Hello once again, Gentle Reader. As we roll into the holiday season and my personal favorite holiday looms around the corner, I find I need to make room in my soul for all the turkey I’m about to eat. As is appropriate around this time of year, let me unburden myself by giving a shout-out and a big THANKS to many of you who have made my life so much better, primarily by keeping me gainfully employed over the years.

    1. Thank you to all the hackers, virus writers and crackers out there. Without that additional 24 hours per days of security work that you thrust upon us, we don’t know whatever we would do!

    2. Thank you to all the spammers – you know who you are. You not only provide us with additional work in tweaking spam filters, you provide our colleagues with endless complaints and gripes which make us feel like people actually want to talk to us.

    3. Thank you to the BCS. Without your wisdom and abilities in computer programming, how would we ever know which of the three undefeated teams from years past (USC, Texas, and St. Stephen’s School for the Blind) would deserve to go to the ‘national championship’? For that matter, without you, we certainly wouldn’t understand why a 2-loss team should be ranked higher than a 1- or no-loss team.

    4. Thank you to all the marketing folks who ask us for technological implementation overviews for products which are on the horizon – the distant horizon. Without being able to give you these gross overestimates and revise them daily to meet your moving target, we would be stuck watching YouTube!

    5. Thank you to all the people in the trenches out there who send the funny YouTube videos to us several times per day. Without 427 people watching the same video at the same time, there’s no way we could get that faster internet line past the management teams!

    6. Thank you to the management teams who constantly test our abilities to do more with less.

    7. Thank you to the sales teams who keep us on our toes at the end of months and quarters by constantly checking to ensure faxes are working, emails are coming in, and phones are ringing. It’s nice that we get that extra few days at the end of the month to ensure that the technology which was working fine for the first 25 days is still working just fine.

    8. Thank you to all you road warriors who insist on administrative rights on your laptops. Without the fulfillment of cleaning spyware and viruses off of your system on a regular basis, we might actually have to do real work. Go ahead, keep disabling that pesky virus protection!

    9. Thank you to all the implementation folks who call us with Sunday night emergencies. Without those extra hours we put in on the weekend, we wouldn’t be able to leave the office early while still putting in our 45+ hours per week.

    10. And, finally, thank you to all the bar owners out there. You know who you are, and you know why we’re there!

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

- The (Probably Soon Unemployed) Journyx Grumpy IT Guy