It's a dull week at Mission Control with no one adding a lot of value to the place, so Joe and I give ourselves a quick challenge of writing the ultimate application for the new 802.11b cards that we've picked up for our personal disorganisers.
A few days of programming later, Joe and I meet to show off our respective efforts.
"Check this out!" Joe chirps happily, handing his PDA over.
"Well, at least you're trying I suppose," I admit grudgingly.
"Trying?!?"
"Yeah, well, with the self-paging thing. But if you want to make an urgent departure from a meeting really believable you need something like the EEP I wrote for my PDA"
"EEP?"
"Emergency Exit Procedure. It's hooked into the Excuse Calendar and generates a message which is SMS'd to your mobile in less time that it takes to compromise IIS, and, should anyone ask questions, is vague enough ...
If I hear the words virtual boardroom one more time, I'm going to hurt someone.
The bloody boss, stepping out of character, has rekindled the CEO's interest in videoconferencing. Normally this would have me smiling at the thought of spending more company cash, but we don't have the bandwidth to support the system company-wide.
"Why?" Joe asks, smelling a rodent-like creature.
"Ah. Well, I'd been meaning to tell you about that..."
"You've sold our bandwidth to a third party haven't you?"
"Not exactly, no."
"You've cranked up the company's ISP service?"
"No, I sold that off ages ago."
"You sold it off!"
"Yup, cashed in the client base and ISP domain name to another supplier. Very lucrative."
I've been thinking," the Boss says, wandering into Mission Control feigning nonchalance. "Surely with the number of movements in the building at the moment and the increasing copper price and all, we should invest in some data cable. Keep a stock of it on site. Ten boxes or so, what do you think?"
"Excellent idea!" Joe says, knowing full well that a particular cable manufacturer is offering a 16 gig USB key with every ten boxes of cable purchased. "Or perhaps even 20 boxes - just to be on the safe side."
"Why not 30?" the Boss bids.
"Or 40?" Joe says, upping the ante to levels which will see us needing a new storeroom.
While it's good to know that Joe is fully prepared to let the company buy a stack of purposeless cable to land a 20 dollar USB stick, the Boss doesn't seem to be at all ...
