trainees could take in one of the four bars of
the House, in order to find a husband.
A major Tab was the ‘Member Of’, that is
Security Group Membership.
An AD group was most of the time
containing the members of a WG. But this
was a complex task, in the present circumstances, because the WG’s hadn’t really been
defined, so into which group was Hilde to add a trainee was a guessing game,
improvisation on the spot.
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Ok there were good trainees. Nice ones too. Those even got hired later on and did not
spend ALL their time drinking coffee. For instance Lut, she had once been a trainee.
That did not mean that having a coffee was a crime, au contraire, it was a very positive action. But coffee alone and no work meant stomach problems. At least for Hilde.
Hildegard could not make herself get heard when she tried to explain that they would
have to wait a bit, and that she was not the only one production line; that it also
depended on the higher level of the mail administration team. But since they had to
manage more than just this MOU but twenty-six, not counting the four bars, they
would have to give out let’s say 40 times 26 = 1040 trainee mailboxes today.
But the trainees didn’t want to hear any of this. Hilde tried it nicely one last time and said she would notify them when their mailboxes were ready, via their Supervisor, to
whom she would send the necessary info. She hid the fact that Mail Administration
was putting trainees at the very end of their list, because they did not consider them to be very important. But say this to a trainee and he commits suicide. She did however
dare say that it could certainly take until the next morning. When the trainees heard
that they broke out into violent shrieks, just as if she had told them they would be taken one by one and grilled alive. She could only get rid of them by almost physically
throwing them out of her office. They trotted ill-humoured back to their PC’s which
where parked all over the floors, because of a lack of space.
But this, she knew, would not be the end of it. By the end of the morning each of them
had phoned in average at least three times, which made a total of hundred and thirty-
two calls, just to keep asking when their mailbox would finally be ready, and how
many important reports for them to treat were stuck there because of her. Nothing
helped the fact that Hildegard repeated that their mailbox would only be ready the next
morning.
Oh let the dwarfs take them!
Hildegard felt she was not handling this right, and began to imagine murder scenes,
which she drew up in mind on the wall before her. She began to relax, and smiled with
glee. One trainee hanged, another shot, another...
As if phoning her non-stop was not enough three of the trainees now returned, entering
her office menacingly. Their attitude clearly showed they wanted to intimidate her. A
forth trainee was to join them quickly. To make it worse the phone rang and she had
the secretary of the Director General of MOU XX at the end of the other line (he too
was on sick leave). She dared to answer and the four trainees glowed at her furiously.
Above that ten messages appeared one after the other in her mailbox; half of them
marked ‘Urgent’. Well then it was not so much a problem. Three of the messages came
from the trainee’s supervisors and were claiming for their trainee’s mailbox. She would
have imagined more intelligence from that side at least.
The day passed on this mode, with the continuous visits of furious trainees claiming for
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their mailbox and thus doing everything in their power to keep her from doing it. That
is entering their data in the Active Directory in order to get them a logon and then send a request for a mailbox to Mail Administration. One trainee she counted came to her
office seven times. This face she finally remembered. Should she get rid of her by
letting her meet Mrko Mrnsk maybe?
She was sure Mail Administration was planning her assassination too, with the ever
growing number of requests she send them.
Hildegard allowed herself a little break to count the number of messages she’d got
since the beginning of the day. Hundred and eight.
But by the next day, the Miracle had happened, and the trainees had their mailbox. At
least in principle, because Hildegard knew the worst was to come. Instinctively she
braced herself against the usual attack.
One trainee phoned to ask that the HelpDesk send him someone to his flat to install his
home computer. When Hilde sent him, politely, to the devil, he said he would inform
his CLA and that it would have consequences.
A second required CHD to supply him with personal scanner, colour printer, digital
camera and USB key. When she told them all of this was a his disposal and the CHD
main room he had a tantrum, something which typically builds up inside frustrated
toddlers.
A third wanted to know who would be put at her disposal to type her important reports.
What would they be later, once grown up! Hilde believed that either they would, by
some miracle, adapt to civilisation, or be doomed to disappear, as the dinosaurs had.
Logon
But all this was nothing, compared to the logon drama. No trainee ever had managed to
do a logon and enter a mail password without help. Ok you don’t believe that one. But
they amount of trainees who didn’t was enough to turn this belief into conviction. Ok
Hilde well knew that many trainees were nice and smart, the problem was, she never
met one. They never called nor showed up at CHD.
You know that after you’ve switched on the PC and the little box has booted you’ll see
a message:
Please press Ctrl+Alt+Del to logon. You then obtain a little dialog box like:
Username
Password
Domain
House (nothing to change there)
To the right of this box the trainee had to enter the Username and Password as they
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were given to him by his Supervisor.
