Meet Jonathan Dart, a muggle-born computer wizard with no magical powers of his own. He seems like a nice guy–one who likes beer and is anxiously looking forward to the next Fallout–but he’s got one major problem: He’s just become the head of IT at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a place where students regularly die painful deaths at the hands of evil magicians, but one that hasn’t yet discovered the magic of 3G or Netflix streaming. Sound like a dream job? We thought so, too, until we took a look at Dart’s Tumblr–The Setup Wizard–where he’s documenting his experiences as the man responsible for bringing the school into the current century and trying to navigate those goddamn staircases that won’s stop moving and actually probably give a lot of the students motion sickness, if we’re being honest. Also, how come that’s not in the books? Neville Longbottom just losing it down a stairwell and all over Hermione’s hair because the steps have just gone upside down?.
Aside from learning that Butterbeer won’t get you properly sauced and that magic pubs don’t accept credit cards–much less Apple Pay–here are just a few of the other things that might make you reconsider taking a job at the world’s most famous school for aspiring wizards, where everything defies logic, including the fact that students are sent into the forbidden forest (where they will, again, literally die) for detention.
First, there’s the issue of a server room setup:
Second day on the job and I was given the entirety of it to take a look around and come up with some possible locations for where to set things up. After wandering around the left corridor on the seventh floor for a few laps I noticed a door left slightly ajar. Lo and behold, to my complete shock, inside was a fully functional server room. Delighted, I found the information for the wifi running out of its routers and took a trip around the castle to test the signal strength. This was going great until the signal went dead about a half hour later.
I returned to find my server room still intact and once again functional. I did my rounds again only to have the same thing happen.
Turns out the damn room is magical (of course it is) and was only acting as a server room because that’s what I desperately needed it to be. This is great until some kid walks past who desperately needs a toilet and POOF my servers disappear, the signal goes down, and a john takes their place.
Back to the drawing board.
Then, there’s the problem of making sure that everyone has a secure password:
Now, apparently it’s pretty well established that muggle tech and magic don’t seem to work too well together. This very quickly drew disappointment from the Headmaster, who admitted with an air of defeat that he had neglected to write down or even attempted to remember his login password because he assumed he could use Alohomora to unlock his laptop. It took some pressuring from me for him to not set the password as Alohomora, simply because half the school is already using it as theirs.
Have they tried “love,” “sex,” “god,” or “secret?” We hear those are usually pretty effective.
Dart’s got his finger on the pulse of hot-button issues
I’m happy to see growing support of a “wizards only” version of the Internet. Honestly I’m behind the idea just because I’d like to have a way to look up answers to questions I’m too embarrassed to asked in person.
Is there a birth control spell? A school with this many young teens who are, truth be told, poorly supervised, and I’ve yet to hear of a single pregnancy scare.
But he’s having some trouble with the kids over at Slytherin, who are probably angrily calling their dads right now because some dirty muggle’s trying to infiltrate their secret lair:
Have you ever tried to set up wifi under a lake? The damn Slytherin kids almost refused to even let me into their common room until I explained to them what Spotify is and how, with the magical power of the internet, they can stream all the emo music their little hearts could ever desire.
And that whole staircase thing:
Tried insisting that the logistics of the stairwell system is actually costing the school time and money, but the professors all agree that having magic moving stairs somehow improves the school’s aesthetic or something. I honestly think they just don’t know how to actually turn them off.
The entire blog’s worth a read, and while the bloom’s off the rose a little–Dart has hired himself a non-muggle assistant who understands how wizarding works–it’s at least nice to know that the guy’s found one way to let off some steam when he’s done being assaulted by ghosts in the bathroom:
Good newes.; Unlike Butrebeer, firewhisky wll get you sh*tfaecd!.
