow for cardboard and blue for polystyrene."

"What about glass?" the PFY asks.

"Glass is to be sorted by colour into bins in the basement," the Boss replies.

"Hmmm... And what's driving this initiative?" I ask.

"The... company has decided to become carbon neutral by the year 2010 - and so they're moving to implement recycling prior to the announcement being made in the press."

"Carbon neutral in three years?" the PFY says dubiously.

"Yes. Obviously it will take longer for the whole company to convert to this but in the meantime we're planning to implement recycling, energy saving measures and implement the purchasing of carbon credits."

"Carbon credits!" I sneer, unable to suppress the derision in my voice.

"What's wrong with carbon credits?" the Boss gasps.

"Carbon credits are like putting a humidifier in a room then putting a dehumidifier in as well to offset the effects," the PFY offers.

"Only with carbon credits they're in different rooms," I add. "Or maybe it's a bit like putting your heater on in one room of the house and turning the aircon on at the other."

"I'm not sure I understand what you're saying."

"Okay," I say. "Carbon credits are a bit like beating someone up on this side of the world and sponsoring one of those poor starving kids on the other side of the world to make up for the fact that you're a complete shit at home."

"Only people think you're great because you're cancelling out a bad deed with a good one."

"Instead of not committing the bad deed in the first place," I add.

"It's like dropping a crap in someone's desk drawer and offsetting it by cleani..." the PFY starts.

"I think he gets the picture," I interrupt. "So what energy saving initiatives are we looking at?"

"Low power lighting, grey water harvesting and green computing, obviously."

"Green computing - you mean iMacs?" the PFY asks.

"I think he means computing hardware which supports hibernation, processor cycle reduction and suspension and virtualisation," I mumble.

"Oh right, NancyBoy boxes."

"Exactly!"

"I..." the Boss burbles.

"So we'll end up with machines which'll slow themselves down at weird and inconvenient times and lose processing power while they ramp up in response to need?"

"No, I'm sure the bloke said you can tune them to only reduce to a certain point and to speed up recovery time. And with virtualisation you can tune them to consolidate virtual servers onto the least number of machines and shut the rest down till they're needed."

"Still sounds like Nancy-Boy boxes," I concur.

"?"

"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!" I blurt. "In fact, a REAL computer would have a hole in the front to push trees into and an exhaust pipe out the back for the black smoke to come out of."

"AND," the PFY adds. "they run so hot - even on screensaver - that they keep the room nice and toasty when you're not there - saves on heating."

"All that is a thing of the past though." the boss burbles. "The bloke was telling me that using mobile processor technology the..."

"What bloke?" I ask.

"The... um..."

"Mmm?" the PFY says.

"Bloke... from... uh..."

"..."

"...the... green consultancy..."

"So you and the IT Director talk to some yoghurt-eating fruitcake in a hemp suit and sandals and the next thing we know you're planning to replace our high power server environment with a poor imitation of it?"

"I think you'll find it's the way of the future," a voice from the doorway says.

"Ah, Simon, Steven," the Boss says. "This is... uh... Jeremy from the Power Green consultancy. He's been contracted to the company for a couple of months to help us reduce our carbon footprint."

"Hi," Jeremy bubbles. "Nice to meet you."

"And what is it you do Jeremy?"

"Well, in a nutshell I analyse plant and power usage, server capacity utilisation and desktop usage and feed those numbers all into a sophisticated package which makes recommendations on what hardware to purchase in the short term to improve a company's ITCF."

"ITCF?"

"IT Carbon footprint."

"Ah right, so what you're saying is you'll gather some numbers and dictate what server equipment we buy this year."

"Well... essentially, yes," Jeremy says.

... Two hours later...

"OK," the PFY says as we leave the building via the service entrance. "All we have to do to be nastiness neutral is to find a couple of people bound and gagged in a skip bin, take them out, give them a couple of wallets, unkick them a few times, unelectrocute them with a cattle prod and say 'clothing hippy on discount percent seventy look oh'."

"On the other side of the world," I add.

"Should we stop for a quick lager first?"

"Be rude not to..."


CHAPTER 5

"Ah the long, dark reaches of intrigue!" I say faux-casually in the dark, scaring the Boss half to death.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he cries when he's collected himself, no doubt readjusting his underpants in response to the recent extra loading.

"It's a computer room, I belong here," I say, getting up from the chair I've been sitting in - strategically placed behind the swing of the server room door. "Which is more than I can say for you."

"I... was just stopping in on the way home to make sure everything is ship-shape," he snaps, reaching for the light switch.

"No, don't touch that!" I say as the server room door quietly >click<s closed. "Because if you're really here to check on things then it's best done in the dark..."

"In the dark?" he blurts nervously.

"Yes, in the dark," I reply calmly. "Look at the racks around you, what do you see?"

"Machines."

"Look closer agent Starling, what do you see?"

"I uh... servers?"

"Clo-ser..."

"Lights."

"Indeed. And what do these lights mean?"

"Pardon?"

"What do they mean? Each lamp has a purpose... Of each particular lamp ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature?"

"I... That the server's on?"

"No. That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing each lamp does? What needs does it serve by lighting?"

"I... That everything's ok?"

"NO! A lamp indicates STATUS. And STATUS is what we're interested in. And what do the lamps tell you?"

"That everything's ok?"

"Do they? Is that what they're telling you?"

"I..."

"Because they tell me a completely different story."

"What?"

"Hmm?"

"What... story... do they tell you?" the Boss asks uneasily.

"That orange lamp over there tells me the story of a server with a faulty power supply. That flashing red lamp over there tells me of a degraded RAID array. And those two flickering orange lamps over there tell me a server has two dodgy power supplies that it's switching between. And all these stories are part of one larger story."

"What?"

"Hmm?"

"What's the larger story?"

"THE larger story."

"What's the larger story."

"You mean the name of the larger story?"

"I... yes, if you like."

"The name of the larger story is... The Silence of the Servers."

"The Silence of the Servers?!"

"Yes. It's an interesting story that I'm sure you'll like, involving a mid level manager, and electrical engineer and the deferment of the refurbishment of an UPS for financial reasons."

"I... don't know what you mean."

"You're sure?"

"Positive..."

"Ok, once upon a time there was a technical person - me, for instance - who put the replacement of UPS batteries and refurbishment of the electronics onto his business plan - as a cheaper option that replacing the UPS outright. And in this story lets say that this technical person's manager would rather spend the money on something else - new computers with touch screen monitors for a call-centre - for instance."

"Those machines were in last year's budget! We'd committed to buying them when we replaced the call centre software!"

"As I say, this is just a story. So say, for instance the UPS wasn't refurbished and the batteries not replaced. Say the manager concerned didn't want to tell his technical person that this wasn't going to happen for financial reasons - for his own personal safety reasons. Say he got an electrical engineer to pretend to do some technical work and battery replacements but instead jumper the UPS input and output while taking off a small supply to power the lamps on the panel to look like it was still working normally..."

"I... don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you don't. Because this is just a story. But say when this electrical engineer crept back in the wee small hours to do the internal bypass and panel rewire he didn't realise that the moment he disconnected the UPS internals he'd also be disconnecting the power to the SNMP agent inside the UPS that talks to our paging system..."

"Oh..." the Boss.

"And say, instead of jumpering input and output through a smoothing circuit he just connected all our expensive servers to dirty raw mains - dirty raw mains fed from the same board as the lift motor as it happens, a huge inductive load, I might add, introducing power factor changes, surges, back EMF, etc..."

"I..."

"And say in the story that the technical person mentions to his manager that there could be a power problem. If the manager were innocent of wrongdoing he'd call the electrical engineer to check the UPS and if not he'd sneak back in the middle of the night to make sure that the lights on the UPS were still working properly so that no-one would find out his dirty little financial secret."

"Uh..."

"But anyway," I say, flicking the lights on. "The backstory is irrelevant, it's how the story ends that's important."

"How it ends?"

"Yes, say the story ends with a complete UPS replacement, then it's a happy ending. If it ends in lies and denial, well..."

"You know I think we might have budget for a UPS replacement," the Boss burbles.

"Excellent, I'll let the PFY know," I say, reaching for the cellphone.

"Really? Where is he?"

"He's in the basement carpark doing to your car what the engineer did to our UPS."

"I... but I thought you said it was a happy ending."

"Perhaps you should think of this more as a Roald Dahl happy ending then. Maybe that would help..."


CHAPTER 6

It’s Mission Control late one morning and we’re giving the Boss a damn good listening to...

“...and I’ve been talking to Jim from P.R and he says that we can probably do a little better on our machine maintenance because when he was working in a former company he managed to get a 48 per cent reduction in price by presenting vendors with competitive quotes from an alternate service agent.”

“Yeeees,” I say. “While it is true that reduction in costs is a definite possibility, when looking at such a large reduction in costs we have to bear in mind a few salient points.”

“Which are?” the Boss asks, listening attentively.

“Firstly, Jim was probably talking about reduction in the costs of the machinery he was in charge of in his former role – which was, in this case, probably photocopiers and automatic staplers...”

“And second?”

“In computing one vendor is unlikely to be able to economically source the spares of another, and...”

“And..?”

“And Jim couldn't tell the truth if you paid him to.”

“Weeellll, I think that’s a little harsh,” the Boss says, shaking his head in a sign of mild disbelief.

“It’s true!” the PFY gasps. “And he knows bloody EVERYTHING! If your server reboots because a chunk of memory has crapped itself, he’ll be telling you how it’ll be a seating fault, how memory seating is an art unto itself and that he learnt how to seat memory properly from Michael Dell himself.”

“At Michael's home, over a few beers,” I add. “Because that’s the other thing about Jim. Whatever you do, he’s done something better!”

“Three times better,” the PFY chips in. “For instance, say you said you had an exciting drive into work this morning.”

“Jim would say that was nothing,” I comment, “as he used to Rally drive.”

“In ‘Nam,” the PFY adds.

“For the V.C,” I offer.

“In a car with a jet engine.”

“Powered by a fuel he created from his own urine,” I finish.

“So you’re suggesting...” the Boss asks

“He’s a bullshit artist, yes,” the PFY concludes. “And one topic that he believes he qualifies for ‘world authority status’ on is computing.”

“It can't be that bad,” the Boss says. “He'll just be a user with more experience than most.”

“Less experience than most is probably more accurate,” I reply. “But that doesn’t stop him from professing his expertise to anyone who listens. But don’t take our word for it, bring up a topic, any topic at all. Religion, say!”

“Because he met the Pope,” the PFY says.

“And the Dali Lama.”

“Sadly he missed out on meeting Mohammed, but he has read all the books and went on a spiritual quest to find the source of the prophet’s teachings.”

“Before he was made a grand potato of the Kabbalah.”

“And he’s not one to let complete ignorance of a topic stop him from having an opinion.”

"Oh..." the Boss says worriedly.

"What?"

"Well, I thought you might appreciate the input... I invited him up."

"PREMO!" the PFY snaps dryly.

Moments later Jim arrives and proceeds to tell us how the viewing window in our door is a security risk.

"It's bullet-proof glass an inch thick!" the PFY lies.

"I know, but it's still a security risk. Because of ricochets," Jim snaps back.

"Good point," the boss blathers, picking up a pen and paper and making a note.

"Anything else?" the PFY asks.

"The door to your computer room has wire-strengthened glass."

"Yes?"

"It's not bullet-proof though," Jim says smugly.

"Yes - we wanted to avoid the ricochet risk," the PFY chirps sarcastically. "Anything more?"

"Is that an open riser?" he asks, pointing through the viewing window on the computer room door.

"Indeed," the PFY says, leading us into the computer room and to the riser door. "But as you can see, it's behind two secure doors and has this >clank< steel bar to stop people entering, this steel tray >bonga< >bonga< to stop people falling if they do enter and this video camera..."

"To let you know if someone enters the riser," Jim finishes.

"No, that's just so we can send something into those 'most hilarious deaths' TV shows. We've had some close calls..."

"You've had some close calls!" Jim gasps. "I was working on an oil rig in the north sea one time and the drill crane pulley broke and so I had to climb the boom and... "

>clank< >bonga< >Crash< >crash< >crash< >clunk< >thud<

"Do you want to say it or should we?" the PFY says. "Still plenty of room down there..."

"I... uh... t-t-there's been a terrible accident??"

"BINGO!"


CHAPTER 7

Today's going to be a bad day, I can tell. Not because of the evil machinations of the managing classes, nor the heat seeking stupidity of our users, nor even the Machiavellian plans of our suppliers...

No, today is going to be bad because the PFY has had insomnia for the past week or so. His game playing marathons have upset his body clock so badly that it has no idea of what time it is anywhere.

Ordinarily, your average garden variety geek - like me, or possibly you for that matter - would cure a bout of insomnia with the hard reset of several more days of non stop game playing and vast amounts of lager. When done properly this leads to a coma-like 12 hour sleep marathon sprawled over the keyboard dribbling like a retard. When done improperly it's much the same thing except it's on a Circle Line tube carriage for half of London to see...

Sadly, however, in this case the PFY decided to fight fire with fire and deprive himself of ANY sleep to teach his body a damn good lesson.

...which has lead to the paranoia and the PFY's most recent assertion - that the Boss is planning to replace us with robots. This in turn has lead to the PFY tailing the Boss around the building

"Exiting at level three," the PFY says quietly into his phone. "Going into... the library!"

Damn it! Now I know I'm going to have to go up and take a look - what with the PFY's unnatural fear of librarians and all (which I won't go into in any detail - for your own sanity). Normally the PFY'd shrug this fear off. However, in his current state of mind there's no telling what'll happen if I don't intervene.

It wouldn't be so bad if our library actually HAD a librarian instead of just a large room full of books that no-one goes into. Sigh.

Resigned to my fate, I trudge upstairs to meet the PFY.

"He went in there," the PFY whispers, pointing.

"Into the library..."

"Ssh!" the PFY says. "They might hear you!"

"Who might?"

"The librarians."

"We don't HAVE librarians."

"Yes, but one might have got the daylight savings hours wrong and be using our library as a safe harbour till night-time!"

"Yeah," I say, rolling my eyes, knowing what's coming.

"I'm telling you, they're vampires!"

"Of course they are," I sigh, bracing myself for the inevitable diatribe.

"LOOK! The pasty white skin - they never go out in the sun! The heavily diffused lighting which gives them a reason for not having a shadow. There's NEVER a mirror in a library... AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SEE IT?"

"Quite possibly," I say, realising that the only way through this exercise is to push the PFY through his retinue of proofs till we're out the other side. "But they're hardly offensive are they - they're very quiet."

"YES! QUIET!" he gasps. "They always seem to be able to creep up behind you, yet you turn around and they're gone. And they love the high ceilings!"

"You mean like the ceilings you get in most big libraries?"

"YES! And pipe work - have you ever noticed the pipework they always have on those high ceilings."

"The sprinkler pipes," I sigh. "The ones you'd expect to see in a room full of... paper."

"Oh that's just what they WANT you to think. But at night - they hang from them!"

"Yes, good point. Tell me, did you happen to knock back a couple of flagons of cider on the way to work this morning?"

"What? I... - it's made of apples, it's good for you!"

So the situation is worse than I thought – but I must forge on.

"So tell me," I say, preparing for the final assault. "Surely if they were vampires they'd be found out? Wouldn't their husbands or wives notice?"

"Ah-HAH!" the PFY snaps. "You'd THINK that wouldn't you - but they're only allowed to nest with their own kind!"

"So librarians can only marry other librarians?"

"Pretty much," the PFY nods sagely. "Have you ever met a librarian that wasn't married to another librarian - or someone who behaves like a librarian."

"Yes," I nod. "And their children?"

"Their spawn you mean," the PFY gasps. "The undead. SP-900 sunblock - but it doesn't fool anyone."

"I beg to differ," I say, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. "Surely the same thing could be said about a lot of IT people - pasty white skin, live inside mostly, don't use mirrors. We have pipework in the Computer room too..."

"I..."

"And a lot of geeks pair up with other geeks..." I say gently.

"Ah... I... Really?"

"Really." I say, as the Boss emerges from the library, book in hand.

"So there's nothing to be worried about?"

"Nothing at all," I say.

"And him?" the PFY asks as the Boss walks by, attempting in vain to hide the title of the book he's carrying. "A case study in automation of computing infrastructure."

"Oh he's a vampire," I say, handing the PFY a broom handle.

Who am I to stand in the way of God's work?


CHAPTER 8

It's mid afternoon and the PFY and I are sneaking around the building in pursuit of the IT director because he's acting funny...

[READER: DEGAUSS NOW FOR FLASHBACK REALISM!]

...10 minutes ago...

"Right, so you just want this signed then?" the director asks, scribbling blindly at the bottom of the page. "Okay, now if you'll just excuse me..."

"Thanks," I say, realising he wasn't the least bit interested in what he was signing. "Oh! and I just remembered that we needed to get a batch of LTO4 tapes."

"Uh-huh, well I'm sure you can bring that to me later."

"No hang on, I can fill the P/O out now," I say, grabbing a blank purchase order from a tray on the desk.

"Tell you want - how about I sign it and you just fill it in at your office?"

"Sure."

>scratchy< >DASH<

[READER: DEGAUSS AGAIN!]

...Present day...

Now, I'm not one to check a gift horse for cavities, but after an IT director signs what's effectively a blank cheque without batting an eyelid the PFY and I want to know what's up...

"Entering the boardroom," the PFY chirps over the walky-talky.

"So he's in there?" I say, when I get there moments later.

"Yep."

"Who else went in there?"

"No one."

"Hear anything?"

"Nothing," the PFY says, opening the door...

...to an empty room ...

"He's gone!"

"Are you SURE you saw him go in here?" I ask.

"Positive!"

"So there must be some other way out..." I say, checking the carpet for... "THERE!"

"Where?"

"There - see there's a wear pattern in the carpet which ends there. There's a door there. And that - that's not a blanking plate, that's a prox reader!"

"Wow!" the PFY says, holding his card up to the reader. "Nothing!"

"I'll try mine," I say... Nothing. "Wait a minute, what about if I try..."

>bip< >bip< >hummmm<

"What card was that?" the PFY asks as we step into a small alcove. The door humms closed behind us and a fan above us whirrs into life. "This is like a bloody airlock!"

"Indeed," I agree. "The card was a diagnostic one that happened to fall from the wallet of our alarm and lock installer."

"Just happened to 'fall' did it?" the PFY asks sarcastically as another door hums open in front of us. "Bloody hell!"

I concur with the PFY as we enter a well-lit office-sized white room with a couple of armchairs, a small table and a selection of today's newspapers. At the other side of the room, another door with a red light glowing above it.

"This is like a Bond movie!" the PFY gasps "What's behind the door, do you think?"

"Let's find out shall we?" I say, trying the handle. "Locked - and no prox reader. But wait, if I slide the card between the lock and the back of the door frame...” >click<

"Oh," the PFY says, disappointedly as we enter the next - smaller - room and the door >clack<

"Yes, a bit of a disappointment,", I admit as we find the room contains only a small handbasin and a cupboard with a selection of men's toiletries. "You know, I think this might be a..."

>FLUSH!<

"...executive toilet," the PFY finishes disappointedly. "I thought they only had these in B-grade sitcoms."

!!!

>click<

"What the hell are you doing in here!?" the director snaps as the door >clack<

"I could ask you the same thing!" I say.

"I have a KEY for this room," he responds, waving a card at me. "Given to me by the CEO himself. It's a huge honour to get access to this room - half the board don't even know it exists!"

"And how'd you come to get one?"

"I... helped the CEO with a sensitive matter."

"Not the sensitive matter that the PFY and I were working on a couple of weeks back - recovering the images from a digital camera card?" I ask.

