09:55 am – I arrive at work, five minutes early as usual. Though for some reason everyone always gets here before me.

10:03 am – Team meeting. We decide that the correct pronunciation of “Linux” is “ly-noo-ex”.

10:37:55 am – Team revises decision: the correct pronunciation is “ly-noo” (silent x).

10:40 am – Daily lamentation of Microsoft products in our environment.

10:44 am – Backups fail on Exchange server. At least no one notices this kind of thing.

10:57 am – We discover backups on the Exchange server have failed completely for the last six months, as a bug erroneously reports incomplete backups as successful. No one has noticed this kind of thing.

11:20 am – Conference call with Microsoft Rep trying to troubleshoot the Exchange bug. Rep blames the problem on us, claims our refusal to install the latest version of Microsoft Bob on our machines is the root cause of our woes. Rep politely informs us that Microsoft is not contractually obliged to provide assistance in this case. We politely inform the Rep that he has no idea what the fuck he is talking about.

11:52 am – Lunch break. Pizza day.

2:25 pm – Lunch ends on a sad note.

3:01:22 pm – Maintenance on Exchange server causes Blackberry e-mail outage for thirteen seconds. We receive approximately 19,243 complaints, including a threat from the CFO to “chop our balls off.”

3:26 pm – Finally, I have an opportunity to be productive: I catch up on Digg and Reddit. I quickly determine that Ron Paul is the only man who can save America.

3:29 pm – Team receives an anonymous tip that several WoW gold miners are trapped in the basement sweatshop of an “entrepreneurial” sixteen year-old suburbanite. We immediately invoke the time-honored “pics or it didn’t happen.”

3:39 pm – Must look busy.

3:45 pm – I open up Excel, generating random pie charts.

3:49 pm – Boss passes by. Says he’s impressed by the metrics data I’ve generated.

3:55 pm – Team meeting called to discuss the enunciation of technologies referred to by abbreviations. I pass on this one.

4:00:00 pm – I head home. You’ll fill in for me? Thanks a bunch.