Errrghhh...I'm tired, nakerd, and wish I was still in bed in hibernation. Yes its that time of year when "Seasonal depressive syndrome" is No1 of the doctors hate list, and IT deparments dispare as things seems ever so much more wrong than in the Summer.

My department is a fine example. I started my new job in late September - good weather for the season, and everything started rolling very nicely. I have to say my first impressions were great considering what I had moved from. Communication was abundant. Staff knew what they were doing and managers actually cared about the staff.

Now it seems the honey-moon period is over...just into the festivities, and I'm feeling the systolic and diastolic go sky high.

My example to you all - we have 3 main printers, aside from a couple of directors who have their own, which everybody uses. Yep fine you say...typical network where printer sharing drives down costs. Now our department is situated on the ground floor. The printers on the top floor half way down a 200m corridor...its a long way to go for a toner change out. Following the constant problems of people seemingly going gun-ho on the printers, ripping paper out, damaging the guides and trying to do htings themselves, I took the liberty of broadcasting an email reading the riot act out for those brave enough to step on my land (that being putting their grubby little paws in my printers).

This worked fine...for about a week. Then 3 days ago a jam on the photocopier. Now bless it its nearly 6 years old....done over a million copies and on its last legs...but it still works very well thankyou. I get a phone call telling me the gruesome details of "nasty sounds and red lights" appearing on a forever- fading status screen (the type you used to see when Apple Newtons nearly became "hip"). At that present moment you could desribe my other had as being half digested by the great network monster...I had to reach into the rack mount to re-wire a patch cable - loosing sight of my arm in the process to the abundance of red, blue and grey anadondas.

After wrestling with the beast and 2 minutes later another call:

" Oh don't worry its been fixed Oli " say the ex RAF officer with a silver spoon so far up his glotius maximus he could eat ice-cream with no hands.

OK..breath...its still working....wooossssaaaa

A couple of days later a massive server crash hits, followed by every printer somehow sceeming to break me...they all jam within 15 minutes of each other, and the photocopiers network board crashes. To make matters worse, once we sorted the problems out we thought we were home-free. Wrong. Oh so wrong. I get a call saying the printer and the photocopier have jammed. I enquire as to who printed and finish typing out an email regarding the status of the servers. I walk up the 3 flights of stairs, turne right through 2 doors, and along the corridor. TO my right a voice form June - a marketig assistant with what I can only describe as a vendetta with my fist, and a seemily bad hobby of trying to fix printers when she cant even load Word by herself:

" Dot worry Oli I've fixed the Lanier!"

GGRRRR!!!! *Slaps head" Next to going in there and throwing hero ut of the window strapped to her chair, I somehow grasp the energy and motivation to smile and say:

" Thanks June you REALLY shouldn't have"

Yeh...REALLY shouldnt have..like next time ill strap a grenade up behind the printer door if you touch it.

So I move further down the hall way and hear to my dispair a crowd of voices coming from the photocopy room. There sat 3 people, with all the doors open on the photocopier, pulling at paper, trying to pull out a roller, removing papr trays and all seemily ocnvinced they knew what they were doing. Next to taking a large cricket bat to each of them, I tell them to leave it and let me finish the disaster they had just begun. WITH JOYFULL LAUGHTER they leave the room with me wanting to Hulk the photocopier towards them.
I say to any Tekkis out there....know your place and fend off those printer- trolls!