everything.
For the Helpdesk it was a major drama. They had had no say on the moment or way of
the move, it had just been done, they had had no say about the installation of the ‘new’
network, it had just been - not - installed correctly. Many people were without any
network at all, not linked to the rest of the staff, others had been placed on the wrong domain, which meant they were with a connection but which was not working. Like
their PC was configured initially for domain of old MOU XI tried to access network
resources for a domain of new MOU XII with a user account of domain of old
MOU VII.
The authorities seemed not to care, and to suppose, as authorities always do, that the
little ones would take care of everything. Ah but doing the impossible! How easy this
seems to the one who does not have to do it himself. Organisation was not only bad, it
was entirely lacking.
No one who has not lived and gone through such a situation, will you say, but I, who
was as old as the House itself, I tell you, I had never, and had never even imagined
such a thing was possible. Images of those Mandelbrot sets were soon flowing soon
through our minds, as each of us was juggling permanently with at least 4 balls, like a
PC, an Email, a user, a programme. Benoit Mandelbrot’s ‘ strange attractor’ had taken the power and reigned over the MOU with his unpredictable Zero. No One had taken
the power.
Mathematical Knots became the Helpdesk’s daily bread. The search for order in a
disordered system can be very distracting-engrossing for those who play it as a game,
but for the Helpdesk, having to untie it in a real place it felt rather distracting-
distressing. There had to be some order no? Repeating z=z^2+c up to N times, would
they find an order? Was not Chaos the essence of order? Where was the limit of this
chaotic trajectory?
In the meantime the users, not seeing things nicely, that is in ways of z=z^2+c,
continued to be furious about their situation. After the first astonishment, bewilderment
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The Crazy HelpDesk
and rage, depression and gloominess settled in. And depression was not a good thing in
a time of the year where workload was at its peak.
Workers and movers continued their odyssey along the corridors, but one month later
nothing seemed to have been done. Au contraire, it was worse then ever. The Public Health and Consumer Security Officers was called to pay a visit by some Anonymous,
who surely didn’t want his name to be revealed. They inspected the buildings closely,
wrote a report and left not to be seen again. At least not in the near future.
Offices had no numbers, so users were not to be found, offices had no phone, so users
could not call them, nor could Helpdesk call them, offices had not network, so users
couldn’t even use their PC to write an Email. No network, no Email. Worse, half of the
people, due to the split, were new, and the Helpdesk hadn’t even got a list of their
names. They were supposed to give them a logon and an Email; but how would were
they to do this, not knowing their names. Worse, they had to put them into
departments, in their Email and Windows 2000 user databases, but they did not have
the name of the departments. Those had not been decided upon yet. Moreover; the
people coming from MOU VII had not even wanted to come. So they sort of hid. They
were dealing with users without a face, with phantom users. Ghosts. Ghosts doing the work now. What a fright.
Gwendoline wrote an Email to Hilde, it was almost tear-streaked:
“One thing must be said which can console us: Donatello. The man who holds the
newspaper shop at the ground floor of the Curie building. He is ever so nice and wise,
I’m so happy that at least he stayed with us.”
Hilde answered:
“Of course, Tello. You’re right, he has sort of a Buddhist quality about him. Lucky us.”
And Gwendoline answered:
“There is someone who has made a little joke, and has replaced the sign ‘Cafeteria’ by
‘Tello’. I think he might well be the best liked person at the MOU.”
And Hilde answered:
“And what does he say of this whole mess?”
And Gwendoline, coming into Hilde’s office, which was just to her right, declared:
“Oh, not much, you know, he’s a listener.”
A friendship was born.
It’s lunchtime
But even the most brave need food from time to time and Hilde stole away to lunch
with one of some of her best users, which she all knew from previous MOU’s:
Penelope, Jenny, the two Emma’s and Julia. Penelope was not Greek, but from Malta,
Jenny was South-African, Emma I and II were French and Julia was half German half
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The Crazy HelpDesk
Icelander. They had planned to go to the Flower Bar, which was not too far. In
principle Josepha, a much liked Director was to join them too, but she didn’t.
