Tag Archives: laptop

Lost in the machine…

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I had a fairly hearty post written up for tonight, but at the moment it is lost somewhere in the machine. I swear this isn’t the blogger’s equivalent of “the dog ate my homework.” I really did have a post and now it’s really, really vanished somewhere between WordPress, my laptop, and the vastness of the world wide web. I’m sure it will turn up somewhere sooner or later. I’m going to do a restart and see of anything jars loose. Thinks have been ever so slightly buggy since I installed Lion, so I’m hoping a restart fixes whatever glitch I’m having.

In the meantime, here’s a great read from a Freshly Pressed blogger railing against “The Lack of Holidays in August.” Head over there and give him a like, ok?

Lion…

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Like a moth to the flame, I am drawn to yet another newly released Apple product. Thank god a $29.99 download from the App Store won’t break the bank like a new laptop… although the Air updates that they released today look pretty sweet too. Other than blogging, I don’t do enough work on the computer these days to justify any kind of upgrade. Maybe I’ll convince myself next year to spring for a new laptop and ditch the current giant monitor/laptop arrangement… though by then, I’ll be doing even less on the computer than I do now.

At the moment, I’ll be happy just to finish downloading Lion and taking it out for a test drive. I’ll report back if it completely bugs out on me. Otherwise, you can assume it’s another Apple effort that just works.

Broken…

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I get to the office early most mornings. It’s usually a good chance to catch up before everyone else starts wandering in. One of the challenges is that pretty much no one with any passing relationship to authority is around in the event an employee is feeling lonely and wants to talk. So more often than not, I’m the lucky manager who gets the early morning conversations. This morning was one of those times.

Jeff: Good Morning *seeing “employee” walking over to my desk*

Employee: My computer works now, but none of my files are there. I think it’s broken. *looking at me plaintively*

Jeff: Ummm… Did you call IT?

Employee: Uh. No. I thought you’d know how to fix it. They got it working yesterday but now my files are gone.

Jeff: So you want me to fix something they broke yesterday?

Employee: *looking at me blankly*

Jeff: You’d better call IT since they know what they did to it yesterday.

Employee: They won’t be in for another 20 minutes.

Jeff: Patience is a virtue, I’m told.

I’m not the friggin’ laptop whisperer over here. Put in your help request and wait like everyone else does. My using illicit passwords to go in and tinker around with your settings is pretty much guaranteed to only cause more trouble. If not more trouble for you, then certainly more trouble for me… and that’s a no go at this station.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Hard copy…

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With very few exceptions, all of our documents live on one of several network drives available to every employee in the building. I theory that means if ask where something is, I should be able to say “it’s on the Q-drive in the folder titled Big Expensive Project.” Thus armed, a reasonable person could be expected to go forth and find the file they need. Of course our people aren’t necessarily reasonable… and the concept of a networked drive Dot Matrix.jpgmight as well be a blueprint for a time machine.

I’ve been using a tablet to tote all of my paperwork for the better part of the last year. It’s great. I make changes in a meeting, at my desk, or sitting on the can and whatever I’m working on propagates through the network to my laptop, my desktop, and even my phone. With the exception of a very few things that require, for some inexplicable reason, a manual signature, I don’t need paper. And I don’t want it. Paper is going to get lost. My electronic files are going to get backed up once an hour and then stored off site at the end of the day.

You can, perhaps, understand my level of frustration when an employee, let’s call him Mr. Turtle, comes to me with a hand illustrated packet that explains one of the new concepts we want to put in place. Seriously. He had hand drawn graphs and had cut sections out of other documents with scissors and taped them into his “presentation.” Literally. Cut. And. Paste. I’m a pretty smart guy, but I have no idea where to even start dealing with that level of ineptitude from a long-serving “professional” member of the staff.

It’s possible that I’m going to have to pummel the next person who comes to me wanting hard copy of something with a ream of 11×17 paper to drive home the point that this isn’t 1870. Everybody doesn’t need a dead tree edition of everything. Actually, almost no one needs a hard copy of anything any more. Of course that would mean that they’d have to figure out how to use the glowing box on their desk for more than a place to stick Post-It notes.

Editorial Note: This is part of a continuing series of previously unattributed posts appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

I had no idea…

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I had no idea how many websites I went to on a daily basis that I didn’t feel I could visit safely while I was stranded using my work laptop for the last week and a half. The good news is that my laptop is back and all the websites of questionable morals are right where I left them. Thank god for those who know how to bring the innards of this infernal box back to life! A computer with a mile-wide Puritanical streak is no fun at all.