Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng

"How long have you spent working on JUST this one issue for (company name deleted to comply with non-disclosure agreement)?"
Instantly (and constantly) suspicious of questions like this from management, especially when the correct answer would be, "I'm not allowed to access those systems since that guy hates me," I opted for an honest answer of "Including weekends and evenings about 20 hours on this one issue."
Moments later, I got a 'Ticket Assigned to You' notice and the ticket itself had a pretty decent and up to date version of the work performed. It also clearly had my real name in the "ticket owner" field.
I guess the meeting yesterday went better than I'd hoped. In order for the whiteboard scam to work, I had to establish trust. Of course, I started with legible answers. Insightful design of the IT solution, all according to best practices.
Then, I started working on my (as yet untitled) science fiction novella.
"Since either server can function as an STA resource with no additional cost, we recommend fusing the interface with a crystalline matrix to provide redundancy and quadruple data storage and throughput."
While the technology does not exist, the consultant was able to sell this fallacy. Damn.
"We advise that the servers be filled with cooling gel to improve performance and increase minty freshness."
The consultant faded off halfway through this and pretended to cough and choke.
I was still writing: "We anticipate that the user experience will be improved by lessening the drain on network resources." I waited for a positive response from (company name deleted to comply with non-disclosure agreement) before continuing:
"We propose that network utilization will be dramatically reduced by users taking a mini-break during the day after we pre-load the server with streaming video and cache random web pages. Proactively. Multi-user functionality. Outside the box." The consultant actually suggested the existence of the mini-break. As if employees use the internet for non-work purposes on company time.
I filled the stunned silence by drawing a bunny on the whiteboard. Before the conversation had started again, I'd indicated that the bunny's parachute was, in fact, an anvil.
It was a very very cute bunny.