"I..."

"So TECHNICALLY it should be us using this and not you?" the PFY asks.

"Oh you'd never get access to this place, it's worse than a gentlemen's club," he responds. "There's rules! Put one foot wrong and you're out! But if you're in, the world's your oyster - you're fast-tracked for success!"

"I see," the PFY says. "So how do we get out?"

"What do you mean?"

"We seem to be locked in."

"You shouldn't be in here in the first place - it's all computer controlled. You've probably upset it. But I'll just try >Gush< >Whirrr< >Click< There!"

"Ah," the PFY says as we exit to the large room. "You have to wash your hands before the door opens."

"Yes," the director says, pointing at the exit. "But that door's supposed to open at the same time."

"So we are locked in?" the PFY says, looking at the ceiling. "I could trip the fire alarm, which'll probably open the doors."

"NO!" the director blurts. "If there's any upset - however small - they'll find out from the card that I've been in here and I'll be blackballed."

"Let's think of this logically," I say. "The place isn't on the normal access network and has some form of door control logic. I'm guessing that the controller is local to this room, so scan the place for an access panel..."

"Found it!" the PFY says seconds later after moving an armchair. "Let's have a look then... Ah, the door logic's based around a PIC! Those are the input lines, those are the outputs and they're the power transistors."

"But can you open the door without raising an alarm?"

"Yeah - if you give me some time - but all this talk of toilets and everything, I'm bursting!"

"Use the toilet!"

"I can't, THAT door's locked!"

"I... use.. the basin then," the Director says. "But you must NEVER tell anyone!"

"Ok."

>click< >clack<

Two minutes later...

>click< >clack<

"So you're ok then?" the director snaps hurriedly.

"Yeah.. but uh... do any of you have any paper?"

"Oh, he's passed out!" I blurt. "Skip the donkey work, power the controller down and it'll probably fail open."

>prod< >click< >clack< >whirr< >humm< >humm<

Out not a moment too soon either, as the CEO skulks past us towards the boardroom..

[READER: DEGAUSS FOR FADE OUT]


CHAPTER 9

“You don’t have to do this,” I say calmly to the PFY as the wind and rain washes and whistles around us on the roof of the building.

“I do!” the PFY says. “I have to!”

“You don’t – it’s not... necessary” I say.

“It IS!” the PFY counters urgently. “I must!”

“Let's just think about this clearly,” I say, speaking quietly so the PFY has to lean back from the edge of the building to hear me.

“I have,” the PFY whimpers. “I have thought about it carefully. It’s the only way!”

“It’s not the only way,” I proffer. “There’s other ways. It doesn’t have to be the end.”

“It MUST!” the PFY shouts. “I can’t go on like this!”

“You just have to be strong,” I say, trying to reason with him now.

“I’m not strong,” the PFY sighs. “I can’t do it!”

“Of course you can,” I say, reaching out my hand towards him in a gesture of understanding. “Now... hand over the SCO install disks.”

“I CAN’T!” the PFY squeals. “I can’t bear the thought of installing it again. It was bad enough when I didn’t know better, but now it’s just too horrible.”

“Think of the children!” I gasp, as the PFY’s hand again moves over the edge.

“What bloody children?”

“The children on the streets below. What if a child found those CDs? They might take it home, boot their machine off them and think that sort of thing is... normal, good even.”

“No!” the PFY gasps. “Not even a child is that stupid!”

“But you can’t be sure, can you?” I say. “It might happen. Just hand the disks over and it’ll all be ok.”

“How do I know I can trust you?” the PFY whimpers again.

“Because I’m a professional,” I say “Because we’ve worked together for years. Because we have mutual respect. And because there’s a SWAT guy climbing up the ledge behind you.”

“Wha..” the PFY says as I quickly slip the cattleprod onto his neck...

. . . Three days later in a room that doesn’t officially exist . . .

“Well, it’s the real thing,” says a white-coated bloke carrying a CD Caddy with a large lock on it. “The full SCO install media with all the maintenance packs probably has a street value of... next to nothing.”

“So it’s the latest version then?” I say.

“Oh yes. What I can’t understand is how he managed to get his hands on it - I mean in this country we have very strict import legislation which is supposed to cover indecent, objectionable and just plain crap material.”

“Careful – you’ll affect the Spice Girls comeback with talk like that!” I caution. “Has my assistant come round yet?”

“Oh yes, he’s up and about,” labcoat says, pressing a button which turns the wall into a viewing window of the PFY wandering blearily around a white room. “We initially had him under sedation, but once we realised he’d actually booted off the media we thought it prudent to induce an artificial coma for a couple of days.”

“You made him read the Richard Stallman story?”

“Yeah – though he only got as far as the foreword.”

“Really?” I say “I can only remember the dedication.”

“I know - most people do. They say the typesetter was on adrenalin and speed for his own safety. After the first three deaths leastways.”

“So he’s free to go?” I say, pointing at the PFY.

“Sure,” labcoat says, pressing a button to open the back door in the PFY’s room which now exits onto a Soho side street. “He’ll find his own way home but will have no memory of the last few days - he'll think he’s been out on a vendor-bender.”

“And what do I tell his girlfriend?”

“Just tell her you think he caught a 72-hour virus,” labcoat says. “And that he needs to be kept on a diet of meat, veg and Blackadder reruns.”

“And he’ll be ok?”

“Hopefully. Most people make a full recovery though some have relapses – he’s certainly not the worst we’ve seen. We had one guy in here who’d accidentally bought the full OS2 Warp install media on eBay thinking it was a Star Trek movie. Now he was hard work because it was both crap and ancient. We made him read Stallman four times before he was able to be released.”

“Ah, D...” another labcoat says walking in. “Speaking of that Warp install media, you haven’t seen it have you?”

“No, why, when did you last have it?”

“Uh... Not sure. I know I had it in my pocket when we brought that last guy around...”

. . .

I could go on about Tranquiliser guns in Soho but the D-Notices are fairly specific...


Chapter 10 

"You’re not listening to me!" the Boss snaps.

"Hmm?"

"You’re not listening to me!"

"Course I am," I say distractedly.

"What did I say then?"

"The users are unhappy."

"I… What about?" the Boss asks, temporarily foiled by my Geller-like guesswork.

"Some user thing or the other – their stupidity, the computer doing what they told it to do, or.. their stupidity."

"No, I was saying that we need… blahblahblatherblahblah... you’re not listening to me!"

"Hmm?"

"You’re not listening to me!"

"Course I am," I say distractedly.

"What did I say then?"

"You said I wasn’t listening to you."

"Before that."

"I... Actually, do you know, I’ve completely forgotten!" I gasp.

"I was saying that we n... blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this is ridiculous, you’re still not listening!"

"It’s a fair cop guv!" I admit, before the recursion of our conversation overflows his stack and he brownloads himself.

"Why aren’t you listening?"

"I..." I say, trying to think something up but getting distracted. What the hell, I decide to play the truth card... "I’m watching the IT Director and the PFY."

"What about them?" the Boss says, peering over to where the Director and PFY are standing.

"As you can see, the PFY is playing a quiet game of Spider."

"Yes, it’s his lunch hour, I’m sure noone would begrudge him that."

"Yes, but he only ever plays Spider to calm down after something really annoys him."

"Really annoys him?"

"Yes, you know, like when someone asks you to rebuild an entire directory tree from three month old backups, which you do – taking hours - only to find out they only actually needed one tiny text file from the whole thing and they’d found a copy of it on a USB key 10 minutes after asking for the recovery. But they didn’t think it was worth telling you that at the time..."

"I see."

"And that's happened twice to the PFY this week,"" I add. "So now, if you watch very closely you’ll see the IT Director is helping the PFY with his card placement..."

"Yes?"

"Which is something that really really annoys my offsider."

"I... see."

"How's your nuclear physics?" I ask.

"What?"

"Nuclear physics," I repeat. "You see, the theory of relativity says E=MC2 which means that because the speed of light is so incredibly fast even a very tiny mass can produce a huge amount of energy."

"I… see."

"And this energy is generally expected to be released at the splitting/destruction of atoms."

"If you say so..."

"And most atomic bombs use the result of the destruction of atoms to trigger the destruction more atoms which in turn trigger the destruction of a much more atoms, and so on and so on - all in an incredibly short time."

"Yes?"

"And they generally start this chain reaction by bringing one or more pieces of dangerously fissile material into foolishly close proximity?"

"Mmm."

"...By making one of piece of radioactive material show the other piece that the ten should go on the Jack and the Jack onto the Queen."

"I…" the Boss says, penny dropping. "Are you sure we shouldn’t stop this?"

"I would," I say, trying to casually slip my fingers into my ears without the Boss noticing. "But the outcome of a reaction like this tends to be somewhat… unfocussed... and one doesn’t want to be too near to the fissile material when it eve…"

...seconds later...

"What the hell just happened?!" the Boss gasps, picking himself up off the floor and looking over to observe the PFY calmly playing cards acapella. "And are your ears ringing?"

"What happened when?" I ask.

"That bang?"

"You mean the bang, almost like a sonic boom, as air rushes to fill a human being like space now that the human being has ceased to exist?"

"No, a bang like a scream, a door opening and slamming, another door opening and slamming in the distance – maybe the cleaners room – then another scream, a door slamming in the distance, a door opening and slamming close to us, and.. the squeak of a wheely chair. Only all happening in what seemed like a fraction of a second."

Damn, he’s good! Unfortunately...

"The cleaner’s cupboard you say?" I ask, giving the Boss a chance to revise his story.

"That’s what it sounded like."

"Are you sure?" I ask. "I mean you’re... positive?"

"Yes!" "Oh, well, in that case I suppose I’ll go and take quick look. In any case I think we should put him out of harm’s way so I’m going to suggest my assistant plays minesweeper or something instead. You just stay over this side of the office, just in case."

Moments later, after pretending to check the cleaner’s cupboard, I’m on the way back to Mission control and musing at the special uncharted realm of physics that underpins computer games everywhere. The Boss might even be interested in hearing about things like the compression of time that makes a four-hour gaming session seem like 10 minutes, the gravitation-like pull of minesweeper which can draw a person in from acro… or did I forget to mention that?

>EeeSLAMslameeslamSLAMsqueak<

Ooops.


Chapter 11 

"Really, I thought they'd be right up your alley!" the Boss sniffs disappointedly.

"They're just sliding doors!" I comment.

"Yes, but they're intelligent sliding doors – they've got scanners and a computer interface and everything!"

"That's as may be, but they're not secure doors."

"Yes they are, they use face recognition for access control."

"Yes, but they're not secure."

"You could make them secure - you could program it to be secure!"

"No, You can't program them to weigh about three times as much as they do now, have etched smash-proof glass and pry-proof mountings. They're just lightweight access doors designed to be used as a first line of defence – to be backed up by security personnel."

"I see."

"I mean were these doors even purchased with server room access in mind?"

"I..."

"So you admit they weren't? You put your hand up for something that was going free, didn't you?"

"They weren't exactly free - we had to pay security the purchase price when it was decided that they shouldn't go on the front of the building."

"Why."

"Uhhhmmmm, I think Security had some concerns about the door's... robustness."

"I rest my case!"

"Perhaps you could put them somewhere more useful – like controlling entry to the cafeteria?" the PFY suggests.

"Why?"

"I dunno, prevent people coming back for seconds, stopping outsiders like our engineers snaffling all the onion Bhajis – maybe controlling access to the bar?"

"Actually," the Boss says, thinking about it a bit. "That might actually be a good idea! I'll put it to the catering staff."

...Moments later when the Boss has departed...

"You've been rather quiet on all this?" I ask the PFY.

"Yes," he responds. "I've been reading through the installation guide. Micro thin door glass and TV-dinner-grade aluminium extrusions aside these doors are pretty good!"

"In what way?"

"They have an inbuilt processor which isn't too shabby, a face processing offload engine which uses 18 facial regions for recognition from up to 60 degrees from head on and they even have expression templates."

"Expression templates?"

"Yeah, you can let the doors make decisions on both on whether the face is known or unknown and what sort of mood they're in."

"So you could block someone who has access if they look irate?" I say, starting to like this idea a bit.

"Oh that's just the tip of the iceberg! You can create door profiles with operational settings for a particular person in a particular mood."

"Really?"

"Oh yes," the PFY blathers. "Any one of the configuration settings can be matched to a profile - opening/closing speed, opening/closing distance, opening/closing force, open time, door-held behaviour, multiple person acceptance. Say the Boss has just had a crap day - you can make the door open at light speed when he's x metres from the door, slam again at light speed when he's y metres from the door, not open if his wife's with him, you name it, it can be done. AND there's hierarchies so that if the door's not opening for the Boss and his wife it WILL open for the CEO - and slam shut if the Boss and his wife try and sneak in behind him!"

"So... in the interests of... uh... cafeteria security... we should investigate the full gamut of door control options."

"As an aid to the... analysis of the... facial recognition door controller... genre," the PFY finishes.

"OK then, lets do it!"

...Three days later...

"Have you, uh, got a moment to speak with security about the sliding doors you had installed in the cafeteria?" the Boss asks.

"Sure, what do they want to know?"

"Oh, not a lot, they just want to hear from you about your experiences with the programming of the access control program thing."

"What do they want to know precisely?" the PFY asks helpfully.

"Uuhhhm, just how it works. How to use it."

"So they're thinking of getting some of them for the building then?"

"Not exactly," the Boss responds.

"?"

"They've decided that they do want to remove the doors from the cafeteria - but at least they've reimbursed us for the purchase price."

"Don't tell me, they're not happy with the way they've been programmed?"

"It's not that exactly - although I have heard through the grapevine that they weren't impressed with the daily sweepstake on who'd get a cup of scalding hot coffee down their front when the doors slammed closed as they were about to exit."

"Just a glitch in the facial recognition software," the PFY comments.

"The same glitch that slammed the door repeatedly on the Head Accountant's laptop just before he was due to give his presentation on right-sizing the company?"

"Quite probably," the PFY says. "Tricky business, debugging facial recognition code - it's all in assembler for speed you know. So the door's are to be dumbed down and taken away then?"

"Not exactly."

"?"

"They want them on the front of the building with the hot-coffee thing armed with a button on the desk."

"And you said yes," the PFY says disgustedly.

"I was hanging over the side of the building with a hood over my head at the time!"

"Ah right, good point!" the PFY says, packing the installation guide and his notes into a brown envelope and handing them to the Boss.

. . .

Well, we've had our fun I suppose. Besides, I'm sure the PFY's USB Wi-Fi adapter is still plugged into the controller...

Plenty of time to help security... uh... downsize...


Chapter 12 

>crash!< >stomp< >stomp< >stomp< >stomp< >clump<

"Nice trip in then?" I ask the PFY as the Boss looks on warily. "Straight through was it, no stopping every ten seconds then?"

"The tube was fine," the PFY snaps back.

"Something else the matter then?" I ask. "Did someone get up on the wrong side of the traffic island?"

"I had a fine sleep, thanks."

"So it was after you got up, before you got to work and wasn't anything to do with the tube problems we're trying to perfect before the Olympics?"

"It's that BLOODY VENDING MACHINE again."

"Oooh, is it misbehaving?" I ask, even though I know the answer.

"Yes. I put the coins in, selected the number for salt and vinegar crisps and a bloody Turkish bloody Delight bloody chocolate bar came out!"

"Are you sure you pressed the right number?" I ask – knowing full well that after the PFY's history with this particular machine he's especially careful.

"Course I did. D4. It's always D4. The tab says D4, if you look up the row and column and work your way across it's D4 – IT SHOULD BE D4!"

"But D4 was a Turkish Delight chocolate bar."

"NO, the Turkish Delight chocolate bar is F5 – miles away. Not even a bad keypad matrix should do that!""

"What about," I suggest, "if there's a strip connector in the back which was put on upside down?"

"D and 4 aren't mirror images of F and 7."

"What about if they put it on badly registered?"

"What, both of them?"

"Yes."

"It's not likely – and besides the matrix calculation's all done on the keypad board."

"So the machine's busted then?" the Boss asks, unfortunately.

"Oh, it's not busted," the PFY says, nodding his head slightly in thought. "It knows EXACTLY what it's doing."

"Are you suggesting the machine is somehow sentient?" I ask.

"No," the PFY says, to my internal sigh of relief given his propensity for conspiracy theories. "No, it's the Underground that's doing it."

Bugger.

"They make deals with the consumables companies you see – they get all their expired and almost expired stock and load them into their vending machines. Then, as the expiry date comes closer the probability of you 'miskeying' your choice increases, till it gets to 1. I think they even track the stuff you hate the most and weight that higher – just to annoy you."

"Yes, I suppose it's something to think about," I say, not wanting to argue. "Still, aren't the machines independently operated?"

"So they say. But there's always an Underground person watching on the cameras."

"So it's all a conspiracy run by the Underground."

"Yep," the PFY says, rifling through his drawers and pulling out a set of door keys.

"So why don't you ring the number on the machine and get your money back?"

"A. They never give your money back, and B. The moment is gone – I needed crisps and they robbed me of that."

"Did you give the machine a little shake?" the Boss asks helpfully. "Bang it a couple of times?"

"No, that money''s gone," the PFY sulks. "The only thing I can get now is revenge..."

Uh-oh...

"...I'll be in the lab."

. . .

"What lab?" the Boss asks once the PFY's stormed downstairs. "We don't have a lab."

"No," I agree. "We don't. But we do have a storeroom with all the kit we've not got rid of over the years – which we sometimes dip into on occasion for parts to make useful workplace items."

"So what's he making?"

"It's a large storeroom with several huge decommissioned UPS units, piles of old server gear, photocopiers, a couple of line printers, miscellaneous other building machinery – he could be making anything down there.""

"Should we stop him?"

"Yes, good plan. You go down, I'll wait here."

"I... think I'll just see if he calms down a bit," the Boss says, smelling the fear in my tone.

Three hours later the PFY's back, wheeling an all-too-familiar chunk of large luggage.

"Is it in there?" the Boss asks, not knowing whether to expect an atomic bomb or a chemical weapon.

"It is," the PFY says ominously.

"So you're using my pinch then?" I enquire.

"It's not a pinch and it's not yours," the PFY snaps back.

"I made it."

"You made part of it," the PFY responds.

"Now, now," the Boss says, trying to defuse the situation. "I'm sure you can both claim credit for it – whatever it is."

"A pinch," I say.

"Not a pinch," the PFY argues.

"Okay, so it's just a ginormous momentary effect electromagnet."

"That's what it was – but I've modified it."

"How?" I asked, interested.

"Since you originally made this we've scrapped two UPS units – so I paralleled up the capacitors from them with the existing ones in your device. I also converted your 240v trickle charge to a 415V trickle because the caps are rated at 450V, and I changed the direction and speed of the coil triggering."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning it's far more powerful, optimised for discharge and much better focussed."

"And you're sure whatever it is safe?"

"Not entirely," the PFY says. "Which is why I tested it in the basement."

"And?" the Boss asks.

"There's a reasonable chance no one parked along the north wall will be driving home tonight."

"And you intend to use this on the vending machine?" I ask, horrified.

"Well if I used a hammer I'd probably have the life expectancy of a Brazilian electrician!"

"And what do you think your chances are if you're caught wheeling a bunch of electronic equipment around after a chunk of your tube station suddenly goes haywire?" I ask.

"I... didn't think of that," the PFY mumbles.

"Of course you didn't!" I snap back. "You just don't think things through. However, were there a history of... power anomalies... in London, people would be far less suspicious."

"What are you suggesting?"

