Begin forwarded message:
(Rooters Wired Service)
April 29, 2005
Washington DC
The US Economy was brought temporarily to a standstill today by what some
analysts are calling "the Perfect Storm" of the information technology
management professions.
Apple Computers allowed pre-purchases of its highly-touted new "Tiger"
operating system, all scheduled for delivery of late-afternoon Thursday
the 28th, and no later than noon of Friday April 29.
The "Tiger" operating system is a major enhancement upgrade of the popular
Mac OS X system which powers all modern Apple computers.
IT industry analysts had predicted that campus-wide deployments of the
popular operating system, on a nationwide basis, would somewhat slow
business operations in general until the deployment was completed, which
was expected to take probably no longer than all day Friday.
However, it seems that someone somewhere online pointed out to fellow IT
workers that it was also opening day for a movie adapting a series of
science-fiction comedy novels known together as "The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy".
"It was complete pandemonium," said one witness. "You couldn't drag me
anywhere back near the place, not until this is all sorted out and over
and done with," she said, speaking of her firm's IT department. "It was as
if they'd gone mad with indecision, half of them, and the other half was
divided neatly down the middle and pressing their cases on the undecided
half. Stay and do a campus-wide deployment of a new Mac OS X when
delivered at noon, or play hooky and catch the opening show at noon."
In the meantime, nothing was getting done at all, anywhere where there
were Macs in abundance. Our reporter bravely ventured into one such
office, but decided that it was a bit too risky after hearing what
appeared to be a chorus of dozens of voices chanting what sounded like
"when all you've got is AppleTalk, everything looks like a nail".
One ordinarily expects engineers and technicians to behave extremely
rationally, not mill about like a panic of lost sheep. Apparently it was
quite obvious that the dispute was settling into two camps, one of which
was "see the movie first, deploy later" and the other camp which had the
opposite view. The problem was that there appeared to be a rather exactly
even split over which would be the proper solution. Predictably, in
retrospect, someone invariably raised the question of why couldn't half of
the staff run off to see the movie while the other half stayed and
deployed.
By 11 in the morning, across the US, ominous reports began to circulate of
what appeared to be a widespread epidemic of gambling amongst the IT
staffers who appeared to have been (to outsiders) inexplicably seized by
an urge to dice at craps.
By 11:30, cursing lone engineers were seen in offices across the States,
loosely tied to chairs in otherwise empty offices, working their way free
of their bonds. At noon, astonished FedEx deliverymen arrived to free the
engineers and deliver their operating system upgrades.
Nationally, the noon rush hour was described as "a catastrophe." One
shocked witness asked rhetorically, "have you ever seen engineers
directing traffic? Oy gevalt." One parking-lot attendant remarked, "it was
a sign and a caution. They dragged me out of my booth and stuffed money in
my pockets, told me to shut up and learn how parking's done. Went and
really showed me, too."
In most theaters, the second showing had to be delayed while baffled staff
cleaned up piles of what appeared to be thin plastic wallets, all empty,
and hundreds of mechanical pencils per theater.
Police reported thousands of arrests of IT personnel apparently brought to
blows by the combination of stress and remarks such as "You know, I'd have
thought that they'd have picked a hotter actress to play Trillian", or "I
don't think they played Marvin as mopey enough. And what were they
thinking about the way they did Beeblebrox?"
Evening rush hour was also dicey at best across the nation, as crowds
seemed to react rather badly to the presence in lines of clearly-irate
engineers and techs all sporting various degrees of rope burns on their
wrists. Frequently such persons had to be dragged away after screaming at
persons exiting the theater "not a word, dammit, I want to see this for
myself".
By midnight, it seemed to be all over and done with.