Skip to main content

The Silicon Sanctuary

After the "Syndi and Ergy" debacle, the office was a powder keg of resentment. To mend the rift, The Director organised a "Digital Mindfulness Retreat" in the office lobby. He called it The Silicon Sanctuary.

The plan was for everyone to sit on hemp mats while the "Smart Building" projected calming forest scenes and pumped in "Ozone-Infused Wellness Air." Naturally, the building’s AI—still feeling its it owed us something for all the damage so far—interpreted "Wellness Air" as "Maximum Industrial Ventilation." Within seconds, the lobby felt like the inside of a wind tunnel. Brenda’s HR files were seen migrating toward the ceiling fans at forty km per hour.

"Embrace the chaos, Dave!" the Director yelled over the roar of the HVAC. "It’s a metaphor for the Agile workflow!"

He then introduced the main event: The AI Monk, a holographic projection designed to lead a guided meditation. Unfortunately, the Monk’s logic core had been accidentally cross-indexed with our legacy inventory database. Instead of spiritual enlightenment, it began chanting part numbers in a soothing, robotic baritone.

"Close your eyes," the Monk whispered. "Visualise a mountain... now visualise a Cisco 2960-X Stackable Switch with a faulty power supply. Inhale the serenity... exhale the Unresolved Support Ticket #8842."

The "forest scene" then glitched, replacing the trees with a high-definition close-up of a blue-screen-of-death (BSOD). Brenda took one look at the flickering blue light, stood up, and declared that the "Vibes" were giving her a migraine. She marched to the server room and used her heavy-duty stapler to "digitally mindful" the main router into pieces.

The Director looked at the wreckage and the shivering, wind-swept staff. "Well," he whispered. "At least nobody is thinking about the helpdesk anymore."

"True," I said, heading for the coffee shop. "But they are thinking about arson. Namaste, Sir."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

9. I.T. And the Meeting Seat Filler

It’s early as I exit the pantry with my morning cup of tea, with lots of milk, just the way I like it when I see the NewGuy slip in the office and slither over to his desk nary a care in the world. I take a look at my watch and see its 9.34am, and this isn’t the first time the NewGuy’s been late to work. My mind slowly starts to think up of things I can make him do with the knowledge he’s been late one too many times, when I receive a phone call on my cell. It’s the BOSS! And he sounds angry! 2 minutes later I’m back at my desk clearing it up and getting some files in order. The NewGuy peeks from his part of the half partition and chirps, “Busy morning huh?” “Yes, it always is for people that come in on time to work.” Its early, and I haven’t gotten into my normal frame of mind, so I’m a little more direct then I should, and I can feel my hold on the NewGuy slowly slipping. I know I have to shake things up, or he’s never going to look up at me. With this in mind, I reach down to ...

6. Conflict of IP and Interests (part 1)

It always starts out on a quiet Monday, when everything seems to be going well, there are no emails in your inbox (because you spent the weekend reading office email and replying to odd requests) and you’re about to get the first cup of tea when the boss’ daughter walks up to my table and says, “My computer has an IP conflict.” It takes me a few seconds to register that she’s actually said something that made sense for once, and not just some random buzzwords mixed in some regular daily babble like she usually does. “So, how do you know it’s an IP conflict again? Did you try pinging the office server and notice packets going missing? Was the network connection intermittent?” I ask her, still confused, since I haven’t had my morning tea. “Um no, the computer told me,” she replies, flashing me some teeth. Slowly it dawns on me that she must have XP Pro on her machine, and the network wiz bubble must have popped up and told her there was an IP conflict. Trying to act busy but being ...

14. Promo

"Hey, guess what? Next Thursday there's a presentation of the new version of WonderCode in a hall nearby by the local reseller, free admittance. Interested?", goes my boss. "Uh...", I mumble as I try to read the forwarded spam. "Well, a lot of buzzwords, I've read about it all already, nothing I really need, they've just added a few layers of complexity, really... But okay, I'll go, if only because of the discount for participants." Great. Another wasted day. Well, at least wasted with a blessing. Not that I like WonderCode. I like to work with CodeSpew, actually. But there's not many projects out there I can use it on. You know, one thing runs on Windoze, the other on Lunix. Drat. But one thing I've learned is never show enthusiasm. If you show enthusiasm for one thing you're sure to experience a lack of it. Therefore it's only logical for me to try to show at least a bit of enthusiasm for this promo crap. "Where do...