The users gratitude and kindness grew everyday and was a great consolation for the
CHD. Compliments were now flowing at them at such speed and in such quantities that
they sometimes felt overwhelmed by them. It went from Genius to Magician, from
Angel to Saviour. But CHD felt they needed someone like that themselves now, they
needed a master too. But this master was none to be seen. This orphaned situation was
very hard to bear. They needed a kind fatherly figure. Help maybe from some from the
Outside. Someone not House. This dwarfs story was bound to finish one day, and what
then?
In the meantime user’s were doing everything in their power to make them feel well.
Some of them even tried to help out with IT problems whenever they could.
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Svetlana complained a bit to Hilde that the people of her WG had taken to always
come to her first for IT problems. But when Hilde told her it was not her job and that
she should send them to the devil, that is to the CHD Svetlana just shook her head and
said:
“But you all have already too much to do.”
Lexi and even Sven got more and more help from her users when they had to move
their PC’s. Following Françoise’s example many users not only carried the PC’s over
to the office they would move to but would plug in all the cables in the right place.
Anne had installed all the public folders ‘as an Email address book’ for her WG,
explaining thus 15 times how to do this, so that Gwendoline didn’t have to do it.
She had also made a toolbar on which she had put the buttons her WG used most.
Gwendoline discovered this - too late - when she had deleted Anne’s Normal.dot,
which contained them, because of a file corruption there.
“Where is my toolbar with the buttons I use most?”
Gwendoline hung her head and had to explain. She expected Anne to be mad at her
now. But nothing like this happened:
“Don’t worry. I didn’t know the macros where kept in this file,” said Anne, smiling
reassuringly. ‘I just knew how to do this toolbar. I just knew to do ‘View - Toolbar -
Customize - New Toolbar - Command’. Than I dragged the commands over to the new
toolbar.“
“I’m sorry I should have checked first, before deleting the .dot file,” said Gwendoline.
“If you don’t specify where you save them a macro or toolbar will be saved in the
normal.dot.”
She shifted on her feet, looking guiltily up at Anne. But Anne was forgiving to the end, and even pushing it as if Gwendoline had done something for her:
“Well I’ve learned something then,’ said Anne. “Thanks Wizard. And if I understood
well I can now take the normal.dot from one of my colleague’s PC and copy it over to
my PC.”
Chiara had made a macro for her WG that let them gain hours of time each week. It
was a template which they had to fill in quite a lot for a number of missing variables,
like date, names, location, cost, participants.
Those variables she had replaced or rather inserted at the right places by surrounding
them by the # sign. Like #date#, #location#, #participant1#, #participant2#,
#participant3#. The macro then searched for the variables, asked the corresponding
question and replaced the variable by the user’s answer.
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Meeting of #date# at #location#
Participants
#participant1#
#participant2#
#amount#
#etc#
#etc#
#participant3#
‘and the questions of the macro, ‘calling the function which repeated the search
vAnswer = InputBox("Insert Date", "DATE")
Call findit("#Date#", v123)
vAnswer = InputBox("Insert Location", "LOCATION")
Call findit("#location#", v123)
‘function called
Public Function findit(itemtofind, itemtotype)
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = itemtofind
.Replacement.Text = itemtotype
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Function
Consuelo tried to help by working even more and phoning less. She didn’t believe in
dwarfs but only in work. Maybe she was lying to herself. Maybe the Helpdesk was
lying to itself too, and all this wasn’t necessary. It was a mystery. Should they listen to their users and believe they were doing things at night in order to help them without
knowing anything about it?
Boris, as could have been expected, was turning out to be a Super User. Soon all the
girls were swarming around him for explanations. Hugh! Concurrence! But Great.
They sure needed help. Why not from a user, especially if he smelled so good. But
Boris didn’t seem to keen for the swarming, he just wanted to help. On could see him
more and more with Svetlana, sticking their heads together like two little children who
had finally found their alter-ego.