Penelope, her secretary had seen her enter the elevator before her, because she herself
had still be hanging on the phone, and Josepha had said:
“I’ll go and see so that the others don’t wonder where we stay.”
Penelope and Hilde had taken the elevator just after her and thought they would
already find her seated when they arrived. But no. The little group sat down with their
drinks and wondered where Josepha was remaining, her usually being so reliable.
Penelope took some of their stress away by making them all laugh. She was telling her
colleague-friends that this morning she had discovered her garden-gnome gone and
with him her neighbours wheelbarrow. It sure was a mysterious thing. Who would care
to steel a garden dwarf?
“Maybe he got mad at me,” said Penelope. “What have I done?”
But Emma, better informed than the rest of them, told them it must have been the
FLNJ, le ‘Front de Liberation des Nains de Jardin’, the Garden Gnome Liberation
Front. An underground movement. Young people who strove to free garden dwarfs of
their hideous exploitation by the bourgeoisie. FLNJ claimed garden gnomes had a soul,
and must be respected just as human beings were, and not oppressed, standing around
doing nothing, imprisoned in the garden of their slave masters. They even had a hit
song: “Let’s free the gnomes”.
Often an impressive series of sometimes hundreds of those garden dwarfs were found
standing in groups deep in some Forests. The movement, which had apparently started
in France, had become international and now covered whole Europe, Australia and
America. Some of the dwarfs had even sent postcards from faraway countries to their
old ‘masters’. The gnomes liberators have lot’s of websites, one of them is
“This means more money for the gnome makers, it’s such a flourishing industry”, said
Emma, with a slight smirk in her face that showed what she thought of garden dwarfs.”
She was a modern woman, and thought garden gnomes petit bourgeois and tasteless.
“Did you receive a demand for ransom?” asked Julia.
“No,” said Penelope, subdued. She had really liked her gnome.
Josepha still hadn’t shown up, nor had she phoned or used her mobile to say why. It
was not like her.
“Maybe she went away for a well deserved holiday with your garden dwarf,” said
Julia, smiling, to Penelope.
But Penelope did not seem to find that funny, but appeared ridden with sombre
forebodings. She managed a strangled laughter:
“I’m quite sure it was my dwarf, and I’m quite sure something is wrong.”
After that, they did not wonder anymore, but had some sandwiches with their drinks.
Emma I told long fascinating shopping stories, Julia about her new House, Emma II
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The Crazy HelpDesk
about her new boyfriend(s). Hilde bit her fingers because she was thinking of how she
would enter all those users of which she hadn’t a name yet in her database and put
them into security groups which had not yet been defined nor named either.
“Those FLNJ people must be a bit mad,” said Jenny coming back to the gnome topic.
But she was grinning. She liked Penelope, but she was among those who thought
garden gnomes very bad taste.
“In a way I can understand them,“ said Julia, and one couldn’t know for sure of whom
she was talking.
“Dwarfs are a symbol for wealth and prosperity. Legends say they can be unexpectedly
generous, if they take a liking to you. Though the reasons for this can be mysterious,”
said Emma I.
“Garden gnomes are indeed a symbol for success or a good luck charm. For sure this
obsession with garden dwarfs is due to our wish for the wonderful, for work to be done
for us by night, while we sleep. We need to populate our world with friendly spirits,
just as the ancients did. It is our childish belief in magic, our wishful thinking that
things could mend by some superior helpful force,” said Jenny.
“What a Philosopher you are. But I admire your common sense in the attempt to
explain the bizarre.”
“Why? You believe in magic?”
“Magicians would indeed be needed here at the moment,” said Emma I, sarcastically.
”This can’t go on. We’ll all go crazy, if this goes on.”
“Yes this morning I almost left the house with two different shoes, searched for my
keys at least ten minutes and now I almost forgot my bosses birthday,” confirmed Julia.
”I am not only GETTING crazy. I am ALREADY crazy. I could really do with some
therapy or rather even some magic.”
“Who believes in magic?”
