When you finally finish the first draft of a technical manual, you can’t help experiencing a sublime feeling of accomplishment.

And there’s nothing that deflates this feeling faster than wasting an hour babysitting the copy machine, waiting for the inevitable paper jam or system crash or whatever. Ugh. It’s all so mundane and tedious. Sometimes I try to pass the time by imagining that the process is… well, more epic or something…

Three Drafts for the QA team, on whom one can rely,
Seven for the Engineers, who do naught but bitch and moan,
Nine for the Managers with deadlines nigh,
One for the VP on his dark throne
In the land of Marketing, where the shadows lie.
One Manual to rule them all, One Manual to find them,
One Manual to explain it all, and at the Kinko’s bind them.

Nope, that didn’t really help.