I got to work with about an hour to get something done before virtualization class.  What did I find in my inbox but nothing new and only one small invite.  To a meeting.

Jeez was it greaaaaat to see everyone (not really).  Oddly enough there were Missing Persons.  It’s really heartwarming to drag myself to a meeting and find the Chief Executioners aren’t there.  Fortunately they were caught in traffic.  Unfortunately they were in their cars at the time.

I lost an hour of my life that I will never get back.  As best I can figure, one department was really put out because people were mean to them.  They whined so prolifically that they caused Movers and Shakers to do the only thing they could do: have a meeting.   Furthermore, we need to honor this department’s intelligence by reporting what’s going on and later on telling them what caused the problem.  Mind you, this department has proven incapable of rebooting their own computers, so any discussion of network issues will be most interesting.

You’re of course wondering why I was at the meeting if Important People were invited.  And you’re wise to do so.   In order to make one department feel better, this conglomeration of people came up with a Plan.   And it goes like this…  in the event of a Network Emergency:
1. Leap into inaction - call a meeting of the team.

2. Recite Company Song on paging system and mention outage afterwards.

3. Verify that there is a problem.

4. Figure out which departments will be affected. Call each over for a meeting.  Outline suspicion as to what might be wrong. Schedule followup meeting to report on progress.

5. Hold immediate meeting with supervisors of departments while everybody else goes off to do the actual work.

6. Dispatch team to wander off to the network room to have a look around, verify temperature, tell off-color jokes, and if it’s not too much trouble, find out what the issue is.

7. Team reports back to me during briefing meeting. They state the issue and their recommendations.  If absolutely necessary, they ask me for ideas and go off to fix problem.

8. Reconvene for departmental briefing meeting.   Advise department heads of the issue and the proposed fix.  Take many questions on when I think they’ll be done.  Make up answers using scientific Network Logic: how many ports are on the last switch I bought divided by the day (if even), multiplied by the number of candy bars I just had for breakfast or how many Code Reds the department goes through in an average week (if odd).  Schedule next followup meeting.

9. Find CIO to have a meeting about what’s being done.   CIO needs to schedule immediate meeting with his roundtable (currently at company retreat in Bahamas and sounding very concerned).

10. After team fixes issue, it’s time for resolution meeting.   Elect delegate to make announcement over paging system that everything’s spiffy.

11. Call company-wide meeting to go over the issue and prostrate myself in front of them.

12.  Get called into executive meeting (higher-ups are videoconferenced from the retreat - I can smell the pina coladas through the screen).  Explain, make things up, apologize humbly, promise first-born, endure inane questions from people who can’t figure out how to hold the pencil so it makes a mark (this thing is broken).  Corporate Pit Bull sets followup meeting.  No one knows why.
Yes, we have just witnessed MIS by Committee.

I kinda liked the Good Old Days (two weeks ago), when we could simply go fix the problem.