March 16 - 20, 2009

March 20, 2009 - Aha!

This guy’s monitor looked out of synch,
So he told me that it’s on the blink.
"There’s no lava-lamp here,
So it can’t be your gear.
Then it must be your building. You think?"

So I went to his place to take stock
When I heard the door outside unlock.
I then took him outside
Where a cable we spied.
There’s the cause of it! Boy, what a shock!

Boy, three electrical stories in a row (and four in five days). How many electrical jokes and puns can you come up with at a time??? I have noticed that CW sometimes gets on a roll with related stories like this. 


March 19, 2009 - Unlikely puzzle solution

When the user called ‘bout all this beeping,
My response was to keep her from weeping.
“Central IT will send
A new unit, my friend.
Now, just use the wall plugs for safekeeping.”

But a sudden thought made her hope rise.
“I’ll call UPS on it!” she cries.
What can brown do for you?
They’re a freight line, it’s true.
But I doubt they sell IT supplies.

Now I know that the story is gripping,
But I don’t want my rhymes to be slipping.
So I must take the task,
And I just have to ask:
Was the unit in question in Shipping?

This story I read over several times, and for the life of me I could not for sure say that the power supply was or was not from the shipping company UPS. I believed it could be possible for the UPS unit to be supplied by the United Parcel Service to run and maintain their shipping software. I was set to post this as a two stanza poem, but thought I needed the third to ask the question for clarification. Some of the readers in the Tank have been rather cruel lately, especially to FluffyJacket, over the slightest mistake, and I wanted to cover that possible situation. Oh, and to the poster who thought my meter was off in the second stanza, I highlighted and underlined the accented syllables. Usually, if you have an acronym like UPS and IT, you say each letter separately. Exceptions may be things like DOS, SQL ("Sequel" - there was a big discussion about this in the tank a couple weeks ago...) RAM, and ROM. (However, in the tank, F L U F is said as "fluff" - he does that to avoid the spam filter). If you are used to pronouncing it as "ups" (as opposed to downs), you might have a problem, but if you use each letter as a syllable, especially since in this case I'm talking about the shipping company and not the power supply, it works.


March 18, 2009 - Power play

I had said to the bean counter, “Please,
A new UPS runs us twelve G’s.”
His reply was quite jolting
And downright revolting.
“Request denied!” he said with ease.

But in three months some progress was made.
Would an accident leave folks unpaid?
No, a newly fried riser
Card made him much wiser,
My UPS then was okayed.


March 17, 2009 - Don't make us hungry. You wouldn't like us when we're hungry.

Mr. Lumbergh had made me irate
Since a desk in the cellar's my fate.
Then he brought more decline
When he stole my Swingline,
Then said to me, "That would be great…"

So I worked in the darkest of places
Far away from my coworkers' faces.
Now I don't get some cake!?
That is all I can take!!!
Now they'll all need some new office spaces!!!

Even though the title for this tank story was from the Incredible Hulk, the one sentence in the story about not wanting to burn the building down pointed me to one of my favorite movies, "Office Space."  Although the story is a little dated, since it is concerned with the Y2K conversion, and also wants us to believe that banks and credit unions actually run their financial software on Macs, it does speak to us techno-nerds having to live and work with eight managers, balky printers and programming issues. If you get a chance to rent or buy it, I highly recommend it. 

 

And, yes, I have a red Swingline stapler at home. It was a thank-you from some computer hardware company for filling out and sending in a product registration. 


March 16, 2009 - Safety first

'Round the server room work I had hovered,
Where incompetence soon was discovered.
All because of some dope,
Who was given a rope,
Who then told his boss, "I've got it covered."