Such as:
Username CarmenMartinez
Password Svet8888
Domain
House (nothing to change there)
If you manage to do this you will get access to the desktop, hard disk, resources. You
will begin to use all this and begin to understand what it behind all this. Well you
might, because you will not if you are a trainee.
Svet8888 was the password given to every newcomer. Why “Svet8888”. Because
“Svet”, meaning “Universe” was Czech and Myra had devised this password and Myra
was Czech. Or still is. 8888 was CHD’s phone number.
First she had wanted to take ‘Domek’ for ‘House’, but then Domek contained an M,
and M is a dangerous character for a password. In fact a good password must not
contain either A, Q, W, Z nor M. Because of the frequent keyboard driver inversion
between Qwerty and Azerty. That is the programme or commands which made the
keyboards produce one set of letters or another, like Kbden.dll for English keyboard or
Kbdfr.dll for a French keyboard. Or Kbdcz.dll for a Czech keyboard.
I now this sounds nonsense to someone who has never experienced a keyboard driver
inversion at initial logon. But at the House, with all its languages, it happened all the time. And a Qwerty-Azerty inversion is innocent compared to what could happen to
Hungarian passwords. Windows reads characters slightly different in- and outside the
session and once the trainee had set his Hungarian password and logged off in the
evening he could never log in again.
Thus Hildegard dutifully spent the whole morning hanging on the phone or running
from floor to floor to help the trainees typing their logon and introducing their
password. Helping them over the phone usually gave no result.
“Ca ne marche pas - it does not work,” would they stutter in their often bad English or
French, the two mandatory languages. Or rather they sniffed it, speaking through the
nose, in their effort to pronounce well. Hildegard knew she was being mean and
spiteful, but the sheer numbers just made her so.
An expected number of the trainees had obviously never seen a computer. They
phoned to say it was not working. HelpDesk’s standard question the was:
“Is the computer switched on?” and the second:
“Are you sure?”
Hilde then had to send Lexi or Sven to do it for them.
Many of them, especially the girls, couldn’t even hold a mouse, and waved it at her,
like if that would help. Weren’t they supposed to have been chatting with boys on the
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Internet since they were fourteen years old?
Trainees were just the kind to tug a dwarf by his beard if they saw one. And beware the
one who does this. Hilde smiled at the thought. Maybe this was just the kind of wrong
advice she could give to the trainees.
The phone rang for the twentieth time since eight-thirty. The usual question.
“Hi I’m a trainee and it doesn’t work,” said the trainee, to explain everything.
Hilde could formally hear the word ‘poor’ standing before the word ‘trainee’. Trainees
always meant to convey how ‘poor’ they were. And they were, at least in mind. Hilde
abhorred trainees; they gave her ‘les buttons’.
“What doesn’t work?”
“Je ne comprends pas - I don’t understand.”
“What is your name?”
“Angela Recluta.”
“So what doesn’t work?”
“I can’t get in.”
“You can’t logon?”
“What’s low-gum?” Hilde heard panic growing and panicked herself.
Was she going to explain it?
“The logon is the name given to the fact that one types his username and his password to obtain access to the desktop and operating system of the PC, as well as to the files and programmes stocked on its hard disk and the resources of the servers to which the PC is connected.”
No! This trainee would then ask: what is a desktop, what is an operating system, what
is a file, what are servers and resources, and what is stocked. Understandable
somehow, that she didn’t know. Maybe this was the first time she used a PC, and came
from a very poor family. Hilde tried to translate it into more common language:
“You entered your username and your password and it doesn’t work?”
“I don’t understand. What must I do?”
Hildegard, used to this, tried another way:
“What do you see before you?”
“Hm?”
“The screen? Do you see it?”
“Yes.”
“What do you see on the screen?”
“Mm. I don’t understand.” (sniffing)
“What colour is the screen?”
“Black!” (relieved)
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“Please hit any key on the keyboard.”
“Sorry?” (anguish)
Hildegard bit her lips and imagined how someone would take this Angela and throw
her out of the Window. Why didn’t Sven go? He loved trainees.
“Hit the keyboard Dear”
“Really? Hit?”
“Yes.”
Hildegard heard the trainee hit the keyboard.
“What do you see now?”
Hildegard heard the trainee smiling:
“I see: Press Ctrl plus Alt plus Del.
“Great! Can you do this?”
“What?”
“Press Ctrl+Alt+Del.”
“I don’t understand.” The trainee had stopped smiling.
Hilde began to imagine a torture chamber
“Look at the keyboard Sweetie. Yes?”
“Yes (sniff).”
It is true that it is maybe not so obvious to make the relationship between the fact of
seeing “Press Ctrl+Alt+Del” on the screen and then doing it on the keyboard.
Hildegard couldn’t remember she hadn’t been able to do that, but maybe she’d just
forgotten about it.
“See if you find three keys named Ctrl, Alt, Del. Do you see them?”
