Well shucks, I'd been dealing with Blackie and his gang and had acted as a go-between for a lot of my fellow monkeys for years. This could be another rung on the ladder to the position of ESSM (Extra Super Senior Monkey) and the additional 20 bucks or so a year that such an esteemed position offers. The more projects like that I accept, the fewer tickets I have to take. Works for me.

With a second round of nagging mails our chief hooked another sucker, none other than Lenny. I pointed out that I hadn't had the training. "That's OK. We'll get it to you in the next couple weeks."

Suzi can't wait a couple weeks. She sent Lenny a request to file a ticket through $MSprocess and CC:d me. Lenny's note arrived not ten minutes later. "REC, I didn’t get chance to attend the $MSprocess training. Could you please log this issue on this occasion?"

Before I could laugh, up popped our annoying-as-fuck IM app. It was Lenny.

14:27 lenny: hi REC
14:27 rec: hey
14:27 rec: I think it's a hoot
14:27 lenny: is it?
14:28 rec: We both suckered ourselves to do this, neither one of us has a bloody clue, and no help or direction is being offered
14:28 rec: If I didn't laugh I'd have to cry.
14:28 rec: So I'm laughing.
14:28 lenny: kool

Ten minutes later came a mail with some links to what will undoubtedly be some very protracted, painful Death-by-PowerPoints with some fuckknuckle or another droning on and on, in an incomprehensible accent which appears to have been designed to do nothing other than rape the English language. If I'm really lucky, however, there'll be a link to the actual PPT slides and I can dodge what appears to be a total of some 11 hours of this particular circle of hell.

That'll have to wait, though. I have some tickets to answer. Somewhere in Estonia a fuckwit is trying to modify the contents of the HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionFontSubstitutes
key. On an IBM BladeCenter. A blade which is running Solaris 10.