You Take the Good, You Take the Meh
OK, the good news today: I don't think I need to go to Redmond, WA.
The better news: I don't need to carry the hotline phone on Thanksgiving, even though I offered.
The decent news: I got my work laptop "refreshed" today.
The "meh" news: That new laptop isn't working.
The other "meh" news: It's been more than a week since I blogged. I hate that!
Elaboration follows:
OK, elaboration, in order: I don't think I'm going to Redmond, WA in a couple weeks (October 30 - November 10) as I thought I was going to. The purpose of the trip was to be training, for a job I've been doing. Well, when we talked about it today (at a group meeting), my boss was checking who still needed to go. I said I was scheduled, but she wasn't sure that it was necessary since I'd been in the field twice now. I said I'd still be happy to go since it would mean some dedicated training time. Ah, not so fast: it turns out that's not the case. It would be more-or-less on the job training and almost identical to what I have indeed been doing! There wouldn't really be dedicated time with the folks who are the real experts. So, given that, I was more than willing to say, nope, don't need more of that. So, it looks like I'll be at home to pass out comics on Halloween night!
The hotline phone: I had offered to carry the hotline phone on Thanksgiving day, and the week leading up to it, if someone else covered the weekend after Thanksgiving so I'd be free to play/judge at StuffedCOWS. No one took me up on it. But because no one took me up on it, and I'd volunteered for the previous week, someone else got outright assigned to carry the phone, I don't need to do it Thanksgiving week at all! I'd made a similar offer for Christmas Day, since Ellen works then, but again no one took me up on that. I wanted to ensure that I had the days immediately following Christmas off. The best way to guarantee that I won't have the hotline for a specific week is to volunteer for the week immediately preceeding. Since they won't assign it two weeks in a row, they'll look to someone else on the week I want to be sure I'm free!
Laptop: I got my work laptop "refreshed" today. That is, I traded in my old slow laptop for a new one that is at least on the right side of "mediocre". A bit better than that actually, it seemed OK so far, but it's also far from the cutting edge. More like a fresh economy model.
Anyway, I was getting it all up-to-speed with how I want things set up. That included getting Firefox and Thunderbird installed and getting settings on other programs put right. Well, I went to check if the VPN tunnel software was installed, so I could login from home later. It didn't look like it was, though I knew it was supposed to be. So I downloaded a fresh copy and installed. OOOPS, big mistake, apparently. The install failed, then no more LAN connection! Then the uninstall failed, then the call to the help desk, then the driver update failed, then the driver uninstall failed, then the help desk call failed. Well, at least they determined that I couldn't actually do anything with the system as mucked up as it was, so I had to return it to the service center for them to fix, maybe by re-imaging. They knew it was a problem when I said what I was installing. It's even our company's internal product, but the installer apparently is terrible and causes many issues, especially when the software is already installed. If it was there, I couldn't find it anywhere, so they need to also fix where it shows up in the Start menu and warn people not to install it, even if they think it's not there. Hopefully I'll have it back in my hands by tomorrow morning.
As for the last bit, the update, well I've taken care of it now. Though I need a time machine to fix the "more than a week" part.
The better news: I don't need to carry the hotline phone on Thanksgiving, even though I offered.
The decent news: I got my work laptop "refreshed" today.
The "meh" news: That new laptop isn't working.
The other "meh" news: It's been more than a week since I blogged. I hate that!
Elaboration follows:
OK, elaboration, in order: I don't think I'm going to Redmond, WA in a couple weeks (October 30 - November 10) as I thought I was going to. The purpose of the trip was to be training, for a job I've been doing. Well, when we talked about it today (at a group meeting), my boss was checking who still needed to go. I said I was scheduled, but she wasn't sure that it was necessary since I'd been in the field twice now. I said I'd still be happy to go since it would mean some dedicated training time. Ah, not so fast: it turns out that's not the case. It would be more-or-less on the job training and almost identical to what I have indeed been doing! There wouldn't really be dedicated time with the folks who are the real experts. So, given that, I was more than willing to say, nope, don't need more of that. So, it looks like I'll be at home to pass out comics on Halloween night!
The hotline phone: I had offered to carry the hotline phone on Thanksgiving day, and the week leading up to it, if someone else covered the weekend after Thanksgiving so I'd be free to play/judge at StuffedCOWS. No one took me up on it. But because no one took me up on it, and I'd volunteered for the previous week, someone else got outright assigned to carry the phone, I don't need to do it Thanksgiving week at all! I'd made a similar offer for Christmas Day, since Ellen works then, but again no one took me up on that. I wanted to ensure that I had the days immediately following Christmas off. The best way to guarantee that I won't have the hotline for a specific week is to volunteer for the week immediately preceeding. Since they won't assign it two weeks in a row, they'll look to someone else on the week I want to be sure I'm free!
Laptop: I got my work laptop "refreshed" today. That is, I traded in my old slow laptop for a new one that is at least on the right side of "mediocre". A bit better than that actually, it seemed OK so far, but it's also far from the cutting edge. More like a fresh economy model.
Anyway, I was getting it all up-to-speed with how I want things set up. That included getting Firefox and Thunderbird installed and getting settings on other programs put right. Well, I went to check if the VPN tunnel software was installed, so I could login from home later. It didn't look like it was, though I knew it was supposed to be. So I downloaded a fresh copy and installed. OOOPS, big mistake, apparently. The install failed, then no more LAN connection! Then the uninstall failed, then the call to the help desk, then the driver update failed, then the driver uninstall failed, then the help desk call failed. Well, at least they determined that I couldn't actually do anything with the system as mucked up as it was, so I had to return it to the service center for them to fix, maybe by re-imaging. They knew it was a problem when I said what I was installing. It's even our company's internal product, but the installer apparently is terrible and causes many issues, especially when the software is already installed. If it was there, I couldn't find it anywhere, so they need to also fix where it shows up in the Start menu and warn people not to install it, even if they think it's not there. Hopefully I'll have it back in my hands by tomorrow morning.
As for the last bit, the update, well I've taken care of it now. Though I need a time machine to fix the "more than a week" part.
posted by TT at
10/17/2006 11:34:00 PM
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