First you get the job Fixing Samba. Then you get the book so you can learn how to Fix Samba. Then you figure out what the actual job entails (... which is not Samba).

Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the innocent. I'm probably not making this up.

Once upon a time, one summer in college, I was staying in Tempe with my girlfriend's family and I needed to get a summer job. I didn't really have any particular ideas about what job I should get. I was even thinking, I don't know, maybe a hotdog stand at the mall or something.

I was walking down Mill Avenue when I saw one of these businesses that exist inside of a cottage house, with a sign out front that said "Web Design." A couple of people were leaning up against a car talking, and I sauntered up and asked if they were hiring.

They said, well, what do you know? What do you do?

I told them I know a little bit of this, a little bit of that - some web applications, some maybe a little sysadmin Linux-y stuff.

And they asked if I knew Samba. ed: Samba is more or less a Linux application that acts as a Windows file server. Like the L: drive at your work

And I said, sure.

They said, well, tell you what. Nice to meet you. My name is Mark. Come over tomorrow at 10 AM, and if you can get our Samba server back up and running, you've got yourself a job.

I said, great. Sounds like a plan. See you tomorrow.

And I walked on. Two or three blocks over to Barnes and Noble, to the computer section, where I got myself a book on Samba and started reading. I had surely done something with Samba before, but it had been a little while. I don't think I actually bought the book, but it was helpful to er ... refresh some details.

The next day I showed up, awkwardly knocking on the door. Someone let me in and took me back to Mark. They had sort of a front of house and a back of house, and way in the back was where Mark's office was. I imagine this was originally a 2-bedroom cottage.

He took me around to the server room - a literal closet, but it had a keyboard and a screen and a pretty nice rack-mounted Dell server. He gave me the root password.

Up front they had computers all wired into a network with a shared drive. The machines were all Windows, and they couldn't access the drive. So I poked around the machines a bit, messed with Samba a bit, and just kept digging around until I finally found some configuration option that wasn't quite right. Got it working. Went and chatted with Mark.

He was pretty happy.

He said, well, what kind of money are you looking for? We hadn't actually discussed that up to this point.

I said, well, I'm looking for something that's an alternative to a hotdog stand.

He said, how about $10 an hour?

I said, sure. That'll do.

What kind of hours?

He said, well, we usually start a little late, stay a little late. It'll be PHP web development.

Congratulations. I got the job. Start tomorrow.

I can't remember if they gave me a key or if the door was just unlocked. But either way, it was a good thing because I rolled in the next day around 9 AM, wanted to get a good start. Nobody there. I had a machine Mark had put on a table which I assumed was mine, and I started doing all my setup.

Around 10. Nobody.

Around 11, Mark finally came in and started telling me about the different projects we'd be working on.

He had a collection of clients, each with their own specific project setup - usually PHP, sometimes a little WordPress. He'd give me the specifics and give me access to the files, sometimes through an FTP server. Usually I had to almost start from scratch on the development setup, then push up to their server once I had something running.

The weird thing, though, was that I would get just one or two bugs fixed and he'd have me move on to another client. Get one or two bugs fixed, then on to a different client. Each one getting a relatively tiny amount of work.

What I realized was that he was putting off all of these folks. There had previously been some developers, and I don't know how long it had been since they left, but he was scrambling to stay ahead of angry customers. It seemed like all of his clients were angry clients - over-promised and under-delivered - and I was doing just enough work on each of them to make them think progress was being made.

Meanwhile, I started to get familiar with the secondary (or was it primary?) business: a nightlife lifestyle magazine operated out of the front of house. They had a couple of graphic designers, photographers, and an editor, and there was an endless stream of both beautiful people and beautiful photos and lots and lots of advertisements going into these glossy pages. They published weekly or maybe biweekly.

The magazine ran on Photoshop and PageMaker. And sitting right there on that shared drive - the same drive I'd spent my trial interview getting back online - was not only all of their content, but all of their software. With clearly cracked serials. Lots of password.txt and registration_keytxt.crackz files. Lots and lots of professional-grade software, very much not paid for.

It was increasingly obvious that this place operated using any means necessary to cut corners and get things out the door.

The front of house was run by another guy named Marc - Marc with a C - who was in charge of the magazine. Mark with a K was in charge of the web stuff, the investor, the business partner. There was also a main layout editor who did a lot of the heavy lifting. Sometimes when I came in around 8am or 9am, he'd already be there.

I'd say, you got an early start?

He had not, in fact, left from the night before. Pounding energy drinks (and who knows what else). Printer deadline!

Meanwhile, the biggest perk I had was a fridge full of Sobe ed: A sugary fruit drink in a glass bottle with some cool lizards; see SoBe on wikipedia. I am partial to orange Sobe, and I had an unlimited supply. They tended to play house and techno music, pretty loud, all the time.

It was cool. A little weird. Had sort of a shady vibe. OK maybe very shady.

Between the beautiful people in the front of the house and me stuck way in the back, this random guy who just handed me his root password as a trial interview, helping rob Peter to pay Paul in terms of software development, the heavy ad-based front business - I never really felt like I quite knew what was going on.

And I didn't realize it would just keep going, getting stranger as we went all summer.

Definitely more interesting than working at a hotdog stand in the mall.