Systems people are useless

I had an annoying run in with some systems people today at work. I had put in a request to create a restricted access folder on the shared drive that I use at work in order to control who could access some sensitive files. I submitted a request to our systems expert, per normal procedure. They have 10 business days to respond to any request received since they are probably very short-staffed these days. Well, I decided to follow up after 18 business days since I was getting irritated. What response did I get, you ask? Well, I received a phone call telling me that my request was being closed because I did not fill out the initial request correctly. I did not use correct terminology for the restricted drive I wanted to create. I asked the person on the phone what I needed to say and how I needed to fill out the request form to get the desired response, and the guy told me that he was not familiar with exactly how to fill out the request form. The conversation ended at this point. Needless to say, I was quite pissed. How can people be paid to be so useless? When we laid off IT people in the past, did we decide to keep the most useless and let everyone else go?

Thankfully, I have a contact in the systems area based on help I have received in the past. I sent him an e-mail explaining the situation. He told me how to fill out the request form correctly. Apparently, using terms like "restricted global group" instead of 'domain local share' will cause your request to be ignored. I was supposed to know that. My contact also apologized for the screw up since he originally assigned my case to the guy that decided to close it for no legitimate reason instead of asking me for more clarification. Everything should be resolved tomorrow. Yay! If you are at all savvy with computers and stuff, let me know. Apparently we need some people who are not useless. You interested, Mouse? I know it's not Apple, but you'd be a systems superstar here.

Speaking of useless, how about the North American hockey teams? Canada and the U.S. decided to leave their skills back home when they went to Torino. Someone should tell Derian Hatcher that he is supposed to skate back to his team bench after a shift, not the penalty box. He had so many stupid penalties. Maybe both the U.S. and Canada will get smart and send faster players with good chemistry to the Olympics instead of pampered super stars that don't mesh well together and are more size and strength rather than speed. The larger ice surface clearly benefits the more skilled European teams. Hey, at least the Americans are better than Kazakhstan and not worse than Latvia. Woo hoo!

I just realized that no one probably understood or cared about that last paragraph. I'd apologize, but you should be the ones who are sorry. You are missing out on such a wonderful sport.

I am working in the Philadelphia office on Friday. However, I am leaving for Philly tomorrow right after work and spending the next couple evenings visiting friends and family in the area. I'll be back Saturday around noon. No updates before then. Sorry!