IT Problems

When Russell came into the office this morning his machine was beeping constantly when he turned it on. Ii just assumed he was leaning on the keyboard, but he wasn’t. So he asked me why his machine should be beeping and I took a quick look. Meanwhile, one of the Steve’s who sits opposite him reckoned that it sounded like a major hardware fault, like the motherboard, and that it could explode at any moment. I couldn’t figure it out, so I called IT. We have a spare machine since Neil left, so I got Russell to work on that one. Half an hour or so later Matt from IT came up, tried it out, and as I suspected took the machine away. We expected that we would just get a replacement machine when one became available. A little later though he sent an e-mail saying that it had booted up fine downstairs and he was bringing it up to try again. He tried it back up here and it still beeped continuously. He figured it must be the keyboard, so we booted it without the keyboard and it worked. He said he’d get a new keyboard. I started looking at the keyboard and found there was a bit of silver foil (possibly from a chocolate wrapper) wedged in the keyboard, underneath a couple of keys. I prized it out with a bent paper-clip and tried rebooting the machine. This time there was no noise, and it booted up fine. I rang the IT guy back to tell him it was all fine now. I could hear them all laughing in the IT department when I told them it was just a piece of silver foil, and that I’d banned Russell from eating chocolate in the office again.

Staff moves 2

Then out of the blue the sods pinch Knock Off Nige, when we were told Clive was going to be moved off our section next:
Dear all,
As mentioned earlier, there are more moves afoot. One that directly affects us, Nigel has been poached to assist Carl and Lorna on the workflow cleansing programme.
They are dealing with unknown volumes, so I don’t know how long it will be for. I know you’ll join with me in wishing him all the best.
Kind regards

Junior says that he can't take part in the section's Bonus Ball draw we do each week. I hope he still sorts out our DVDs for us.

Staff moves 1

Copy of e-mail from boss:

Dear all,

Another staff move that directly affects us, Helen has been asked to help out on the bureau and has kindly accepted the opportunity.
Again, I don’t know how long it will be for but I know you’ll join with me in wishing her all the best.
Kind regards


Of course Helen didn’t appreciate it. She said “It sounds like I volunteered, or had some choice in the matter”.

Jim's return

Jim has been off for the week on holiday in Portugal. They all complain about him never shutting up while he’s here, but last week they were all reeling of his catch-phrases (You thought only comedians and quiz show hosts had them) while he’s been gone. They’ve also been singing his favourite song “I love it when you call..” (not sure where it’s from). He’d locked his drawers before he went, so no one could use his brown sauce or tomato ketchup on their breakfast sandwiches, until they found out that I keep sauce in my desk. So I’ve lost half a bottle of brown sauce while he’s been gone. (The previous regional office I worked in used to be stocked with brown, and tomato sauce, soy sauce, mustard, salt, pepper, vinegar. So depending on what
It had rained for the fist three days of his holiday. They had a nice time despite that, and he came back even more tanned than he went. He’s kind of a “birch” colour, if you compare him to the wood finishes in the IKEA catalogue.

Quiet day

I say quiet day, the whole week has been quite quiet work-wise. We’ve been discovering the joys of paper folding. I saw www.Readymech.com on the BBC’s Click programme. Then I printed off and made a basic character from there. I then started to customize the pattern and put Fat Dave’s face on. Then, when Alan saw it, Alan started looking for more ambitious projects and found a load of Tranformers and Star Wars stuff, which looks really good, but would take forever to make.
Take a look on http://gundamandrobotanime.blogspot.com/ and http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~sf-papercraft/Gallery/Gallery.html
Then on the www.paperinside.com site I found South Park figures to make, but when it came down to cutting out and making the characters it got very tricky. We also found some good, but less complicated stuff to print and make on http://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/global/entertainment/papercraft/seasons/09/index.html. So I’m going to do some pumpkins from there for Halloween.