"I'm suggesting that we go and visit one or two of our hardware vendors, then maybe the electronics shop that refused to repair my amplifier under warranty, the bank on the high street that wouldn't extend my overdraft, the..."

"...RESTAURANT THAT CUT UP MY CREDIT CARD LAST YEAR!" the Boss adds.

"Only if we can stop off at the beancounters before we leave," the PFY agrees.

"Course we can!"

Well, it's God's work, isn't it?


Chapter 13 

"You HAD to push the button, didn't you?" the PFY snaps angrily at the Boss in the dark of the elevator.

"I only just TOUCHED it!" the Boss snivels. "It's not like I actually PRESSED it!"

"Now, now," I say. "No use crying over fried control panels. We need to take a look at how bad it is before we start getting upset. And bear in mind that they're bound to find out one of the lifts isn't working in a day or two..."

One of the hazards of trying out experimental technology is the inevitable risk that it will somehow backfire on you, and in this case we have a doozy. After a whirlwind tour of the beancounters' floor, a number of underground vending machines, the kebab guy with the radio that's always a bit off-channel and finally the location of a congestion camera via the open deck of a tourist bus, the Boss, PFY and I have set off back for the comfort of mission control safe in the knowledge of a job well done. The only mistake we made in the process was charging the PFY's makeshift pinch up again in case we'd need its services on the way.

"What about the security camera?" the Boss says, pointing at the lift ceiling.

"Good point," the PFY says. "It may have missed the full force of the pinch."

"So we could maybe write a note?" the Boss suggests.

. . .

"Nothing," the PFY says half an hour later. "I think it's fair to assume that Security has not seen our messages."

"So the camera's broken too then?" the Boss asks.

"It would seem so," I concur.

"And the alarm button doesn't work?"

"If the panel's dead it's all dead."

"MY CELLPHONE!"

"You mean you took yours with you!" the PFY gasps. "After about 30 discharges of this baby I'm surprised the battery didn't explode!"

The boss checks his phone only to find it completely dead.

"So surely security will come to investigate?"

"Yeah, I don't think you really understand how security guards work," the PFY says carefully. "Say they've got 20 images to keep an eye on and one of them suddenly goes blank. That's like giving them the morning off. They're not likely to fix that problem as doing so will cut into their cartoon time."

"Or their 'reading The Sun at childishly slow rate' time," the PFY adds.

"So they're not going to come?"

"Not before we're drinking each other's sock-filtered urine, no," I feel obliged to reply. "So how do we get out then?"

"Hmm?" the PFY says.

"Well you two have apparently been trapped in more lifts than anyone in the building. You must have escaped somehow."

"Ah yes, you mean like they do in the movies?" I ask.

"Yes."

"OK, well you know how movies aren't real?"

"?"

"And that 99.99 per cent of lifts have their roof access hatch locked from the outside to prevent people from damaging the lift - or themselves."

"I didn't know that," the Boss sighs.

"No, and I'm betting you also didn't know that OUR access hatches are spot welded shut in any case?"

"Why would someone do that?" the Boss asks.

"I don't know," I say, looking pointedly at the PFY. "Why WOULD someone do that?"

"YOU did it!" the Boss gasps.

"It was a long time ago," the PFY says. "I hadn't thought to change it."

"So we're REALLY stuck here?"

"Possibly – and possibly not. Givvus a hand muscling this door open will you?"

The PFY, Boss and I pry the door open to reveal the slab wall of the lift shaft.

"Bugger," the PFY says. "We might have been able to lever open an outside door and exit that way."

"So..."

"So socks off and watertight containers out!" the PFY replies, trying to add a bit of levity to the situation...

"You can't be serious!"

...Four hours later...

"Where are they?" the Boss moans.

"Oh it's early days yet!" the PFY says, getting a comfortable position on the floor.

...Two hours later...

"Are there any pipes we could maybe tap on?" the Boss asks, before going silent under a barrage of withering looks.

"The fire alarm," the PFY says, pointing at the detector above us.

"Electronic," I say. "If only we still used the old mechanical ones. Still, can't hurt to give it a bash!" >CRUNCH<

Less than half an hour later we hear some thumping from above and the clatter of the hatch - which doesn't open, of course. Luckily however, our rescuer tells us he's going to flip the lift over to master then trip the return-to-ground signal – whatever the hell that means.

"Oh thank goodness!" the Boss gasps, mopping away at his brow furiously.

A minute or so later we're safely on the ground floor and a couple of minutes later our rescuer from the fire safety contractors has made his way back to us.

"The hatch is welded shut!" he says. "I've noted it on my report along with the faulty fire sensor."

"I have to say, I'm impressed with the speed of your response," I say.

"What do you mean?" the fire bloke says, acting a bit defensive.

"Half an hour – unheard of!"

"Half an hour?" he replies. "I got the sensor failure call just under seven hours ago, was onsite about four hours ago - but the blokes from security wouldn't let me sort it out at the time."

"Why not?" the PFY asks.

"They said something about operational security but in reality I think they just had a bet running on what would happen in the lift. I've been here before, you see."

"RIGHT!" the PFY says, plugging his luggage into the nearest power socket.

"You didn't happen to leave anything of any value at the security desk did you?""

"Just my laptop."

"You might want to just go and grab that. Quickly!" I say, as the PFY sets out for security with a determined expression on his face...


Chapter 14 

So the Boss had sensed a touch of animosity between us and one of our main software vendors after a recent bill and decided to grab the bull by the horns and invite them in to press-the-flesh and explain the new charging model they applied to us - without notice.

Apparently, their reasoning ends up being that the new licensing model is one that's both fair to us and fair to other lower-use sites by applying a model which truly reflects the use their application's being put to, number of concurrent users, CPUs it's running on, the potential benefits to an organisation our size, blah, blah, blah.

"Cup of coffee?" the PFY asks, stepping over to the espresso machine once the presentation is over.

"I... don't know," the Rep #1 chuckles. "Are you going to charge me for it?"

"Of course not," the PFY says. "It's on the house!"

"Well in that case, sure."

"Me too," Rep #2 says.

"How would you like it?"

"I... can you make a Café Latte?"

"Sure - I can even make a Mocha if you want."

"A Mocha would be great!"

"Yes, I'll have one as well," Rep #2 says again.

...

"Thanks," #1 says, taking his steaming mug of chocolate infused caffeine and sipping vigorously.

"Ta," #2 adds, following #1's lead and sucking down several steaming mouthfuls.

"Okay, so all up that'll be £47, uhh... 83p" the PFY says, thinking hard.

"Sorry?"

"£47.83"

"What for?"

"Your drinks."

"You said they were free!"

"No, I said the coffee was free, but there's the chocolate to consider, cup licensing, cup hardware maintenance, cup support line subscription."

"What do you mean cup licensing?"

"It's our cup and you're making use of it. Obviously, it will be returned to us, at which time it'll probably need some preventative hardware maintenance."

"You mean you have to wash it?"

"We prefer to think of it as a total maintenance solution aimed at providing the best possible cup experience for the user."

"So what's the support line subscription about then? I hardly think we'd want to be paying that!"

"Cup support line subscription is a compulsory product - you can't elect not to take it."

"So what do we get for the support line subscription?"

"You get the ability to call our support line 24 hours a day."

"And what, you'll give us help if the drink has... made us ill?"

"Possibly - if you ring us during work hours."

"You said it was a 24 hour line!"

"The phone will ring any time of the day or night."

"So we'd have to leave a message then?"

"Leaving messages would require an update to our Gold plan."

"So say I got ill tonight, if I'm on your Gold plan you'd sort me out with a medical attention?"

"We'd sort you out with a doctor's phone number. From the Yellow Pages. On Monday morning."

"So we're not really getting much for Gold support then are we?"

"No, you're right, Platinum is the best option" the PFY responds. "With Gold support we can probably help you with phone numbers, but Platinum support would get you my cellphone number and my firsthand knowledge of the way the coffee was made and what potential problems might arise - determined from our extensive logs of previous coffee drinkers. We also have an in depth knowledge of the various mocha ingredients - which may have contained traces of nut, I'm not sure."

"Neither of us has a nut allergy," #2 blurts.

"And we welcome coffee clients with a proactive attitude to their own maintenance programs! As I've said, neither the Gold nor Platinum support models are compulsory by any means - because we like to be fair to all our coffee clients, big and small, and try to tailor our coffee support model to truly reflect the use the coffee's being put to, the number of cups the user has a day, the size of the cup and the individual blend choices which each client may desire."

"So what if we choose not to buy your coffee in the first place?"

"As you've already had about a third of the coffee you've pretty much already committed to the coffee experience - what with the restocking fee of £50 and all - and to be brutally frank the cups you're drinking from were washed in a porcelain device not normally associated with food hygiene so I doubt that finishing the cup would have much difference at this stage. I would, however, stress that we would strongly recommend your upgrade to the Platinum support model so that we can aid in the 'debugging' exercise should you become violently ill in say... six or seven hours time..."

"You..."

"I know what you're going to say - you like the cut of our licensing gib?"

"No," #1 responds. "I was just wondering what your manager will think about this extortion?"

"Not a lot I shouldn't think", I respond. "Given that the muffins he had at the beginning of your presentation was made in a certain porcelain mixing bowl."

"I had one of those muffins!" #2 gasps.

"Then I would suggest an immediate upgrade to Platinum support line subscription, uptake of our return-to-hospital user support and the additional no-questions-asked trouser replacement option."

"How much?" #2 gasps, feeling the burn and half doubling over.

"Call it an even hundred," the PFY says, grabbing the proffered wallet while it's still touchable. "Or one fifty for a two client pack..." he adds as #1 starts greening up a bit...


Chapter 15 

"And this is... uh... where I work >click<" the PFY says, opening the door briefly before closing it again and walking off.

Curious...

Moments later, the PFY is back and the door opens again briefly with a quick, "Ahh, my desk is the one over there. >click<"

Curiouser...

A short time later the door reopens once more and the PFY enters leading an elderly lady into the room.

"Goodness, this is spacious isn't it?" she exclaims. "Although a little bit cluttered don't you think?"

"Yes mum," the PFY says, bowing his head slightly.

"Why do you need such a big space for the two of you?" she asks.

"It's a technical support environment," I proffer, reeling off the excuse that has maintained the highest floor space-to-employee ratio in the building for many years. "And as such we often need room to set up testbench hardware as proof of concept trials - or simply to diagnose tricky computing problems. So... you'd be... my assistant's… older sister?"

"Mother," she responds, not indulging the obvious lie too much.

"Pleased to meet you," I say, offering my hand in welcome – much to the PFY's discomfort. "Here, have a seat – would you like a nice cup of tea?"

"Yes, that would be nice," she replies, easing herself into the PFY's chair. "Milk, one sugar please dear."

"And an espresso for me, thanks," I add, opting for a drink best suited for saliva detection.

A few minutes later the PFY's back with our drinks while I'm stepping the PFY's mum through a tour of the PFY’s desktop icons.

"And this file here is a movie about a young woman called Amber who, because of the foibles of the 80s job market, is unable to pay her many bills and has to devise alternative methods to do so."

"Like raffles?"

"Yes, like raffles, cake stalls and suchlike," I say, giving the PFY a couple of moments as the colour returns to his cheeks.

"I’ve never heard of it," his mum replies.

"No, it was a bit of an... arthouse movie, with a cult following."

"Like Rocky Horror?"

"Not so much."

"Your tea," the PFY interrupts, before I can continue, passing the cup over while "accidentally" standing on the power cord to his monitor.

I grab my coffee and examine it closely for foreign bodies, sniff it for the presence of undiluted industrial cleanser and take a small precautionary sip. Lovely. As I'm taking a larger sip it occurs to me that the PFY's demeanour is that of a completely changed man. Gone is the ruthless technical professional with a penchant for petty larceny and mindless violence and in its place is a... a... nice person?!

Could it be that the PFY's mum is some form of.. PFY Kryptonite?

?!

But then I realise that if this were truly the case and the PFY was some form of alternative IT superman, struck down by his proximity to his weakening agent, then surely at this juncture he would encounter his arch-enem...

"Who sent this?!" the Head Beancounter says, storming into Mission Control waving a piece of paper about angrily.

"What's that?" the PFY asks, oozing helpfulness like one of those nice people you see on bank commercials

"One of you sent me this reply to my request for administrative control of the financials server!"

"Really? Do you mind if I have a look at that?" the PFY asks, taking the page "Hmmm. It does seem to be rather inflammatory – and that bit implying that your early family history was a experiment in recursion is particularly unkind – but neither of us would have written such a thing. Are you sure it wasn't one of your own people doing this as some form of bad joke?"

"Are you suggesting that this wasn’t your doing?" "It doesn't sound like us," I respond. "And besides – it's been sent from your email address."

"Everyone knows you sent it!" he responds. "And I can prove it! Our consultant has pointed out that the company's SMTP host adds an extra header line of the sending host – THAT address," he snaps, pointing to a sticky label on the side of the PFY's machine. "You're for the high jump now."

"I..." the PFY’s mum says, the excitement a bit much for her as she swoons back into the PFY's chair – illusions of her offspring shattered. "M... My handbag please."

"Are you alright?" the Head Beancounter asks, handing over the requested item to the PFY's mum as he mentally contemplates his liability for her attack.

"I'll be fine once I get my angina tablets," she says, reaching into her bag and retrieving...

>KZERRRTT!<

"Now THAT's what the doctor ordered!" she says, sitting back up again. "How many times have I told you about leaving paper trails?"

"Yes Mum," the PFY says, downcast.

!

"Tell me," I say, addressing myself to the septuagenarian with the unlicensed stunner. "One thing I've always wanted to know... Is everyone on your home planet a psychopath?"


Chapter 16 

"...And we used to do pretty much everything from the switches on the front panel – bootstrapping, diagnostics, machine code reprogramming – all on toggle switches!" the Boss burbles happily "...those were the days!"

"I'm sure they were," the PFY says dryly, rolling his eyes out of the Boss' view.

"Oh, that was just the tip of the iceberg," he continues. "When I first started computing we used to send out cards across London to get processed, but then we bought our own reader connected to a phone line and used it to transmit them over the phone lines with what was the forerunner to modern modems."

"You don't say," the PFY adds.

"Oh yeah! And then we bought our own Burroughs and did the whole thing ourselves, start to finish. We even got our own cards produced for the data entry and replaced our punch card system with mark sense cards – which was a process in itself, but I'll save that story for another day!"

"Oh, don't feel obliged," the PFY says, stifling a whimper.

...Which you can't blame him for. It seems that the Boss has the Grandpa Simpson gene which causes him to recount endless stories with no apparent relevance to what's happening at the moment and which are more stream of unconsciousness recollections than monologues of any value. And today, now that half the IT department is on user-centric service training, the Boss is all ours and has taken use under his wing in an effort to teach us to be more... well, boring.

"Nonsense!" the Boss gasps. "It's my pleasure. You know once we had this machine which had a symmetrical four prong plug in the back of it with a little arrow on it and it turned out that when the arrow was pointing in a vertical direction the machine ran at about two thirds of the speed of what it did when the arrow pointed in the horizontal direction – only no one knew this of course. Anyway, we'd paid for a machine that ran as fast as the vertical position only one day one of the vendor's engineers came and moved the plug from the vertical to the horizontal position for the testing (because they had to test the machine at it's full speed) and forgot to turn it back when he'd finished. Instant upgrade!!! It was only a couple of years later when we had something go wrong that another engineer discovered the plug was in the wrong orientation from what we'd paid for and said we'd have to pay for the upgraded ability that we'd been using. Well, that caused a stir, let me tell you!'

"I'm sure it did," the PFY says, picking up a pager from his desk and pressing the test button.

>BEEP< >BEEP<

"Oh!" the PFY continues. "Looks like we've got a server down – I'll have to pop off to sort that out."

"That's ok," the Boss says. "I'll come with you – I haven't told you about the time we were using one of those old acoustic couplers for remote diagnostics and our throughput from 300 baud to around 20! We searched for that problem for weeks before realising that when we shut the lid on the receiver it was squashing the foam in just the right way to generate a bit of feedback through a channel in the coupler's casing – which of course we didn't know because when the cover was closed you couldn't hear a thing."

"DO TELL!" the PFY snaps, walking into the computer room to fake a server outage with the Boss in tow.

Minutes later I notice an icon turn red on the monitor as the PFY probably presses its power button to ‘clear the fault' for the Boss' benefit, with a restart shortly thereafter.

"...and so it turned out that the punch cards had been eaten by weevils," the Boss blathers. "Which explained all the parity errors we were getting!"

"I see," the PFY says before making excuses about the calls of nature.

"I was just telling him about having to reread all our old punch cards," the Boss says, wandering over to my desk.

"Oh yeah, when you were getting data errors and found that insects had eaten holes through them," I say. "I remember you telling me that!"

"Weevils," the Boss says. "But before that we had..."

"An acoustic coupler with feedback, yes, I heard that. And the one about the plug which set the speed on your machine."

"Oh," the Boss says in a hurt tone as the PFY returns. "But I know you've not heard about the time..."

"One of your large disk drives head crashed and the whole floor shook?"

"Oh," the Boss sniffs. "What about the time..."

"You bypassed the door-open switch on your 9 track tape drive and it lost vacuum and tape spewed out all over the floor?"

"Oh," he repeats, sounding even more wounded before slowly wandering off.

"That was a bit cruel wasn't it?" the PFY asks. "And how did you know about that disk drive thing – I don't remember that story?"

"EVERY old computer buff has a head crash story," I said. "Anyway, I thought you'd done a runner when you ducked off to the bog."

"Nah," the PFY says holding up the home modified cattle prod wrapped in swathes insulation tape. "I was just changing the batteries on this. Honestly, if I had to hear one more story about how they debugged 11/34 crashes I was going to let him have it!"

"And a good thing too. The 11/34 was a piece of crap. The 11/70 was a sack of cack as well and their only redeeming feature was they were the forerunner to the VAX series. We had a couple of 11/780s when I started work complete with 8 inch boot floppies and you could always tell when one crashed because the attention light came on followed by the furious clicking inside the cabi >KZZZZZEEERT!<"

...Can anyone else smell burning?


Chapter 17 

"I think I have some good news..." the Boss chirps happily as he skips into Mission Control.

"Good news?" the PFY says.

"Very good news!" he gushes.

"On a scale of one to ten?"

"Ten - at least!"

"Really," I say. "And what could possibly register as a ten?"

"You're going to get a new computer room!" he blurts.

"A new computer room?"

"Yes, what you've been after - for ages - by all accounts. AND you'll get all new plant and state-of-the-art environmental monitoring and fire suppression."

"Really?" I say, suppressing my natural urge to blurt PANTS ON FIRE! "Who's moving out?"

"We all are!" he gasps cheerfully.

"All of us?"

"The entire building!"

"Why?" the PFY asks.

"Well it's an interesting thing. An audit at the end of last year found that the only thing the company carried sufficient insurance for was workplace accident and associated liability. For some reason. Most importantly the building insurance was flagged as being seriously underestimated given the appreciation in value since the building was purchased - because of its proximity to certain parts of the city which are more desirable than they once were."

"Uh huh," the PFY says doubtfully.

"So what you're saying is that the building that was a bit of a fire sale special a number of years ago is now a valuable chunk of London real estate?"

"Exactly! As a result of this the company decided to capitalise on its good fortune by selling up, buying elsewhere for vastly less and..."

"Misreporting the capital gains as revenue?" I ask.

"No, by buying elsewhere for less and using a portion of the profit to refurbish the new building into a Head Office. And it just so happens they've found an ex-government building not too far away from here which is an absolute bargain and about twice the size!"

"Right," I say dubiously, waiting for the 'but..'. "Got an existing computer facility then?"