“Well we have one of the crowd sitting among us,” said the gentle Emma II to Hilde’s
intention. Hilde gave her a grateful smile, she loved being called a magician. Of
course, there is reason to be happy about such a compliment.
Everyone likes compliments. I do not wish to appear conceited, nor vain, but I do think
I bear the palm for IT compliments. But don’t tell anyone about this, the others might
be a bit jealous. But adages as ‘Magician. Wizard. Miracle.’ are common sayings about
me too. The whole of CHD is good, they each have an excellent understanding of their
own field, and there are quite a lot of Super Users at the House. But I might be the best, the one who secretly knows it all. It’s not that I want my value to be recognised, I
know my value. Those who know about my gift call me ‘The Master’. But it’s not
official. Not really. They just feel it. They call me ‘Angel’ too. I think everyone here likes me, just as I like everyone. People are really nice, that is, most of the time.
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The Crazy HelpDesk
“Thank you. But in those hard times, some ancient and real magic would be indeed
welcome. Maybe we could call some dwarfs for help,” said Hilde. “They know how to
work and get things running.”
For the next days, this became a common joke among them: whenever something went
wrong or was missing, they would put Penelope’s dwarf at fault. He had done it.
Someone had to be guilty of all this mess.
A short hour later they went back to their offices and Penelope of course expected to
see Josepha there, giving her some plausible explanation or to see her appear later in
the afternoon. But Josepha did not reappear, maybe she had been entered as a record in
Hilde’s yet non existing user database.
And Josepha did not reappear the next morning either, nor did she the following day.
Penelope went through her agenda a hundred times, and let her little help, Tessa, do the same thing to double-check, but there were no meetings, nothing to be seen on
Josepha’s agenda which could explain her not reappearing. She wasn’t at her home in
Bohatia, she didn’t answer her mobile phone, Penelope even called her on her usual
holiday location, but got no answer there either. And the morning after it was still the same.
Penelope sensed something was very, very wrong.
Security was called to inquire if anyone had seen her. No. No one had. Security did not
worry at first, typically. Penelope had started calling everyone who might know
Josepha. First inside the House, then outside the House, then outside the country. Her
boyfriend, her sister, her brother, her ex-husband, her baker, her dentist, her gardener.
But no one had seen her, for now a week.
Security finally took this seriously and went around the house. First to interrogate all her personnel, staff without yet names not included, but maybe that was a mistake,
finally sending a general Email to everyone, but no answer about her whereabouts
came.
Finally they even put up posters and searched the building from top to bottom.
But the elevator seemed to have swallowed her. It was true that those elevators were
not working most of the time, but this went a bit far. After that, for a time, people took the steps in all cases, elevator working or not.
The posters stayed there for a few weeks, showing Josepha Laperm on one of the
visitors chairs in her office. She had soft and light-red hair, large expressive green eyes, slightly slanting. It was almost palpable that she was affectionate and liked human
beings and vice-versa. She looked relaxed and comfortable, but one could sense she
must have elegant and feline like movements.
The consequences of the split and re-merge of the MOU’s were disastrous. Traumatic.
Endless series of movers wandered up and down the staircases and the corridors in
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The Crazy HelpDesk
long chains, laden with boxes, chairs, cupboards and looked like centipedes. But
nothing seemed to get done. People were running wild in the corridors and bumping
into each other at each corner, spilling coffee and heaps of paper on each other and on
the floor. Many of them now wore blue red green and yellow bruises on our front heads
because of that, some were limping, two had even broken an arm and a leg. Those two
fortunate ones could leave for some extended ‘sick leave’ if one does not want to call it vacation. Those were the ways of the House.
How had it come about? No one wanted to explain or say. Probably political motives
underlay this decision. So that quickly some of the old powers could be settled?
Securing old powers against new ones? Myra imagined one phone call, from a
mysterious ‘decision maker’, to Jack Owl, the now new director of the new MOU XII:
“Hi Jack! It’s me. How about having a MOU?”
“Oh yes why not. I’ve just got some time on my hands. When? In ten minutes, down at
the Peacock Bar?”
“With milk and sugar?”
“No, I take it strong.”
