I'm going to need you in this meeting...

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After the INITECH office fire Bill Lumbergh’s father, William H. Lumbergh III, Esq., Chairman of the parent holding company, stepped in to deal with the aftermath. Now, he couldn’t very well fire his namesake son, Bill, but he could move him over to INITRODE where he’d not introduce so many problems. Call it a demotion if you want, it’s more like nepo-damage-control, it’s uncanny how much Bill looks like his 65 year old father, isn’t it, sorta freaks me out.

So what to do? First order of business was to do just that, get business back up and running, enough to be able to send invoices and process payments. Payables could wait, Nina is freakishly good at keeping vendors on hold waiting to find someone to talk to. Us IS nerds were dispatched to acquire as much used gear as we could locally to, as he said, “just make it work you basement dwelling geeks” in the temp office space they rented. That was 6 months of hell, but thankfully that’s behind us and it’ll be smooth sailing now.

Meanwhile, his tech-savvy nephew, the one from the sister he really doesn’t like, kept running on about this “Internet thing” and how it’s going to change the future. He seemed dubious about it in this meeting I was pulled in to, could have been the comment about how “I don’t need email, I have my fax machine next to my desk”, maybe, not sure. By the end of this meeting his nephew, Chip Lumbergh, managed to convince his uncle enough to magically be appointed Vice President over this new division and, somehow, landed a little bit of cash to do it. 

How and why? Well, according to his uncle, “his name is Chip, of course he understands technology, his name is the same as a computer chip”, I’ll let you find any logic in that. Or not. His sister did work for EDS like 20 years ago, rumor has it she had an affair with Ross Perot and that’s Chip’s father. He’s never admitted, denied or even acknowledged it, guess that’s why she stayed a Lumbergh. Maybe in the future they’ll have easy DNA tests to find out, wait, it IS almost a new century.

Chip also managed to convince him he needed some staff to start with, some devs, a sysadmin, a network engineer and a team lead, he managed to scam a team of 6. Somehow, despite me not saying a damned word the entire meeting, when asked who he wanted, Chippy-boy pointed at me.

Crap.

As I'm trying to leave the conference room, Chip "The Chipper", as he refers to himself in the 3rd person, jogs to catch up next to me all but running out of the room. He does that ever so annoying frat boy back slap thing and says “I’m so happy you’re on the team, you did such a great job on that disaster fiasco! I can’t wait to talk to you about my ideas, a new consumer gaming computer and an online game to play on it!”.

Sure thing Chip, I... Can't... Wait...

Double crap. Oh well, the checks clear, which is more than I can say for the last startup I was at. I can’t wait to see what he names this new division. I'm sure it will be something original, like the others.

Not.

And with that it’s off to scour the old building for anything left that’s not burnt up and hit the computer show for used gear. On a bright note, the new Star Wars, Phantom Menace, comes out in like a month, I can't wait to see it, there's no way it can go wrong, it's Lucas!

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