The troll has reached the plaza...

It was a quiet day at the Plush Pipex Plaza for the security guards... just like any other. After all, they only had to walk 5m from a nearby office to annoy the people entering the Plaza.

However, the day didn't remain very quiet for long. It didn't so much get noisy, but smelly. As the guards were wondering if a point-and-squirt luser had managed to get a little too close to the plaza, a shape wandered up to the door.

Noticing the hulking mass, one guard said "'ere that's a troll isn't it ?" To which the other replied "looks like it, but I thought that they were held somewhere in Southampton"

"Oh they are, but apparently a really dangerous one has escape and is roaming the country side".

At this point the other guard's brain starts going into loops as he realised that the troll in front of him is most likely to be Simon the stressed, the troll that escaped from TCP Towers not so long ago. He tries to warn the other guard, but is too late. The other guard has already started to intercept the incoming troll...

"Now look 'ere, your kind aren't welcome h<WARGGHGGGHGHGHGH-guggle>".

The guard never finished as Simon the stressed reached down and tore his head off and munched on it.

"Mmmmmm, fresh security guard. Makes change from lusers and sump oil"

"Now Simon" said Nicolai, who was bravely 'escorting' Simon, "be nice to the security guard will you..."

On hearing this, Simon unsuccessfully attempts to stick the half-eaten head back onto the security guard's shoulders.

"It fit as well as luser does through the eye of a needle" said Simon as he threw the head over his shoulder.

"Wwwwhat are you doing with that thing ?" said the remaining security guard, who had given his own contribution to the stench at the door to the plaza.

"Me start work today here"

"Its starting work here ?" asked the guard incredulously, looking at Nicolai.

"Oh he is", said Nicolai, "however he has just escaped from TCP Towers and has been on the run for the past few weeks so he needs a little bit of re-adjustment to a normal company".

"You call this company normal ?", said the guard, "Still, I guess he can go in. Just make sure he doesn't eat any more people".

"Why not ? People are nice to eat. Much nicer than lusers" slobbered Simon.

"Yes, but these are nice people Simon, they will be nice to you" soothed Nicolai.

"Oh, okay".

With that they entered the plush plaza. Arriving at the reception, Nicolai introduced Simon to the idea of a chair. With that done, he bribed the receptionists to let the troll stay in their presence un-attended and went off to Lart some lusers.

In the meantime, Simon was looking at the other people starting at Pipex with hunger in his eyes. Breakfast had been very short that morning. He ignored the looks he was getting after the plant next to him had wilted. Whilst the new employees waited to be put through the paperwork, Simon amused himself by munching on a few of the better looking magazines and chairs in the reception area.

After a while, the new recuits (and a troll) were taken away and forced to fill in lots of paper work to ensure that they really wanted to work at the plaza. Simon the stressed was very good during this time, especially when the person leading the torture asked everyone to introduced themselves...

"I'm Foogrumble Bar, soon to be in technical support". From the happyness of the person, Simon assumed that they either hadn't done tech support before or had done and had a lab for a blood stream.

"I'm Click N McSquirt, a web designer". This one formed a black hole of clues from where no clue had returned from.

"Rich RouteFlap, a network engineer". At least this person looked vaguely clueful. He also looked like someone who would accidently caused half of your network to be routed via outer mongolia and via SimonNet, but you can't have everything ("You want a T3 and correct routing ? What is the world coming to these days ?").

"Me troll. Me a sysadm. No, that wrong. Me", Simon paused whilst he looked at a sheet of paper in front of him, "systems development engineer. Whatever that is. Me not a sysadmin and any one who say otherwise gets them arms torn off, they legs broken, their lungs torn up and them brains bashed out". The other recruits looked a little worried at this and edged a little bit away from the troll drooling at the prospect of eating another nice tasting luser at the end of the table.

"er, I'm Phil Phone Firewall, a helpdesk person". This one looked worried at being next to the troll and a little clueless.

After all of the introductions were done, the last of the paper work put under the finger nails (or talons) of the new employees, they were dropped off at their respective working areas.

Simon the stressed sat in front of his desk, facing the PC that was decidely dead. He had gotten through several infernal systems engineers and the machine still wouldn't work. Even eating the engineers with Hoi Sin sauce hadn't helped. He decided that it was probably the hardware that was at fault and no eating of internal engineers would help that problem. Although it may help the others deliver working systems. Taking the dead CD-ROM out of the system, he booted up the system to find that Windows95 had been installed on it. After the convulsions had died down, he asked around about getting Solaris on the box infront of him....

"Me need Solaris fix"
"er, there maybe a problem there"
"Why that ?"
"Well, the company refuses to pay for unsupported products on the desktop"
"Og, me just a simple troll, but they refuse to pay for unix since it unsupported ? Who is 'they' anyway ?"
"'They' are the bean counters who are in bed with Microsoft. And yes, Unix is unsupported"
"This a strange idea for an ISP which relies on Solaris for its business"
"Yes, and the bean counters want to know where we can use the HorrorThatIsNT within the plaza"
"Ooook. This not good. Where can poor me get some anti-M$ vacine ?"
"Down in the stores, we have a weekly order from the makers of it"

After the anti-M$ vacine, Simon felt much better. Using Win95 didn't cause convulsions any more either. His PC was even happy now, after he had replaced the CD-ROM in it with one which had the correct interface on it.

"Me thirsty. Me need drink", thought Simon. With that, he got a cup of water from the nearby water dispenser.

"Gook, strange water. Water not normally blue with green bits floating in it. Still, it smell nice".

And with that, Simon took a swig. Not noticing the smug smiles from the other people in the room. The reason for these smiles rapidly came apparent as Simon slowly changed from a troll to a peon.

sigh I've got a feeling that this could be the last TCP Towers/Pipex Plaza post I do for a while. There are several reasons for this. One is that most of the TCP Towers posts were brought on by stress and lack of sleep[1]. Stress is not really a factor at the Pipex Plaza yet. This week certainly hasn't been that stressful. I'm sure that this will change as we're forced to use M$ software. Another reason is that the reasons for the stress I was under at TCP, normally lusers, featured a lot in the posts. Without any luser interaction, it removes much of the material I used to use. I'm fairly sure that I'm going to find lusers internal to the plaza that I can use instead though :)

[1]	No drugs were ever used[2] in the writing of any TCP Towers post, no matter what certain people think.
[2]	Who needs drugs when you've got stress and lack of sleep anyway ? Its cheaper, although the side effects are fairly bad at times.

Posted on 13 Sep 1996