Paid To Wait

I find myself in a very strange place tonight... waiting. Waiting for about 4 hours, and while I sit here waiting, the government is paying me. That's right, your local property taxes are hard at work tonight. I'm here, sitting on my duff, getting paid. In fact in about 30 minutes I'll be on overtime!

For all you out there thinking about an exciting job in the Information Technology field take note of me. I have been at this for almost 15 years, I'm near the top of my game. The lead network engineer at my place of employment. And here I sit, in an abandoned building waiting. Tonight I plan on being here waiting for 3 hours or more. It won't be till sometime after that when I actually am called upon to use my skills.

How did this happen? Simple. I caused it. At precisely 2:06 this afternoon a co-worker and I were talking about, "Maybe getting out early." After that huge breech in fate-tempting protocol, I took it even further. I said, "What would we do with all that free time anyway?" So there it is. It's clearly my fault. When the fates are tempted they rarely skip those opportunities to show you, "Exactly what to do with all that free time." So here I am, a victim of my own carelessness.

It seems the fates convinced a server to take vacation a little early.

"Call it a 'Holiday Bonus' for a hardworking domain controller."

"Honest?"

"Really. Seize up, blow up, whatever you want."

Whatever golden tale was spun, the server bought it, then kicked the bucket and called it quits. It bought the farm, threw in the towel or whatever you like. It did it...and did it real good! We tried to coax it out of that mood, but to no avail. So we brought in the big guns and called hardware support. A support tech is en route, from San Jose as we speak. I don't think I will tell him this is all my fault. People who drive 3 hours in the rain the night before a holiday tend to have a limited sense of humor. Go figure.

In this technicians magic bag of tricks, is a setup Dorothy's friend the Scarecrow would be salivating for. A new brain with all the bells and whistles. I'm also hoping for a very heaving hammer.

Once the tech gets here the real fun begins, but until then, I wait. So here I sit. Getting paid good money to watch the door, and try and keep busy. So far, this is all I've come up with.