Ennui is not a french dessert.

Slow and boring week. The Filipin-Pho sucks. The other new guy is annoying. Meh.

I saw Silent Hill over the weekend. The sounds and lots of the visuals really captured the game, in my opinion, but I missed seeing the big pipe swung at the twisted nurses.

And even with the implied passage of time in the movie, the heroine got through things way faster than I did. Probably she read a walk-through online when she was researching Silent Hill.

As for yesterday...

Stuck in close with Vanna White!
Night after night after night after night
All right!

Remember that song by Weird Al? Well, I was stuck in one at work for an hour last night, and the reality bore no similarity to the song.

It's not the first time I've been stuck in an elevator there, but usually the elevator makes it to the nearest floor and I can easily pry open the doors. This time it got stuck a little short of the second floor and, despite the rest of the building seemingly made of crusted tissue paper and discarded styrofoam, the elevators appear to have been designed with the philosophy of "No escapees!".

And, looking over at the client's Eyes and Ears, I realized he was no Vanna White. Not even if I squinted. To be fair, I'm hardly Pat Sajak myself.

Ah well. I used the phone in the elevator to call the monitoring company, who called the bike patrol guys, who sent up one of their new guys, who doesn't have access to the second floor (my doing), where the cleaners let him in, where he determined that there was in fact a stuck elevator. He then called the elevator company, who responded in less time than it took the bike patrol guy to show up, despite being on the site.

The guy flipped some switches in the machine room, and out we popped. The first thing he asked was "Where you guys jumping in there, before it stopped?"

That's exactly what we had been doing. I do that all the time, and so does he. Our synchronised efforts, however, were more than a match for any mere machine. Score one for the meatsacks!

Rimmy: "No, we weren't. Were we?"

Eyes and Ears: "Nope."

Technician: "Yeah, well the overspeed indicator is what stopped the elevator, and that usually happens when people jump."

Rimmy: "We'll keep that in mind, won't we?"

Eyes and Ears: "Yup."

Ah well, c'est la vie.

On the weekend I talked to the useless braggart that replaced Zoroastrian, and told him to actually patrol, and to not just write down that he is.

He said that he was, and I told him that all electronic records indicate that he's not.

He suggested that something was wrong with the electronics, and I pointed out that it would be an unusual malfunction indeed, since it seems to accurately show everybody else doing what they're doing.

He then said "Well, I'm doing everything I was shown to do."

Dumbass. "I'm the one that trained you, and I certainly didn't tell you to take long breaks between doing halfassed patrols where you don't go everwhere and check everything."

He then wanted to come by during my shift on Monday to see these records for himself. I asked him what he hoped to accomplish by that.

"So that I know what I'm missing." Yeah right, so you can see what data points I'm using so you can figure out how to fool them.

"I've already told you what you're missing. This is the same information that the client uses. Do your duty."

And, when I checked his records after that, they were better. ;)

Laid down the same basic thing to the Filipin-Pho last night too. Same deal, he said he goes everywhere and does everything, but unless he's greasing up with oil of etherealness, he ain't doing squat. I told him the deal was that if things are done, the client gets mad, calls the company, and you get removed from site. "So do the whole thing, okay?"

"Uh... okay."

We'll see. ;)

The sort of people I'm sure I've played with in Guild Wars.