"No, one will be purpose built onsite - using all-new plant and materials."

"Cabling infrastructure?"

"All new cabling to be installed top to bottom to your specifications."

"Sounds okay so far," I say slowly - having learnt from harsh experience that when encountering a goldmine one must prepare oneself for the shaft. "When's it going to happen?"

"Three weeks," he gasps excitedly.

And there it is, complete with pit props and canary...

"You can't do a build like that within three weeks!" I cry. "It'll take months just to plan for it!"

"Oh, they're not planning the build for three weeks time," the Boss blurts. "We just have to be out of the building by then."

"I..."

"...because we've sold it. Obviously some interim measures will need to be taken and some less than optimal configurations might need to be borne for the short term..."

"Who the hell sells a building in three weeks?" the PFY gasps, as in my mind I recall the server rooms of my youth and suppress a scream.

... Rows of tables in carpeted rooms with servers stacked on and around them....

...Portable aircon units leaking water onto the floor...

...IPS power!!!...

...Rats' nests of network cabling and power cables strewn all over floors and tables, in doorways, across light fittings...

"It's not going to happen!" I snap decisively.

"Has to happen - the building's been sold!" the Boss responds.

"It may have been sold, but we can't possibly move the equipment in time. We need a temperature and humidity controlled environment, with UPS power, generator backup, security!"

"Not to mention up-to-date racks, raised floor and a structured cabling system," the PFY says.

"How long would it take?"

"Well, if we could get the people, 24-7, and the plant and hardware, I'm guessing... a couple of months."

"A COUPLE OF MONTHS!"

"If they were working 24-7."

"We don't have a couple of months. You're just going to have to make do. I think I can get you allocated about half a floor where you could put all the servers and stuff - till the work's complete in the other half."

"With workers moving in and out of the gear, carrying building supplies?"

"There might be a bit of building activity which might overlap..."

"How about this - you sell the building and LEASE BACK the computer room and operations room until such time as the server room is built?"

"I'm not really sure that makes financial sense – besides I've already told our risk people that we'd be okay to move. I mean, it's only some servers..."

"You'll have to get the buyer to delay the purchase then," the PFY seethes.

"Never going to happen. They're moving their computer room as well and they've cancelled their lease. I can't think of anything that'd make them want to delay."

"Really?" the PFY says.

"Nothing."

. . . One day later . . .

"And apparently the WALLS of the computer suite may be made of asbestos," the PFY explains to the IT Director. "Presumably because of its fire retardant properties. One of their technical people discovered it yesterday afternoon when they came to take some measurements and moved a panel."

"Are they sure it was asbestos?"

"Oh yeah, it had CAUTION, ASBESTOS stencilled across it."

"And do we know how long it's been in the building?"

"No, Could be 20 years, could be 20 minutes – But obviously now they're delaying the purchase for a couple of months until they can have the entire building checked to know what the removal costs would be..."

"Awfully convenient for you, don't you think?"

"What, the daily exposure to an environment that might kill me horribly in 20 years?" the PFY replies. "That's not what my solicitor thinks. He is thinking out-of-court settlement though."

"I think we'll wait for the outcome of the builder's report," the Director responds.

"No skin off my nose," the PFY says. "It's all billable research time for my counsel, time for further discovery, examination of documents to see if anyone in the company has a history of signing off building works with substandard materials."

"I see. Well perhaps an out-of-court no-admission-of-guilt deal might be best," the Head mumbles.

"Meantime, I guess we'd better plan this new computer room properly," I add, nudging a stencil into the darkness under my desk...


Chapter 18 

Some things you just don't want to waste half a day doing. Like talking to the company's shrink about whether the PFY should be referred to the authorities or not...

"Okay, so my name is Catherine, I'm just gathering some background on what occurred a couple of days ago and would like to ask you some questions about Stephen's behaviour leading up to the... incident."

"Sure," I say, taking a seat.

"Would you say that your assistant is liable to... uhhhm... flights of fantasy?"

"Only in certain situations," I say.

"Such as?"

"The Swedish volleyball team are visiting a jelly factory just as a fire breaks out, and the sprinklers come on and one of the jelly crystal tanks bursts, just as one of the team members makes an unkind remark about one of the other members hair styles," I reply. "But apart from that..."

"No paranoia, delusions?" she asks, scribbling something down on a separate sheet of paper and writing my name at the top...

"Paranoia, delusions? No, not really," I say, suppressing more evidence than Lord Hutton, knowing it probably wouldn't help to mention the PFY's conspiracy theories about moon landings, vapour trails, petrol prices, UFOs, train spotters, global warming, ECHELON, mind control and scoutmasters (to name but a few) - even if most of them are true.

"Can you give me some background on the new Director of IT then?"

"What would you like to know?"

"As I understand it the former Director resigned after the company was forced to pay a large amount of compensation over an unexpected delay in relocating to a new building?"

"Yes, we found asbestos in one of our rooms - and I'm sure that the stress of realising that you'd been exposed to potentially lethal airborne material for such a long time possibly had something to do with my assistant's actions."

"The asbestos later found to be mislabelled plasterboard?" she asks.

"Yes, but the PFY wasn't to know that at the time."

"I see. So can you tell me what your assistant has against... short people?" she asks.

Bugger, I was hoping that wouldn't come up.

"Yes, it seems he was attacked by a garden gnome when he was little," I lie.

"I think we both know that's not true."

Double bugger.

"OK, my assistant has a pathological mistrust of short people, believing them to be pint-sized dictatorial, publicity seeking types."

"And the same can be said for beards?"

"Yes, one of those attacked him too."

"Let's just stick to the facts, shall we?"

"OK, he doesn't like beardies either, he thinks they're the mark of the idiot. So when - like last week - he's got a bearded Davros telling him we'll use wireless in the new building after he's just spent four days doing duct surveys and drawing up cable runs... well, it was bound to happen."

"He said you tried to kill him."

"He didn't!"

"He did. So if you don't mind me asking, what speed were you doing when your assistant pushed him out of the back of the van?"

"He fell!" I gasp. "The back door wasn't closed properly. And anyway, we were still in the basement!"

"And you backed up?"

"An accident, I thought I'd put it in park - I'm not used to driving an auto. In any case, I thought this was supposed to be about the PFY?!"

"Yes, OK, back to your assistant. Do you recognise this?” >clunk<

"Oh yes, that's his... insulation tester."

"Insulation tester, or cattleprod?"

"Insulation tester - for checking the insulation rating of network cables."

"It's a cattleprod - I know, I had someone look at it."

"Really?"

"Yes - they said it'd been modified." she responds, turning a couple of pages. "The uh... duty cycle of the inverter had been increased along with the... supply current and the handle had been hollowed out to take an extra battery."

"You can't be too careful checking insulation," I say.

"So which setting do you use for insulation checking?" she asks, pointing to the PFY's hastily applied labels. "Stun or stir-fry?"

"Stir-fry - stun is a self-test setting."

"In that the 'stun' setting is hardwired to the metallic handle and with the increased amperage the holder would be unlikely to be able to let the thing go until the battery ran out??"

"I don't know - I've never tested it."

"But your assistant used it - on the director?"

"It would seem so."

"Because he claims the director 'fondled his arm'."

"Fondled his RAM!" I say, "He'd removed some RAM from his machine when the director picked it up - and as you know the static voltages present in the body are more than enough to destroy the intricate nature of RAM. In an effort to counter the dangerous electricity in the Director's body he attempted to apply an equal and opposite harmful voltage."

"To the testicles."

"That was just..."

"An accident?"

"I was going to say 'a bonus' - but accident will do," I respond.

"And the names?"

"We all have joke names for each other - I call my assistant 'the PFY' he calls me 'Sir'..."

"And you call your director, uh... R2D2, Yoda, and 'the Bollard'."

"Harmless fun!"

"So you're saying that the van incident was an accident, as was the attempt to back up over him; the cattleprod thing was a spur of the moment solution to a technical problem and the names are just workplace fun."

"Yes!"

"OK, all that aside then, how do you explain this?" she asks, handing over a photo of the PFY and the Boss that I was hoping wouldn't surface.

. . .

"So how did it go?" the PFY asks, when I get back to Mission Control.

"She bought the stuff about the van, the names and the cattleprod, but I'm not too sure about the other one. I attacked the poor quality of the image, the accuracy of time on the CCTV systems and suggested that there were many ways to interpret it in non-violent connotations, but I'm not sure how well it went down. She suggested that she might call the director and you might... apologise?"

"TO A DWARF!?" the PFY cries, just as the director swaggers in with a victorious expression on his face.

Uh-oh.

"So," he says, as he approaches the PFY's desk. "Anything you'd like to say to me?"

"I..." he starts.

"I think what my assistant might be trying to say is..."

"I'd like him to say it," the Director says - in the manner of one who'd fly a copper kite from a church steeple in a lightning storm.

"And he will," I say. "Only we discussed it and felt that the embarrassment you'd suffered could not be removed by simple words. And to that point the PFY would like to keep his job and is wished to compensate you for your pain by..."

"And how would he do that?"

"By permitting you to stun him with his own insulation tester..."

"Really?" he says, savouring the moment.

"Oh yes. He'd really prefer that to being fired. And might I say - so would I."

>KKKKKKKKKZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...


Chapter 19 

"You know," I say to the PFY as I pore over some building plans. "I don't think the beancounters are as big a set of idiots as we've given them credit for."

"How's that then?" the PFY asks.

"This building they've bought - I've done some admittedly rough sums based around the floor space and previous sales in the area, and I think we may have got a real bargain!"

"Really?" the PFY says dubiously. "But what does it have to recommend it?"

"There are seven pubs and two Indian joints within a one block radius, a tube station a couple of blocks away and a women's fitness centre across the road."

"Oh," the PFY says. "What about the building?"

"It's an old government department building - from the days when they were all self-contained."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning this place had a vehicle workshop, a huge store, cafeteria, plant rooms, the works!"

"So where's the server room going?"

"There's two options - the one that the architects have selected, taking into account the needs of insulation, access to services and security..."

"And?"

"And the place we’re going to go - immediately above the vehicle service bays - taking into account the proximity to pubs/curry houses and that Mission Control would then overlook the fitness place."

"But why above the service bays?"

"We could install all our plants in the service bays as opposed to the computer suite and just duct everything up."

"Doesn't seem to be much of a gain to me..."

"We could section off another part of the bays and use it for tape safes."

"Yes, but it d-"

"We could cut off another chunk and keep all our spares in it."

"Still..."

"WE COULD CUT A HOLE IN THE FLOOR OF MISSION CONTROL, INSTALL A POLE, KEEP A CAR IN THE SERVICE BAYS AND CALL IT THE BATMOBILE!"

"Now you're talking!" the PFY says enthusiastically. "But we’d need to have electric doors with fake windows painted on them. Or trees! Yes, a real batcave! But won't we have a bit of trouble changing the architect's minds?"

"Nah, we just use some airy-fairy palaver about that location being ideal for input into building heating, carbon neutral, etc. They eat that sort of thing up."

“You lost me.”

“Well, with the push for being carbon neutral we just say that we’ll use the heat from the computer room to heat the building.”

“And in summer?”

“We use it to heat the pool.”

“What pool?”

“The one in the women’s fitness centre. Obviously there’ll need to be the odd bit of maintenance work...”

. . .

“You can’t go there,” the Director says.

“Are you sure?” the PFY asks, waving the ‘insulation tester’ around.

“It’s not me!” he snivels. “Security want it for their main office, stores want it for the main store and the accountants want it for storing our paper records.”

. . . One large building fire later . . .

“Someone’s going to have to pay for this,” the head beancounter sniffs as the fire brigade hose a stack of ashen paper out of one of the basement storerooms.

“And so they should!” the PFY says. “Who was it said we should only do the mandatory servicing on our fire and intrusion alarms?”

. . .

“So it’s just you, security and stores then?” the director asks later in the day. “And I take it there will be no more suspicious fires?”

“You have to be joking – no, this has to be settled amicably between colleagues. The PFY will see how they’d like to do it.”

. . .

“So it’s a game of darts then?” the PFY says to the stores and security managers.

“Uh-huh,” they respond in unison. “Cider darts!”

. . .

“You’re really going to play darts for your rooms?” the Boss asks.

“Cider darts,” the PFY corrects.

“What’s that then?”

“A pint of cider to start,” the security manager says, trundling over under the weight of a pile of lunchtime kebabs. “A pint of cider per round, a pint of cider if a dart misses the board or bounces back onto the floor. A pint of cider to finish.”

“Catch it with your foot?” the PFY asks.

“If you catch a bounced dart with your foot before it hits the floor, you can replay it without forfeit,” the stores manager nods.

“Injury time?”

“Forfeit the game.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” the Boss whispers to me, moments later. “They look like they’re pretty good.”

“They should be – they’ve both got pub teams, and one of the stores guys brews his own cider.”

“You don’t stand a chance!” the Boss gasps.

“’Least we’re having a go though!” I say, as the PFY wanders off to set up the board and grab a couple of dozen boxes of pikey mouthwash.

. . . The next day . . .

“How did it go?” the Boss asks.

“Mint!” the PFY says. “Touch and go for a while, but in the end we won by forfeit.”

“How?”

“Foot injuries from trying to catch a bounced dart.”

“Both teams?!”

“Yep.”

“Don’t they both wear steel caps?”

“They do, but a steel cap boot is a poor protection from a dart body made out of a rare earth magnet, expelled from the board by a toned down pinch...” the PFY continues.

“I...” the Boss says, after we explain the basic concepts. “And so you won?”

“Well after the PFY had nailed one of the stores guy’s feet to one of the security guy’s feet to the wall behind them it was a bit of a non-event.”

“And there’ll be no... repercussions?”

“Nah, we let them keep the cider!”


Chapter 20 

"Hi, I'd just like some help setting up my Macintosh for access t..."

>SLAM<

. . .

>Ring<

"Hello?" the PFY says.

"Hi, we must have got cut off, I was ringing for a bit of help setting up my Mac..."

>SLAM<

. . .

>RING<

"Is there something wrong with your phone?" the voice asks.

"I don't think so," the PFY says. "But just let me check something... >SLAM<"

. . .

>RING<

"I keep getting cut off - you're not hanging up on me are you?"

"Hanging up? No, no, everything's fine here - perhaps it's one of our PABX features," the PFY says.

"What do you mean, PABX features?"

"The PABX. It's got some filtering firmware in it to prevent foul language - a bit like Mail Marshall, but for voice streams."

"You can't be serious?"

"Oh yes, it's the latest thing to stop office harassment. You enable the filtering and then it just terminates conversations that contain foul language before they get the company into trouble. That way the company is seen to be proactive about preventing workplace harassment. Funny thing is I don't think we enabled it on our phone system."

"So it's not that?"

"It might be - I'll have to check. C*cks*ck*r." >SLAM<

. . .

>Ring<

"Was that it, all I heard was c..."

"Ars*B*ndit!” >SLAM!<

"MY TURN!" I gasp, as the phone rings again.

>Ring<

"NUMBKN*TS!” >SLAM!<

>Ring<

"CHUTNEY FERRET!" I shout. >SLAM!<

Classic! The PFY has discovered a way to call users names with impunity! He's a bloody genius!

>Ring<

"George W Bu...” >SLAM!<

>Ring<

"STOP IT!" our user gasps, before I can think of something really inappropriate.

"Stop what?" I ask.

"Stop testing your system on me! And why are two of you doing it?"

"Oh," I say. "I was just trying to eliminate the possibility that it was only happening on certain extensions."

"Well all people at this end can hear is you shouting names at me!"

"Oh, right," I say. "We were just doing some debugging as well and it seems that heightened volume - which indicates vocal stressors - has a higher weighting than the ordinary spoken word. So just saying c*cksuc*r...” >SLAM<

>Ring<

"My mistake," I say. "It seems that at any volume c*cksuc*er...” >SLAM<

>Ring<

"This is ridiculous! You can't..."

>SLAM<

>Ring<

"Hello?" the PFY says.

"What happened then?"

"I'm not sure?" the PFY says.

"All I said was you can't..."

>SLAM<

>Ring<

"There's no need to be like that," the PFY says. "It's not our fault - it's the software!"

"I said CAN'T!"

>SLAM<

>Ring<

"Now just take it easy," the PFY says. "We're only trying to help you sort this out!"

"I'm not swearing at you!"

"Oh right!" the PFY says, feigning enlightenment. "You were saying the abbreviated version of 'cannot'?"

"YES!" the user cries.

"Gotcha. I think it's probably just an accent or dialect thing on the part of the voice recognition circuit. I can probably adjust the settings on it if you like," the PFY says, nodding meaningfully to me.

The penny drops and I login to the PABX management console.

"OK, how do I do that?"

"All you need to do is just repeat, I dunno, 20 or 30 times the 'you cannot' abbreviation and we'll recalibrate it to your particular inflection and you'll be sorted - it'll never drop your conversations again."

"OK. You CA..."

"NOT NOW!" the PFY interrupts. "It'll just get messed up with the rest of this session. You have to create a NEW session so that ONLY the words you want recalibrated get recalibrated."

"Oh. So I just ring you back and repeat the words?"

"Yes. But hang on, what's that?" I say, joining the conversation.

"What's what?"

"I've just noticed that our PABX monitoring software is running on overclocked processors - which is probably part of the problem. So you probably need to repeat the phrase as quickly as possible, 20 or 30 times. Loudly. As soon as we answer to reduce white noise."

"OK - so I just ring you back and do it."

"Yes - but remember, we won't talk because then it'd recalibrate us, not you."

"OK, I'll call right back!"

And that, as they say, is that.

He hangs up, I repatch our phone line to the CEO's humourless PA and he recalibrates himself out of a job.

No one believes the story about the voice filtering of course.

The PFY fakes an email from him to the aforementioned PA, just in case there's any doubt in her mind...

"That was a hell of a lot of work to go to just to avoid telling someone you don't do Macs," I say.

"Yeah, but it had to be done," the PFY replies. "Anyway I'm thinking we should tell everyone the new building isn't compatible with Macs."

"Go on, say we can't do it!"

Like I said, he's a bloody genius...


Chapter 21 

It seems the cunning machinations from last week have come to no avail - someone at the coloured pencil office still wants the PFY to give them a hand installing some macintoshes.

"I hate going to see the designers," the PFY whines. "They're a bunch of overfed smelly beatniks who think that buying expensive desktops makes them important."

"Spare a thought for me," I mumble, nodding over my shoulder at the upset engineer behind me. "I've got to deal with him for an hour or so."

. . .

"I mean who the hell sharpens the blades on a bloody cooling fan!" the engineer gasps angrily as he wraps another couple of turns of gauze around his fingers in response to the seeping of blood through the existing wrapping.

"That would be me," the PFY says. "I was reading an analysis of propeller design with a view to increasing the efficiency of fans and it appears that sharpening the leading edge can lead to efficiencies of up to 0.7 per cent in power consumption.”

"You did this just to save 0.7 per cent of a 200mW fan?!"

"That's a 500mW fan - because of the metal blades," the PFY counters. "But anyway, I did it because it was funny. The 0.7 per cent saving just justified me doing it during work time."

"It's bloody irresponsible!" he whines, directing the focus of his annoyance at me.

"No it's not - the fan's got a guard!" the PFY says.

"Not on the inside of the case it doesn't!"

"Yes but it does say on the outside of the case that you should ensure power is disconnected before opening it - we always do."

"I was diagnosing a power supply fault!" he snaps.

...and so it goes...

