"What's this magnet for?" I ask, picking it up and hearing a bell start chiming in the distance.
"You bastard!" one of the programmers utters.
"I'm sorry?" I ask, turning.
"YOU did it didn't you?"
"What? Break into my own cabinet? But I've got a key.."
That's the terrible burden of proof really – in this day and age, you need some to make an accusation.
The late-breaking news comes in that one of the consultants had a set of head– phones plugged into a CDROM drive hanging off their networked PC. But not anymore. Now there's an unexpected vacany in the department. I blame the Ethernet Isolation specs. 3KV my backside!
Quicker than you can say "Help us with our enquiries" I'm "helping the police with their enquiries".
"What is this, can you tell me?" a burly officer asks, right up in my face. He holds up a magnet.
"It's a magnet. There was one on my cabinet!" I cry.
"Yes. And where did you get them?" he asks, seizing control..
..and losing it.
"On my cabinet! I just said!"
"No not this one. The others. Where did you get them?"
"Others? What others? You mean there were more on my cabinet! Why?!?" (I can play the "stupid game" forever, having had years of education at the hands of computer lusers.) He tries a different tack.
"What would you say this was off?" he asks
"My cabinet! It was on my cabinet, I told you! I pulled it off... and I think I heard a bell ringing"...
.... .. .
A couple of hours later I'm back at my desk with Mr Lucky, no charges pressed. I close my cabinet, satisfaction mine for the first time in a long while.
Then the phone rings...
–
The BASTARD IS BACK!
Programming is dull at the moment since the only "bug" in my software is now repaired. (The swipe-card door-access machine had some logic "glitch" that unfortunately no-one knew about until a particularly annoying Sales Consultant got accidentally locked in the secure area over the holiday weekend. The poor guy was a drooling wreck when they found him – apparently the sirens and sprinklers were playing up in there too, every 10 minutes. It all goes to show that you can't be too careful when stealing an ex-operators car park.
THE BASTARD GOES TO THE TRADE SHOW!
I decide to kill some time by dropping into a Computer Trade show to "sense the new direction of the market and Investigate emerging trends", i.e. I'll spend a shitload of the company's cash on food and drink and give a couple of salespeople a hard time they won't forget.
Well, that's how the normal bastard would do it, but not me. I really get remembered. All I need now is an acronym.... Hmmm...
I get there and two stalls promptly close when they see me coming, (poor losers), but theres 4 or 5 newbies that look like easy meat. I centre on a vendor that's trying to push their unix compliance with every ISO standard except hygene and start talking 7-figure site upgrades. Ignoring his panting, I continue to talk, harping on about our requirement for complance with currently emerging standards till he takes the ball and runs with it.
"Ah well, you see, we're THE foremost company in compliant systems" (turd) "In fact, our projected market share is.... blah blah blah.."
I let him dig his hole nice and deep. He's sure that 2 years at University has prepared him for the hardball arena of BIG $ales.
"Yes" I cut in "But all this is irrelevant without a Dynamically Allocated Heap and some Transient Intuitive Hardware System. Are you D.A.E.H.T.I.H.S compliant?"
"Sorry?"
"Dynamic Allocation of Extra Heap and the Transient Intuitive Hardware Standard, D.A.E.H.T.I.H.S. It's THE most important thing to come out of ISO this DECADE! I guess you don't have an implementation path yet then?"
"Tell you what" he says, smelling a deal "The Regional Manager is on the Showroom floor somewhere. I'll track him down and get an answer for you?"
"Well, that would be great!" I say, trying to enthuse him and keep him from staring at the acronym for too long. "But I'm a bit pressed for time, I've got a flight in..."
He runs off. The Regional Manager is no dummy. They're trained to recognise "SHITHEAD" spelt backwards. And upside down. And reverse. And lipread.
One stall down, 4 to go. I troll up to the next...
"Hi there, what form of hardware solution are you looking for?" Mr Smiles says (In other words, how can I tuck you for an extra grand)
"Well I don't really know. I need a fast and expandable machine that's top of the line but also capable of talking to my old luggable laptop."
Mr Smiles likes the words "Fast", "Top of the Line" and "Expandable". He runs over to a machine surrounded in glitter and advertising and gestures at it. "This is probably what you want then. The latest thing. There's only two in the country and luckily we have one here today"
"Yes yes, but will it talk to my laptop?"
"THIS baby will talk to ANYTHING. What's the interface, ethernet?"
"No, a SCSI-1 Interface. My machine pretends to be a disk, ID 3. But lots of machines kill my machine's powersupply with inductive transience backflow due to a non-standard SCSI interface...
>DUMMY MODE ONE<
He practically BEGS me to try the new machine out. Which I've been waiting for. I drag out my luggable, which is, admittedly, a bit of a beast.
"Wow! That IS old!! And >ungh!<.. quite heavy too. I guess you're quite attached to it?"
I mumble about legacy data, only use it at home, sentimental value and irreplaceable software while he plugs it in and starts the host machine.
"Okay, let's see what we can see" he says, and presses the power-on switch on my "portable" The 31 hefty nicad batteries that make up almost the entire inside of my "laptop" pour grunt into a tripling inverter which in turn supplies RICH, CHUNKY VOLTS to alternate pins on the "SCSI" bus, whilst emitting a dull "uuurk" sound.
"My Laptop!" I cry, reaching for it, just as smoke starts pouring out the back of the display machine. Mr Smiles dives for the demo machine weeping, while I exit, in "anguish"....
...resetting the circuit breaker in my machine as I go...
..to the next stall...
"Hi there, you look like someone who needs an upgrade!" the salesman chirps
"Well I don't really know. Is any of your stuff capable of talking to my luggable laptop?"
"HELL YES!"
One born every minute.
THE BASTARD'S STILL ABOUT!
It's a warm afternoon as I roll into work after a heavy night at an my favourite bar.
I'm in such a run-down mood I almost don't notice the smell of deodorant in the air. Deodorant can only mean one thing – an outsider. No-one here cares if their smell offends anyone. The smell is pretty thick which means the bearer must have been here a while.
As these thoughts steam sluggishly through my brain, I trundle through to the expresso machine and fill my tankard with the syruppy dark roast Italian.
Barely have I time to turn off logins than I meet today's visitor.
"Simon?" the boss chirps from the doorway "Ah.. I'd like to meet John Stern, he's the speaker from "MOTIVATION 2000" that we mentioned in the departmental newsgroup last week..."
"HI!" John gushes, powerdressed to the max.