Rosie wasn’t mad at all at Maurice when he mixed up the contact group of her WG
with that of another one in the Public Folders of Outlook, but when they had found out
where the contact folder had gone and put it back where it belonged, thanked him
profusely. She kept on thanking for so long that Maurice felt the users had decided to
forgive them no matter what happened. Had he deleted the whole server and lost all the
backups they would still have forgiven him. And thanked him for all his effort. This
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was only natural because if all documents disappear from a server that meant they
wouldn’t be able to work anymore at all. And anyway ‘they’ would have put
everything back at night.
There is no limit to the greatness of users.
The mystery stories of user’s work being done at night continued and that the users had
one prime suspect: The CHD. Public Friend Number 1.
Dwarfs were Public Suspect Number 2, though no one spoke this out aloud except as a
joke. CHD began to believe in this second solution. Because even if they still stayed at the House at night quite a lot many of those miraculous documents and macros that
were writing themselves were not their deed.
“But maybe we shouldn’t insist too much to know,” said Sven. “Otherwise it will be
like in the story. The moment set eyes on them, Husch, Husch, Husch they will be gone.” He had taken a great liking to the story. Of course that Sven would take a liking to stories where others did his work.
But users, they felt, were very grateful to them, the CHD. They got more praise with
every day that came. For the tiniest thing they helped with, the user would get into
states of rapture as what regarded their skill, goodness and efficiency.
Hide annoying codes
“Thelma that can happen. Just choose ‘Tools - Options - View’’ and deselect all
formatting characters.”
It was a small thing but Thelma literally exploded into compliments. She told
Gwendoline how precious people like her were, how generous she was with her
knowledge, how no one could do without her and so on and on. All this for a simple
answer, at least simple for Gwendoline. Gwendoline had to thank her now, on her side:
“It’s so nice of you users that you give us so much support. You collaborate so much.
Otherwise we would never be able to get on with our work. You help us helping.
Without someone like you, I couldn’t go on either.”
It was strange; Thelma was not so gifted for computers. She said so herself:
“But it’s good you’re there. Computers are really not my thing, I wish I could have
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your gift. I feel so stupid at times.”
Gwendoline pondered over this:
“But no. You’re intelligent! Look your office is tidy, your speech is well structured,
and you have imagination. And you’re quite of a psychologist too, aren’t you?”
Thelma bent her head to that, with some modesty.
“You’re gifted for languages, aren’t you? How many languages do you speak
fluently?”
Thelma bowed her head again:
“Four.”
“And how many other languages, not so fluent, but good?”
And again, Thelma bent her head:
“Four”
“And I’ve been told you cook well, don’t you? You can follow the instructions in
recipes? Very complicated recipes? Devised by three star cooks?”
Thelma looked at her, a strange glance in her eyes.
“So why can’t you follow a Help Menu?! You have everything that it needs to
understand a PC. I would like to know why this is not the case, but if you want my
opinion it is the case. But you just don’t WANT to know it. Computers give you a fright
just because they are SAID to be so difficult. For once, just open a HELP MENU, and try
to follow the instructions. I guarantee it is much easier than to follow a cooking
recipe.”
Gwendoline marched away, feeling a bit stupid.
ut Thelma had finally gotten the message. She chose HELP in the File Menu of
Word and read through it. Finally she decided to try the Customise Toolbar
B Recipe first. She needed to add the Drop Cap button to one of her toolbars. She
was using the function a lot for her 112 elements.
The last call before lunch, just when Gwendoline thought she would manage to have
lunch at lunchtime, was from nice Alice. But she saw no way to solve the problem on
the phone or via the remote access. Mrko Mrnsk had seen to that by lately putting a
strange series of restrictions on the Global Policies.
She just had to go. Alice, unfortunately, lived in the Koch building. Hers was
obviously a network problem, and chances were the cable wasn’t doing it anymore.
Gwendoline took a fresh cable with her and took the path through the secret shortcut
Maurice had discovered between the Curie and Koch building.