The trouble with getting rid of an engineer who's become a royal pain in the arse is that it takes so much time to wear them down. Whereas your ordinary engineer will start crying if a power supply fails twice in a row, your RPITA variety of engineer is quite happy to come on site time after time to replace the same part over and over again, without ever wondering why or trying to diagnose the real cause. By the time the roulette wheel of engineer assignment spins in your favour and you get someone who knows what they're doing that dodgy capacitor on the motherboard has been responsible for more outages than a union official. Stronger measures need to be taken...

"And quite frankly you should earth your racks - I could've been killed!" the engineer adds.

"Yes," the PFY says, disguising disappointment as thoughtfulness.

It's a twofold upset for the PFY and myself - firstly the fan didn't result in some sick leave and the desired engineer reassignment and secondly the hour or so that I put into separating an earth lead from its tab inside a power supply then gently teasing the phase wire into contact with the metal body (all through the cooling fan grill so as leave the tamper-evident seals intact) was wasted.

The hour spent insulating the rack from any earthing was a waste as well, but at least we can write that off as planning for future requirements...

The 'great' thing about crap engineers is that they don't let something like not knowing anything about the product hamper them in any way. They're quite prepared to lift the cover on something, pull the memory out, hold the memory in their mouth while they bend a couple of heatsinks out of the way looking for a loose wire, shove the memory back in the slot, reseat it with a small amount of pressure, a medium amount of pressure, a large amount of pressure, then realise it's in the wrong way and repeat the pressure install method, shut the cover then realise they've been working on the wrong machine the whole time - and maybe they should have turned the power off first...

The PFY, while I've been recounting this, has been fielding calls from beatnik central about when their machines are going to be configured... Things look like getting a little, well... testy. Especially as I notice the PFY reverting to his newly mastered 'predictive obscenity filtering' technique...

"What's going on with the Design Office?" the IT director cries, stomping into Mission Control with a definite bee in his bonnet.

"Design Office?"

"Yes, the design office! They say that an important company brochure about the relocation is being held up by their inability to use their desktops."

"Oh that," the PFY says. "That's because they're Macs. I don't know anything about Macs!"

"Oh they're easy," our Engineer pipes up, playing right into the PFY's digits. "They're just like PCs."

"Really? Well how we trade jobs and I fix this while you fix the Macs upstairs."

"I... Well, it'll cost you a few beers."

"Done!" the PFY snaps.

Moments later the engineer's off to do battle with the inbreds while the PFY and I have a live chassis server to install. If only...

"Uh - you couldn't give us a hand getting this back into the rack could you?" the PFY asks, nodding.

"For Pete's sake, there's two of you! What do you need?"

"Basically someone just needs to hold the machine into the rack while we power it up..." the PFY says.

KZZZERT!

And then there were two...


Chapter 22 

So we've got some external consultants here blundering through the requirements for the new building as a QA thing..

"It's not that we don't trust you," the Boss explains. "Far from it. It's just that senior management would like some assurance that everything you've asked for is a requirement and not just a nice-to-have."

"A nice to have?" the PFY asks.

"Yes, you know, something that's not essential - or something which we might be able to purchase at a later date when there's a little more capital available."

"Let's face it," I say, going for the honest approach. "The company has made an absolute pantload on their building transactions - even with the penalties we've paid to remain here in the interim. If they don't have the available capital now they'll never to have it. This is about trying to wear us down to the point that we'd accept space in a coolstore at a butchery if it were available. And it's not going to happen!"

"I'm on your side," the Boss hastens to assure us. "I think that if we're going to do this we need to do it properly, but I have to say that even I have difficulty explaining the requirement for a 150 inch plasma screen."

"It's for the status wall!" the PFY gabbles. "Instead of having a cluster of smaller plasmas all over the place we'd have a single screen which would encompass all we need to know about."

"Like what?"

"Systems and networks reporting, video feeds of server and comms areas, localised information that might be pertinent to the computer facility like Council, Electricity, and Telco works underway," I respond.

"Not to mention weather conditions likely to affect our wireless comms," the PFY chips in.

"Or countdown to happy hour at the local," I add.

"Supermodel-in-the-area alerts," the PFY suggests.

"I'm dubious about those last examples," the Boss says. "But I can appreciate that a single portal for status information might be useful. Still, it's not me that will be deciding, it's these people."

The Boss hands over a document from a consultancy firm and the PFY bashes the name into a search engine.

"Hmm," he mumbles, looking at the company's website.

"What?"

"They say that the partners have a combined experience in computing of over 60 years."

"And the company consists of a couple of COFs?" I suggest.

"COFs? What's a COF?" the Boss asks.

"Crusty Old Fart. I.e. someone who was there when dirt was invented."

"I hardly think..."

. . .

Our worst fears are realised at the first site meeting when they start questioning the amount of space we want to get our hands on...

"I can't see what the problem is," I say, walking with the consultants through the gutted heart of our soon-to-be-created computer suite.

"Leaving aside the assumption that we'd approve the separate comms room with the advances in structured cabling in the past 10 years," one of the COFs says. "The size you're proposing is huge! You've allocated about 1/5th of the floor!"

"Just planning for the future," I say as my dreams of a rent-free city flat hiccup briefly.

"And what part in the future does this plant access shaft play?" the other COF asks, tapping the area of the plan where we're planning to put our fireman's pole.

"Where's that then?" the PFY asks shoving a builder's trolley loaded with concrete out of the way.

"Here," the first COFs says, stepping over to a section of the floor marked out in yellow chalk and concrete dust.

"Oh that! That would be a central riser for all the supporting plant - the access path for power, chilled coolant, makeup air, etc." the PFY lies. "It's key to the build."

"It doesn't look all that key to us," he counters. "You could put all your plant in the computer suite and save a valuable amount of what was once car parking space in the floor below - not to mention the loss of floor space on this level."

"How much floor space are we really losing?" the PFY asks.

"Fifteen square meters – roughly," the second COF says.

"How much exactly?"

"Okay we'll tell you," the second COF snaps, entering the chalk outline and handing his partner the end of a measuring tape. "... 4.4 metres by 3.7 metres is >tappity< sixteen point two eight square metres. So you'd lose sixteen square metres of floor space for no good reason. I'm sorry, but there's no way we'd support you cutting this slab out."

"Oh don't be sorry," the PFY says, pushing the laden builder's trolley towards them. "They cut about 99% of that slab out yesterday."

. . .

>Ring<

"Yes?" the Boss answers, on the second ring.

"There's been the most terrible accident," the PFY begins...


Chapter 23 

I've got a particularly vexing game of multiplayer Enemy Territory on my hands when the new Boss rolls in and spoils everything. I say new Boss, as the previous one that everyone liked left for greener pastures and then his replacement left on medical grounds after accidentally pushing a paperclip into the live pin of a power socket - being misinformed by someone that it would improve his AM radio reception - scant MINUTES after telling the PFY and I that he was concerned about our high internet usage...

Coincidences abound.

More importantly, with the new building and the forward thinking the whole company has signed itself up for an "Into the Future" initiative for which we're beta testing a robotic brain as a boss while we wait for the appointments process to grind on... I've no idea whose bright idea it was but apparently it came down from 'the very top' so we're now lumbered with a first generation beta test android with a particularly slow processor, limited memory, noisy paging disk and resource contention problems - so no change there.

The large packing crate outside the office was a bit of a giveaway, as was the couple of whitecoats who came from 'an IT personnel consultancy' to help him settle in. The saddest thing, however, is that even without human emotion the robot still gets on better with the staff than his immediate predecessor.

I note a couple of sheets of A4 in the boss's claw, which tends to sway the argument of the Boss's purpose in favour of a technical problem. However, we have been a little barren in the toilet tissue department since the PFY complained to the buildings maintenance manager about the toilet fresheners in the bottom of the urinal, saying he preferred the menthol to the eucalyptus flavour...

Sigh.

"Back the way you came, first left, second right after the lifts!" the PFY says, before the Boss has a chance to engage his voice circuits. "Leave them in the cubicle."

"What?" he starts, stopping mid roll, scanning the room slowly for signs of intelligent life.

"The toilets."

"Oh. No. I was looking for.... >grind grind grind< the person who signed this form."

"No L2 cache at all," the PFY mouths at me before he turns back to the Roboboss. "Which form?"

"This form," the boss responds, releasing the paper onto the PFY's desk.

"Let's have a look at this, blah blah blah, secret weapon, blah blah, maintenance... Yes, it's the maintenance contract for our telephone exchange."

"For 13 thousand pounds. Annually."

"Affirmamundo," the PFY chirps back.

. . .

"Pardon?" the Boss asks, after his word recognition 5-second timeout expires.

"RogerDoger."

"Pardon?"

Realising that both the PFY and the robot could play this game all day and night - at overtime rates if applicable - if someone let them, I decide to step in.

"He means yes."

"Ok. >whirr< Analysing the number of faults, and age of the exchange, I have determined that we could change the maintenance to per-call for the next two years, after which point we would re-evaluate both the exchange and its maintenance contract. I estimate this would save the company ten thousand pounds per annum," the Roboboss warbles.

"But then we won't be invited to the telco end-of-year bash," the PFY whines. "They have cider girls!"

"This would not factor into the calculation of savings."

"Yes, but it's a really good party!" the PFY says. "The place is next door is a boutique cider brewery and they have some sort of contra arrangement for phone support which makes for a pretty exciting event!"

"This would not factor into the calculation of savings."

"So what are your priorities for your role?" I ask. "If that's not leaking too much of your programming to us."

"Prioritised targets are cost savings, stability of service, risk assurance and potential liability."

"And staff morale?"

"This would not figure into my calculations."

"Health and safety?"

"This would not figure into my calculations."

"So what you're saying is that savings are your priority and people are not?"

"They do not factor into my calculation of savings."

"Did you realise that the finance department of this company allocates IT budget and by increasing our budget you could increase your savings targets exponentially?"

">whirr<"

"...and that a large portion of the budget that is not allocated to us is made up by the salaries of the people who staff the finance department?"

">whirr<"

"...and that if less people worked for the finance department you could achieve the exponential savings?"

">whirr<"

"...and that there's a chainsaw behind my assistant's desk fuelled up and ready to go?"

">whirr< >click< Savings computed!"

As the robot grasps the chainsaw and heads to the lift I can't help thinking that... ...the new Boss is shouting at me.

"YOU'RE ASLEEP!" he snaps, as I lurch forward in my chair.

"Just resting my eyes," I say. "The screens are very harsh on your eyes."

"You weren't listening to me, I was saying your internet usage figures are outrageous."

"Oh, yes, of course. We'll look into it immediately. Now, you were saying something about problems with your AM radio reception?"


Chapter 24 

"Woah!" the PFY breathes, looking up quickly.

"Woah what?" the Boss asks, looking around cautiously, as I re-enter the room from the passage to the server room.

"Nope, it'll be OK," I say to the PFY, ignoring the Boss for a moment.

"What'll be OK?"

"Are you sure?" the PFY asks. "It was quite noticeable."

"What was noticeable?"

"Yeah, but it was quick. Ten quid says it'll be fine."

"WHAT WILL BE FINE?!"

"I'll take that bet!" the PFY cries, before turning to the Boss. "We're talking about that power glitch."

"What power glitch?"

"The one a couple of moments ago."

"When?"

"When the lights dimmed briefly."

"The lights didn't dim!"

"They did," I counter.

"They most certainly did not!"

"I beg to differ," the PFY snaps with a measure of self-satisfaction. "Behold!"

Following the PFY's finger I note a couple of red icons where green switches should be.

Bugger. That's a tenner down the gurgler.

"I didn't see any power glitch!" the Boss says.

"You wouldn't," I say. "You've either got it or you don't... and you don't."

"Got what?"

"The admin gene," the PFY explains. "The ability to recognise things that users don't. A slight flicker of lighting, a whiff of hot component in the air, a fractional change in the pitch of a cooling fan - all of which the garden variety user misses in the headlong rush to read their email."

"Well, it can't be that good if you can't agree about whether the glitch you saw would have any effect or not."

"There's miles of power and data cabling in this building, a large transformer in the basement, UPS in the machine room and smaller UPS units in the comms rooms. Predicting the effect of a power glitch here is about as easy as predicting the landing of space debris."

"Yes, but anyone could look at a monitor and notice a red icon," the Boss comments.

At this point I realise that our Boss will never care that both the PFY and myself can extract, over the top of meaningless conversation, aging air-conditioning, canned music and fan hum, the muffled urgent tones of a piezoelectric beeper warning of a hardware fault - from three rooms away.

"It's not about seeing a red icon," the PFY says patiently. "It's about knowing a red icon is about to light up or sensing that something is wrong. You can't teach someone that."

“It’s hearing a subtle change in the hum from a UPS and knowing that it needs a coolant top-up,” I add.

“And you get all this from the admin... gene?”

“Oh yes,” The PFY says. “If you’re born with the admin gene it’s just... instinctive.”

“And I don’t have that gene?” the Boss says.

“No.”

“So what do I have instead?”

“I dunno – what’s the one that causes Asperger's?” the PFY asks unkindly.

“So tell me more about this gene then,” the Boss says dryly. “You make it sound like a superpower.”

“Well, in a way it sort of is,” I say. “There’s no seeing through walls or anything but there’s a lot of that sixth sense stuff.”

“I find that very hard to believe...”

“It’s true,” the PFY says.

“I...”

“He’s right,” I interject. “It’s just an inbuilt ability to KNOW things – like when to put a cleaning tape into a drive before it tells you.”

“Or how hard to hit a stuck hard drive to get it moving again...” the PFY says.

“...without breaking it completely,” I add. “But it’s not just about systems – it’s also about the environment.”

“Like when not to answer the phone.”

“Or when to hide behind the door.”

“And how to tell when a door handle might be electrified,” the PFY continues.

“Not to mention the computer suite environment,” I add. “Like when it’s 17.8 degrees instead of 18.”

“Or 60 per cent humidity instead of 45.”

“Anyone can do that,” the Boss snaps – obviously feeling left out. “You never know – I might have the gene and just not know it.”

“I doubt it – but we’re happy to test it if you really think you have what it takes.”

“I DO!”

“Okay then, go into the server room and tell us what the humidity is – without looking at the aircon unit.”

“You’re on.”

“How’s he doing?” the PFY says, as the Boss stalks down the corridor to the computer room.

“Well... he’s just about to fail the electrified door handle test.”

“Woah!" the PFY says, looking up quickly.

"Woah what?" the helldesk supervisor asks, walking into the room.

"Nah, it'll be OK," I say to the PFY, ignoring the helldesk supervisor for a moment.

Well, it passes the time, doesn’t it?


Chapter 25 

"So let's just get this straight," I say to the PFY as he hovers about my desk. "You want me to write a reference for you lauding you as a veritable workplace IT savant who can leap laser printers in a single bound, bend RFPs in his bare hands and generally manage an IT project with the ease of a veteran?"

"Yes."

"So you can get a job somewhere else and leave me with the task of moving all the IT infrastructure to a new site - at which time you'll no doubt reapply for your old position, and blame any integration issues on my workmanship?"

"No!" the PFY gasps. "I want to join a particular group of IT professionals and they won't accept nominations without the support of five people in the industry."

"Five? So who are you using? Me, right, but who else?"

"A couple of fellow bastards from the place down the street that frequent the pub, plus the Boss and the IT Director."

"Really - and you think that'll cut it?"

"I'm not sure they actually look at the references too carefully - and anyway I faked some reference templates and inserted them into the Boss and Director's Word hierarchy. If they deviate too far from the template they'll have to write the whole thing themselves and I think we both know they're about as creative as..."

"The team that nicked the Mac look and feel - yes. OK, well I suppose it can't hurt. It'll cost you a couple of beers though."

"No problems - when do you think you might have it?"

"It must be pretty bloody good if you're in that much of a rush."

"No, not really, but Richard Stallman is talking next week and I've been having some insomnia problems recently."

"Ah, OK, enough said, I'll get right onto it.”

Half an hour later I'm looking at a masterpiece of fabrication. Not only have I alluded to the fact that in his preschool years the PFY singlehandedly made a Babbage engine out of Meccano, I've also suggested that he was in fact the original developer of Windows but lost all his designs when he accidentally left his school bag on the tube while Bill Gates was in town on holiday. Able to to perform long division in hexadecimal in his head while writing Lisp code to parse foreign languages, the PFY also has a hidden side to his personality that many people don't know of, where he donates old computers to schools and helps senior citizens master the basics of computing.

So he should be sleeping soundly by the end of next week.

And so it was that the next afternoon my web-based study into the hobbies of supermodels is interrupted by the incessant ringing of the PFY's phone. He's still not back from lunch and he left at nine!

Realising that I won't be able to concentrate on the selection process a supermodel goes through to choose a volleyball outfit with the phone ringing, I pick up the PFY's extension.

"Hello I'm looking for Simon Tr..."

"That's me," I say.

"Oh good. I'm just doing a referee check for an Operations Management position and one of the candidates has produced a reference from you and I'd just like to validate the content - purely a formality, but something we have to do."

THE LYING BASTARD!

"Fair enough," I say, suppressing the urge to slam the phone down.

"So I'll just read the reference out to you and then ask you to confirm its content," she says, before reading my words back to me. "Is that the reference you supplied?"

"Not exactly," I say. "But it's pretty much there."

"Are there some alterations you'd like to make?" she asks.

"Oh no, no - the gist of it is there. The illegal dumping of computers, his time helping out the older lags in prison..."

"Prison?"

"Oh don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds. It was only remand and in the end the whole case was dismissed because the goat lived and the prosecutions vet just... disappeared."

"I..."

"But what I said about his technical ability is spot on. He can honestly look at the hexadecimal numbers in an image file and tell you how many women are in it and what clothes they're wearing - if any! Honestly it's uncanny and I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't had the misfortune to see him do it."

"You say he started in computing at a very young age with Meccano?"

"Oh yes, I've seen the family photos. It's such a pity that the police returned the set to his neighbours' place - but luckily being only four they didn't press any charges for burglary. That time."

"I..."

"I know what you're thinking - he must be a handful to manage with all that... enthusiasm, but I just try and stick to the basics of computing and rein him in. You know, keep customer-focused and supply a reliable and robust infrastructure for the best money possible."

"Really," she asks. "You're not looking for a change in career are you?"

"You know," I say. "I was just thinking that the other day..."


Chapter 26 

“It's a little... uh... large, isn't it?” one of our beancounters says as he scans the computer room in the new building during a site visit.

“Optical illusion,” the PFY counters. “Machine rooms always look oversized when there's no kit in them. Take my word for it, once we install the racks and the cable trays the place will look half the size.”

“I... still think it's rather large.”

“No, no, it's fine,” I say. “Like my assistant says, wait until you see it with the racks and stuff in place – honestly, it'll look tiny.”

“Are you sure this is the same size as your existing room?”

“It's a little larger, I admit,” I say. “But who's going to quibble about a foot or two in the scheme of things – and like we've said, it only LOOKS large. When the machines are in place you really will believe it's halved in size.”

Which it will have. In a rare moment of self-sacrifice the PFY and I have actually dipped into our own pockets to pay the builders for several nights of private work of installing four mammoth but silent electrical motors and building a remote control movable steel wall through the middle of the computer room - creating two suites, the work one and the private enterprise version.

It was the beancounters' idea really – they'd been reading so much about SAAS recently that they were convinced that we were over-investing in our infrastructure and should instead utilise the resources of an external vendor.

Which is where the PFY and I came in. By halving the size of the computer room and installing the best of our existing servers in a virtual cluster in the ghost facility, we'll 'migrate' our desktop functionality to the most competitive 'external provider' who responds to the RFP. And who's going to be more competitive than a provider that doesn't have to pay for kit, power, plant or real estate?

