💾 Archived View for tanelorn.city › ~demifiend › archives › 2002 › bpfh-bastardization-begins.gemini captured on 2020-11-07 at 02:08:53. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Absofuckinlutely perfect -- 9:05AM and the phone's already ringing. I let the idiot talk to the tape while I hang up my coat, tie back my hair, login, and load some Nightwish tracks into XMMS.
When I'm settled in I playback the recorded message; it's some fool from purchasing wanting to know why we don't use Microsoft Office XP when he uses it at home.
"Fuck him," I mutter and erase the message. If he's too lazy to read the IT equipment standards document that I helped the CEO draft and implement, then he deserves everything he gets.
The standard, of course, specifies that our shop is an Open Source shop; all our software is licenced under either GNU's GPL, the BSD licence, the MIT license, or the Artistic License. Paying for hardware's one thing (we get our CPUs from AMD 'cos they're cheaper than the shit Intel sells), but anybody who think's we're paying $300 per machine for an operating system and another $400 per user for office software is either insane, stupid, or both.
The phone rings again, and it's the Office fan from purchasing again. File this one in the "or both" category mentioned above.
What the hell, I decide, and pick up the phone. I just got promoted to head of IT last week and I'm still happy about the fat raise I got. Not to mention the authority I now wield.
"Why the hell are we using this KDE 3 operating system? I've never heard of it before," the fool from purchasing barks at me. Looking at the Caller ID I learn that I'm up against the head of purchasing.
This should prove most amusing...
"Well, sir, we're using KDE 3 as our standard GUI because it works in a manner similar to Windows, but happens to be free," I reply, trying to be nice and helpful. I want this fool to lower his guard before I stick it to him.
"And this OpenOffice garbage! How come none of this software is American? Are you some kind of Communist?"
Actually, I vote Libertarian. But it's not polite to talk politics on the job.
"As I explained in the equipment standards document that was distributed to all employees last week: we use Open Source software because it is free, and because if anything goes wrong I can personally fix it instead of begging a vendor to give us a patch that might only make matters worse. This has nothing to do with politics."
"But it's so hard to use," he whines. I fucking hate it when grown men whine at me. It's bad enough when women do it.
It must be a full moon somewhere -- I can feel a change coming over me... I can feel myself becoming bastardized.
It feels good.
Still sounding polite and reasonable, I reply, "I empathize with your frustration, sir. If you use Mozilla and point it to the URL kenshin.skye-macro.com/tutorials/openoffice-NEWBIE.php you'll find a set of tutorials that many of our coworkers have found very helpful. Likewise for kde3-NEWBIE.php in the same path."
I hang up as he starts fiddling with Mozilla; it'll probably take the schmuck a minute or two to find it in his menu, even though the KDE menu is laid out just like a Windows "Start" menu.
Whoever said, "Hire the handicapped; it's fun to watch 'em," never had to work in IT holding the hands of morons.
I fire up Emacs and open up the KDE3 sources, moving to the modules that handle networking and access to the filesystem, and add a few subtle alterations.
Having pulled the FreeBSD 4.6 Bastard Programmers' Manual from Hell from my secret safe (it masquerades as a toolchest) and flip to the page on unsavory porn sites with IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Having picked out a few pervert anime sites with images of characters considered underage here in the USA, I patch KDE3 to check the host and username of the current user, and to randomly download naughty pics at random times from a set of IPv4 addresses picked by yours truly.
Just wait until this fool's wife finds out about his taste for anime involving young schoolgirls in compromising positions. Not to mention the boss and the FBI...
I laugh in between sips of Whoop-Ass; all I need to do now are audits on disk usage and network usage to generate evidence of naughtiness on the part of the head of purchasing.
Come afternoon, it's time for a few emails to the CEO, the idiot's wife, and the FBI from a gentleman in Manhattan with the handle "Dev Null" (yes, it's me faking my name and address). The disk and network usage audits are done, and it seems that my little patch as worked admirably well; the head of purchasing has 5GB of hideously illegal pornographic anime in ~/pr0n.
When presenting the evidence to the Board of Directors and a couple of polite young ladies from the FBI, I sigh and say, "One would expect a greater degree of professionalism and discretion from a man in Mr. Edwards' position. Oh well. Do you have any other questions?"
Both the Board and the ladies from the FBI appear to be done with me. Back to work, then, and to waiting for another victim...