A couple of the blokes in the office today dared to try what I wouldn’t yesterday: to re-load the photocopier toner. I knew if I tried it I’d end up struggling with it for half an hour before scattering that lovely black toner all over the carpet. So I went and did my photocopying on the fax machine instead.

Whereas these two… well, they only struggled for about ten minutes, before scattering lovely black toner all over the carpet. Oops. But at least the photocopier works again now.

We’ve moved floors in our building. After all, it had been a good three months since the last move — there was a real danger we would get fully settled in.

On the plus side, we’re two floors down, so the lift ride is slightly shorter. I’m close to a window, so there’s some natural light coming in, even if the view is just of other buildings and the atrium where-in there is a food court which is currently not used. So if I lean far over my desk, I can just make out the disused tables and chairs far below. There are no adjacent meeting rooms, so no having to nag people to close the door when they use the speakerphone (in fact my former neighbour was even more insistent on this than me).

On the minus side, it’s further to the kitchen, but the only other negative thing — the one has people up in arms — is that to get into the toilet, you can’t just use the electronic key, you have to grab a conventional metal key from a rack on the noticeboard. Theoretically there’s four keys, but in practice someone seems to have pinched some, because there’s only been two every time I’ve walked past. So there’s the real risk of being dying to go, but having to wait for a key. Blargh. How antiquated.

But hey, there’s a colour printer on the new floor. That makes up for everything.

Went into the gent’s at work. Standing at the urinal just about to get on with it when there’s a knock. “Hello?” Female voice. Must be a cleaner — one of several middle-aged women in dusty blue uniforms, generally seen spending an inordinate amount of time polishing the brass fittings in the building’s foyer. She’s checking if it’s safe to come in.

“Yeah”, I call back, trying to indicate that no, it’d be great if she waits a minute.

The door opens anyway. My hands are down near my zip, but nothing’s out, nothing’s open, so I turn around to see who it is. I don’t know what she thought she saw, but the colour drained away from her face. “Oh! Sorry! Sorry!” She backs out, and calls from behind the door. “Sorry sir! Sorry!”

Satisfied she’s not coming in, I get on with it, then go out, passing her in the corridor. I tell her there’s nobody else in there. She says sorry again and thank you. I chuckle and keep walking.

• Flashback: incident on a train in Scotland

An update about my colleague who lost his laptop computer on Friday the 13th last month. A couple of weeks later he was playing with his kids in the front yard when a male youth walked past on the footpath. With a laptop under his arm. Colleague recognised the laptop, ran after him and rugby tackled him on the nature strip (or so the story goes. Maybe he just shouted out “Oi!”). Youth claimed he had bought it in the pub. Yup. A likely story. The laptop was recovered, and Colleague took it back into work and got the local geeks to look it over.

So they checked it on the asset register. And it didn’t match. Different serial numbers. Uh oh… had he beaten up the wrong kid and got the wrong laptop back? As it turns out there was something askew on the register, and it was eventually positively identified as being the correct laptop. Problem now is it’s no longer covered by the insurance (since they had been told it was stolen, and the replacement had arrived) so now it’s in laptop limbo.

The OFLC got back to me after I queried the G rating of Doctor Who: The Two Doctors, saying that: In the Board’s view, the material is suitable for general viewing as the incidences of violence are so theatrical and unrealistic in this low budget science-fiction context as to be minimal in their impact. Can’t say I agree with them when it comes to the stabbing scene, but there you go. Nice of them to reply, anyway, and not a hint of “go away, you crank”.

Geek joy: That moment when you realise that the tweaking you’ve done of the program has been successful, and though the code is a tad more confusing now (quite possibly in a way that nobody else will ever understand, no matter how well-documented it is), but all the effort was worth it because it takes about a hundredth of the time to run.

