The Interstate Laptop Saga.

*Friday*

TheFuckingFucker (TFF) has finally received a new work laptop. He's been waiting for this for about 6 months; he's utterly convinced that his current laptop is dying, and that he needs a new one "RIGHT FUCKING NOW". Now that it's finally arrived, he can't wait for us to configure it in our VIC office and then send to QLD - he's asked us to mail directly to him, and let us configure it remotely. I objected, telling him that it would be a nightmare, but he was desperate, so we relented.

Big fucking mistake.

It took me about 5 hours of fucking around just to get it to join the domain (turns out that Windows doesn't like ip6 when joining a domain). When I finally got it on the domain (this was all happening at the same time as we were discovering just how big the fraud was from ChocolateStarfish, so it was a crazy day), I discovered that the new laptop didn't have Office 2007 on it. This was a surprise, but not a problem - I told TFF to look in his office for a Office 2007 install CD, and that we would use his old Office key from his old laptop.

TFF didn't like this, but he had no choice (while tempted, I didn't mention that it was essentially his fault for not letting us double check the laptop here), so he went on his treasure hunt. About two minutes after I told him to look for it, I found the Office installer on the QLD network drive. I was very busy with the ChocolateStarfish fraud stuff, so I let TFF keep on searching - I did my fraud "hacking", got back to TFF, then told him that I had the installer anyway (he couldn't find the CD after ~10mins of searching), and that we could proceed.

He said "Fuck this!!", went offline and stormed out of the office. The QLD admin lady skyped me, asking "What's going on?!". At this point we all (iOrgasm, PonyGirl, and myself) decide that this particular problem can wait until after the weekend.

*Monday*

I'm in, somewhat earlier than usual, waiting for TFF to get online so I can finish this Office install. I'm busy with fraud stuff still - hearing just how much money we've lost really says just how big this fraud was - but since I'm such a nice guy (really!), I'm trying to get this install done ASAP. TFF, when he finally gets on Skype, is actually still in a bitchy mood, complaining that he doesn't have time for this "fucking shit", that we "treat him like shit", etc etc. I phone him to try and diffuse the situation (we're talking about 8 mins of lost work time here with the CD hunt), but he's busy packing up his new laptop to send down to us to finish configuring - he "really just can't be fucking dealing with it" anymore, and wants us to do it, even though it will cost him about 5 days of freight time.

I finally get through to him, and with me playing the diplomat, being all nice, trying to get this done so I can continue with the fraud stuff - I convince him to let me log into his laptop, so I can finish the Office install. As the installer is running - TFF had actually packed up his laptop in a box and was ready to post, I had to convince him to unpack it so I can do the install -  I hear a beep. The Office install had failed, as the installer on the network drive is missing a lot of required files.

As soon as I saw the error message, I knew I was fucked. I explained to TFF the problem, that I could send up a CD within a couple of days/network copy the files up, but he, quite calmly (I knew he was on the edge), explained that the laptop was coming down to us, no matter what.

Not the greatest day.

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Later on, I found out that the BigBoss's brother-in-law (who works for us, in the same) had informed one of the co-conspirators (yup, it's not just ChocolateStarfish, there's more!) in the NSW office about the fact that we knew about their dodgy second company, thus giving them time to delete important evidence, files, etc.

Just keeps getting better and better.