Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2012-03-13 11:12 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2012-03-13 11:12 pm
Entry tags:
Beware of the Leopard
azurelunatic: (my workday was completely hilarious; I should write it up in my journal.) synecdochic: hilarity is good! azurelunatic: "hilarious" is sometimes one of my new synonyms for The Bad Kind of Fun, but I hope my login will be working tomorrow. synecdochic: oh mySo I roll into work actually somewhat earlier than expected, given that I had a late-afternoon meeting, and my mood is darned decent: I'd slept, I'd eaten, I'd remembered to take my morning-pills, and it was gloriously rainy. Fucking chipper, man.
I was curious to see what the aftermath of the much-talked-about (and also much-delayed) email system migration, from Outlook to $PROGRAM, was going to be like. I start in on my day. I log the heck i -- no, I don't. Argh.
I call tech support with the details of my error (password's accepted, but can't connect to the remote system). It is lunchtime, so I suspect that he-who-usually-handles-this-noise, $FLOOR_IT_GUY, will not be back for a good hour. I sigh, slap headphones on my ears, and start up my trusty little iPod Fruitz, who has been freshly loaded with my favorite jams. I try to, at least. Fruitz is out of battery or something and will not start.
My overlady cruises by with a plate full of lunch. I wave at her and share my tale of woe. She shares the tales of woe of some of the rest of the team -- one person's email is half-migrated, and gets the emails from those still using Outlook in her Outlook, and the emails from those using the new system in $SYSTEM. "And from outside?" I ask.
No one knows. "I'm tempted to send a message from gmail to find out," my overlady giggles.
I text my manager to let her know of the situation (can't log in, got plenty to do in the long-awaited team supply cabinet inventory, will carry on) and carry on with the cabinet inventory.
There is a wiki page for the proper inventory. It is in the company internal network. Can't log in, can't get to the internal network. Right. My changes to the inventory are carried out on paper. I will synchronize these at the next opportunity, just like a good little clustered database should.
I discover that the two great huge cardboard boxes full of random stuff appear to be boxes from a two-years-ago mass office move, and may well have become lost in that move. There is a manual with orientation materials, including the default voicemail password that would have been very useful a week and a half ago when I needed to set mine up. There is a printed out photo with a heart drawn on it, a coffee mug, binders and binders, and -- gods help us all -- audio tapes. AUDIO TAPES. DO WE EVEN HAVE A READER FOR THOSE.
I find a name in the papers. I find another name, and another. Pretty soon I am sure I know whose boxes these are; the other names look to have been welcome packets for long-since-gone interns, since everything else is in this guy's execrable handwriting. (High school handwriting analysis skills come flooding back, and I am able to determine that the packet of unclaimed notes on my whiteboard is not in fact the same guy, though that is also crappy handwriting.) There's even a moving manifest, with a cube number. How thoughtful. It's in my building, on my floor even, but I have no idea where on my floor. The wall map is not helpful. Ordinarily I would check the company directory, which is -- of course -- on the internal network. Which I can't log in to access. I check my printout of my department, upon which he does not appear. Argh. I send a text to my manager.
I continue digging.I locate four laptops, two of which were thought permanently missing, and two of which were completely unknown. The previously-missing two are Thinkpads with fingerprint scanners, which are known to be paranoid fuckers and for historical reasons are always dubbed "Jim" in a certain subset of my social group. I unearth a set of burned DVDs from the boxes from the mystery dude, which correspond to the audio tapes (wouldn't DVDs suffice? Well, the audio might be unclear. Argh). I am paging through the binders when a packet of papers fall out; they turn out to be a set of NDAs that correspond to the names and dates on the DVDs and audio tapes; apparently that was from some study. At least four years ago. We've already shredded an ungodly ton of paper related to studies that was at least that old. Do we really need these? What is even on them? My computer doesn't have a DVD player. I can't log them in the supply closet wiki properly yet, but I should go look up whether those participants are in our databa-- Network. Login. Right. No. Argh.
Woah! Hi, manager!
Manager: "How's it coming? Have you talked with $FLOOR_IT_DUDE?"
Me: "That's the next step; I was waiting until … wow, it's way after lunch."
Manager: "Was I meeting with you today?"
Me: *nods*
Manager: "You will have seen in my email -- oh, wait, no, you won't, because you can't log in. $SYSTEM ate my calendar. I have no idea who I'm meeting with today, or when, or where."
Me: "I just so happened to put that meeting in my personal calendar. Which I can get to on my phone." *poke poke* "4pm. $ROOM."
Manager: "You're the *best*. … You found stuff from $PERSON?"
Me: "Remember those boxes in the closet that we weren't sure what was in?"
Manager: "Right. No. He's no longer with us."
I don't ask; she doesn't tell. He's not quite as no-longer-with-us as the guy whose name still appears in the team supply cabinet labels, though.
Ooo! Labels! The cartridges for my new label-maker arrived in yesterday's shipment from Office Depot, and were delivered yesterday afternoon. Based on that, the labeler, which was supposed to arrive today, should be arriving in this afternoon's shipment. And that should be coming -- well, at any time, really, it's after three already. I will have so much fun relabeling all of the things. Once I know what all of the things are, I will get my manager to sign off on some proper storage containers, so there's less faffing about with cardboard boxes. Glee!