The hour or so the trainee takes now gives Hilde the time to type ‘medieval torture
chamber’ into her Google Search box and go surfing.
Found!
“Ah. Yes!”
“Can you press them all at the same time?”
“All? Yes. Ah! Yes.”
“What do you see now?”
“Aaah. I see: A box. With U s e r n a m e, P a s s w o r d, D o m a i n.”
“Domain must stay like it is.”
“Ah right.”
“Do you have the paper with your username and password?”
“I don’t understand.”
Tongs?
“The paper I have given to you yesterday.”
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“Yes, the paper, yes.”
“Can you type what is written next to username on the paper in the username box and
do the same thing for the password?”
Hildegard hears the trainee type.
“Have you done this?”
“Yes.”
“Now press Enter.”
Trainee hits something. Silence and then:
“It doesn’t work.”
Garotte? Strappado?
“What happens?”
“It doesn’t work.”
“Do you see a message on the screen?”
“Yes.”
“Can you read it to me?”
Trainee reads dutifully:
“Could not log you on to the domain. You may have introduced an invalid username or
password.”
“Try again.”
Trainee does.
“It doesn’t work.”
Screws?
“Please read to me what’s written next to ‘username’.”
Trainee spells out:
“j o a n dot a u s t i n”
Hildegard knew that trainees had problems understanding they had to type THEIR name
in the username box. Some even typed ‘username’, instead of their own username. The
fact that another name was written heir did not seem as a problem.
She felt like murder but tried to stay patient in her voice, while wildly gesturing at the wall.
“But that’s not your name. You must put your name instead of this other name. You
have a credit card and a bank card? With your own name and password, don’t you?”
“Yes!”
“And when you want money, you don’t put another name into the system, don’t you?”
“Arr.. No.”
“So what’s YOUR name?”
“Angela Recluta”
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“Please now type angela.recluta. angela dot Recluta.
“Like on the paper?”
“Yes. Now type the password: Svet8888”
Angela types:
“No! Does not work!”
Whip? Wheel?
“Try again with a capital S Honey.”
“A capital S! Ok. It works!”
“It works? “
“Yes! Thank you. You’re very nice. I’ll tell the others!”
Oh please don’t! If word got out, she was doomed. They would all come running! And
Hildegard didn’t feel nice at all. She felt lost. A silence followed. No call at all. But Hilde knew she was the eye of the cyclone.
Thinking back chances were that she had been just as stupid, or been considered such.
Indeed she now remembered having been treated badly by a series of very old maids,
male ones included, so it was maybe for the same reasons that she felt murder now.
She reflected that in this big new world made of numbers and Babel language, them
trainees maybe just had an identity problem, not really knowing about the importance
of their name in the system, and not being able to link words like username and
password to some reality.
Trainees! Remember your name!
On this wise thought, Hildegard braced herself against the next attack.
She had to survive a few more days, until all the trainees had gotten access to their PC.
After that they would anyway spend their time in the bars of the House, queuing up by
the hundreds for a coffee in order to keep herself and her colleagues from having one.
It’s lunchtime! Can you believe it?
Are there companies and institutions with bars? Yes of course, and it was the style of
the House. This ‘House’ has at least ten of them (not counting the private office bars).
Of course they are several canteens too, with thousands of dishes served a day. The
House’s largest canteen is at all times filled to the extend of bursting, with members of the official staff of course, administrators, assistants and secretaries and, but also with temporary staff of all kinds, auxiliairies, trainees, petitioners, then the Scientists and their staff and all their wives and kids, then the men and women of the technical
services, chauffeurs, electricians, window washers, then journalists, groups of visitors by the dozens, friends, husbands and wives, kids, security teams, terrorists, their wives and kids, the personnel of the newspaper shops, the personnel post office, and whoever
else I cannot think of right now howling through it. It was a roaring noisy, noisy place,
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with twenty minutes queues and dishes forever cold when one finally managed to reach
a table and sit down.
The CHD didn’t like to go to the big canteen. It gave no rest and one left it more
stressed than they were before. Only Leo and Gwendoline went there from time to
time. To be alone in their very own fashion.
The House had a lot of small canteens too, they was one or more in almost every
building of the House, hidden behind staircases, popping up behind a corner, being
born out of the nowhere and disappearing just as suddenly again a few weeks later.
There was the Peacock Bar, named so because of its life Peacocks, which were
wandering proudly before its windows, the Pink Bar, because its life salmons, and the
Mountain Lodge, because it was lodged high up in the mountain, you had to take three
elevators and three escalators to get there.
Hilde, Penelope and Emma II went to the Peacock bar.
The peacock bar was the favourite; the funny thing was that they were such modest
peacocks. Some Bohatian variety of them made them walk and spread their
magnificent plumage like with a lot of reserve. They were not proud of their majestic
fan. This was just the way of the House too. It loved understatement.
