With the girlfriend out for the weekend, I spent the last night with my Gallifreyan boyfriend. He's a lot like 8 actually: long brown hair, soulful eyes and a lovely almost-RP-accent. Needless to say, since it was a Friday night I didn't watch the time. In a relationship with three it's a rare treat when you get to properly focus on just one person. When I finally got to bed at about 4 am, I fell asleep happy and contented. This was not to last long.
At just quarter past seven, my phone rang. Still high on my timelord-induced happy, I just told the iPhone to go into silent mode and not bother me with trivialities such as calls again. This, clearly, was my first mistake. I saw the phone flash a few more times, but turned over and wrapped myself into the duvet - nothing is real, strawberry fields.
Then, just a few minutes to 8 the doorbell rang. I knew I could not ignore that now. I quickly forced myself into yesterday's clothes - breakneck heels and white sheath dress - and answered. To my surprise it was my neighbour Andrea who knows full well I like to sleep in at the weekends and who would never bother me in such a manner. If she'd been the one with the emergency, she'd have just come in. She's got the keys to my house. When finally she opened her mouth I could not believe my ears: "Poet, there is someone from your work on the line for you. They could not reach you on your phone."
Well, duh. I don't do on-call service. I'm a senior software engineer not an IT monkey.
Grudgingly, I accepted the phone. A teary voice informed me that my computer was broken. This seemed borderline impossible. My machine is the company file server (just files, no network) and I take meticulous care of it. The whole reason my workstation is also the server is because my OCD is well documented. I remained calm. Fridays is when the cleaning lady comes in. She sometimes dislodges cables. But, first things first. Have you checked that both monitor and machine are switched on? I got a five minute tale of all the failed attempts. Panic is welling up inside of me. Could the updated graphics card driver have caused this? The possibility seems remote but the implication of the server being broken is catastrophic. I ask for the cables to be checked. Allegedly, they are all in place.
Not wanting to waste my time talking to morons, I brush my teeth, wash my face, put on too much perfume and race to the office, my trusty Irish setter dog in tow. Might as well walk her and have a long lie in after that. I get to the office, sit down at my desk, check the cables (all okay) and boot the server normally. It does not fail. It is not broken. I just switched on the screen.
I say hi to my dumb-assed colleague who made the phone call and to my utter dismay discover he is working with the laptop. Yes, that would be the laptop that has a local copy of all server data and synchronises every night. The very same I just checked was up to date yesterday! Couldn't have waited til 10am possibly, could it have?
To add insult to injury, dimwit had the gall to tell me that "I've got the power!" Amazing, ain't it. I am off to Grayskull now. Anyone fancy coming with me?
</3 my life.