I almost never ever write anything about work here.

It's partly because I don't want to become another Queen of Sky but the main reason is that it's just not very interesting stuff.

I mean, writing about the beer I drink or the shows I watch on my personal time becomes simply mesmerizing when you start comparing it to things like how many hardware quotes I requested or how many spreadsheets I updated at work.

Sent out quote requests for the new Oracle servers today. I only gave the vendors three days to respond this time, but it's a pretty simple order. Somebody's hair is on fire about replacing these servers so I'm trying to speed up the process as much as I can. I always get quotes from several vendors but I pretty much always know ahead of time who's going to come back with the lowest price.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Where was I?

Oh yeah, work.

I'm so buried in paperwork that just about the only technology I touch anymore is this here keyboard. I do get to have fun when new equipment comes in, and when old equipment goes out, but for the most part my days are spent crunching numbers and researching new technologies and justifying expenditures and plotting project timelines and attending meetings.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Huh? Wha?

Oh, sorry.

So, when a rare chance to actually get my hands dirty arises, I jump all over it.

Like today, when I found that I was no longer able to talk to some equipment. We'd recently replaced a broken component and, apparently, we got the cables screwed up in the process.

Anxious to do some "real work" I grabbed a Fluke and made my way into the datacenter.

The Fluke consists of a couple of small pieces of orangey-yellow equipment. You connect the doohickey part to a network cable, and then you use the thingabob part to find the other end of the cable. The thingabob emits a tone when it's over the right cable, so this is called "toning out" a connection.

At least that's the way it's supposed to work. That's the way it works for everyone but me.

The way it works for me is that one of three things happens:

1. The thingabob starts making noise as soon as I enter the room and doesn't shut up until I leave.

2. The thingabob refuses to make a single sound no matter how much I beg.

3. The doohickey breaks as soon as I turn it on.

This is all eerily reminiscent of my younger days when I'd fry a new watch within a few days of owning it.

I have a magnetic personality, you see.

Some sensitive technology just doesn't like me, and that's just the cross I have to bear. And it may be getting worse. I've been spending so much time with paperwork that people are actually starting to doubt My Technical Supremacy.

There are even threats (made in jest, at least for now) that my datacenter access will be revoked if I continue down this path of ever-increasing administrative work.

I can envision a day when lights will dim when I enter a room. People with pacemakers will clutch at their chest and keel over. Planes will fall from the sky when I go outside to check my mail.

Eventually, I figure, the government will kidnap me, dissect me, study me, to find the secret of my power and use it as a weapon.

Did you hear about Tehran? They got Siltzed back to the stone age.

Eventually, my powers will spiral out of control, wiping out all of the progress we've made over the centuries, and a new Golden Age of Man will ensue. One unencumbered by the shackles of technology. All living things will exist in harmony.

And you'll have me to thank for your newfound paradise. But you'll have to thank me in person, because e-mail and telephones won't be working anymore.