Without Further Ado, I Bring To You...

...the XXXI edition of the Carnival of the Badger.

I apologize for the delay in the showing. I had a "March Madness" theme planned out last night ( I know, I know - I did a "Superbowl" theme last time, so I was cheating a little bit ) - and then all hell broke loose this morning.

I've been working alot this last week and a half, and today really got the heart going. When I got here this morning, the Internet was broken again - this time just the office was affected. Slowly from 8am, until about noon, a whole Lord of the Flies thing started happening in the office.

The three owners, and all the GMs are out of town this week, at a major convention. They're all out cruising the strip out in Vegas for the IHRSA convention - which is a nice break from cruising up and down Hwy 100, where two of our clubs are located.

The powers-that-be may be MIA, but at least we know where they are. There's a couple of kids here in Milwaukee that have gone missing. That has absolutely nothing to do with my 'Lord of the Flies' work day, but Badger Blogger has something you should read about it.

But with the owners too far away to do anything about the mounting problems, people started fending for themselves. I spent almost half of the morning on the phone with Time Warner. Don't even get me started on them. Maybe we should look into if AT&T can provide a service for us. They seem to be everywhere else.

It started off as a small turf war. The accouting people felt that the business ops people weren't as concerned about the problem as we should have been. Everyone in the office gets along REALLY well, so it's funny to see when sides break out, and one side feels the other is being too elitist.

But we did start to band together before we let the tension destroy us all. The tension never really quite dissipated, and was always there, kinda simmering beneath the surface though.

I could only imagine what would have happened if we knew the problem wouldn't get resolved in the near future. I had visions of everyone just snapping - thoughts of making fires to stay warm - doomsday prognosticators standing atop their desks shouting out at the top of their lungs - everyone wearing tinfoil hats - and others, hiding underneath their desks with hands covering ears, trying not to hear the chaos around them.

But like I mentioned, we started to band together, and if not for a small form of democracy, order was restored. The network came back online, and the internet returned. I was then able to tell you my harrowing story, and all is right with the world now that the Carnival is up and running.

One last side note about today and how it relates to the Carnival. After order was restored, and I had my bright idea to do the "Lord of the Flies" theme - I was sitting at my desk, when someone needed to run next door to teach a class for employees. She was running late due to the morning mishap, and she proceeded to shout out: "Where's my stapler?? Has anyone seen my stapler??" I couldn't stop laughing.

So you almost got an "Office Space" theme for the Carnival today, had I not been almost done with the re-write. Maybe next time.

If your days aren't as hectic as mine, you can go see Nick for hosting information.