Panic reflexes on ...

While closing a bunch of old tasks at work, I noticed a bright flash of light out of the corner of my eye. I paused. Was that lightning? It was quickly followed by a loud, metallic sounding crash that rumbled on and on.

I felt my heart slow down as I peered out my window towards the Post Office and One Financial Center. I wasn't sure what to expect. All I saw was a turbulent sky, mail trucks making their delivery, sea gulls fighting a rising breeze.

My heart begins to speed up. It's official: I no longer think that loud noises are just an act of Nature anymore... Welcome to living under the gun.

Help Desk - Title does not dictate behavior.

With a handful of minutes to go, I look back at the past week at work. The mad scramble to fix computers crippled by the NIMDA worm, the extended evenings inoculating servers, the mountain of help desk calls. It's all gone now. All the ruined computers are rebuilt or replaced. All the calls are logged and resolved. There's a new schedule for the box light, the unassigned tasks my manager's been ignoring this week are properly assigned and completed (in my case). The generic help desk calls, including the old ones, are updated, reassigned and closed. Where there was chaos there is now, briefly, order. And this is all due to me.

Lotus Notes informs me that I have new mail. It's from a user who's complaining that a task was "improperly annotated." I showed the task as closed, when he didn't get the box light he asked for. He demands the task be edited and I write him back.

I pull up the ticket and write "Task not completed due to backlog of help desk calls. Please refer to M's e-mail explaining this delay."

I write him back with two words: "Task edited."

Randall is my hero!