Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Clearly a Monday on a Tuesday

I’m sure today should be Friday the 13th. Of course, when I left the house this morning, I had no idea what the day would bring. It started out innocently enough. Up at 5:30 - shower, fold some laundry, eat breakfast, read the paper, wash the dishes .... stay off the computer - yet SOMEHOW I still managed to leave the house about 10 minutes late. I should have known then ...but, no shear bliss.

As I navigated toward my office, I started to write out my "To Do" List. I have a limited amount of time in the office before I leave for California, and I know the season is starting. There is no more time to put things off till "later". Later has arrived.

I was about 5 miles down the road, composing my list when I thought about something I needed to install on my work computer ....

"Hmmm, computer",

"Yes, COMPUTER", ... my mind echoed back at me. "You know ... one of the two laptops you had at the house this weekend."

Which is about the time I realized I didn't have EITHER ONE WITH ME IN THE CAR. Without either one I was pretty much F*&^ED - because, yeah, funny how it helps to do your job - WITH A COMPUTER! I turned around, returned to the house - grabbed my work laptop which was right beside the front door, where I wouldn't forget it and continued on to the office.

Arriving at the office 20 minutes late I reassured myself, "Just work straight down the "To-do" List. No deviations - plug away, and you'll have this minor stuff out of the way in about an hour - then you can get onto the big projects."

Then - I booted up my computer and recieved 132 f'ing e-mail messages!!! (and that wasn't including the 113 in my "Junk Folder"! In the middle of wading through my "good" e-mail, my computer decided to freeze. When I tried to reboot - I got a system 53 error - and then the blue screen of death.

I booted again - only to get a Memory Dump - and honestly I think they should just be honest and not say "Memory Dump" but "YOUR COMPUTER IS TAKING A CRAP".

"YOUR COMPUTER IS TAKING A CRAP" ... also apparently means it's decided to ditch the network card (or so the engineer/programmer told me after switching network cables, removing my computer from the docking station and re-booting 5 times himself, because he was sure I was doing something wrong when I started it up. At this point, I was muttering "MF Computer" under my breath. < --- (does not mean MusicFan, either!)

Finally the engineer/programmer deciding "we" weren't going to worry about the network card anymore and I could just run wireless. So - 2 1/2 hours into work I'd managed to handled 1 business e-mail and ONE support phone call! !

Next I called another customer to give them a quick file they needed. Of course, they had "one other quick question". 45 minutes later ... To say it wasn't the best of days and the rest of the day was pretty much the same would be an understatement.

While wading my way through the quagmire, I may have been a touch dramatic to a friend in an e-mail ... Here's the advice he sent me back ..."Note to Mittany: Remove all sharp objects from car before driving to the airport."

I must say, it put a smile on my face and slightly lightened my mood. Which was a good thing, as I had to go beg a college instructor to allow me into her Fiction class. (Last week was the first week of class - and registration occurred while I was out of town ...) I'm not sure if it was the red-hair, my manic personality, or the vouching 4 of the other students did on my behalf, but she agreed to let me in! Let the writing and the learning continue!

2 comments:

Joseph H. Vilas said...

A friend of mine once said "Never take a crap: always leave one." I guess that applies for computers too.

Anonymous said...

*O* Some days just aren't worth getting up for !!!!