Movement of staff

We got told yesterday (Thursday) that Clive and Helen weren’t needed for the new section that was being put together. I thought that it was too good to be true at the time, that we would be getting rid of a couple of duffers. We were quite depressed when the woman putting the new section together told us. We haven’t told Clive and Helen that they’re not leaving us yet. They were both quite nervous about moving section, so we were going to let then stew for a bit.
Then in the afternoon we were told that Helen would be going anyway, somewhere else. We could not be told where she was moving to. Then later one of the women who is moving came and told us that she was moving section. Then it became obvious where Helen was going to be going. Clive looks like he might be staying for the foreseeable future, but we did tell the woman who’s section he was going to that he would be upset that he’s not going now. We told that Clive was quite keen about the move, even though he wasn’t, so next time she needs anyone she might come looking for him and take him off our hands.

Calibre of 3rd floor staff

As I’m walking towards the print room with a couple of large drawings a middle aged woman who we’d not seen before walks into the office and heads towards the print room, but with her head scanning the room from side to side obviously looking for someone to help her. Not asking for help, she walks into the print room, and unfortunately I follow her in. Instead of asking for help she lets out some retarded sound “Ehh-eer” (a similar kind of sound to Helen when she wants help, but can’t be bothered to actually ask. There’s only me and Paul in the room with her, and having weighed her up already I ignore her stupid sound, I’m happy to say Paul does the same. After 30 seconds she realises that we are getting on with what we’d gone in for and decides to say “Help. Can someone show me which machine I need to fold this drawing?” Again I ignore her because I’m used to this kind of crap from Helen, and I don’t have any time for anyone who behaves the same. Sadly Paul comes over to her and points her in the direction of the folding machine, even though the sheet she has already has folds in it. He takes the drawing off her and shows her how to feed it into the machine, then carries on with his own stuff. She then unfolds her second sheet and tries the same with that. She manages to jam it into the machine to create an error on it then says to me “Which button do I press now?” I don’t know what she’s done so I have to go round and see what she’s done. I pull the paper out of the machine, which clears the error, then tell her that you just feed it in and the sensors detect the paper and it takes it in automatically. So I watch her fold her second piece of paper, pick her paper out of the catcher-tray underneath, then she starts looking around.
“Where do they come out?” she asks.
“Underneath, in the catcher-tray.” (I’ve only seen her with two sheets of paper)
“Where are they?” she says.
Half thinking that she might have had a third sheet I unscrew the part of the machine which lets you look inside. She tells me that none of the machines downstairs have worked properly since the power cuts on Monday.
Paul comes over and asks “How many should you have?”
“Two.” She says.
He holds up the two sheets she’s just put through the folding machine, “One, two.” He says.
“No, the copies.” She says.
“You wanted copies?!” Paul says, “This isn’t the copying machine, this just folds.” He takes her over to the large sheet copier and feeds one through for her.
“They’ve been folded twice now, look at the creases in them.” She says.
Paul makes sure she has copies and then takes her back to the folding machine and makes sure she’s folded them. Once she leaves Paul says “She asked for help with the folding machine didn’t she?”
“She did, she said can you show me how to fold this.”

Power cuts

On Monday morning, about half past ten, the lights and monitors all went off for a couple of seconds. Just long enough for the computers to all reboot. There was an “OOOOHHH!” from everyone when it happened, then everyone complained that all their work was going to be lost. When Clive complained we told him that it wouldn’t be too much trouble for him to re-do the ten minutes worth of work he had done so far that morning.
The second time the power went off and on again there was a big cheer. Then a big sigh again when it all came back on. In total throughout the day we get four power cuts. No one explained what it was all about.

Itchy & Scratchy

Nige comes in late this morning. He’s had to let the builder in who’s digging the foundation for his conservatory. As soon as he arrives Andy comes over and asks Nige if he’s got any new films. He reels off a list – Kingdom, Rambo, Run Fast Boy Run,Heartbreak Kid…
Nige tells him he hasn’t got any of them. He’s a bit bored of doing all the copies now. I have got Planet Terror .
“What’s Planet Terror?” I ask.
“It’s the 1St part of Grindhouse.” I am told.

After a while Andy leaves. Then Mark shows up. He’s been for a cigarette.
“Here’s the other half of the double act… I’ve already had Itchy, now here’s scratchy.”
“How was your weekend?”
“At least he butters you up a bit before having a go at you.”
“What new films have you got? Have you got Kingdom yet?”
“No, not yet. I can get you a rubbish copy, but you would only complain and bring it back.” As he leaves he asks: “Are we okay?”