And now today's sport:

Minion fighting. My minion won, the other one fled The Shed, and then fled work entirely.

This suggests I should probably avoid making my minion angry.

Random Monday-ness

My minion continues to establish her Cow-orker credentials by singing along with the radio. Listening to breakfast radio in the first place doesn't help her cause any, either. And while the Project Team Leader and I were having a deskside meeting she was busy on an extended personal call that mysteriously ended as soon as our discussion did. Maybe the interview panel did find the website after all...

Heating in The Shed has been turned on to counteract the chill. Will be interested to see if people actually turn the heating off as the day warms, or whether they'll complain about the hear and turn their own air-conditioners on to let the heaters and the air-conditioning battle it out.

Just another glorious day in the corps...

"I see Cow-orkers..."

"Hi, switchboard? There's a problem with my phone extension - the number on the handset is also assigned to someone in the main building. Can I get an extension that works?"

"Let me just test your current number and see what happens ... hmm, it's engaged. Yes, it sounds like there is a problem there."

The number I was calling from was engaged. What are the odds?

The life of luxury

Currently working in The Shed, an ageing and dubious-looking demountable that seems to have taken root in decades past. Anyone working on a project gets put in The Shed for the duration of the project (except Project Managers, who occupy the top floor of the main building and enjoy sweeping views of the river, Chevron Island and Surfers. Typical, really...).

Banishment to The Shed is supposed to be to prevent project people from being dragged away for operational work, but in reality tends to feel like you can't come back inside until you Get It Right.

On the bright side, when I do enter the main building, at least I'm allowed up on the furniture.

Day One

Arrived to find nothing apparently working. Marvin the Paranoid Security Officer explained that I couldn't get my security pass:

"Nothing's working today. Typical. Can't even take ID photos without the computer rejecting them. All the ones I took this morning - gone. And there are alarms going off all over the building, but can I get anyone to do anything about them? Not a sausage. You could try coming back later but, honestly, things probably won't be working any better then, either. Mondays? Don't talk to me about Mondays..."

The forms that were supposed to have been put through to set me up with computer, network and internet access haven't been, either. I can see this is going to be a productive start to things.

Slappable Clients II

"I ordered multiple licenses, but I only received one CD set."

"You only ordered one CD set."

"My order says 'media required'."

"It does. And media was supplied. You didn't say you wanted multiple copies."

"I need multiple copies! This will only work the way I want it to if I have multiple copies!"

"You can make multiple copies - the license allows you to do that."

"But I want original multiple copies! I don't want to make my own copies!"

"I can order another more copies in for you, then, but you'll need to pay for them."

Direct quote: "The quote I received from Symantec includes the media. I'm not prepared to pay for further media. The nature of the product is such that the CD forms part of the solution as it is required for the bare metal recovery. I'm happy to take this up with Symantec if you wish. The original order said '(must include media)' and for this product means a CD for each licence.

I'm sure he's mistaken, so I call Symantec. They agree that using the software the way he wants to will need one CD per license. They also agree that he can make his own copies, or pay for additional copies of original media, and seem a little puzzled as to what the problem is.

I enlighten my contact at Symantec by reading back the client's message. I get as far as "I'm not prepared to pay for further media" when the other end of the line explodes with laughter, followed by "Well I've got news for them - there's a lot of things we don't want to pay for either!" before being cut off by further eruptions of laughter.

I now have to translate this into less inflammatory terms and relay it to the client.