Fix the Goddamned Servers Already

So I'm about to flee the country for two weeks of binging on pasta and cheese in Italy. Which was all well and good, until my manager sent out an email to everybody I work with which effectively said, "Hey, Eric's going to be leaving for two weeks, so if you need anything from him, better get it now." Just like that, all my dreams of slipping quietly out the side door vanished and the last three days have been bloody screaming messes as people bombard me with requests.

A part of me actually enjoys this; I'm a born procrastinator, so over the years I've gotten to the point where I work much better when the metaphorical building is collapsing and I have to defuse 15 bombs in 30 seconds or Dire Consequences Will Result (this being the IT industry, those dire consequences amount to a slightly raised eyebrow and a shrug from middle management, but hey, I can pretend). I even get a bit of an adrenaline buzz, which leads me to believe I might actually be qualified to be an air traffic controller, but I digress. (Can you digress when you haven't even narrowed the focus to start with? I might have to look into that.)

So why, the sharp hypothetical reader asks, am I dicking around with a blog that I rarely update when the barbarians are breaking down the castle doors? Because the IT Gods, cruel harpies that they are, have chosen TODAY to make both my mail servers run molasses-slow. Not break, mind you. Because if they broke, I could call the help desk and yell at somebody. (Another side note: our help desk has a toll free number. The last seven digits are easy to remember because they spell useful words. The first three I can never remember... 800? 888? 877? What's interesting is that one of the prefixes leads you to the help desk, the other is a non-working number, and the third is the toll-free front end for a 1-900 phone sex line. So every time I try to dial the help desk, I either get Indian tech nerds, buzzing noises, or orgasmic women. It's the little things that keep life exciting.)

Anyway. I have adrenaline (and caffeine) coursing through my bloodstream right now, and I can't get any work done because anytime I click on anything my... computer... slows... to a crawl... for minutes at a time. So it's either blog like my hair is on fire, or chew my fingernails bloody.

Compounding the issue is the editor of a web page that I update; nothing gets published to the page until she approves it. We have a friendly relationship based on loathing stupid people who can't follow directions (fortunately our company is teeming with people who fit that description, giving us lots of conversation fodder). Because I'm nice to her, she does me occasional favors by moving my requests to the front of the line, warning me when things are screwy, etc. But recently she's been pretty much ignoring everything I ask her to look at, so my superiors are screaming at me because the page isn't being updated. There's nothing I can do except nag her, but I can't do too much of that or she'll quit doing me favors and trading stupid people stories.

To review: I am wired, stressed, annoyed, and conflicted. And I have a four-hour layover in Newark tomorrow. The only thing keeping me going is a vision of mountains of parmesan.