Alice was expecting her: “I’m sorry to cause so much trouble, but I have to finish this
report before midnight and I just don’t seem to have any access to the network.”
Gwendoline assured her it was nothing and began to climb over the table to reach the
back of the PC which was standing against the wall. This was hard work really.
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Usually Lexi’s, but Lexi was on a course. She heard a kind voice behind her then, and
thought it was Alice:
“Are you managing? Can I help you with something?” The voice was subdued, like if
gently begging to be liked. Gwendoline managed to stick the end of the network cable
into the socket at the back of the PC and then turned around. She didn’t believe her
eyes then. It was not nice Alice who was standing there but nasty Cecile Acrot. Or
wasn’t it her?
“Thank you for solving Alice’s problem. And all our problems. You always solve them
so well. I’m sorry I’m such a mule with computers,” said Cecile. She was slightly rosy
about the checks, like if she was on the verge of crying and trying to hold it back.
Gwendoline wondered. It was as if she had seen Cecile’s true self for the very first
time.
Maybe Cecile had been nice all the time. They just hadn’t noticed. Maybe Cecile was
just over polite. A too good education can harm the best.
Gwendoline shook her head and than nodded and smiled at Cecile, still not
understanding it fully. She bade Cecile a nice lunchtime and went back through the
dark shortcut, feeling a bit alone.
It’s lunchtime
Leo, Lut and Gwen took more than an hour of it that day, delighting in a ‘Soufflé au
girolles’. Sven and Maurice had several pitas. Lexi didn’t want to tell with whom she
was going to lunch. Jo stayed in her office with a sandwich Hilde had brought her from
Tello before going out with Emma I-III, Penelope, Julia, Jenny and Micha to have
Salmon with creamy mustard and tarragon sauce at the Pink bar. Nico was with Chiara,
meditating in their way over the Set statement, assigning an object reference to a
Back from lunch Gwendoline found a small basket with various sorts of tea in it, and a
note: “Sorry to be such a bore all the time, hope you enjoy this tea to relax from people like me. Pompea.”
Gwendoline now felt a bit guilty and much moved. Those users of theirs were
extraordinary. They were so lucky to have them. They were not only dreams of users,
they were Jewels, and very real.
Both she and Hilde, while meeting for a coffee at Tello’s wondered. Their precious
users became nicer with every day that came. They really seemed to care about their
Helpdesk, physical and mental health included.
Public Suspect Number 3: The Super Users? Or Public Suspect Number 4: All the
Users?
Tamara had distributed fun patches to the whole team, on the model of the Nicotine
patches, only with ‘Work’ written on them, so they would not feel the need for work so
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badly, and could slowly learn to do without it. Everyone accepted laughing and stuck
them on their arms, except for Johanna, who refused firmly, letting out small outraged
pouts.
But again and again users repeated the same advices to them, all day over.
“You look so tired Gwendoline. Still so much to do? Poor you. Do you take your
vitamins?”
“You look like you haven’t slept for days Hilde; why not stick to official working
hours.”
“Gwendoline. You worry me, you don’t look very well. How about a holiday?!”
“Hilde, take a rest, you’re overdoing it.”
“Gwendoline and Hilde. I’m going home. It’s five-thirty. Do the same. Call it a day.”
And the two friends, first checking their watches, looked at each other and decided to
do just that. After all, they even had a good reason to do this. They had an interesting evening in view. With this mysterious consultant whose even more mysterious kid was
running around the house all day and apparently at night too. His father was quite
small, but such a good-looking man. Gwendoline adored small men. She found them so
cute.