It just makes financial sense – at least that's the way the beancounters saw it when they pored over the RFP responses. In an effort to be scrupulously fair the PFY and I did try and nudge them toward the other more costly respondents so as not to unfairly bias the decision in our favour, but even after our best endeavours they still decided to go with the cheapest model.

Ah well.

So the only problem we have is that we overlooked the segment of the RFP which stated that the company wanted a seamless transition...

The computer room meanwhile progresses nicely. Within hours of the beancounter's visit the racks are in standing in what will be their final locations and the wall is now the only structure I know of with the ability to alter its location to GPS coordinates which have been texted to it. A work of bloody genius!

“I... It really does look smaller!” the beancounter gasps as he returns to the room. “But surely that's never 40 metres?”

“Forty metres?” I say grabbing the plans from his hands. “No, I see the mistake – this measurement is in chains - point four chains.”

“Chains?”

“Yeah, it's an old building, it'll be from the original surveyors notes.”

“But then four chains would make that about... uh... about five metres.”

“That’s about right isn’t it?”

“No, you see, the room is the correct width – in metres – but the length of the room is ridiculously small – about two-thirds of what it should be.”

“It’s probably a typographical error.”

“No it’s not - the picture shows it as being as long as the corridor over here plus the length of your office.”

“No, there must be a room missing somewhere. How far is it from the security doors to the end of the room?” the PFY asks as we step out through the doors concerned.

“I’ll check >stomp< >stomp< …. >stomp< 12. So that’s probably just over nine metres.”

“What about from the end of the room to the doors?” the PFY asks.

“The same as the other way.”

“You’re not taking into account Earth’s rotation and doppler effect,” the PFY says, TXTing furiously behind his back.

“Eh?”

“The wall, it won’t be in the same place because of the earth’s rotation,” the PFY says. “Just put your back heel on the wall and count the steps this way.”

...20 seconds later...

“It’s strange,” he says. “It’s just over 10.5 metres now.”

“Check it again,” the PFY suggests. >tappity<

“12 metres, it just doesn’t make sense!” he says. “It’s like this is moving >clonk< >clonk< Hey, that wall's made of steel! You know I think the wall really is...“

>SLAM< >CLANG< >CLANG<

>tappity<

No one believes the beancounter’s tale the next day when he turns up to work reeking heavily of bodily outputs after being crammed between some crushed racks overnight thanks to the PFY’s coordinates being about six inches into the back wall... His fanciful tales of rooms closing in on him are put down to his abuse of the many empty boxes of cold medication that the PFY planted in his rubbish bin…

The subsequent site visit shows the server room is exactly as specified in the plans.

“Though it looks half the size when the racks are in there,” the PFY adds, as our visitors depart.

>tappity<


Chapter 27 The long-awaited weekend has almost arrived! The migration of the server room to the new site and the transfer of our 'crucial' services to the successful tendering party (ie our ghost facility) is about to commence.

"But I still don't see why we need to pay a data transfer fee!" the Boss whinges.

"Because they'll need to put a high speed link into the building for the weekend to enable them to transfer out data to the new hardware," the PFY says, never one to miss an opportunity to gouge the company for an extra couple of hundred quid. "Otherwise they'd have to copy over the VPN link, and that'd take days to complete."

"Why do they need to take a copy anyway?" the Boss whines. "They're taking the servers with them!"

"It'll save on recovery time if the servers get damaged in transit," the PFY says.

"But surely that's their problem?" the Boss says. "In any case why don't we just buy more tapes and you two backup the systems before they go?"

"It's the least costly option," I respond, not wanting to spend a Friday night at work pretending to backup data just to claim the overtime. "If you were to pay us overtime it'll work out to be more expensive than putting the temporary data link in."

And so it goes. The work the PFY and I are putting into convincing the Boss that he should pay us some lager money is starting to be more effort than we first thought. It's getting to the point that one of us is likely to say...

"You're right!" the PFY snaps. "I'm sure nothing will go wrong. We'll say no more about it!"

"Yes," the Boss concurs. "After all, we're dealing with professionals now."

. . . Later that night . . .

>Crash!< >C-Crash!< >Bang< >Crash<

...

>Bang!< >Crash< >Kerash< >Clatter!<

...

>Crash!< >Crunch!< >Bangity< >Crash!<

. . . Early the next morning . . .

"W-what happened?" the Boss gasps, surveying the wreckage at the bottom of the stairwell - a pile of computer hardware and cases liberally salted with inventory stickers removed from the premium servers we moved to the ghost facility, along with a selection of computing hardware picked up from the local Oxfam shop.

"Bit of a trolley disaster," I shrug. "I was on the front and the PFY was on the back when one of the castors fell out of its socket."

"What the hell were you doing carrying the computers down the stairs in the first place?!"

"The freight elevator was in use with the furniture."

"I... this is going to be an insurance job," the Boss whimpers, looking at the crushed equipment.

A couple of hours later an annoyed insurance rep shows up, and things start looking a little hairy. Instead of looking blankly at the rubble and reaching for the chequebook, he starts sorting things into their component piles. While the mess - the guts of half a dozen inkjet printers, several 10 meg hubs, a pile of old servers, a broken portable air conditioner (the PFY was 'in the zone'), and two filing drawers of ISA cards (still in the filing cabinet - the zone is infectious) - might be enough to dupe the Boss into believing that half the contents of the computer room have done a two-floor freefall, this bloke isn't fooled as easily.

"Hmmm" he says, doing the full CSI workup on the stairwell bannister. "Yes..."

"What?" the Boss asks.

"Just a moment," he says, climbing some more stairs. "Mmmmm..."

"What is it?"

"Well, let's see," he says. "I can see from the marks on the wall and on the bannister suggesting that the servers fell a completely different way to the networking gear. And the filing cabinet fell another way altogether. At first glance it would look like someone had simply... thrown all this equipment off the 2nd floor landing, and that no accident took place at all."

"Are you absolutely sure?" the PFY asks, waving his money machine card out of the Boss's line of sight.

"Er... as I said, at first glance you'd think that was the case - and that the wreckage at the bottom of the stairwell was just the usual end-of-life crap that only ever gets moved anywhere when an IT crowd has to vacate their workspace - but I'm not so sure. I'll need to take a better look. And I'll need your technical people to give me a hand with the investigation. Perhaps we could meet up again in... ten minutes?"

...Ten minutes and one extortion (so large it verged on being proctology) later...

"Yes, well I think we've sorted it out and we'll accept your claim," the agent says, while patting a large lump of the PFY's cash safely stashed in his pocket. "It obviously happened as they described and you've lost several expensive top-of-the-line servers. This >scribble< is your accept claim number, which I've rung through to our 24-hour line so you should be able to replace the kit as of Monday. So if there's nothing else..?"

"Only my laptop," the PFY says. "The trolley ran it over - which was what caused the castor to fall off the trolley."

"Sigh. OK. I'll take a quick look before I go."

"It's just up here..." the PFY says, disappearing up the stairs.

The Boss has barely begun to discuss what we'll do with the insurance money when our conversation is interrupted by a >crash!<

"What was that?" the Boss gasps.

"Well, I'm no expert," I say. "And I'm not up with the insurance game. But I think that sounded like... a tragic accident?"


Chapter 28 

There's something about a newly refurbished building that just appeals. Whether it's the contrast of old and new (i.e. the ancient glass fronted axe cases in the stairwell which no-one in their right mind would install these days, versus the almost ubiquitous security cameras which everyone seems to be installing these days) is hard to say....

One thing that remains the same, though, is the users. While the PFY's engaged in some scheme to disguise the true size of the server room, I'm spending my valuable time teaching a user how to fix the poorly designed software with the cowboy installer that he's just downloaded from the web and stuffed onto his machine – with the usual unexpected results.

And the worst thing about teaching a user how to do something is that it's always about ten times slower than doing it yourself and akin to using the world's laggiest KVM solution as you instruct them where to put their mouse, which button to click, when, and what do once they've clicked it. It's all because of a new policy the Boss has decided to adopt for IT support – something to do with teaching a person to fish (which, once we considered the high levels of mercury in seafood, was fine by the PFY and myself).

Still, it's a challenge to even the most patient of people when your user fails to grasp the simplest point and click concepts – especially when you know that the moment you leave the room they'll be paraphrasing your instructions in an effort to pass themselves off as an IT guru.

“You want to open the INI file with WordPad and remove the line which says 64 bit,” I say.

. . .

“No, the INI file,” I repeat.

. . .

"The one with DOT I-N-I at the end,” I say helpfully. “No, NOT THAT ONE! The one with the same name as your application. Just quit out of that one, that's your machine's boot order. No DON'T SAVE IT, you've chopped a line off the top! DON'T Re..! Why the HELL did you reboot?!” I snap, thinking for a moment about the 'sanity instillers' in their easily-broken display cases in the stairwell. Then about the security cameras...

“I'm... going to have to go back to my office and get a boot CD,” I say, exiting before something bad happens.

My trip to our new Mission Control for Knoppix therapy is intercepted by the Boss.

“I suppose this ridiculous plan is your idea!” he snaps, oozing the sort of sarcasm which will see him second in my mental list of “people most likely to come into contact with a rusty fire axe in the next few hours if they're not careful”.

“What plan, what idea?” I ask.

“Follow me!” he snaps, leading the way through Mission Control, down the shiny new services corridor, into the server room, stopping momentarily >bip< >bip< to read a text message from the service desk's call escalation paging system.

“It's... beautiful!” I say, admiring the PFY's handiwork as I step into the server room.

“It is isn't it?” the PFY says proudly.

“It's like being in a geeky Tardis!” I gasp, looking around me happily.

“I know!” the PFY bubbles, to the Boss's annoyance.

“How long did it take to put them up?” I ask.

“I started last night,” he admits. “And finished about half an hour ago.”

I have to hand it to the PFY, it's like a work of art – there must be at least a thousand mirror tiles covering the walls of the server room - making the place look ten times its half-size.

“I had a few boxes left over so I did the corridor as well,” the PFY adds, still smiling away to himself.

“And the glass door?” I ask.

“Not just ANY glass door,” the PFY says. “It's 42mm armour glass and weighs so much it needs special hinges. Not only can it can stop a bullet, it can also stop an IT manager who has a parallax error because the corridor walls are mirrored too..."

“Ah, that'll account for the smudge,” I say.

“It's a stupid idea,” the Boss says, >bip< >bip< pausing to read yet another text helldesk message. “And dangerous too.”

“Stupid?” I say. “But with these mirrors we'll be able to see a service lamp from almost anywhere in the room. And safe because you'll be able to find faults before they turn into something much worse!”

“It's stupid,” the Boss says. “And I want them removed!”

“But they're glued on!” the PFY replies. “They'd rip all the wall lining out!”

“And it might be asbestos,” I add, just for old time's sake.

“It's not asbestos and the walls can be relined,” the boss snaps. “That's what we've got a decorating budget for.”

“What do you think paid for the mirror tiles?” the PFY asks. "Not to mention the door!"

“I...” the Boss says, winding up for a real whine. >bip< >bip< “Oh for Pete's sake, would you go and look at that application install at finance!”

“I was on my way when you grabbed me,” I respond, now feeling suddenly cheerful. “Anyway, it's only one machine.”

“It was one machine before, but it's all of them now,” he says, reading from his phone. “They'd all installed that application, which was fine till they used your instructions to fix it.”

“MY instructions?!” I seethe, feelings of cheer gone.

"Yes - and you'd better get a wiggle on as there's a pay run due this afternoon."

"Get a wi.." I gasp, before the finality of the situation grabs me. "Of course, I'll get right onto it - but could you do me a favour and get the door to the stairwell?"

"I... suppose so."

. . .

>tinkle<

. . .


Chapter 29 

"We should sue!" the PFY snaps angrily, thumping the Boss's desk with vigour. "We can't let them get away with this!"

"Really?" the Boss asks. "I'd hardly have thought you'd want to sue a fellow professional?"

"PROFESSIONAL!" the PFY gasps. "They're cowboys! What sort of outsourcing company wouldn't put in a redundant network to their clients?"

"Well, to be fair, we didn't ask for a redundant network..." the boss admits graciously.

"We didn't ask that they didn't install our servers in a Turkish bath house, beside an oil heater with a tap immediately overhead either, but we sort of expect that they're not going to do it," the PFY counters.

"Yes but there's expectations and there's expectations," the Boss responds.

"There's not! We wanted them to host our servers and we paid them good money to do so. We had a service level around 24 by 7 access and yet instead we get limited access if and when their network connection is up - it's just not on!"

"I admit that it's not optimal..." the Boss agrees.

"Not optimal - the network went down seven times THIS MORNING!"

"And what did their helpdesk say about it?"

"They said it was a problem our end.."

"Have we checked our... end?"

"Of course we have!" the PFY snaps, "and there's nothing wrong here. The link light remains constantly on, the router shows the interface is up and has no errors - the problem's at their end."

"I still think we should go easy on them," the Boss says. "After all they're a new crowd and they're probably still getting things sorted out. And let's not forget - they were the cheapest."

"Cheapest?" the PFY blurts. "They were the most expensive!"

"No, they were the cheapest," the Boss counters. "Perhaps you didn't see the final contract - I managed to talk them down to a third of what they originally quoted."

"Do you have a copy of the contracts?" the PFY asks

"I... sure," the Boss says, rustling around in some folders on his desk "This.. >shuffle< is the original contract and... here's >shuffle< the revised one. I'm quite the negotiator."

"Yes," the PFY says, skimming the pages. "Quite a coup. You managed to get them to reduce the price to a third of the original and substitute the word Monthly for the original Annually."

"I, what?!" he gasps, snatching the papers back quickly. "THE BASTARDS!!! Why that's... uh... "

"Four times the original price?" the PFY suggests.

"The F****G PR**KS!!" the Boss shouts, knocking the papers off his desk in a fury.

"And you can bet they did it on purpose," the PFY says. "They're probably laughing their arses off now, what with the crap network and all."

"RIGHT, THEY'RE NOT GETTING AWAY WITH IT, WE'LL BLOODY SUE!"

It's funny what can pop into your mind when you're bored, isn't it? One minute you're sitting in your nice new office in a nice new building, while your assistant is pretending to work in the nice new server room - when really he's next door in the nice new ghost facility taking care of a couple of backups on the systems we're pretending to host offsite for a huge amount of cash...

And then suddenly, for no reason at all, you just reach over and type RELOAD on the core router's console window. And then you make a rule for yourself that every time you get a coffee you'll do it again. And then you start to feel a little bad - because seven cups of coffee is rather a lot for a morning...

Swapping the revised contract for the monthly one was the PFY's idea.

"You know what?" the PFY says. "Better than sue them, we should publish all this on the web. We should post just what we think about them and their crap service!"

"You're right!" the Boss says, snatching up his keyboard and tapping away furiously. "How do you spell shitcake - with a hyphen?"

"I prefer without..."

A quarter of an hour later, the PFY gives me the prearranged signal and I rock on up to the Boss's desk.

"That's that router problem sorted out then," I say to the PFY. "Turns out that the word RELOAD was stored in the terminal program's callback buffer and one of the interfaces had a control-E in its name."

"Oh," the PFY says, faking illumination. "So every time you'd show the interfaces the router would reboot and take the network out?"

"I know - all my fault," I say. "So lucky we didn't sue after all - what with one of their major investors being that rampant solicitor and all. We'd have been in court for years and he'd have sued the pants off us."

"Ah well," the PFY says, turning to the Boss. "Perhaps he'll settle out of court?"

I smell some holiday money. Well, a hint of excrement from the Boss's general direction, but mainly holiday money...


Chapter 30 

“How are you doing?” I say cheerfully, extending my hand in greeting to the two cabling guys that the beancounters got to shift some data cabling around – without telling us. “Clint and... John isn't it?”

“Ay?” One of them says. “I'm Steve and this is Dave.”

“My mistake,” I say. “I was obviously thinking of Clint Eastwood and John Wayne – two other cowboys.”

“Cowboys?” Steve gasps unhappily. “What do you mean?”

“The job you did for the Beancounters – have to say I'm impressed. Most people would just let the network admin know that they needed to extend the VLAN to another distribution closet in the building instead of running an over-length hunk of dodgy Cat-6 point to point - but you didn't let that stop you, did you?”

“I liked the joint in the middle of the cable, insulation taped to a heating pipe,” the PFY says sarcastically. “Because insulation tape holds best when it's nice and warm. And jointing Cat-6 with a punchdown block stuck to a heating pipe in the middle of a duct really is an underrated cabling technique.”

“We'd already cut the cable to length because we thought there'd be tie wires,” Dave mumbles.

“Of course you did,” I say. “And there was. Deceptively labelled 'Tie Wires' along with the destination closet number. That said though, which cable manufacturer training course was it that recommended stapling Cat-6 along a skirting board?”

“Tha...” Dave says, before the PFY interrupts.

“BT doesn't count!”

“The thing I don't get though is,” I continue. “Why you didn't run the cable between comms rooms and patch into the existing structured cabling network instead of running it to the faceplate and using our existing WARRANTIED Cat-6 cable as a pull wire? After breaking the faceplate because you didn't realise where the screws were, then losing the screws when you did?”

“We thought it might be over-length so we were trying to reduce it,” Dave murmurs.

“Yes,” the PFY says. “We TDR-ed it. At 175 meters you could probably have run it to the toilets and back, just to be on the safe side.”

“They made us do it,” Clint – I mean Steve – blurts, much to Dave's annoyance.

“Who made you do it?”

“The bloke in the office. He said they'd pay extra if we didn't go through the comms rooms.”

“Ah, so you're saying that one of the beancounters told you to link between offices on different floors – presumably so they wouldn't be subject to our patching regime?” I ask.

“I... suppose so,” Dave says, not wanting to get too involved in any office politics. Smart man.

“And the cable – it was rated for POE?”

“Which standard? 12, 24, 48 volt, 20 watts?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of 240 Volt up to 20 Amps,” the PFY says.

...One night and one small faceplate fire later...

“I don't understand it,” one of the beancounters sniffs.

“Well it was quite simple really,” the PFY lies. “It seems that a section of unapproved data cabling must have worn through some power cabling with the vibration of the aircon unit that it was cable tied to, causing a massive increase in current down the line.”

“I wasn't talking about the power thing.”

“Oh you mean the fires?”

“You said it was smoke!” he bleats. “From the wall socket.”

“We call that a fire,” the PFY says, condescendingly. “Because where there's smoke...”

“Yes, but why did you have to put an axe through my LCD monitor and my desktop machine? They can't have been on fire!”

“Can never be too careful,” the PFY says. “Fire can spread like lightning – and as we all know lightning travels at 186,000 miles per second! You should be thanking me!”

“And my iPod,” he sniffs.

“It was plugged into the desktop – no doubt charging. No telling what might have happened if the battery had exploded! And again, I was rather expecting a bit of gratitude...”

“And the server upstairs?”

“Fire's a tricky beast. I trust my supervisor's decision to hose it down until he was sure it was completely safe!”

“Yes but he hosed down every machine in the room - as well as our filing cabinets and my manager's bonsai.”

“Yes," the PFY responds. "Unfortunately though, the problem was that the cable wasn't in the structured cabling system so we couldn't use netdisco to figure out which machine might be affected. Ultimately we had to choose safety first and hose down everything."

“And this all happened in the middle of the night you say?”

“Yes, and it was lucky we were both here,” the PFY says. “Or things might have been different.”

"You'd be surprised at the number of situations we're able to resolve out of hours just by happenstance," I add, jumping into the conversation.

"Although we'll still be putting this down as a callout," the PFY adds.

"Well we won't be paying!"

"Now now," I say, defusing the situation. "You say that, but I'm sure you see the value of a few pennies expended so that my assistant and myself stop off for a quick look-around before going home after a vendor presentation. Just to make sure things are OK."