Had a company sponsored flu shot yesterday. Obviously they want to remove the most likely reason for taking a sickie this winter. Even us lowly contractors, normally shunned when it comes to corporate benefits, were included. The medicos took over a meeting room for a few hours to administer said shot to everybody who wanted it, thus allowing those of us sitting nearby to marvel at the liberalism of the corporation for allowing a safe injecting room on the premises. Best of all the flu shot showbag included mints, M&Ms, Ovalteenies, tissues (you’d think we’d be less in need of them now) and some Dilmah teabags (certainly a step up from the usual ones in the kitchen).

The plethora of milk formerly in the fridge at work (which at one point topped 25 one-litre non-long-life cartons of various varieties) has been pared right back, and now totals a mere 2.5 litres of Rev. Luckily for me, Rev is my preferred variety of milk. Not that it matters much since I’m only using it to top up my tea.

A lot of Melbourne’s bloggers are taking things a little more cautiously at the moment, following Jenjen’s sacking (just after she gave notice anyway) due to the alleged content and work time involved in her blog. For my own part, I’ve scrupulously avoided naming where I work or going into too much detail about my colleagues. And I think posting only from home is the order of the day.

Obviously it’s a difficult issue. I’d like to think that most companies take a realistic view of their employees using Internet access for non-work purposes, as long as it doesn’t interfere with work. Indeed, the same applies to any resources at work - phone calls, Post-It notes, e-mail. As long as you’re getting your work done, what does it matter?

Yeah, I sometimes send personal e-mails from work. And use the phone. And run out on errands (ho boy, did I ever today!). But then again, I make work calls on my personal mobile, interrupt home activities for work, connect to the work computers from my own PC at home (using MY electricity, dammit), and even use sometimes use my own pen and ink when writing work-related notes. Gasp!

I don’t know if it all balances out or not, but so far my bosses seem to be satisfied with me getting my work done when it’s needed. I do the work. They pay me the money (except what the taxman takes). Everyone’s happy (especially the taxman). Well, I hope so, anyway — it’s worked for three years in this job so far.

Ah, Friday the 13th, traditional for bad luck. So, what bad luck did I have on Friday the 13th? Erm… none really so far. (Admittedly the day is not over yet.)

This morning I slept through my alarm, which had been cunningly set to play the radio very very quietly. I blissfully slept until almost 8am, but since I didn’t have to be anywhere in a hurry, one might almost call this good luck. And yesterday I left my yearly ticket at home. It cost me an extra $5 to get to work and back, but not exactly fatal.

But just in case you are tempted to relax, thinking that nothing bad really happens on Friday the 13th, take note of this: a colleague of mine was in a rush this morning. He left the house with his laptop computer and some folders. Realised before he got to the car that he’d left something behind. Put them down, ran back into the house, got what he’d forgotten, and then came back and got in the car.

He drove out of his driveway, wondering why the car felt a little odd to drive. Stopped, got out, looked, couldn’t see anything askew. Drove off down the road. Realised a short time later that his laptop and folders were not in the car. Went back to find folders of paper strewn across the road, and the laptop computer missing, presumed stolen. Argh. He showed me one of the folders he recovered. Yep. Tyre marks.

So, there you have it. Some people do have bad luck on Friday the 13th.

Mystery Man has gone. Vanished. His desk is cleared. His computer is off. His deodorant is all gone. The nameplate from the top of his computer has been removed. Only his chair remains.

His last hurrah was his arrival on Tuesday morning, when he found his chair missing. This prompted that most rare of events - an actual conversation with the guy - which for my part I denied all knowledge of his missing chair. He then went on the prowl for it around the office, and spotted its legs and wheels in the clear bit of glass below the frosted bit of glass of the adjacent meeting room. He must have been very attached to this chair, because he then found a spare one from elsewhere, knocked on the door, and interrupted the meeting in progress to demand his chair back. Obviously the actions of a desperate man.

But now he’s gone. What he did (well, apart from show up for only a half hour at a time to make phone calls and read e-mails) will remain forever unknown.

4pm. Now his computer has gone too.