Change password
She then spent the whole afternoon explaining to 44 trainees how to change their
Windows password. Having sent them instructions of how to do this was to no avail.
She said “Press Alt+Ctrl+Del and then choose ‘ Change password’ so many times that she wished for an inflatable automatic Helpdesk pilot.
Note that in order to change your password on your Home PC you have to choose
‘Start - Settings - Control Panel - User Accounts - Change an Account - Change
Password’ if you are using Windows XP.
Whatever it may be, just catch the (hopefully not wrong) attitude.
She was such a success with the young crowd that she had to continue to change
trainees’ passwords in her dreams. At one moment the trainee who had visited her
office seven times came back. She seemed to have grown to a giant size. She towered
over Hilde, demanding a mailbox, in such a menacing manner that Hilde woke up with
a start. Revenge!
That night, she devised a Welcome Sheet that she would from now on distribute to the
Trainees. It would contain some simple rules for the trainees to follow. House and IT
rules; further spell out their name, username, initial password in beautiful, coloured
letters; then describe how to logon. Finally bid them to read the Help web pages and
hint at in squalid details what would happen if they did not.
She got Lut to make her a beautiful layout, Lut seemed to be such a creative person. As
for the squalid details, she pondered as if to ask Maurice, but then trusted her own
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imagination.
Trainees must be given to feel how important they were and at the same be silenced.
And it was to work; the next invasion of trainees would be much less bad.
And since they would have four of them a year, the Welcome Sheet would help a lot.
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The Key and Super User
As Lut heard from Donatello, the man who held a shop where he sold newspapers on
the ground floor of their building, the acronyms for our two buildings had now changed
to RK and MC, which sounded more reasonable. Everyone told everything to the
Newsvendor, and he told everyone. Of course she knew Hilde would have the rather
frustrating task to change the acronyms all over in her databases, and herself all over in her Web Pages.
Tello asked her how she was and she told him:
“Fine, but we have so much to do, it’s such a Chaos.”
Tello stroked his white beard, shaved close to his skin. He looked pensive, but then
gave her a warm smile. On could say a lot about that smile:
“I’ve heard about that. But I’m sure you’ll get help somehow.”
“It rather be soon. And hierarchy never realises our workload.”
“That seems to be the definition of hierarchy,” said Tello.
But hierarchy then did do something for the CHD, and sent them Myra. To help. Myra
was not an informatician, but had been, just until yesterday, the kind of user who often ends up in a Helpdesk: A Super user. A Super user is a user so gifted with Computers
that he ends up doing nothing but that. But since Myra was still so very young, and
lacked experience somehow, they decided she should do the Central Helpdesk, taking
all incoming calls and then dispatching them to the right person. With Myra they were
now eleven.
But hadn’t Myra already been present since the first meeting? Maybe she had, but as
already mentioned, the House was nuts. People were saying it all the time. And they
were actually proud of this, why is not so clear. Like Italians are proud to cheat a bit, the French to be chauvinistic, the Dutch to be penny-pinching, the Belgians to be... ok I stop.
What had happened was that Myra, freshly come to the House some months ago was
hired in a WG with quite difficult people in it. Three rather old maids, maybe jealous
of her. And they were hopeless with computers. Myra, with the inexperience of her
youth, was quite unable to handle them (the old maids, not the computers). Nor could
they handle her. A report went from the WG’s boss to the Personnel Service, asking
them to put her away, and that she didn’t do. Personnel was shocked, the House NEVER
put anyone away, so a solution was searched for and found. And since the only good
thing her WG was grudgingly admitting about her was that Myra was ‘quite’ good with
Computers so why not give her to nice CHD team, all of them ever so kind, they would
know how to ‘educate’ her. ‘Educate’ here was not meant in the sense Charles Dickens
might have used when describing his orphanages, but rather in the sense Bettelheim
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developed to help his autistic children. Never punish, always let do, they would then
learn by themselves.
Such were the ways of the House. Sometimes they went to far in this, as for instance
not telling Myra’s previous WG how difficult they were sometimes themselves.
So the CHD got Myra. A previous Super User.
The Super User is, along with the Key User, a person to cherish. Those two help a
Helpdesk to an extent they seldom realise.
The CHD had quickly found out who they were: There were almost as many as there
were Workgroups. Almost every workgroup of the world must have one. It just
happens. It’s like magic. The same law did not apply to the Super Users. There were
much less Super Users. What luck. Because if they were too much Super Users, there
would be less HelpDesks. But a Key User was the one a HelpDesk needed.
The Key User does not have to be a genius with computers. But he is good with their
users, his colleagues. He or she is the one who knows the needs of his service from top
to bottom and often of the kind who likes to integrate people.
Marianna, Denis, Patsy and Erik were examples of such Key Users.
He or she would give them the ‘CHD Welcom