If I had $1 for every consultant that breezed into my office and turned my professional life upside down and then merrily breezed out... well, I wouldn't be rich, but I'd certainly rather have the $1.

Latest debacle: paper MCSE (certification) comes in and realizes that he can't understand a network I've grown for the past six years. A network that can support a nationwide non-profit full of social work majors¹ with 99% uptime and just one (me) IT person for 1/10th what, say, Lockheed-Martin would've paid for it. Yeah, it's complicated, yeah, it's quirky, yeah, it's got 12 servers, yeah, it's got Linux, Novell, and Windows NT on it. But it works. And it's consistent enough that I could teach any techie with some network experience how to keep it running in a week or so.

So, one consultant meeting with the executive director later and, while on vaction, I get a note saying: "I [the executive director with a psych degree] have determined that we must move as quickly as possible to an all-windows 2000 network structure. Please have a migration plan on my desk next week. Your target date is [three months from now] for completion of this project."².

So I want one of these. Maybe six or seven so I can give them to friends. Or mail them to other consultants with, like, dismemberd floppies inside or something.

Found it on Little. Yellow. Different.