15: Cheese Mover Habits

Here’s a few words about system upgrades–or, rather, a few words about about system upgrades.

Modern systems administrators have outsourced their memory to online forums and search engines, which worked until illiterate large language models got rebranded as AI and the resulting feral autocomplete engines stuffed your external brain’s technology section with reconstituted search-engine-optimized Scorpion fan fiction. Fortunately for you, so did your boss. You have the option to fall back on the computer’s built-in manual, whereas your boss thinks books like The Seven Highly Effective Cheese Mover Habits contains undying management wisdoms. He doesn’t remember anything from that either, but he keeps it on the back of the loo to present an image to anyone foolish enough to enter his lair. No, don’t touch it, the cheap paper those things are printed on absorb ambience and I should know. But did you consider, possibly, for a moment, working on the legitimate issue underlying your question? No you did not, as evidenced by the fact that whatever circuitous “reasoning” process that led you to write and send this letter betrayed you by permitting you to, once again, touch not just a computer but the Internet.

If this amuses you, check out my collection Letters to ed(1).