Another “Day in the Life Of…”
April 23rd, 2009
I had so much fun (did I?) writing the first “day in the life of” that I thought another one might be suitable considering the day I’m having thus far. This is a standing post for today, i.e. I’m writing just about everything that happened as they happened.
8:15am – I was actually having an enjoyable morning since the curmudgeon is out this morning. I got a call from the employee in charge of the “lockdown system.” This system basically locks all our doors in the threat of an emergency. Of course it’s never worked right; the door magnets don’t always sync up w/ the security software. Now, the curmudgeon relishs on keeping most of the information to himself. Redundancy and contingency just don’t exist here. That being said, I managed to bring the system back up by “guessing” the respective passwords and ensuring all the workstations were communicating with the server. Fortunately, the curmudgeon isn’t one for changing passwords and likes to use one or two for everything.
8:39am – I picked up the problematic laptop that one of the “big bosses” was having after pestering him for three days. The hard drive went bad so I’m replacing it. All of a sudden, I get a phone call from him asking me if I’ll back up his personal email on Outlook. Now, I’m sure we all know how to save a PST file but because we don’t use Exchange/Outlook for our business email, I told him that I’d do my best but no guarantees. The guy actually started crying and begging me to do what I can. I offered to bring him a Kleenex.
9:12am – I receive a “frantic” phonecall that the printers have “disappeared” from one’s computer. Wow, that must be some kind of miraculous occurrence. I’ve never heard of anything just “disappearing” from one’s desktop. I informed the caller that I’ll get to them just as soon as I can but that I’m working on a couple of other things at the moment. Apparently that wasn’t good enough because this person had *another* coworker call me to tell me of the first person’s plight. Needless to say, I told the second person in the time I just spent “wasting” with her and telling her what I told the first person is time I could have spent addressing the previous issues so congrats on being moved down even further in the queue. (Good thing my mid-year review is next month!) Fortunately, it was something as simple as the print spooler filling up with BS files so a quick purge and restart of the print server fixed that.
10:30am – Finally getting caught up on things when a coworker asked me if I have a tape measure he could use. I look around at all the IT gear and grinned at him. “I guess not,” he says before walking to the desk next to me and rummaging through our network tools. I *politely* suggested he contact the Maintenance department since they probably have…umm…TOOLS. “Oh, yeah, good idea.” :::sigh:::
The rest of the day – OMG, the rest of the day was boringly lame. I bet if I rack my brain I’ll think of something dumbass-y. Hmmm….. Nope, nothing’s there. On to tomorrow.
grumpy
