everything was going fine, until...

i show up at the office of this company through which the boss gets a big chunk of our work. i'm told the owner's assistant cant connect to the dvr anymore to check footage of who's been coming in late or whatever she uses it for once in a blue moon. i check the IP addy on the dvr, its gateway and port, go to her office - she lost the IP addy - a-ha, gotcha, easy. no - it doesnt work. i check her setup - she should be on the same network as the dvr. try to ping dvr - comes back with timeouts, but it comes back from some other IP address. wtf? i quickly check that the dvr is connected to the router under the receptionist's desk - lights are blinking - all good. go to their IT guy. he gets mildly agitated, tells the boss' assistant she should have called him, he doesnt know anything about this, but ok - we'll try to figure it out. i showed him what i did, the ping, he tries to ping some other stuff, seems to find a nearby addy that pings, tells me to change the dvr to that address, still doesnt ping. now a girl comes to his desk saying she lost her connection to the server. "a-ha!" we say, she was the address we stole - back to change the dvr back to what it was. he reassures the girl that now it all works and everything is as it should. except we still cant ping the dvr. we check the router together, he finds there's some unused cables still connected to it, and one is actually looping back into another port. he gets rid of unnecessary wiring, and as we walk back to his desk to try pinging, the girl that said she was disconnected is saying she's still disconnected. and the girl from the next desk over. we go back to his comp, he's tweaking out, the head of accounting comes down to say accounting has lost their connection to the server. ooops... the IT guy says he's only been there for like a month or something, and he's trying to learn their setup on the fly, harassing them for documentation and information, no time to spare for masturbation... he's about to open up the server room when the boss of the company comes down asking if, when he has a spare minute in say the next 5 minutes, if he could install a mobile internet stick on so'n'so's laptop, because his father is dying and he's gonna be spending a lot of time at the hospital, but would still like to have access to his files... which in itself is pretty weird, to me. i mean, i donno, but work could wait, as i see it. all these rich fuckers living in these goddamn condos can make do without holding hands with their goddam property manager for a bit in case of extenuating circumstances, cant they? but maybe i got this out of context, maybe the guy is expecting that this will potentially take weeks on end and every now and then he'll sneak off to the cafeteria and take care of the most important stuff as he has a bite to eat.
alas, IT guy tells the boss he's having a serious issue with the server and cant get to the mobile stick for the moment, but he's not liking that others beside himself have administrative access to the server, and is wondering if that might be the problem. the boss tells him that the only person other than him that has admin access is the head of accounting girl, and why dont they go ask her right now. she says no, hasnt done anything. IT guy logs in right at his server, and it's like most stuff is missing. but there is a computer somewhere at the office from where he can still login to the server and see everything as it's supposed to be. at this point i say "see ya later, when you get your server up again".
i'm at another call, and i get a call from the boss' assistant telling me they need me to come back because the thing i plugged something into is whats bringing the server down, and they're getting nowhere, and i need to undo what i did... um, i didnt do anything?
so i get back there, because i need to drop something off anyways, and the IT guy has the DVR with the router completely disconnected from his network, and he's till having the same issues. he's starting to suspect the head of accounting girl might be messing with him, or just messing with the server. he doesnt know if he's being paranoid or is she actually guilty. he wonders if maybe it's somebody back east..? and he still has this login that allows him to see what appears to be an unpopulated version of the server. it appears to him that while he was trying to figure out the DVR problem, someone has created another user, and bla bla bla... i say "see you when you get your server back up."
paranoia seems to be the flavour of the year.