RJ's Downfall...

Date: Mar 20, 1994

God's laughing at me...
Here I am, minding my own business (as usual), and I get this mail of meeting minutes saying that the Biologists in Heidelberg thinking of applying to jobs here at the EBI are concerned about a few points. So I decide to be Mr Helpful and mail to the person that sent this and mention a few points that the computing environment here will be zillions of times better, the Unix support will be infinitely better, and made some comment that I wasn't sure yet about my involvement in selection/hiring of systems people and that I worried that no computer people would be involved "as usual". So that mail got forwarded on to The Group: sys-admins, managers, and all.

What a stink. Management is pissed off cause of my "as usual" comments about hiring practices, the group's sys-admins are pissed off at the implication that their support is sub-standard. Ok, so me, being Mr Diplomacy replies to this forwarded mail of mine, to the whole group, and points out it wasn't the groups sys-admins I was talking about, but the EMBL Computer support. Then, I find out this mail alias gateways it into public news and the EMBL Computer Group reads it and is pissed off. Well, why stop there when there's still people left that I haven't insulted...

Well, they can't fire me since my contract says they have to give me a computery type job for 3 years. So here I am, one day in charge of selecting, ordering and setting up a million dollars of computers, and the next I'm a keyboard-duster! How embarrassing. I have to wear this silly blue uniform with pants 6 inches too short, and a silly cap, and say:

This is agony. The pay drop means I'm back to a pitiful salary like I was making in Canada. Which means eating at home. Ever try to cook with gas? Can we say Perpetually Burnt Meals? I knew we could...

So I've started to work my way back up. I sneak in at night at make a few modifications. Then at opportune moments, I just happen to be in the hallway when Joe sys-admin is telling the new BICOS (Boss In Charge Of Stuff) that he can't figure out whats wrong. Then I say:

Well, a few times like that and the new BICOS is wondering about his sys-admins who can't fix stuff while the keyboard-duster can. And then when demos are going on, or when the BICOS is near by, I look in at the sys-admins and give them a big evil grin. hahaha. They're looking very nervous...

So since I was such a star as a keyboard-duster, they offered me a job actually using keyboards. A DED job. Data Entry Dude. So I thought back to the advice me dear ol' mom gave me as a kid :

So I took the typing job. Bad move. It means that I don't have the opportunity to just happen to be in the hall when 'problems' I can fix are noticed. And every time I make goo-goo eyes at one of the Typing Babes, I get smacked in the back of the head with a ruler by the evil Head Typing Mistress. Then I can hear 'tee hee hee' all through the room.
Life is hell.
So now all the advice my mom gave me as a kid has come back to me. Like:

Hmmm - doesn't sound so great to me. And I'm sure my wimpy little body is gonna stop the car...

ok, so I found out that the way they measure productivity is by software counting up the number of keystrokes from each terminal. So a few more modifications and rob a few percent everywhere and add it to my pitiful productivity and now I'm at the top of the class. None of them can figure it out when they watch me type with 3 fingers and still outperform them at the end of the day. hahaha.
Life is still hell though.

Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and I'm stuck in a Typing Pool in a country with the wrong color of Cheddar Cheese. Now I know why all my UK friends live somewhere else. Like Germany. Where they name pubs sensible things. Like 'The Pub', instead of:

Now if one was in North America, one could presumably walk into 'Berts Bar' and ask to see Bert. yeh, so where is the Green Man? The picture outside shows a man covered in leaves, I wanna see him in real life. And where's the red lion?

sigh. It's no wonder my hair is turning white and falling out...

Alcohol is a cool invention. So are memory cells. Lets do the Time Warp again...