fine whine

There's something worse than having an extraordinarily deep pile of work. It's knowing that there's an extraordinarily deep pile of work that's not quite ready to drop on you yet, and there's nothing you can do about it either way*.

* So there.

So much for my company's supposed security. Despite keeping us from our personal email* and desktop wallpaper our network and computers were compromised today. Apparently a hole in the plug-n-play service built into Windows 2000 was published recently, and, despite a fix appearing not long thereafter from Microsoft, our workstations were not prepared for the onslaught. Apparently in the last day or two some fourteen variants of the same exploit have been worming their way around, and it hit my computer at about noon. As far as I can discern all it did was to shut down my computer, but others didn't fare so well (one had all of her emails erased. Lucky her).

I, of course, assumed that the NT ADMINISTRATOR mentioned in the shutdown notice (which admittedly didn't look familiar) was someone in the I.T. end of things, and they were going to come after me for my custom wallpaper and unapproved software. When I began hearing cubicle mumblings about viruses and shutting down I paid attention, and slowly the rumors spread about a virus outbreak.

Of course Zotob and RBot and the others are technically worms, but who am I to argue? Some of my coworkers don't quite comprehend computers the way I do.

You see, I sought out a fix, and found the aforementioned Microsoft hotfix. I put it on a floppy and set out to find as-yet-uninfected computers to vaccinate. I gave the disk to somebody and she put it in the drive, and then asked me, "Now what do I do?". Immediately I realized that my instruction of "Run the one file on this disk" might've been insufficient so I walked her through the three click process.

Of course, less than half an hour later someone official wandered around telling us that we don't in fact need to turn off and unplug our computers (from the "blue cord" only, they'd said) but instead just reboot around 3:45.

Naturally the rumors had begun around 1pm, and there were many, many empty cubes for an hour or two while rumor and reality clashed. In the end we're all back up and running. What is really amusing is that there were whole departments of people unwilling to heed the hearsay and stubbornly kept working. Here they had an opportunity to socialize for an hour, and they turned it down. I don't know who's crazier, them, or the people supposedly securing our computers.

* Even Gmail (via https) is now blocked. Somehow they've even managed to plug that hole, much to my chagrin. I still have some tricks up my sleeve--and my own wallpaper, not theirs--but dammit, I shouldn't need to try and beat them. We should all be on the same side here, and naturally it should be my side. Stupid policies.

"Webinar" Say it out loud a couple times. The word just rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? First brought to my attention over a year ago, it hasn't emerged from any casual conversation or other interaction with anybody until today, and then only indirectly.

Nevertheless I cringed. It's not a real word, and it's not enough of a sound-alike to pass as one. There is no easy way to get, logically or phonically, from "seminar" to "webinar".

Anyway, this matters not, as not only is the word lacking in my approval but also in general meaning, as an email my coworker received today.

He's the new guy but I suppose I won't be able to call him that much longer. His position is senior to mine and it won't be long before he runs out of questions to ask me.

Since he is still new to the organization, he is midway through his so-called 'onboarding' process. Today he received an email ordering him to participate in a webinar.

By 'participate', of course, I mean to say that he was supposed to open a PowerPoint presentation attached to the email and call in on a conference call to follow along.

Not one bit of this so-called webinar was being done with the Web. Not one bit! Of course, "phonecallandpowerpoint-inar" doesn't sound any better, does it?

What comes below 'meaningless'? I mean, after 'buzzword', of course?

I'm angry. I received an email in my work inbox today that really annoys me, mostly because I'm annoyed that it angered me so much.

They're 'restricting' our ability to change the desktop wallpaper. By 'restrict' they mean to say 'remove' since now anytime my coworkers or I minimize all windows we will be greeted with a cool blue background with the company's logo (which is itself just two words in different weights the same font mushed together).

I already know who I work for: a company that wants to suck every drop of individuality out of its workers, apparently.

I'm not sure why this bothers me so much. One theory that I have is that this is due to the other erosion of my 'freedom' lately, in that certain sites are blocked including Flickr and all web-based email (POP3 access too) as well as a host of sites designated as tasteless, games-related, insecure and more. They've told me that I am not to be installing my familiar free applications such as Irfanview and Firefox because they are not officially approved. They've demanded that we purge all emails older than three months, though my inbox quota frequently fills up in under three weeks if not three days.

I want to work and restricting what I do on my computer is restricting my work. But keeping me from changing my background doesn't really change what I can do.

That said, blocking me from the Control Panel does. That is another point on the email sent today, that the Settings portion of the Start Menu will be 'restricted' and by restricted again they mean 'removed' going so far to explain the point as to define icon ("picture") and to show a screenshot of the butchered Start Menu.

Damnit though, why can't I keep my personal backgrounds? Am I not to have any shred of personality or humanity on my desktop? I suppose I could compensate by color-printing my collection of desktops and littering the walls of my cubicle with them, but somehow that seems, well, wasteful and stupid.

Whereas their policy is just stupid.

I'm not in the office today, but if I were I'd likely be fooling around on the internet more than usual. You see, the company has decided to shut off access to web-based and otherwise accessible personal email accounts in the interest of security and whatnot.

This of course irks me, not because I particularly care for my email but more for the fact that I don't like people telling me I cannot do something.

So it's good I'm not at my desk, as I'd probably be working on breaking through the security. Which is probably why another category of blocked sites is 'proxy avoidance information'.

If there is any good to come from this entry, then, it is this: If you email me during the day, even through my contact page, I likely won't get to it until nightfall.

Officially, that is. I'll be working on a workaround straightaway.

So now that I'm two co-workers down (well, somewhere between one and a half and two, or maybe three, if Michelle when pregnant counted as working for two) I've had something of an increase in my workload. Threefold, if not more. Without getting into any detail, I can say that it's an awful lot of garments and emails.

Oddly enough my phone is ringing less and less, disproportionately so if not in some weird inverse of the the email increase. This may be some sort of pleasant side effect, or I may just be slicing my time into smaller bits such that the intervals between calls, being filled with more and more work, seem all the more distanced even though the calls still come at the same rate. Or not.

Naturally I am under the delusion that I can somehow handle all of this.

Perhaps I delude myself because I have nobody else to delude, as promises of help and the like seem to be hopeful suggestions, not concrete assistance.

Tomorrow and Friday I leave the office to trek across the Rust Belt, and all the time I am going to be away from my emails and garments and desk and phone.

I'll look at my emails, unofficially, but that's all. I'm not going to check my voicemail, and I'm going to pretend that the place is at a standstill without me.

Which, effectively, it is, since I am apparently the Final Authority on a number of little decisions, the cumulative result of which is a pair of jeans in a store.

Well, several hundreds of thousands of pairs of jeans in hundreds of stores, but the idea's the same.