Secret CIO

That's it. I've had enough. My reserves of patience have finally run out - heaven knows they've lasted long enough. It's time to put a stop to this once and for all... "Do you please want to turn that racket down?"

Still the thumping continues.

"I mean it! You'd better turn that down now, young man...!"

Nothing. "I said - turn it down!"

There's a marginal lowering of intensity, a door opens and a voice calls nonchalantly down the stairs: "Or what?"

"Or..."

Or.... hmmm.

As I've said before, there's a very limited range of sanctions I can realistically bring to bear on my son - and She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed is fast running out too. It's not that they're not effective - it's that they only ever seem to be effective once.

We stop his pocket money - he goes without and then borrows from his friends until he's served his sentence. We ground him - he stays in his room. We stop his internet - he watches TV. We take away the TV - he listens to music (at a brain-jarring volume).

We remove his stereo - he spends his time shouting out of the window at passing strangers or amusing himself in what soon becomes an ominous silence of what-could-he-be-doing-up-there.

It's strange - in a creature that otherwise has the patience threshold of an irate wasp that's just made the switch to decaf - the Brat's tolerance for sustained deprivation of what he would otherwise regard as essential is extraordinary.

If we didn't know better, we'd think he had spent some years studying meditative calm under a bewizened guru with a long wispy beard, somewhere under a waterfall in darkest Al Ain.

Alternatively, he could just have been spending too much time with my senior management, having as they do a similar ability to endure hardships mere mortals would find intolerable - such as not having a functioning e-mail system, or having a storage architecture that regularly eats 26.4% of anything stored on it, or...the list goes on.

The users at my firm certainly don't have these miraculous reserves of patience - they kick up an awful fuss whenever anything goes badly wrong, which is currently once a month and rising. And while I can understand their frustration, I do feel slightly aggrieved when they shout at me - I would dearly love to fix it - if only I had the budget.

But our senior management take a different view - a view filled with phrases such as "long-term vision", "strategic analysis", "sacrifices must be made" and "I need a new Ferrari". Actually I just made that last one up - but it does seem to be a factor for some, judging by the company car park these days.

Well, my management, my son - I've had enough. My patience with their patience has finally snapped - and I'm going to sort the lot of them out if it's the last thing I do.

My son, ironically, has left himself wide open for this one - if he only knew it. Stopping stuff hasn't worked - so from now on, in a bid to improve our father-son bonding (which is clearly at the heart of the issue), I'll be doing everything with him - up to and including sitting in his room listening to music.

Outside estimate until breaking point: two weeks.

Now management - that's a harder nut to crack, but I think I've found a way. As it happens, the IT department faces out onto the car park - and for some unknown reason, we have nice large plate glass windows.

It's a funny thing about our storage arrays lately - they've been getting dangerously hot, almost like they're ready to explode from the racks. Yes, that's right - the racks placed just by the windows.

Outside estimate: one week.