Well at least, Myra thought privately, Jacques Owl was very good looking. And he had
a very nice smile. And he seemed smart too.
Would the new Director, Jack Owl, manage to organise the MOU and give it a good
workflow, make it happy? Unhesitatingly, Micha, his assistant, said: Yes!
But the consequences of this ten minute coffee were unforeseen, even to its makers. If
there had been makers. Nothing was less sure.
The network people, which were not the Helpdesk people from MOU XI and XII, but
from MOUIT, had mixed things up too. They were used to having the network domain
names correspond to the MOU names, which were numbers. So they put people
supposed to be in new domain XI into old domain XI and people supposed to be in new
domain XII into old domain XII. In all possible combinations except the right one.
Let’s not talk of old and new MOU VII. Adding to all this confusion they just made a
lot of mistakes. One would imagine it was easy to just connect a specific network
socket in a specific office to some specific network domain. Just like in a phone
central, one just allocated a phone number to a certain name. Ah but what is ever
difficult, if you don’t do it yourself. If one tries to understand the split at page 20 it’s
become obvious it was almost impossible to get things right.
And if you don’t want to know what a domain is, or don’t understand, don’t worry, just relax, just catch the attitude towards it, because anyway, things will anyway have
changed again in a few weeks. Only one thing will remain, the PANG! You’ll hear
about it later from Myra.
Alexandra Lexi was driven to sheer madness by having to re and re-organize hundreds
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The Crazy HelpDesk
of moves of PC’s and printers twice a day and especially moves of missing printers and
PC’s. They just hadn’t arrived into the office they were supposed to go to and some of
them remained lost forever. But how could someone work without PC or Printer? It
would go on and on.
“It’s an endless story,” she said to Maurice.
“Exactly! And the users, the new Software for user management – AD for Active
Directory - calls them ‘OBJECTS’ in the same line as PC’s and printers. As if someone
wanted to give the impression they were worthless.”
Hilde let out what was almost a shriek: “What! Worthless! Objects! Our users who
work so hard! What a dangerous mentality. Where will that lead to!”
“Exactly!” said Maurice
No one knew what to do anymore nor to whom to turn. Everyone was running and no
one knew where to. Penelope repeated it was all her dwarf’s fault, or rather his
disappearance. Using her neighbour’s wheelbarrow he was now carrying everything he
could to the most wrong place possible.
User were calling by the hundreds, many of them didn’t even seem to know how to
logon anymore: they insisted their password had been five asterisks, like
or Num Lock was off and they were using the numeric keypad to enter the numbers
their password contained, or they did not remember to check if they were in Caps Lock
or if the name written on the screen was really their own.
Most of the time, it was true, it wasn’t, because of all those moves. But by the time that had finally noticed it was not their own it was too late: their user account was locked out by too many password trials and CHD had to log them in again. Ok this would not have been so much of a problem, hadn’t it been for the sheer quantity of it. Others
seemed to have forgotten that a computer and a printer had to be switched on in order
to work, they insisted they had done this, and that the Helpdesk had to come by to
check what was wrong. When the same Helpdesk came they had to realise that users
had not even tried to look at the problem more closely. They just sat there stunned and
pointed helplessly at their computer. Things had gotten out of hand, users were found
crying at their desk, unable to move, but crying for help just because they needed to
express some damage, unknown to themselves. Someone had to help. Of course the
first thought went to the computer, but even the basics seemed to be forgotten now.
So Helpdesk’s first question quickly became:
“Is your computer switched on?”
And the second:
“Are you sure?”
“Hm. How do I know?”
“Is there a light somewhere in the front of the PC?
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The Crazy HelpDesk
“Hm. No. How do I know? Can’t you come and have a look?”
Why was this suddenly happening? Because the Helpdesk had no means to take care
of their users properly anymore, and so they reacted as every child would towards an
all of a sudden careless parent, not doing his duty anymore: they became demanding,
regressed, and asked that even the most simple thing were done for them. Should
Helpdesk put on their drapers for them from now on? Hold their mouse and do all the
clicks? Tell them again and again what a logon and a logoff was? CHD quickly
realised many users had no idea of what that meant. For a logoff, which did not take a
lot of time, a user just had to choose:
‘Start – Shutdown – Logoff’, but instead of that he chose: ‘Start – Shutdown – Restart’.
