Low Pass Filters, High Pass Filters, Band-Pass Filters, Gas Pass Filters

Not really quite a follow-up comment on Carsten's new pastime, but at least it'll get his attention in the morning when he fires up his web browser.
Today, I experienced Data Loss (TM) in a most detrimental manner. After tediously hand-entering 256 different resistor values and double-checking each sum value by hand to a datasheet that was "possibly wrong" according to my supervisor, then hand-calculating 256 more values via formula because Excel thinks it's smarter than the user, I left for my lunch break, only to return to find that "Excel has caused a fatal error. Send error report?"
Send error report?!!! Well that's all very merry and good for Excel to say, but I've got over 100 unsaved data points caught up in that "fatal error!" Good for nothing Windows NT 4.0.
For that matter, good-for-nothing Internet Gestapo - excuse me, IT department, as it seems I've discovered my company's most irritating weakness: its sheer incompetence at understanding and handling the simple necessities of worker connectivity. I swear to you that Jerrod and Jim running out of a broom closet would do a better job than these clowns.
Today, my supervisor gave me an assignment which required me to have access to a data-crunching program, as there was no way to construct the plots by hand. I was told that the PC that was supposedly put on order for me would arrive at some date unknown due to some hidden beauracratical information down the line to which I was not party. Thus, I have been usurping the computer of a vacationing engineer, and doing my data plotting. However, since the engineer will be returning tomorrow from vacation, thus leaving me with no computer, I decided to offer up the use of my laptop as a company resource, as it has the same simple plotting capabilities as the borrowed PC.
However, the one drawback to my laptop is that it runs Redhat 8.0, and thus cannot read the windows-formatted diskettes that the company normally uses. Thus, my supervisor suggested that he email me the necessary data, such that I might be able to use my local machine to finish the task. The only work on the IT department's behalf, then, was to simply respond to my request to "please turn on the ethernet drop in cubicle #9, as I need to receive data from my supervisor." Well, they responded all right - with a rude email to my work account stating "I looked in your cubicle this afternoon and noticed that you did not have a PC. I do not understand why you need an active ethernet drop when you have no PC. I looked up the requests and we are working hard to get the flow-down PCs to interns as soon as possible. When you receive your PC, then I will activate your drop."
I found myself needing to once again explain my predicament and refrain from using the greeting "Dear Thong-Soilers," to convey the fact that they were not only screwing me over, they were more importantly screwing my supervisor over by preventing me from doing what I was supposed to be doing. Suffice to say, this whole shenanigan did not end well, despite the fact that the person handling my request ended up visiting the cubicle I was working in at about 4 pm, and asking me to explain my situation again, causing me to question whether or not he was able to comprehend long words typed onto a screen. The net result: "I'm sorry, it's company policy. Only PCs issued by us get internet. We don't allow laptops from home onto the network [this is despite the fact that everyone else clearly does it and makes no effort to hide them]. And no Linux on the network, we're a Windows network, and you know, once you're on the network, it's easy to get into everything." Perhaps, then, it's a money-saving scheme - rather than hiring competent sysadmins to improve network security - hire the ones that can repeat company policy well and simply make the network inaccessible to employees!
At this point, the only regret I have is that all the good-looking people in the corporate world get hired by IT departments (though no complaints here, as I've already got my own attractive sysadmin).
Frustrating though the day was, my sour mood was greatly tempered by the unexpected pleasure of a phone call after work from a dear friend of mine who'd promised me before I left for the summer that he'd call me, and actually followed up on it! What a nice surprise to find someone who really does remember all the little things. We chatted for an hour or so about this, that, and the other, siege weapons and golf - really was a nice reprieve from needing to keep polite and on topic at work and making the effort to connect with my uncle and cousin at home. Plus, it did help me sort quite a few thoughts that have been weighing on my mind as of late - especially since, it seems, he's had also had a recent encounter with a moral problem similar to one that I've been torn over. It brings back a lot of memories of 8th grade and a small run-in I had with the administration who was too spineless to stand up for a single article published in a student body-sponsered literary magazine that managed to offend the delicate sensibilties of a yuppie parent (who was apparently offended at the placement of my toilet-humor article right across from a very serious letter to a Congressman written by another student, probably hers). Man, lighten up... in a way, one could even argue that the magazine was operating on an extremely sophisticated level (if one were a bullshit artist, that is) by employing juxtaposition of a politically oblivious viewpoint to that of "a student forced to write a letter to the Congressman as a 7th grade assignment, who later submitted it as a literary piece for the school magazine."
Then, I was forced to issue a letter of apology and recall the magazines. Now? In retrospect, no so sure I would've done the same. It's a lot to think about - where do you place the blame in something in which people have a choice in participating in?
On another note, Max's quote of the day is "Any more eccentric and he's gonna be going around dressed in a kilt, Victoria's Secret fall selection, and bat wings."
I like that image a lot.

Further bulletins as events warrant.