"No."

"Not even to make sure some poor bean... accountant such as yourself hasn't had a nasty accident and been trapped in the lift for hours and hours?"

"I... I'll see what I can do."


Chapter 31 

"...And so you can just log in to my machine and look at it whenever you like?" our user asks indignantly.

"Uh-huh," the PFY says, fixing the user's printer settings while he's talking.

"And I don't have to give you permission or anything?"

"I'd have assumed that was implied by ringing the helpdesk?" the PFY says.

"Yes but surely you'd ring me beforehand - as a courtesy, if nothing else!?"

"No, the courtesy bit is me looking up a helpdesk call on a Friday afternoon after three lunchtime pints," the PFY says.

"I... is this the way you normally solve problems?"

"Sometimes," the PFY admits. "Although other times I find that if I leave the call open long enough the user'll go back into their printer settings and remember they stuffed around with the local printer/network printer combo and put it right themselves. But like I say - I'm feeling courteous this afternoon."

"I'd like to speak with your Supervisor!"

"Absolutely," the PFY says (courteously). "Putting you through now!"

>RING<

It never ceases to amaze me how every now and then an otherwise sane user suddenly starts believing that they, their email, and their personal files and instant messages would become so interesting for an administrator that they would forgo the worlds of computer games, movie torrents, porn and piracy simply to peruse their desktop in the hopes of finding something which could only be - let's face it - disappointing.

I mean when the world's your oyster you don't generally settle for fish paste...

"Hello there," I say, handsfree enabled. "IT... Oh... Management, I guess." (For I too have had three pints at lunchtime, plus a couple of extremely generous shots of The Macallan.)

"I was just talking to your systems person and he was most unhelpful."

"Really?" I say. "On a Friday afternoon - after three pints? I'm surprised he answered the phone at all."

"Look, this is serious. He was logged into my machine without my permission."

"Technically," I say, as the Macallan is known to fire up the pedant in me, "that would be the company's machine, however as we're all friends here we should look into it. When exactly did he log into it?"

"Just now."

"He can't have - he's been here the past hour."

"He did it over the network."

"Oh right, remote administration - you must have logged a helpdesk call then?"

"Yes - but surely you'd call me before just rifling through my desktop!"

"No not really," I say. "But give us a minute and I'll just check the job. >clickety< . . . >Pregnant pause while I check my eBay bids, order some more coffee for the espresso machine and fire up Bioshock for some afternoon boredom relief< Yes, a printer config problem. It's been... resolved by the look of it. So no harm done with the remote access."

"But then he could do it at any time!"

"True - but it's relatively simple to stop this from happening if it worries you," I say.

"How?"

"There's two ways that we commonly recommend - one's called shutdown and the other one's not logging a call with the helpdesk. But to be completely honest, shutdown's your best option."

"Why's that then?" he asks, suspiciously.

"Look," I sigh. "It's a Friday afternoon and I can see where this is going, so why don't we just cut to the chase? We get calls from concerned users like yourself upon occasion and I'll tell you what I tell them: When it comes to an administrator's interest in your affairs you're competing against the rich tapestry of the internet - and losing. The only thing that can possibly be done to engage our interest in you is for you to complain about your lack of privacy - because then we start wondering what the hell it is you have that you don't want us to see. And before you know it the administrator concerned has passed you on to someone such as myself whose sole purpose is to keep you talking long enough to fire off a backup of the contents of your hard drive."

>Scrabble<

"Oh it's too late now," I say. "By now my assistant will poring over the contents of your 'My documents' folder, skimming your instant message logs, ferreting through your browser cache and ultimately nosing through your email - which he didn't even need access to your desktop to do in the first place."

>Slam<

>Ring<

"Hello?" I say.

"What's this I hear about you rifling through someone's desktop machine?" the Boss snaps.

"Oh that!" I say. "It was just a remote administration thing - a user had stuffed up their printer settings and my assistant had connected remotely to fix it."

"Without talking to him about it?"

"No - we were just adjusting the settings - same as we did for your machine last week."

"You logged into my machine last week? You didn't ask me!"

"Technically it's not your machine," I say nodding knowingly at the PFY. "However as we're all friends here we should..."


Chapter 32 

If there's one thing a lifetime in computing teaches you, it's how to cover up your mistakes...

"Oopsy," the PFY says in a casual tone mid-keypress - the sort of casual tone which, by its very casualness, means it's not casual at all.

"What did you do?" I sigh, fully expecting to hear that some poor user now has a vast amount of space available where their files used to be.

"Ah... a little problem with one of my VBS scripts," the PFY says. "I think I may have changed everyone's address book surname to 'Chutney'."

"How?"

"Well I was just writing a quick script to change the Boss's surname randomly to something mildly offensive every day."

"Well it's just a surname," I say. "Fix yours and mine and tell anyone else who asks that it's a known problem with Service Pack 3. No! Make that Service Pack 3a - it sounds more plausible."

"Service Pack 3a of what?" the PFY asks.

"Now let's not get technical, SP3a should be enough for them."

"And how do I explain the missing files?"

"What missing files?"

"Well I was moving all the Boss's files into a folder called 'Ferret' - only I moved everyone's files there."

"And then clicked on 'Yes to all'?"

"Uh-huh."

"So you've mixed everyone's files up in a folder called Ferret and potentially overwritten a stack of them?"

"Yeah. The original plan was that you'd have to look at your surname and work out the second half of the offensive phrase to locate your files. Like a combination lock. Only it looks like everyone's affected."

"OK. Drop the core router," I say decisively.

"Eh?"

"Move your network to the ghost facility LAN, drop the company core router and we'll say it's a major network outage. Then just restore the files from the early morning backups."

>clickety<

“Though we didn't run a backup last night," the PFY says as an afterthought.

"What?"

"It was a pay day - we never run backups on a pay day so that there's no bank payment data trail in case the auditors..."

"Oh yes, of course. Yesterday morning's backups then."

"But people will notice their files have changed."

"The Mandelboozer virus!"

"What?!"

"The Mandelbrot virus - it reverts the last set of changes in a document."

"You called it the Mandelboozer virus before!"

"Yes, that's another thing the virus does - changes its name."

"There's no such thing!"

"There will be once you get into Wikipedia and create it."

. . . moments later . . .

>crash<

"I think the network's down," the Boss wheezes, redfaced from the 20-metre dash from his office.

"Yes, it's the Mandelbank virus," I say.

"Make up your bloody mind!" the PFY interrupts.

"It reverts files to previous versions, which causes network spikes which can lead to router reboots," I continue.

"If only we'd installed Service Pack 3a," the PFY says, not wanting to miss an opportunity.

"Mandelbank - I've never heard of it," the Boss says.

"It's in Wikipedia, look it up," I respond.

"I can't, THE NETWORK'S DOWN!" the Boss yells.

"Use your cellphone browser."

While the Boss is devoting 50 per cent of his mental CPU to working out how to use the browser on this phone (the other 50 per cent being remembering the way back to his office), the PFY completes the Wiki entry and starts the recovery process.

"Bugger," the PFY says.

"What?"

"When we took the network down it looks like a nagios script has fired off about a million messages then kicked off an automated recovery of all our crucial server images to the virtual environment."

"Cancel them."

"I can't. The switch on the admin vlan is isolated when the router's down."

"Reboot the router!" I snap.

"But then people will be able to access their files."

"Not now the Mandelboober virus has infected the building management system. >tap< >tappety<" I say, logging into the building management system. "It's back-purging the dust filters into the aircons and turning on the heating which has >clickety< tripped the fire alarms!"

*JANGLE*

. . . The next day . . .

"So this virus thing is all taken care of then?" the Boss asks.

"Yes," I say. "We managed to isolate the affected building components and clean the virus out of them all."

"Yes, it was a pity you didn't find them all before the security system shut the basement doors on my car as I was exiting."

"We didn't know the security system was infected till then," I say, barely suppressing a chuckle.

"And you're sure it's all fixed now?"

"Absolutely," I say. "We've run a security scan over the entire network, top to bottom and it only has a couple of small recommendations."

"So why did the doors slam on my car again this morning?"

"A booting glitch," I say, as the PFY coughs loudly to cover a snicker.

"So what were the recommendations?"

"It's technical," I say.

"Try me."

"Apparently we're supposed to install SP3a and run a VBS script to tidy up any problems it might cause - but frankly I'm not too keen on doing it."

"We can't risk it happening again," the Boss snaps. "Do it."

"OK, if you insist."

. . .

. . .

*JANGLE!*


Chapter 33 

"But why can't we visit the site?" the Boss bleats one morning when we shoot his idea of seeing the ghost facility down.

"It's a defence site," I lie. "They host defence computers as well as stuff for companies like us. They're probably not allowed to show people through their server rooms."

"We should just turn up unannounced and say there's some server problem that we have to fix urgently that can't be fixed over the network," the Boss suggests.

"That would assume (a) that we can create some legitimate sounding problem requiring a site visit, and (b) that we even knew where their site is," I counter.

"You don't know where our servers are?!" the Boss gasps.

"Of course not," the PFY says. "It's part of the contract. If we knew where our servers were, we could theoretically compromise the security of the country's distributed IT defence systems."

"Exactly what defence data is held at these sites?"

"We could tell you, but then we'd have to kill you."

"Perhaps we'll skip that bit then?"

"So we don't have to tell you?" the PFY says.

"Look," the Boss says, ignoring him. "We pay good money - no, VERY good money for this external hosting arrangement, and I'd like to know how it's being spent. I'm not paying top dollar for hosting when our critical services could be operating out of the back room of some office building! I want to see what we're paying for!"

"They don't let you visit," the PFY repeats "It's a security thing."

"Then perhaps we shouldn't pay!" the Head Beancounter responds, entering Mission Control from his lurk-point outside. "That's a financial thing!"

I realise now that this is a setup and the Boss has been committing IT treason in actively conspiring with the Beancounters to find some unmet SLA in our external hosting service contract, so as to derail the 'external hosting' gravy train of the PFY and myself...

"Maybe we can get some photos?" the PFY suggests.

"We'd want to see the facility," the Boss says.

"Both of us," the Beancounter adds.

"I'll make some calls," I say.

Half an hour later the PFY and I have a rough plan of them being hooded (for 'security reasons') at night (to 'coincide with shift changes') bundled in the back of a van and driven around local streets for half an hour before being brought up through the freight elevator to our ghost facility.

To disguise the server room a little, the PFY's going to flip all the floor tiles upside down, remove the rack doors and slap lots of anti-terrorism posters everywhere. We've also lined up a bouncer from a local pub to dress in khaki and 'act military', dropping the occasional bit of IT patter. To complete the picture we've asked the Boss and Beancounter to supply scans of their passports 'for ID verification and validation purposes'.

. . .

A day later and the Boss and Beancounter are ushered out of the freight elevator looking slightly dishevelled - thanks to the PFY's high speed negotiation of a couple of the city's parks.

"So this is it then?" the Beancounter asks angrily. "All that money for this?"

"State of the art facility, this," our bouncer says.

"It's no better or worse than we have in our own building!" the Boss snaps.

"It may as well be our building," the Beancounter fumes. "We're being ripped off!"

I'm wondering if the PFY can hear any of this, watching us - as he is - from the CCTV monitor beside the Halon release in the next room...

"And we pay all that money for THIS?" the Boss snarls as our security guard departs 'to do his rounds'.

"It's a state of the art room with redundant UPS, Environme-"

"I don't care if it's got state of the art bloody environmental monitoring with round the clock surveillance..."

"Actually, it has," I murmur.

"...we're being ripped off! This is never a defence facility! I worked in defence and they'd never use this sort of equipment."

"I think..."

"There's no log book!" the Boss says triumphantly.

"Pardon?"

"There's no log book - we didn't sign in and out - I'm sure that's part of the contract!" the Boss says triumphantly.

"They got photocopies of your passports."

"Yes, but we didn't sign in and out - it says they'll do that, in the contract!" the Beancounter says happily.

"So you're going to void the contract over a technicality?" I ask, rubbing my jaw thoughtfully.

"YOU BET!" the Boss says.

"And we'll go back to hosting it ourselves?"

"Hell no!" the Beancounter says. "The current on site facility cost us a fortune - there's no way we're going to expand it to house these servers! No, we've found an excellent hosting place in Luton which is dirt cheap."

"You're going host our servers in Luton?" I ask, looking at the CCTV camera, thinking about that scene at the end of Wag the Dog.

"Yes. Only it's cheaper if we provide the technical support - so one of you's going to have to be relocated to Luton."

"Luton?! Yes. Yes, I'm sure we can work something out," I say, creaking the door open. "I'll just let the security guy know we'll be leaving..."

*Nod*

>Slam<

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS


Chapter 34 

"What's this?" the Boss demands, tossing a tattered faux leather-covered book at me.

"This?" I say. "It looks like someone's diary."

"Your assistant's - but what's inside it?"

"I don't know. I'm not in the habit of reading personal stuff," I respond, choking down a chuckle.

"I suggest you do!" he snaps.

"Why, what am I looking for?"

"Just look."

>flip< >flip<

"Angela, kebab house at 7:30," I read.

"Not that, move on to nearer today."

"Boss's missus, pub, 8:30.”

"WHAT?"

"Just jokes," I say, holding up the book. "The page is blank."

"Keep turning - this month!"

"Uh-huh," I say, flipping over a couple more pages. "What am I looking for?"

"What's that?" the Boss asks, jabbing his pudgy pinky at a page.

"This? What it says at the top of the page: Schedule of Concrete Pours at poorly guarded building sites."

"And the next page?"

"Woodland parks with no night time security and easily accessible backhoes."

"And the next page?"

"Lime storage facilities."

"And the next?"

"Crematoriums with dodgy door locks."

"And the next?"

"Pet food manufacturing plants."

"And the next page?"

"Glue Factories with no alarms," I say. "Look, what's your point?"

"What do you mean what's my point? Do you think I'm stupid?"

"Have you not heard the expression 'Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle?'" I respond.

"I, uh... what's that got to do with anything? Anyway, that's not the point - look at those lists again."

"What am I looking for?" I ask, oozing innocence.

"What do you mean? You can't tell me you're not a little concerned - worried even?"

"About what?"

"About why someone should be collecting that sort information - what they might be planning to do with it!"

"You mean..." I say.

"Yes! I think your assistant is moonlighting as a security guard!"

What?

"I... Of course!" I gasp "It all makes sense now! The late-night drinking, the reality TV shows - the monosyllabic speech!"

"Aren't you concerned at all?"

"Not with detective work like that I'm not," I admit.

"We should find out what he's up to! It might be a conflict of interest!"

"A conflict of interest if he's going around guarding places at night?"

"It might be," the Boss says, less convincingly.

"Doubtful."

"But still, we should look. Where is he?"

"Off at lunch with the new woman from the pub."

"When do you expect him back?" the Boss asks furtively.

"Back? Oh, right! Um, in an hour?”

"Well maybe we should look through his cupboard, just in case there's more to it," the Boss suggests. "Where does he keep his stuff?"

"He keeps all his things in the storeroom, but I really don't think..."

. . . 30 seconds later . . .

"Oh no!" the Boss gasps as he pushes the door to the store open. "A spade and an old roll of carpet."

"Yeah," I say. "Right where those brand new, easily stolen and virtually untraceable 22 inch LCD monitors were stacked."

"But why's this stuff here?"

"No idea. From memory they've been here since around the time that auditor bloke went on holiday without telling anyone about it beforehand. Though perhaps it was all just in the boot of the PFY's car and he needed to make space for several boxes..." I hint.

"You don't think..." the Boss says, with just a hint of horror.

"What?" I ask equally mysteriously.

"...that he's a builder's labourer?"

"What?"

"Add it up," he says. "Old carpet, spade, building sites, places that need locks fixed..."

"Well now you put it that way, I suppose you could be onto something," I say.

"So it is a conflict of interest!"

"What is?"

"Him, he's working for other sites."

"I'm pretty sure there's no conflict."

"It is - I happened to notice that one of the building sites in that concrete pouring schedule is one of our competitors."

"Yes, insider trading and corporate espionage is rife amongst workers in the cement industry," I nod meaningfully.

"You can't be too careful. Give him a call - let's get to the bottom of this."

"You can't be serious - you want to interrupt a romantic lunch/evening to accuse the next Fred West of being a corporate spy?"

"What? Just call him!"

. . . Ten minutes later . . .

"And you're sure you don't know where those LCDs are?" I ask. "Fair enough"

"Well, is he coming in?" the Boss gasps.

"He's a bit tied up at the moment. But he did say he was happy to meet you here later on this afternoon to prove that your suspicions are totally unfounded."

"Well I suppose that will do."

"Fine. Oh, and he asked if you'd take the roll of carpet to your office so it'll save him a trip back here..."

"Oh. I suppose I could."


Chapter 35 

When you've got a problem it's always good to have a couple of bastards to call upon in times of trouble. Sadly, Brand and Ross aren't taking calls at the moment, so I have to call upon a fellow IT bastard, Jerry, for his thoughts...

"So how big is this pile of monitors?" he asks.

"180 last count," the PFY says.

"And you don't just dump them because?"

"He told the boss they cost five quid a pop to dispose of - because of the mercury."

"And the 900 quid?"

"Has been drunk," I admit.

"So you've got a basement full of old monitors that you want to get rid of?"

"Yes," the PFY says. "Soon, because I just bought a billiard table on eBay and I need the space."

"Right. And the monitors were replaced with?"

"22inch LCDs - 240 of them - or 265 including shrinkage," I say, pointing at the PFY.

"Right you are. 240 - A few Tasmanian desktop upgrades during the move?"

"Yes."

"OK... OK... Let me think... 180 CRTs, 240 LCDs, dumping cos... goddit!"

"What?!" the PFY and I ask.

. . . The next day . . .

"So walk me through this again," the new Boss says. "We have to get rid of all of the new LCD monitors because they don't have... Lead free solder?"

"Exactly," the PFY says. "We were running out of IT fitout budget because people were buying new office furniture and saying it was an IT expense simply because their PC sat on it. Or they did - to use their PC - in the case of new wheely chairs."

"And so one of your predecessors decided to buy monitors in bulk, direct from an overseas manufacturer - not realising that the EU restrictions about importation of products with lead based solder?"

"And," I add "It turns out that these monitors have lead in them."

"So if there's concerns about lead in solders why are companies still using it in manufacturing?"

"Because some places in the third world don't have these restrictions" the PFY says "Like Africa, Bangladesh... Alambama..."

"...Luton," I add

"Who's going to know?" the Boss asks, in a rare moment of pragmatism.

"Obviously we'd be obliged by our professional ethics to let someone know," the PFY says sadly. "but no one wants to be a whistleblower."

"So what do you suggest - we tell our users that their monitors contain lead - making the company potentially liable for prosecution?"

"Goodness no," the PFY says. "95 per cent of them wouldn't care anyway. No, you've got to make them want to replace their monitors."

"Which is where this comes in," I say, handing over a glossy sheet of paper.

"What's this - a recall notice?" the Boss asks.

"Yeah, we printed it up this morning" I say. "The PFY's going to Chunnel to Belgium in the weekend and send about 20 of these to random people in the company. Then, in a couple of days we'll go and collect them in a suspicious manner saying that there's been some misunderstanding and that it's nothing to do with these monitors and that they're perfectly fine."

"But like you say - who'd care about lead?"

"The recall's about the hideous amounts of radiation they don't emit."

"They don't emit?"

"Yeah - if you make a particular point of saying they don't emit any, people will be sure they do. And they weren't made in that factory in Ukraine that used to be a power station. We also say it's merely a precaution and completely harmless so long as the minimum safe viewing distance is observed."