I head over to $FLOOR_IT_GUY's office. He is out. Drat! I grab a snack from the kitchen and wander back, complaining to my teammates. A closer examination of the office door reveals that he has in fact gone home with allergies. And the other person in the office is in fact not even there yet -- there's a box of office supplies for him, but he is Sir Not Appearing In Today's Saga.
I return to my cube, where the labeler isn't. Of course, I did order the version that has to be plugged in to a computer... *sigh*. I debate retrieving a network cable from the Hardware Pile (like the horn pile, but with more delicate equipment that shouldn't be napped upon) and temporarily commandeering a jim so that I can get some fucking work done. Not that all of the organizing and such isn't work, but I am a modern office worker, and a modern office needs a goddamn working computer.
I claim the professional-society-branded Charles Babbage coffee mug from the box of things that used to belong to the former co-worker, and make myself a cappucino. It tastes of victory against at least the endless parade of office supplies, if nothing else.
Upon my return, I realize two things simultaneously: It is time for my meeting. Also, the red light on my phone is on, which either means the person from $LOCATION calling back about the potential event there, or the helpdesk calling back about my fucking login. Call log says: helpdesk.
Helpdesk trumps meeting, so I call them back. We exchange pleasantries; he cannot even locate me. He needs to go do a thing; I head off to my meeting.
The room is occupied by two someones else (did the $PROGRAM's nomming of my manager's calendar entirely eat the meetings, such that the room was showing as unclaimed?) but that is okay as my manager is nowhere in sight. The cappucino is delicious, though; perhaps I should try nonfat milk next, as the internet suggests this makes better foam. My manager texts back; she is on her way.
The occupants sign that they can wrap up in two minutes. My manager espies an unoccupied conference room, and we snag that. Just as well that we did, because no sooner have the other occupants left our conference room than some other people come along to claim it. Good job no one is planning on snagging the new one. We commiserate and meet. I probably won't be able to get started on the new task today, because it involves the network, but she'll email me. It will probably arrive, assuming my email account migrated. (I don't know, because I haven't been able to log in and check yet.) Perhaps I could set the email up on my phone? I resolve to give that a whack once I get a moment.
"It's been kind of hilarious," I sigh.
"That's a good word," she agrees, and shows me some glorious WTFery within the webapp for the new email program.
"Fascinating," I say.
"That's another good one."
"Now, about the data; I have a very unpopular view on that--" my manager begins.
"I was thinking we could have a data retention policy, and inform people of the date by which the old stuff will be destroyed unless they claim it," I suggest.
"... That's doing it properly," she agrees. Apparently I am starting to become telepathic and precognitive. Again. It happens.
She also clears me to use the jim, at least for stuff like video -- I will have to give it back if they have a study that involves the use of computers, but such studies are generally only a few days long, and it can live on/around my desk in the meantime. There might even be a security cable in my future, so I wouldn't even have to move it when I went home. What luxury!
The red light is glowing on my phone when I return. It's after five. I will be going home in short order. The helpdesk is in my voicemail, telling me I'm good to go.
I log i-- oh for the love of sweet Enki's nutsack. I call the helpdesk guy back, and tell him about this new and worse little problem. An hour of clanging, banging, and holding patiently ensues, including the part where I have to point out that he probably can't screenshare with me because I have a thin client and I can't get logged in, and also fiddling around on the back of the thin client box to swap the monitor cable between sockets and switching inputs on the monitor. I propose setting up the jim; he tells me that we're going to do this one issue at a time. I get the power cord and a network cable plugged in under the desk while on hold anyway on general principle.
"Can you log into the email from home?" he wants to know.
"Maybe?" I hazard. "They migrated me last night. Or they should have." (This has already come up, as I mentioned it so if it was a Known Issue he could rule that out from the get-go; it wasn't.)
"I want you to email me your network password, because I'm going to replace some cables and do a few things and then log in as you," he says, and the frustration is audible on every danged word. It's not at me; I've apparently passed the unspoken hurdles to be considered a competent end-user.
"I love changing my password," I agree sarcastically. "Okay. When I get home I'll email you, and if that fails; you're [email], right?"
"Right," he says (he is the classic pattern of username, nothing fancy there).
"I can just -- oh, for crying out loud, I have gmail on my phone, I'll email you *right now*." And I do. He gets it. I mourn the passing of a simple and sweet workplace-safe password that now must never be used again for it has been compromised. I hardly knew ye a month, sweet password.
A month. Today is my one-month anniversary. Well. Here's to me.
I check in with three friends as I head home. Two of them have in fact had worse days than me.
When I finally do send that email about data retention and the imminent destruction of a gawdawful ton of audio tapes, DVDs, and those tiny freaking cassettes that I'm not even sure if the camera that uses them works anymore, the subtitle is going to be "Beware of the Leopard."
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Or
"I found the missing stuff. It was in an unlabelled cabinet, in a box marked "beware of the leopard."
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