In a way users were right: this command sounded like nonsense.
Everyone had a creepy sense of foreboding, a funny feeling at the pit of his stomach,
something just had to happen. Hilde wished for Penelope’s garden gnome to come
back with her neighbour’s wheelbarrow, with all the right things in it. Or for some
other dwarf maybe.
Everyone was complaining, some were crying, many were sneezing, the Helpdesk was
going crazy.
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The Crazy HelpDesk
The visit of the Garden gnomes
And one week later, the dwarfs had appeared indeed. They were of course seven of
them, one for each of the seven first floors, but none for the eighth floor, the floor of the Director’s team. All of them standing in its south-east corner. They all wore a big
white paper napkin, each of them bearing a different label. The labels read:
1. Weberli: the Painter Dwarf
2. Netikette: the Cabling Dwarf
3. Muckel: the Carpenter Dwarf
4. Tonnelli: the Handyman Dwarf
5. Diagoras: the Zyrtec Dwarf (for the allergies)
6. Terapi: the Counselling Dwarf
7. Elbuself: the Do-it-yourself Dwarf
Number Seven, Elbuself, came last but not least, because, after all, what were we there
for, if not to do everything ourselves.
The seven however were real garden gnomes, with long beards and funny long coats,
bright red pointed hats and shoes. The Zyrtec and Counselling Gnome appeared to be
female. They too had beards, but they were more elaborately combed. Whoever had
placed them there? The FLNJ?! Whoever had ordered them to come? Or asked to,
invited. I mean politely and they then came by own volition.
People made the steps from floor to floor (elevators where not working that day again)
to walk around and inspect the gnomes, laughing, exchanging slightly disobliging
remarks about the hierarchy which someone for sure had wanted to point at. People
found they had not done their job, and that some fun head had expressed his mild
criticism by placing those dwarfs. Jokes were found, especially by the French, like:
“C’est un n’ain portant rassemblement!” - ‘What an important gathering!’ or “C’est n’ain porte quoi!” - ‘What nonsense’. Since ‘dwarf’ is ‘nain’ in French.
Penelope inspected each of them closely, hoping to recognise her own gnome, but she
had to be disappointed. Anyway, she meant she could have recognised him among
thousands. Some people were saying that garden gnomes resembled each other like a
troupe of new born babies. Indeed when the police found clusters of garden gnomes in
the forests and brought them back to the station and then contacted those who had filed
a complaint for their garden gnomes theft; it turned out that their owners, called to
collect their property, had every hard time in the world to truly identify their very own gnome.
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The Crazy HelpDesk
But Penelope had found her garden gnome to be unique. There were two distinguishing
features about him. The first was that ‘ titomme’ (that is: ‘little man’) wore glasses. And none of the seven gnomes standing there wore glasses. Of course he might well have
removed them. The second was: ‘titomme had no beard. You are going to say that a
garden gnome without a beard is not a garden gnome, and indeed at times Penelope
wasn’t so sure about this either: ‘titomme was alive. The proof was that he had walked
off. She felt she could recognise ‘titomme among thousands, even in disguise. He had a
soul, and a soul is something unique. One just can’t miss a soul, and certainly not
Penelope.
How had the Seven gotten in the House without being seen? Although it was obvious:
amidst the reigning disorganisation security had not been taken too seriously in their
building lately. Where in other buildings of ‘The House’ people had to show their
badges and were scanned from head to foot, in the Curie and Koch buildings security
measures had lapsed. No one could one control the masses of movers and handymen
which had been walking in and out in endless streams for what was now weeks. So it
must have been all too easy for an accomplice to have introduced those dwarfs, hidden
in a box or wrapped in some woollen or linen cover.
Penelope, secretary of MOU XII highest bosses, if laughing with the rest of the MOU,
was at the same time slightly white around the nose