Yesterday afternoon, I finally got around to putting my certificate of completion into my Monster resume. I did this for exactly one reason - I could use the acronym MCSE when doing so, even before I've passed all the tests. First thing this morning, my cell phone rings. It's a recruiter from a staffing company. The position he was trying to fill was for a $15/hr help desk call center schmuck, but I thanked him for calling anyway. He was nice about it, and got right to the point with "It only pays $15 an hour, and I'm not sure that's within your acceptable range." I wonder if any other calls will come in today.

I told the story of an email exchange between Me, Dick, John and CTO to a Friend on AOL Instant Messenger this morning. The events happened last night. Some names have been changed to protect me.

You have just entered room "Payback Chat."
Friend has entered the room.
Friend: this should be good
Me: check this out
Friend: checking
Me: A couple weeks back, I'm talking to another (more highly paid) manager on the phone
Me: she's asking me to help troubleshoot the office in Deerfield the day before I went out there
Me: So I asked her what kind of information she'd gathered:
Me: Have you looked at event logs on the workstations?
Me: No, they hadn't. "I'll check that now," I said.
Me: "Oh, you can do that?" she says
Me: "Yeah, just MMC, add snap in, computer mgmt, bingo."
Me: Her reply:
Me: "MMC?"
Me: Now let me go on a tangent here
Me: MMC stands for Microsoft Management Console, and it's the generic interface that just about every Win2K management software uses.
Me: Anyone who has ever administered a network should damn well know about MMC.
Me: Later on, she sends an email to John with some comments about the "Sequel server."
Me: Fast forward to yesterday afternoon
Me: Late in the day, CEO Asst comes to me wanting me to post a file on the intranet so that a link can be sent in CEO's weekly update.
Me: This is appropriate; it was decided that that's how these things should be, since the week before, a 7mb attachment went out to every mailbox in the whole company.
Friend: ha!
Me: But John has gone home, and I don't even know which machine he's got the intranet running on
Me: When I go into the server room to look, there's someone else at the console.
Me: I look at the file again, and it's not huge, so I tell CEO Asst to just send it as an attachment, and we'll do the link next time for sure
Me: (This is a long story, nowhere near being finished.)
Me: Anyway.
Me: So that goes out, and the highly paid network manager in LA (who shall be referred to as Dick) sends an email to all the managers:
Me: "Weren't we supposed to do these attachments as links to the intranet?"
Me: My reply: Yes, I know, here's what happened. Feel free to lay smack down on me if you must. (The last sentence a direct quote.)
Me: John immediately called shenanigans on me (which I appreciated greatly)
Me: CTO replied with "SMACK, BOOM, POW - we need to have a backup system in place for this kind of thing."
Me: John replied to only CTO and me that CEO Asst should have given more lead time, since that attachment had to exist way before 4PM yesterday, and gave me a little grief about how the intranet server has a big sticker on it that says
Me: "INTRANET"
Me: and followed up with "Do I have to tell you what MMC stands for?"
Me: Here's where it starts getting good
Me: So the MMC joke is out there, and CTO is unaware of its source
Me: so I reply with (among other things): "MMC?"
Me: CTO replies: "Yeah that's MS Mgmt Console"
Me: I reply: "He fell for it!" and tell the story of where that little joke came up, without revealing the specific person, but saying it was someone who "dman well should have known."
Me: CTO replies: "... if our employment system works for you great, if note let me know ... :-)"
Me: It was funny - but I took it to another level with:
Me: "As requested, I will let you know if the employment system *does not* work for me. You'll know it when you see it."
Me: I get a reply from CTO only to me, making triply sure that he was making a joke, and apologizing if he "offended" me.
Me: BAM
Me: I love having even the teensiest upper hand.
Me: (That's the end, so far)
Friend: ha
Me: Of course, I replied with "No it was funny, no offense taken, no apology required."
Me: I also didn't retract or clarify any statement I had made
Friend: george costanza: "but I've got hand!"
Me: ha
Me: so I can't wait until CTO is back in the office and comes in to chat and smooth things over
Me: I've been considering my reply to that all morning
Me: Basically, unless I retire early or die young, I don't see this place as being my last employer