The Machine that goes Ping!

Our Solidyne Micromizer III was beeping for about a week.  One of my staff members told me that something in the electrical closet was emitting a loud beep every 90 seconds or so.  My job as Executive Director encompasses many different areas.  I fundraise, work with the board, oversee the finances, manage the staff, and deal with intermittent beeping noises.

I unlocked the electrical closet (as fixer of things that go beep I have a key), and found the source of our beep.  It was, in fact, our Solidyne Micromizer III.  The Micromizer III is an impressive panel, and one can open it up to find a vast array of buttons and numbers that probably do some very important things. 

An important point to note here - I did not then, nor do I now, have any fucking idea what the Solidyne Micromizer III does.  After 18 minutes of searching, I found a small toggle that said "Off."  I toggled it.  The beeping stopped.  Sure, we are no longer Micromizing anything, but I fixed the beeping noise.  Which I believe was an important leadership step to take.

I asked various staff members if they knew what the Solidyne Micromizer III was supposed to do (when not toggled off).  No one had a clue.  I likened it to the Monty Python sketch about the "Machine that goes PING!"  My staff members, both from age and a lack of appreciation of what is really funny, had no idea what a Monty Python is.

One young staff person gave me a different analogy - "It's like Lost!"

Yes, that's much better. Instead of turning off a machine that doesn't do anything except beep impressively, I've now started a cycle where we need to enter certain numbers into the Solidyne Micromizer III every 142 minutes or the entire agency will be destroyed in a massive electromagnetic pulse.  Thanks.