They had hesitated to follow his invitation, too much too do, but now the users had
decided for them. Those users were being so grateful. No small wonder maybe. Work
seemed to get done over night all by itself. Ok one could do it, if one knew how, using
macros and formulas. The users thus held CHD responsible for the nightly magic. Ok
let users believe what they wanted to believe, but Hilde and Gwendoline began to
wonder if there might not be some truth to the dwarfs’ or Heinzelmen version. Keira
had ended up telling bits of her nightly adventure, because the head of the translators
had asked Gwendoline and Hilde if they could investigate and get her to admit having
her hands in the report which had been translated into 142 languages by unknown
freelancers. After all, the Irish not only believed in fairies, spirits and kobolds, they KNEW they were fairies, spirits and kobolds.
They had surfed on Internet and gone through the ancient legends of Bohatia, reading
about this small people which had disappeared together with the last jewel found in
their mines, but had not uncovered much. But the jewels produced by the Bohatians
were unique, priceless, affordable only by golf champions, pop stars, people of the
Emirates or worse the Mafia. Was it really true that there were no more jewels to be
found in those ancient mines? But where then had Myra’s priceless bracelet come
from? No one had ever dared to ask her that question. Was there a lover? Myra? A
lover? After all why not, but who then was it.
Only now they realised that Myra was resisting all this stress much better than the rest of them. She seemed to have a secret, something different to strive after. Myra believed in other things, but they might be very real, just like her bracelet was.
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So maybe the Consultant could help them. He was Bohatian and seemed to know a lot
about what might really be going on, it was just a feeling they had. He seemed to know
a lot in every respect. He was a geologist, an architect, a historian, a jeweller, those were a few of the things they had gathered from the little talk they had had with him
when they met him down at Tello’s, where he was fetching a coffee. So what else did
he know? It could be a lot, if one had to believe Tello, who seemed to know him well,
the guy being his neighbour. Maybe he could inform them about small and gentle
beings going around and helping people in need.
Just before leaving she passed by Françoise’s office. Françoise sat there, surrounded by three of her colleagues, all of them bending eagerly over her shoulder.
When they saw Gwendoline they looked up: “We wanted to call you but then decided
against it,” said Jerry, “you already work far too much.”
“Any problem?”
“No, don’t worry, I’m just cleaning up some nasty codes in this document,” said
Françoise, “just go home, I’ll be done in a minute. And I just love doing this. I just love it.”
She beamed at her, turned her back, and she began to hammer her keyboard with
bravado as if she was playing a piano. Gwendoline saw nasty codes flying out of the
document by the dozens; page breaks, section breaks, hidden text, double spaces and
paragraph signs, lost references and corrupted footnotes. And, once in the air, they
became notes, and seemed to form a concerto. A bit like Tchaikovsky or rather one of
her own compositions? Françoise aligned paragraphs using the Paint Brush with
Allegro non troppo, created Uniform Headings using Format Style with Allegro con
fuoco, adapted Footers with Molto allegro e vivace. She and her three colleagues, bent
over the document, listened intently, forgetting everything around them. When she had
reached the elevator Gwendoline could still hear Françoise chanting:
“I love it I love it I love it.”
One minute later, encore at official office closure time, 17h30 in the afternoon exactly, Leo and Lut witnessed a strange scene.
They had heard loud shouts of protest, and a soothing voice answering. Both of them
darted out of their offices to see what was happening.
It was Arthur grabbing Johanna by the belt, well Lut and Leo were not so sure if it
hadn’t even been by her hair! Her long blond braid. He obviously endeavoured to drag
her out of her office and Johanna was endeavouring to stay in it.
“Jo, it is office closure time!”
“Arthur, leave me alone, I have to finish this report. We have a deadline running, and I am milestones away!”
Milestones was one of those programmers expression to express their progress with a
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project: Kaleidoscope IV and now Kaleidoscope V. Jo just couldn’t stop. The tailor
made programmes were her passion; a passion like one could have for a man or
woman.
The little prince had begun to grow up, and was very worried about his team lately. He
had let them have their will, and let them do. But if this continued, he would soon be
manager of a cemetery.
“Jo, go home.”
“Arthur you let me finish this report! You know the House needs a structure. How dare
you not let me stay and work as long as I want to! You must realise how important this
programme is to the House. It is a question of life or death. You must realise that the
only way for...”
