the great internet hamster

The Great Internet Hamster that powers my workplace's connection to the internet fell off his wheel today... normally it's his much smaller hamster buddy who powers the connection to the departmental server that (once in a while) falls off (which means you can access the wider internet, but nothing on the departmental servers)... but today it was the big guy himself...

I was right in the middle of stuff too... I'd just made some rather groovy looking (at least I thought so, She Who Must Be Theoretically Obeyed is kind of on the fence about it) changes to a particular page, and I was about to go and check it out, see how it looked, when I got the very annoying "The page cannot be displayed" message... I hate that message. A lot.

After that there was much hitting of the refresh button and reloading the page and closing and opening of browser windows and general muttering and cursing... just in case...

Then a little while later everyone got an email from the folks in IT, telling us all what I already knew... the Great Internet Hamster was no longer running on his big internet powering wheel. Of course they didn't tell us if he was dead, had broken something, or was just refusing to get back on the wheel... all we got was "our service providers are working on the problem as a matter or urgency"...

Which just means they're standing around looking at the dead/injured/recalcitrant hamster and shaking their collective heads.

And of course, since my whole entire job exists in it's entirety on the internet (albeit the departmental servers rather than the worldwideinterwebnetski)... well, I was pretty much left at Thumb Twiddle Central... total and complete Thumb Twiddle Central...

The really annoying thing was that this all happened just before lunch... but enough before that I couldn't just go and take an early lunch and get myself out of the office and away from the Hamsterless Internet... although thinking up stuff about the Great Internet Hamster did bring lunch closer sooner...

Then, when I came back after a very bad lunch (things that were fried, or covered in pastry, or both... lots of carbs basically... ethnically diverse carbs, but carbs nonetheless) it was still down... *sigh*

Fortunately one of the girlies I work with (ie Not She Who Must Be Theoretically Obeyed) distracted me with random questions about lunch, life, the universe and whatnot for a good twenty minutes or so, which meant that the Great Internet Hamster had time to get back on the damn wheel. Yaaaay!

And it also looks like, if I end up leaving the day I think I'm going to be leaving (29 June... which I just realised is a week tomorrow... damn!), then my leaving celebration (what little there will be of it) is going to kind of get merged into someone else's leaving celebration and there may well be excursions, coffee, cake and whatnot. Which is kind of cool, if a little, you know, confronting and more than I really want to be going on and stuff... maybe I can take my beverage and my cake related item and just meld into the background or something...

Then, when I got home, I kinda felt like a hamster (without the Great Internet bit) for a while... I was planning to drop my pants in at the dry cleaner anyway (jeans tomorrow... yaaay... since I had a whole conversation about the wearing of the jeans this week with the girlies at work and I figure, you know, this is the second to last Friday, so stuff 'em)... but when I got home I discovered that the nice people at Australia Post had a package waiting for me (well, a piece of paper telling me there was a parcel at the Post Office, god I love those bits of paper)...

It could only be one thing, my copy of Loving Brian (which is currently sitting on my big red sofa and keeps calling seductively to me to make me come and leaf through the soft and silky pages... okay, not really, but it feels like it is), which I ordered a little while back (and it showed up early actually... it wasn't supposed to be here until next week sometime)... it's been on the list for a while, and, well, with the disposable income and all I figured what the hell...

So I basically got home, changed my clothes, turned around and went back out again, jumped in the car and headed out to the shops... picked up the book at the Post Office, dropped my pants at the dry cleaners (okay, that's not ACTUALLY what I did, but you know what I was trying to say), went to the supermarket to get something for dinner, then back home again, all within half an hour...

Crap... I still can't get that thought out of my mind... a week tomorrow...

Bugger...

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