So, I came in to work last week Monday (25/June/07) and my boss wasn't in. Got into the office ready to do my morning routine: Make coffee, print up yesterday's numbers, collect faxes,... y'know, the usual. However, nothing gets done until I log on the computer, set up my Radio Stream, and check my e-mail. Priorities, of course. My computer was already on and logged up as it is wont to do from time to time. I shut down my computer every night but because there is no locked door on my "office" it tends to get used and misued, especially on the weekends. One time someone used my computer to register for a Passport. I used to get up at arms about it. Now I really don't care.
So the computer's already up and I'm hitting all my usual sites. Problem is, the web browser is not registering them as it usually does. Internet Explorer has this great function where you start typing an address in the Go box and a pop-down window appears with all the websites this computer has been to which closely match what you're typing. This time my computer was reacting like I was typing Chinese. Checked my blogs, same thing. Then I took the time to realize that the Desktop was completely different. I write a lot of office documents which I have either collected sparsely around the screen or, when I'm feeling guilty and orderly, placed in folders. This time the desktop was considerably less cluttered. A whole lot of head-scratching came into play until I went to the Start Menu to look up another document and saw that it wasn't me who was logged in to this computer. It was my boss. He apparently had been on my computer over the weekend, doing whatever, and didn't shut down at all. All of a sudden my heart went into my throat. I had been doing such a good job of keeping my Blue Man Group escapades out of Saks Fifth Avenue and strictly on my blog that now I felt there was a breach of security. Had he read my blog? Will he read my blog? Now that I just typed in all the frickin' addresses, including to the new one which barely anyone knows about, he's got everything he needs to just peer into my vast secrets. One of the entries on the new blog has me writing about my plans to phase Saks out of my life. He doesn't need to be reading that. So I freaked out. That night at home I tried to figure out a solution. How can I keep my boss from finding out all this stuff? Checked all the settings that this new blog has to offer (and there are quite a lot, believe you me), and found the easiest answer: Allow the blog to only be read by the author. So that's how I've kept it. It's nothing personal. I just wanted to keep my job.
Interesting postscript to that story: That Tuesday my boss ran out the store to catch his train and asked me to shut his computer down. First time that ever happened. I scoured his browser history to try and erase the addresses, but they never came up. Whatever I typed on my computer didn't register completely on his account. So, I don't think he actually read anything. I think it was all really in my head and I overreacted. Thing is, if he (or anyone in the store, for that matter) wanted to look me up online I'm not too hard to find. And he would've slipped something into conversation by now, which he hasn't. I even mentioned my being a Blue Man for Hallowe'en last year and he didn't bat an eyebrow.
And people tell me I think too much...
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