Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - Comments About Comments and Unintended Porn

Oh, wow, I have two acknowledged readers already! *sniff* I'm so touched.

To Desired At Dawn: Thanks, and I'll read yours as soon as I get a chance - I think I like you already!

To Wendy and the rest of the world: I just have to tell this story...

Once upon a time I was working in IT at an environmental laboratory. Our department was small - my boss, me, and "Art". Art is a terrific guy, a couple years older than me, who happens to be obviously homosexual. Never anything we discussed, and it never really mattered - it was just *obvious*. Now back in the day (about 1997), digital cameras were still a pretty neat new thing. Art brought one he borrowed from a friend into work and took lots of pictures of coworkers and of the building.

A couple weeks later, I was bouncing through the network and while in Art's personal directory (I had root access on the network and it was part of my job to be mucking around in other's people's files) I saw there was a bunch of JPEGs. "Oh, great!" I thought. "These must be the pictures he took of everyone at work. I'll look and see if any of them will be good for the company website."

I open the first file, and guess what opens up full screen on my 20" monitor facing out into a major thoroughfare through the building? A lovely photo of a nude gentleman in a rather compromising position! Aaaaagh!!! Close it! Close it!! Close it!!!


Art was sitting at his desk, perhaps 4 feet from my position. He gave no indication that I had seen it, and I don't think anyone else did either. So what to do? It's pornography on the network, but he is my friend, and no one could possibly see it except me and my boss. I didn't say anything. If my boss ever saw it, he never said anything to me.

Unintended pornography at work is bad. Unintended pornography at work directly involving coworkers is *much* worse.