"What's the minimum safe viewing distance?"

"There isn't one - which will make them even more suspicious."

"Then there's this," the PFY adds, holding up a box.

"What's that?"

"A Geiger counter," the PFY says, "with the guts removed and a tiny circuit that just makes the occasional crackle and moves the needle randomly at the low end of the scale."

"Why?"

"Because sooner or later someone will hold it up to their ancient radium dial watch and notice that it doesn't crackle any more or less than it does any other time."

"Then they'll open it up and find there's no workings inside apart from the tiny circuit and some old batteries wrapped in insulation tape to give the unit some weight - and be positive there's a problem," I add.

"Then I'll go round assuring everyone that things are OK and the only other options are some old CRTs..."

"After shaving off small chunks of his hair," I add.

"I... do you think it'll work?"

"Hell yeah. Half of them will be off sick with headaches within the week and we'll swap CRT screens in while they're away,"

"But didn't you dump the old screens?" the Boss asks

"I did, but I'm sure we can pick up some here and there for... I dunno.. 10, 20 quid apiece."

"So what are we looking at?"

"Maybe a couple of grand?" the PFY says

"Plus the dumping fee for the LCDs - another two and a half," I chip in.

"I thought it only cost five quid?!"

"Five quid for mercury, but it's ten quid for radiation because they have to ship them to Liverpool - where birth defects would largely go unnoticed."

"And premature death is a blessing," the PFY adds.

. . . The next day . . .

"Jerry" I say "I've got those 240 LCD screens you were after - what did we say, 50 quid apiece?"

"Forty."

"Forty-five."

"Deal. Now, got any wheely chairs? The company's looking for about 100 or so..."

. . . That afternoon. . .

"Did you know that the gas piston in wheely chairs can explode?" the Boss whines, as an ambulance bears a poor unfortunate from Beancounter central away...


Chapter 36 

"But the notes I have say you built a new machine just last year!" the Boss snaps, looking at the PFY's list of parts. "Why do you need a new one so soon?"

"It's technical," the PFY says "You wouldn't understand."

"Try me," the Boss snaps back.

"What do you know about Quad Core Processor Technology?"

"Nothing."

"L1 and L2 caching?"

"Nil."

"What about SATA2 drive speeds and Disk caching?"

"Again, nothing. Why?"

"Processor lookaside mean anything to you?"

"No."

"Maxwell's theorem - Ohm's Law?"

"Is that two separate things?"

"I'll take that as a 'No' then," the PFY says. "What about Nanometre technology?"

"Nope."

"Eldervisse's processor electron gating proposition?" the PFY asks, veering into excuse calendar territory.

"Is that even a real thing?" the Boss asks, both annoyingly and astutely.

"Of course it is," the PFY says, offended.

"It sounds a bit made up."

"I can assure you that it's as relevant to computing as the Moore's Inverse Square Law of IT Satisfaction."

"What's that theory then?"

"Well, the basic theory is that as machine processing power increases, user dissatisfaction with momentary application pauses do as well."

"I thought it was about computing power doubling every 18 months?" the Boss blurts.

"No, you're thinking about Gordon Moore," the PFY counters. "I'm talking about Reggie Moore - the famous Helpdesk supervisor."

"You're making this up!"

"I'm not!" the PFY sniffles.

"We'll just see then >tappity< >tap<"

You've got to give the PFY marks for Wikisalting. Not only has he inserted entries into Wikipedia, he's fabricated websites, complete with photos of IT types pointing at graphs (one of these quite patently the barman of the local pub in a suit jacket with some pens stuck in the top pocket).

"So what's this got to do with you needing a new desktop machine?" the Boss asks, admitting defeat.

"Look, if you take Moore's law into account..."

"Which one?" the Boss says sarcastically.

"Both of them," the PFY says. "Anyway, if you take into account Moore's' laws then my machine..."

"Which is only... ten and a half months old," the Boss points out.

"...is already over halfway through its useful life. So if I'm to remain abreast of current technology I should be replacing it every nine months!"

"As should I," I put in, not wanting to miss out on a new gaming rig either..

"Three hundred quid for a Graphics adapter!" the Boss says, pointing at a line item.

"I need one to run two screens simultaneously at high res!" the PFY insists.

"You don't HAVE two high res screens," the Boss retorts.

"They're mentioned the seventh line down" the PFY sniffs.

"We can't afford it!"

"Which, his one or my one?" I ask.

"Either one."

!!!

It's one thing to deny the PFY a new machine, what with his flimsy arguments about needing it and all, but it's quite another to deny me the chance to improve my service level to the users. Particularly when I happen to have laid my hands on a pre-pre-release copy of FEAR2...

"But this is a priority!!" I gasp. "Can't we cut something less important from the budget - like those multifunction printers - no one uses all the features on them! They'd be happy with the old lasers they used to have."

"It's too late, the multifunction devices have already been bought," the Boss says, handing another page over. "There's barely enough money left to cover paper."

"I... that's what a printer costs!?!" the PFY gasps.

"No, that's what a toner cartridge costs," the Boss responds. "Apparently the contract that my predecessor signed gives the MFD outfit exclusive rights to all the company's printing at 1.25 p a page and includes all expenses apart from paper and toner cartridges. No one thought of checking the toner cartridge cost. The company either goes paperless or the IT department will go bankrupt."

"Not a worry >clickety<" the PFY says, shutting down the print server. "Now, about that new desktop?"

"I think it's going to take a lot more than that to make the printer company re-evaluate the two year lease..."

"YOU SIGNED A TWO YEAR LEASE!" the PFY gasps, horrified at the possibility of being the laughing stock of his gaming peers with the oldest desktop...

"Let's just calm down," I say quietly. "I'm sure the printer company will see reason and let us out of our contract."

. . .

"It's a signed contract," the MFD rep says, "and as such I'm unable to do anything about it. It's very clearly stated that we'll pay all expenses except toner cartridges and paper in exchange for the favourable per page printing model proposed."

"So you're not even going to consider a shorter contract or cheaper toner cartridges?" I ask

"I'd like to help you, but a contract is a contract..."

"Fair enough," I say, to the disgust of the Boss. "Thanks for coming and meeting with us. I'll just show you out of the building..."

. . Five minutes later outside the building . .

"No hard feelings?" the MFD guy says apologetically.

"None whatsoever," I say as an MFD sails into the windscreen of his car ">CRASH< Oh dear, someone must have accidentally bumped that out the window. Lucky ONE of us is paying for the insurance though. >CRASH< Oh, two clumsy people..."


Chapter 37 

"How's that paperless office coming along then?" the Boss asks enthusiastically as he enters Mission Control on his daily constitutional.

"Paperless office?" the PFY asks.

"Yes, you were saying the other day that we should go to paperless."

"No I was saying how our printing and copying contract was extortionate," the PFY responds. "And anyway, that's all sorted out now."

"Ah! Well. I kind of mentioned the paperless office idea to a couple of people and they're quite keen."

"Are they?" I ask.

"Well if we're talking paperless, check this out," the PFY says, pointing to a web page on his screen.

"What am I looking at?" The Boss asks.

"It's the website that the caterers use for our meals."

"Really? So they use real ingredients and not just tramp vomit?" I ask.

"Yeah," the PFY says. "They subscribe to this site, which tells you what meals to prepare for what tier of punter. You choose a week of meals and it orders all the ingredients to be delivered for the food you selected."

"Tiers?" I ask.

"Yeah. You have the Platinum range, which is CEO material - escargot and all that, Gold, which is the sort of stuff you'd see at a posh catered event, Silver class, which is nice catered food, down through the various other tiers, to us."

"What's our tier?" I ask.

"Uh... it doesn't actually have a name."

"If we're talking Platinum, Gold and Silver then we're probably around Lead?" I ask.

"As in poisoning," the PFY adds.

"Indeed," I say. "But that's probably because 'Transuranic heavy metals may not be used where there is life'"

"Huh?"

"Nothing, just a quote from the past."

"Well?"

...

"Sapphire's not an element!" the PFY cries a few minutes later, poking a rather nasty hole in TV history.

"It hardly matters," The boss interjects. "So this is just a food ordering website saving the hassle of filling out a couple of forms. Surely there's not much paper saving in that?"

"It's more than that," the PFY says. "Each day the caterers go to the website and see the recipe along with pictures and a little video showing how to make it."

"And?" the Boss asks.

"And they don't print any of it. Though it does look like the web server is particularly poorly protected," the PFY hints.

"Meaning?"

"Someone could go into the website, make some fairly minor modifications to the recipe and end up with rather nice meat balls instead of the Hungarian glue-lash that they manage to make out of most things."

"But then you'd need to make a video and have pictures," I counter.

"Yes, that's where it comes unstuck - you'd only really get away with some minor quantity changes. However, that said, you could just change options on the webpage..."

"You mean like.. change the tier of meals we're getting?" the Boss asks furtively.

"Exactly!" the PFY responds. "You could change the tier you want for this week's meals - and they might put it down to a keyboard error if the finance people complained about the end of month bill."

"So we could get..." the Boss says.

"Chicken korma, Peshawari naan and all the poppadoms you could eat? Yes," the PFY responds.

"But surely it's password protected?"

"Two minutes with a keypress recorder." the PFY says, holding up a sheet of paper with "CH3F" written on it.

"But surely the cafeteria people would know?"

"That's the great thing! The whole site's put together by some publicity seeking pot basher who's promoting new era meals - so the cafeteria staff never know what they'll be cooking from one day to the next.'

"I... Let's try it with tomorrow's meals," the Boss mumbles. "Just to see."

"Okay, I'll just pick something in the silver range," the PFY says. "And the best thing about this >clickety< >tap< Is it's completely >click< paperless, meaning..."

"No audit trail!" I blurt.

. . . Lunch time the next day . . .

"This is amazing!" the Boss says, shoveling down a prawn malibari.

"True," I respond. "People are racing back for seconds instead of to the toilets!"

"We won't get away with it of course," he replies, the voice of reason intruding. "Finance is bound to find out any day."

"Yep. But maybe for a couple more days..."

"So perhaps you should... uh... pull out all the stops?" he hints.

"You mean... Platinum, all the mods?"

"Go for it!"

. . . The next day . . .

"You're not having any?" the Boss blurts, halfway through his second Fisherman's basket.

"No," the PFY says. "I had assumed that Platinum would be somewhat better than deep fried seafood and chips."

"Smothered in tartare sauce," the Boss responds. "It's bloody lovely - so light. A bit salty, but lovely. The staff are loving it."

. . .

"So," I ask the PFY moments later. "When are you going to tell him about your recipe update to deep fry them in castor oil?"

"A couple of minutes after I've visited all the toilets in the building."

"Ah," I say. "So you're committed to the paperless office thing then?"

"Oh yes!"


Chapter 38 

"So let me get this straight," the Boss says, looking at his email to the PFY's latest masterpiece. "You're proposing a software... amnesty?"

"Yes," the PFY answers.

"And what's a software amnesty when it's at home?"

"It's a chance for people to turn in software they don't use any more," I explain. "So maybe you bought a product from somewhere and never actually got around to using it, either because it was hard work or because you just couldn't be stuffed learning how to use it properly."

"Like Microsoft Project," the PFY says.

"Or maybe you used it once, but it was such a bloody nightmare that you quietly deleted it off your machine and never told anyone about it."

"Like Windows ME," the PFY adds.

"Or maybe a manager of a group decided that they were going to make a change that mattered and move all their people some new version of something but before that could happen he was..."

"Pushed down the stairs," the PFY interjects.

"I was going to say 'told that the company was moving in another direction'."

"So what will this achieve, just finding out what people aren't using?"

"Partly, but also it helps us in the event that someone else in the company ever wants to buy some software again - as we can give them one of the returned pieces of software instead of then having two people hiding their bad software purchases."

"Sell them one of the returned pieces of software," the PFY comments.

"Yes of course."

"So how does this help the company?" the Boss asks.

"Because we don't end up buying more copies of software and we have lots more room in the bottom drawers of filing cabinets," I respond. "Nothing gets on my tits more than buying yet another copy of some software from some supplier when there's an unused one sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere. The bloody vendors love it, of course! And if you ring them and ask how many licenses you have you hit that particular portion of their brain affected by amnesia - they've no idea - until the annual maintenance payments are due..."

"But don't we just end up rebuying the software from ourselves?"

"We do, but this way keeps the money inside the company."

"Till 4pm on a Friday," the PFY adds.

"At which time it's reinvested in company morale," I concur.

"So you're planning to just drink the money away?"

"Uh huh," the PFY responds.

"I think I've got a better idea," the Boss says, rubbing his chin. "Let's talk to the finance people and see if we can't get cost centres paid some nominal fee for returning their software."

"I don't -"

"PLUS they get an extra, larger payment - say half the product's current buy price if the software is subsequently required in-house. That way they're getting an incentive to return software."

"What if they subsequently realise that they need the software after all? Won't we look bad?"

"No, because we saved them rebuying it at retail anyway - and as you say, it keeps money inside the company."

Both the PFY and I are not sure the Boss has fully understood the alcoholic beverage supply aspect of this proposed idea.

"I still don't think it will motivate people," the PFY says, changing tack.

"What about if we had a prizes - for the group who returned the most value, and the group who bought the most from the available software pool?" the Boss gasps enthusiastically - not really realising that all this project is really going to achieve is the unearthing of a large portion of the worst software in history...

"How would that work?" the PFY says.

"We'd calculate the value of the software they returned and the group that returned the most would earn a prize. And we'd also calculate the value of the software that groups bought from the pool and give a prize for that too - maybe 100 quid on the bar."

"Ah," the PFY says, keenly interested in the money-on-the-bar idea. "Two lots of 100 quid. Hmmm. But in the latter example wouldn't people just buy up vast quantities of crap software from the pool to win the prize, leading to exactly the same situation as before?"

"No!" the Boss snaps, waggling a finger. "They'd have to show a real business case - and we could verify it."

"It's not a bad idea," the PFY nods.

"I can't fault it," I say.

"I'll send the message out now," the Boss says, after making a few additions and modifications to the text.

. . . Three days later . . .

"I can't believe it!" the Boss burbles, wading through the piles of software clogging up Mission Control.

"I know," the PFY says. "We could almost open our own Symantec store!"

"I was thinking of applying for a Microsoft Reseller certification," I say from behind a mound of Vista install media.

"So which group's winning?" the Boss asks.

"Well it was a close race," the PFY says. "Because it looks like one of the Beancounters had his heart set on a Lotus Notes and Novell installation, but there was an incredibly large trunk of enough OS2 Warp install media to serve two thirds of the company - which no one's owned up to."

"So who won?"

"Well..." the PFY says. "It was us."

"You?" the Boss gasps.

"Yes, well when you factor in all the Server OS, Database, ERP licenses that we traded in when we went virtual, we won by miles."

"But..."

"I know, it hardly seems fair - but bear in mind that the company will now be able to use all those licenses for new services."

"I suppose you'll be wanting the 100 quid," the Boss sighs, admitting defeat quite quickly, really.

"That would do nicely," the PFY sniffs, as we choose that moment to break for a liquid lunch courtesy of the company.

. . .

"So," I say, as we down the first company-funded pint. "Any idea how we're going to get the second 100 quid?"

"No idea," the PFY says. "Though I did happen to make a quick call to the piracy hotline about someone running a stack of servers with no licensing earlier this morning. By my reckoning I expect we'll be back here next Tuesday."


Chapter 39

"...Which leads to the next item - the office Christmas function," the Boss says to the assembled masses of the IT department.

"The office function or the building function?" one of the helldesk geeks asks.

"Just the office," the Boss says. "The director and I have been talking and he's keen that we all do something together as a team building and morale boosting exercise."

"PAINTBALL!" the PFY cries excitedly.

"Uh, no, I think I'd like to do something else," another of the helldesk geeks sniffs, knowing all too well the harsh sting of the PFY's paintballs, stored - as they tend to be - in the PFY's freezer overnight.

"Yeah, no, I think we want something that's aimed to unite us rather than divide us," the Boss concurs. "Something which we can look back on in a few years and smile at"

"Yes, PAINTBALL!" I shout.

Were one blessed with the power of ESP at this point I'm fairly sure the PFY's thoughts would be something like a cross between an Arnie movie and Platoon - complete with Rolling Stones soundtrack - judging by the dreamy expression on his face.

"I think we'll skip the paintball idea," the Director interjects. "How about we do something that everyone would find fun?"

"But everyone loves paintball," the PFY says, apparently oblivious to the fact that half the IT staff have regressed into a semi-vegetative state at memories of past paintball encounters with him.

"Like I say, something everyone will find fun" the Director snaps.

"What about abseiling?" the Boss suggests.

"Uh, well, we're really looking for an activity we can do in the building - so everyone can be involved but we're still close at hand in case there's any systems upsets."

"We could abseil off the building," the PFY suggests.

Judging by their expressions alone the thought of the PFY standing above them - possibly holding a 19" CRT monitor - as they clamber down five stories hasn't struck a chord with the assembled IT staff.

"No, too dangerous," the Director says. "And not something that everyone can get involved in all at once."

"What about..." the Boss' PA starts.

"Yes?"

"Well some friends of mine did a 'great race' thing at their work. They all got into teams of four and had to complete various challenges to find the treasures hidden in the building."

"Hmm, interesting - show of hands?" the Boss says.

. . . One all-but-unanimous vote later . . .

"So it's decided then, we'll set up a 'race' on Friday afternoon for various treasures hidden around the building, ending up back here at 4pm for nibbles and drinks!" the Boss burbles.

. . . Friday, 7am, in a mostly darkened building . . .

"Treasure number one, back of the fire hose reel, northern stairwell, second floor" the PFY says to me, not looking up from his view of the Boss and Director on the CCTV monitor.

"Got it," I say, scratching away furiously on a piece of paper.

"Treasure two, inside the pot plant, second floor foyer.”

. . .

"Treasure 22, inside the CD storage bin on the Boss' PA's desk," the PFY says finally.

"Don't you feel a little... bad, cheating like this?" I ask him.

"What, you mean after none of the staff wanted be on a team with us?" the PFY asks.

"No, me neither," I chuckle.

. . . That afternoon, one early treasure-gathering mission later . . .

"Righto, off you go!" the Boss cries, handing out the clue envelopes to us all.

. . . Five minutes later, in Mission Control . . .

"How's it going?" I ask the PFY, leaning back to check out his monitor.

"One team's just found treasure one gone," he replies.

. . . Two hours later . . .

"Treasure 19, found to be gone."

. . . Ten minutes later . . .

"And that's treasure 22 not found," the PFY says. "Show time!"

. . . Five minutes later . . .

"Well," the PFY blusters from his pile of treasure, in response to the incredulous questions from the staff. "It was pretty simple really - the clues led us straight to everything."

"But there were four separate treasure paths!" the Boss gasps.

"And there were two key problem-solving people on our team," the PFY says. "We were bound to think outside the box and discover the other paths."

"Well, er, congratulations," the Director mumbles, not wanting to be a bad sport about it and ruin the Christmas morale.

"But to show we're fair and that Christmas parties should be fun for everyone," the PFY adds. "We've decided that everyone should choose a present from the pile."

"I... well, that's very generous of you!" the Boss says, as people make grabs at the treasure pile.

"Not at all!" the PFY replies. "Christmas should be fun for everyone. And with that in mind..."

The PFY's sentence is interrupted by the sound of the doors locking and the lighting controller clicking to 'off.'

"Paintball," the PFY continues, handing what feels like a holster and some night vision goggles to me in the dark...

>pop< ... >pop<>pop<>pop< ... >pop<>pop<

Now THIS is a Christmas party!