BOFH: Forgive and forget
And get some revenge too
Email delivery: Hate phishing emails? You'll love DMARC
Episode 4
They say the secret to a good relationship is to be able to forgive and forget - and so I'm working hard on the forgiving bit with the PFY.
He, for his part, is working on the forgetting - which I'm told is a perfectly normal by-product of ECT - even though a lot of private hospitals frown on the use of it unless it's accompanied by a believable signature on the release form and a large donation. I make a mental note to call the School of Dangerously Experimental Medicine and see if he's made any progress with his delusions of my demise...
See, I'm feeling better already.
I'm not one to bear a grudge however, and am perfectly prepared to forgive the PFY for having superconductive high-current tinsel specially made just to secure a promotion. After all, it's his attention to detail that makes him so valuable in his role.
That said, I can't afford to spend my days looking behind me checking for the inevitable black van of doom.
Because that's a beancounter's job.
Speaking of which, the company beancounters have scheduled a meeting with me to emit some piffle about my wrongful acceptance of the company's accident compensation payments and spending it on an overseas holiday. They want me to pay the money back!
Honestly - you'd think they were upset I wasn't dead - a point I noted in my response to them in my last email. And recorded their subsequent office conversation about via the CCTV system. (You never know when you'll need a bargaining chip like that at a later date.)
One of the weedier beancounters waxed lyrical about what he'd do with me if he ever caught me alone in a dark alley. And nothing sexual either, thankfully. Which just goes to show you can't judge a book by its cover.
. . .
I run my eye over the office just to make sure everything is as I expect it. The entrails of the PFY's chair are scattered over his desk in the wake of the frenzied search by Security for the remaining company bribe money that the PFY is supposed to have stolen. Ironically the search operation provided me with the opportunity I needed to stash the missing quiddage in the ceiling space of Security's office..
There's something about well-oiled plans. And well-oiled supermodels for that matter...
Sadly though, I know I'm going to have to bury the metaphorical hatchet and release the PFY from his medical accommodation, if only because I now see the pointlessness in being a cruel and heartless megalomaniac IT professional. Sorry, I meant a cruel and heartless megalomaniac IT professional with no one to brag to or compete with.
For instance he'd have appreciated the way I replaced the two AA batteries in the cattleprod with a lantern battery on an extension lead because the beancounters are too tight to let us have our own supplies cupboard any more.
A deeper man might ponder the strange adversarial yet symbiotic relationships that are forged in the darkened pits of a workplace and how they grow via shared experience to form the basis of a compartmentalised outlook on the world which is completely separate from that which we have at home.
But me, I just want to show the PFY how if you reduce the unlatch/relatch time to fractions of a second on an electronic mortise lock in combination with randomising the time between card swipe and unlatch to a value between one and 120 seconds you can make one of the HR people pack a complete spaz outside the front doors of the building. (Because you never know when you're going to need a bargaining chip like that either.)
Sigh.
As the building starts to shut down for the night I hail a cab and give the cabbie the directions to the PFY's hospital.
"but I'll need to make a stop on the way," I add.
. . . 10 minutes later . . .
>clip< >clop< >clip< >clop< >clip<
"Oh! You startled me!" the weedy gentleman in front of me says.
"Did I? Sorry about that. I'm from the Make-A-Wish Foundation"
"The Make-A-Wish Foundation?"
"Yes, you were saying something earlier in the day about what you'd like to do in a dark alley."
"I was what? Are you really from the Make-A-Wish Foundation?"
"Nah!" >KZZZZZEEERT!<
. . . 10 minutes later . . .
"Picking up or dropping off?" the charming lady at the hospital asks me.
"Both actually," I respond. "You've cured a friend only his brother is far more delusional - thinks he's an accountant in a large company in the city. Apparently he's built up a bit of immunity to ECT. You have to set the knob to 11. Write that down, '11'..."
...