On this, Arthur put his hands in his pockets and pulled out two earplugs. He had
prepared his action well. If he kept listening Johanna was going to convince him. He
would have no chance to escape. Her speeches were like the songs of the sirens, you
always ended up in her mouth.
Jo was meaning well, but she was just overdoing it. Arthur was meaning well too.
“No way Jo, enough of those sixteen hour days. You go home to your husband and son.
How long is it that you haven’t seen them? I’m sure you only meet them on the way to
the bathroom, now and then. Life and death? Whom are you kidding? Go home or
you’ll break down. We need a live Jo, not a dead one.”
Now he couldn’t hear what he was saying himself. He took Johanna by the arm again,
and dragged her to the door.
Jo gave up, but not quite:
“Ok, but let me take my portable.” She meant the portable PC of course. She made the
gesture of typing.
Arthur understood, because he had been waiting for this.
“I have closed up your portable in my desk.”
Jo shot a series of menacing glances at him but had to accept the evidence. There was
not a single portable in sight. Had there been one, she would just have taken it, hers or not. She stamped her foot.
“Give it back!” she gestured.
“No way, go home and relax, relax just one weekend.”
“I’ll use Nicky’s portable!”
Arthur didn’t understand but crossed his arms and smiled malevolently:
“I have asked MOUIT to close your Intranet access for this weekend. And if I don’t see
you go home at reasonable hours from now on it will be forever.”
He shot another malevolent glance at stunned Leo and Lut:
“You are giving a bad example Jo. And you two, out of my sight, go home
immediately, otherwise I’ll take off points of your staff report next spring!”
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He seemed to be growing at each word. He looked terrible, mythical.
Lut was really afraid now. The rumours had told the truth. Here it was, the Minotaur!
Standing right in front of her. Smacking its lips.
“Lut go home.”
Lut, fearing for her life, gave up gladly and literally ran away. There was a film with
Paul Sparks that night, beginning at 20h30, and she didn’t want to miss it. Luckily her
husband had taken up to do the cooking for the family, and maybe she could manage to
have supper with him and Maxi, and then still see her favoured actor.
Leo stood there somewhat helpless:
“Jo, you need help?”
“Yes!” cried Jo. ”Don’t you see what he’s doing to me?”
Leo nodded, but with some doubt.
“F... off!” said Arthur. ”Remember your staff report. I’m still your boss.”
“No you aren’t,” cried Johanna.
Leo withdrew prudently; after all, Arthur was right. Not that he was still her boss, but that Jo worked too much. What had suddenly gotten into him? He and Lut had already
talked about it.
He would have loved to see the end of the scene, but then he had an appointment with
Emilia, his new acquaintance. She was still trying to be patient about his cancelling
them in the last minute. But for how long?
He could still hear Johanna shouting, but it got fainter and fainter:
“Traitor! Traitor! What? You have asked MOUIT to take my Intranet access away?
You are in league with MOUIT?!” and Arthur answering:
“Remember the first meeting of the CHD. You said you liked to play society games.
Go home and play your games! When have you played for the last time? Do you even
remember the word ‘Monopoly’?”
Leo would have loved to hear it all and find out who had won but then he obediently
took his way to the exit and soon was treading on his red Tretroller, a German version
of the gas powered Have-Fun-Scooter. A few minutes later he saw Johanna passing
him by on her bicycle. Tears were streaming all over her face. Poor Jo, without a
portable and access to the VPN, the Virtual Private Network, she must feel completely at loss. No more access to the local Intranet of the House or to her files! A woman like her, without Bluetooth, to connect wireless from anywhere in the world to her PC at the office, just got the blues. Then Leo saw that at the same time she was laughing, just
before she disappeared at a right-turn. And it was true: something had finally
happened. Their boss had come back, their boss had come back!
But when Leo gave this a second thought, he was not sure that he liked the idea. But
the scene had been funny and he didn’t feel the