A brief synopsis of recent OIT activity

Friday, March 8, 8:38 a.m. — Greetings, Notre Dame student body. Though we realize most of you have evacuated campus for your various spring break plans, we’d still like to send a short email about the current status of connectivity on campus. Sorry to take up your time. Hopefully this won’t be too much of an inconvenience, as we have no intention of blowing up your inbox. Just wanted to say that certain buildings have been having trouble connecting to the interwebs, and we’re working the best we can to address the problem. Thanks!

Friday, March 8, 12:41 p.m. — Hi, me again. Again, not trying to be too much of a pest here, but we just discovered that this connectivity problem might be a bit more grisly than anticipated. Long story short, a groundhog seems to have found his way into our wiring. There is some damage to our hardware, but we think we can identify all those issues by this afternoon. Accomplishing that, everything can get fixed over the weekend, and we’ll have your connection good as new by Monday! Thanks.

Friday, March 8, 4:21 p.m. — So, turns out the groundhog is still scampering around. Yeah, we thought he’d given us his two cents and leave, but turns out the mongrel is still bouncing around in there. Dastardly little varmint has his mouth around a cable, just eying down my engineers as they try to scare him out of there. Sorry for the angered language — there’s just a plucky smirk on this demon’s face that unnerves me. We couldn’t fix connectivity today, as this critter’s been holding our systems hostage, and the extent of its damage is still left up to our imagination. Regardless, hopes are high; we are calling animal control at the present moment and will be keeping the groundhog under constant surveillance until God purges its evil from the earth. Have a nice weekend.

Monday, March 11, 8:02 a.m. — Things have gone from bad to worse. As it happens, animal control wouldn’t lend us a hand since this, technically, only falls under the jurisdiction of OIT. I personally don’t understand how this only qualifies as a technological problem, but OK. We’ve been spurned by the laws of man, and thus have taken on the mission ourselves. I have an engineer who’s lost three fingers and another who’s lost an eye, but we’ll chase after this damned groundhog with an undying fury. I feel that I’ve lost my sanity, but I will hunt this monster ’til my last breath. Will provide updates as our crusade continues. Until then, connectivity will still be an issue in LaFortune, Decio and Haggar.

Monday, March 11, 4:16 p.m. — The day has been a long one. We’ve wrestled up a temporary solution, biding the groundhog’s time with distractions acquired from the DeBart vending machines, though I fear they will not satiate the beast’s hunger for long. I only have enough time to get off this email. Not only is connectivity still on the fritz, but I now fear that we OIT engineers are on the run. That’s right. It’s been made clear: Though we thought we were hunting it, it has all the while been hunting us. Our numbers are growing thin, unable to keep up with the groundhog’s ferocity. Will update in the morning, as we continue to scramble our resources against the creature’s ire throughout the night.

Tuesday, March 12, 10:47 a.m. — It finished its meal faster than we anticipated, and I now regret giving the creature access to so much sugar and 5-hour Energy. The beast has become a dynamo, a thunder-ball of energy, and its appetite once again focuses on OIT hardware and OIT engineers. I came face-to-face with the beast as it swallowed my best friend whole. It occurs to me that no one truly appreciates how vicious groundhogs are as a species. It also occurs to me that I’ve looked into the eyes of the devil. I have seen the abyss, and in turn, that abyss has seen me. How will I ever come back from this? How do I return to my wife and family? How can I ever lie to my children, telling them everything will be alright? I will never be the same. I begin to fear we will lose this war. Working closely with Cisco, our network vendor, who is confident that maintenance tonight will address these network issues.

Tuesday, March 12, 1:43 p.m. — Recent experiments reveal the groundhog to be bulletproof. I fear the worst.

Wednesday, March 13, 8:33 a.m. — It’s gone. I cannot believe it. The beast has let mankind live. Will I ever understand why? Can one ever comprehend why such Lovecraftian horrors have yet to sweep us out from existence? I feel my life has an added significance, though conceptually I’ve never felt so small in this vast cosmos. Could it all be part of some grander plan? My mind races, and I hesitate to recognize how I’ve rediscovered God. Could it all be a ploy, this wily groundhog just toying with us? I may never know … Network issues have stabilized, as if by luck, fate or providence. What engineers are remaining have begun to slowly address the wreckage, burying the dead and tallying up how we might recover from the damages done to University hardware. Expect updates tomorrow, and, for once, dare to hope.

Thursday, March 14, 4:18 p.m. — Additional network maintenance almost complete. We reckon everything will be finished by the time students return from break. We’ve had to replace an absurd amount of hardware. My memory flashes over the last couple of days, back and forth through the hell I’ve been living through since Friday, and I still grapple with the thought that this all came from one rodent. Could it all have been one bad dream? No, I tell myself as I attend the memorial service. No, and I’m lucky to be alive. I cannot sleep, but I spend my days kissing my wife and telling my kids how much I love them. Life is precious, we found out. I do not expect to stay at this job much longer. Thank you all for listening.

Being on break, most students deleted these emails directly from their inbox, never reading them.