I’m sitting in my office with my soldering iron, working on my latest gadget when Skip walks up and looks at me.
The fact that I’m actually doing something seems to take him aback for a moment; looking at the equipment strewn about it’s several seconds before he has to admit he’s stumped, and wonders what I’m doing.
I sigh quietly; all that teaching, gone to waste. Well, education can be expensive…
“This is our new CAD/CAM machine.” I begin. “You can program patterns into it. If you want to cut things out of wood you program it, and then a lathe or saw or whatever cuts out as many as you want. Perfect cuts every time.”
His eyes are big now: I’m actually doing something useful, putting this machinery together. I take a quick look over my shoulder and see him trying to ask the inevitable question. I turn my soldering iron up to “deep fat fry” and sear his leg. The resulting scream and quick limp away assures me that he now realizes that I don’t tolerate stupid questions. Hell, for that matter, I barely tolerate intelligent questions.
Education can be painful, as well.
Picking up the phone I put in a quick call to Kim, the babe in accounting who likes to mother everyone.
“Yes?” comes the rather weary response. We’ve dealt with each other before.
“Skip burned himself and is trying to bandage it now…but you know how men are. He’s bound to screw it up. Think you could help him?”
“You’re a real bastard, you know that?” she says. “Just once it would be nice if you could get through a lesson without maiming him."
“Hey, learning can be painful. He’s in his office now.”
She makes a few more rude remarks and hangs up to go tend my partner’s wounds as I spray the air freshener. The smell of burnt flesh is always pretty nasty.
I continue with my soldering when the phone rings. I look at the extension number: Jim from sales. Whatever he wants is going to be completely useless and take up gobs of time. I press the special “disconnect” button on my desk and send 50,000 volts of electricity through the line. I hear a thump above me telling me that Jim got the message, as well as some cursing from Skip’s office. Damn, I’m teaching him well…I didn’t even notice that he had tapped my phone. I make a mental note to subscribe him to Blue Boy magazine and go back to my work.
After about 20 minutes Skip comes in and I have him finish putting together my equipment: I’ve made a few modifications but he doesn’t seem terribly curious about them; seems he’s learned his lesson about asking questions. At least for today.
Skip limps over to his PC and we load up the network version of Army Men. We start happily blasting each other when the phone rings. It startles me to the point that Skip actually has a chance to kill my infantry…I reach for the “disconnect” button when I see the extension number; it’s Joy, the sales babe. Some folks find it odd that all of the women working here are good looking. If they're not good looking they decide to quit shortly after they start….
“Good morning, service, this is Brian” I say in my best voice. Skip rolls his eyes. “How can I help you?”
“Brian, this is Joy. I’m having problems with my message board.”
For a moment I’m puzzled; what does this have to do with me? Why would she be calling me about a message board? Not enough cork to put pins in to?
“Ok, and your calling me because…”
“Well, after Pat loaded it I can’t get into my mail.”
Loaded it? For a moment I’m really confused. Then it all comes together. This message board is software. Software that some USER had loaded on MY computers. And not just his; he’s messing with OTHER users PC’s. I give Skip my “This is bad” look and tell Joy, in a voice that sounds far away to me, “I’ll take care of it.”
I hang up the phone and tell Skip that someone other than us is screwing with the users. He goes to the storage locker and grabs one of the boxes that are used to clean out a desk and informs security that someone will be leaving very shortly. I look at my console: yep, the boss is on the Internet, in a live sex video room. I could set my watch by when he logs onto his “morning meeting”.
A few clicks and taps here and there and the bosses’ live video feed is being sent to every users screen in the company. I look at Skip and smile. “The phone should ring right…about… now,” I say as the phone rings.
I don’t have it out of its cradle before I hear my boss screaming.
“What?” I say, registering shock. “Internet porn? On everybody’s desktops? Let me check this” I say as I click a few keys on my computer. “Ah yes, seems someone has been getting a live video feed. Not usually a problem, if they keep it to themselves. But there’s seems to be some software that’s conflicting with it. Let me check”.
A few more clicks on the keyboard and Skip’s Army Man is blown to pieces. “Here’s the problem. Something called message board. No, we didn’t install it; did you authorize anyone? No? Let me check the records and see who did it.”
A few more key clicks and I “find” the name of the perpetrator and let him know. I hear him tell his secretary to get Pat in the office RIGHT NOW; you can hear the capital letters in his voice.
The boss assures me that I don’t need to track down the person who had originally accessed the feed; it being break time anyway, in the spirit of the company & giving free reign, etc. etc. I mention to him how easily this information can leak out with unauthorized software being loaded. Can’t be too careful with a loaded gun like that walking around.
It 10 past 11 so Skip and I decide to take a quick 2-hour lunch. As we walk to the bar across the street we can see Pat being escorted to his car by security, and none to gently. Skip tells me they didn’t take kindly to all those e-mail propositions Pat sent them about wanting to see a “real man in and out of his uniform”.
Damn, I’m teaching him well. Almost makes me feel guilty about the pattern he’s going to find etched into his desk from our new CAD/CAM machine……