Link to previous

Lunch was at Chilis, David ordered an appetizer and a steak. I ordered a burger. As we talked I realized that he was a pretty decent guy which isn't surprising. I'm guessing as upper management part of what you sell is yourself so he was probably used to selling his personality for a very long time. I tried appealing to his human side, I explained my experiences since joining the company, struggles I had and personality conflicts.

I also used buzz words like "streamlined synergies" but it didn't have any effect on changing status quo. Looks like I'm going to have to pull out the big guns.

Me: So, I was working on organizing some of the information on the network shares and found a list of all our current customers in Jen's home drive. I'm sure it's nothing, but it had what they currently paid and a number next to it that was about 10% less across the board.

While I copied data from the existing WinXP machine to my linux machine I made it a point to dump the "Customers" table into excel and dump their prices and creating a seperate row with a lower price in it. Of course this document didn't exist before I moved the data from their XP machine to my linux machine, but I figured I would need a silver bullet. The hardest part was making sure the file signature showed up correctly. If they checked the Details tab of the file it had to show Jen's name or the jig would be up. Thankfully Jen often left her machine unlocked while she disappeared into the "Restricted" room.

Me: I don't know what it means, and it's probably nothing. But I wanted to make sure you knew about it

David: You know what, let me get lunch today

Me: Oh, I couldn't. You've been great company!

David: Will you stop arguing with the boss and just put a couple bucks down for the tip

I dropped a $20 and headed out. My plan was in place. I got back to the office and had noticed Martin sitting out front

Martin: Hey, I'm glad I caught you. Listen, Jen and Jeff and I talked and we decided to keep you in the break room. We will head things off with Liz

Me: Sounds great. Let me know how that works out for you

And with that I went back to the table and sat down. I set a reminder in Outlook to switch out the IP addresses of my linux box with the Windows XP machine that currently hosts the intranet. I wanted to wait until the office was cleared before swapping out the IP's. I typed up an email with a link to Jen and Jeff for Cacti so they knew I had actually used the machine and wasn't just trying to not bring in my laptop anymore, of course it pointed to the IP that the WinXP box is using so I didn't send it right away.

I sat looking at my spreadsheet, it was mostly empty. I added windows patches on a few servers I had already installed to the spreadsheet so it looks like I had been busily working all day. I was walking out to grab a bottle of dew and ran into Jeff

Jeff: How are you liking Martin

Me: Not at all

Jeff: He's just trying to help

Me: Let me know what changes he suggests/impliments and how much it actually helps

Jeff: He's not after your job

Me: He couldn't do my job

Jeff: HA! See you in the morning

After everyone has left it's pretty eerie and quiet. All the lights that are normally on, are now off. I RDP into the Windows XP machine and change it's address from 192.168.2.10 to 192.168.2.20, then I change the linux box so it has a static IP and grabs 192.168.2.10 and reboot both boxes. While I hadn't seen the WinXP machine fail since disabling DEP, I didn't want to take any chances.

Link to next