tl;dr - and for this I skipped lunch?
Mar. 13th, 2012 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charloweenI have a very slow, very annoyingly slow, office computer.
It's Old, and it's Slow. When it freezes - once every 90 minutes or so - I go to the kitchen, make a cup of tea, and come back to my desk, wait for the tea to steep and cool, then Old Slow revives itself and we precariously chug along for another 90 minutes. It's not the most relaxing way to try and get any work done.
The other two desks in the office (occupied by my colleagues) have computers that work passably well, and if Middle Desk is unoccupied, sometimes I try to use that one (but sometimes the monitor displays nothing but jaggedy lines and I back away slowly).
There's also a fourth computer, a mystery computer, an Inexplicably present Extra computer that's been crouching (waiting) on one of the shelves for months.
After a long and annoying yesterday evening and this morning full of switching out the tower from Old Slow computer and Inexplicable Extra computer a few times, and determining that I could either access the internet at a reasonable speed (via I. Extra) or access the network with all my files (via Old Slow). Yesterday I left Extra running a virus scan overnight to see if this morning I'd be able to get on the network. Nope. So then I tried doing the remote-access FTP server thing to get to my networked files on Extra - no dice. It accessed the internet fine, but immediately "removed" any file I tried to download.
Then I figured, okay, I'd switch everything back (again) to Old Slow, get some files onto a USB key, and go from there.
This time, Old Slow decided that I was fine to log in, but that it wouldn't bother hooking in to any servers or host trees or whatever.
Then I went to make D: faces at my supervisor (who I'd been avoiding), who sent me to the magical department administrator after a) commiserating about bullshit department politics where the most junior staff get the most crap equipment and b) wringing a promise from me to actually sit down and have a proper meeting (I was weak. In other news, I've recently stopped reading PhD Comics).
The department administrator told me she'd just ordered new computers! I told her I wanted to get some work done, ever! She told me I could sign out the department laptop (we have a department laptop?!), so I did. Except it had to be back before the admin team leaves for the day at 5:30.
Annoyingly, the department laptop is a sweet little Toshiba Protege almost-ultrabook. *weeps*
After trudging back upstairs and having the almost-ultrabook give me worrying Windows XP hissyfit messages, but getting logged in, but also not understanding why the desktop's keyboard isn't registering on the wee laptop, I was almost ready to get something done.
WHICH IS WHEN my dear beloved BF popped his head in to ask if he could email me a document for some quick proofing.
WHICH IS WHEN I started crying (just a little).
...and that's how I spent my morning. How was yours?
(In the interest of fair and full disclosure, BF then gave me a big hug and let me follow him back to his office to read the doc off his screen - even though he had to go teach in half an hour and probably had meant "please look at this while I'm teaching" not "please sniffle at my monitor while I pretend I didn't have last-minute prep to do".)
Oh, and all those lovely Ctrl+ keyboard shortcuts? Don't work on the department laptop. *headdesk*
It's Old, and it's Slow. When it freezes - once every 90 minutes or so - I go to the kitchen, make a cup of tea, and come back to my desk, wait for the tea to steep and cool, then Old Slow revives itself and we precariously chug along for another 90 minutes. It's not the most relaxing way to try and get any work done.
The other two desks in the office (occupied by my colleagues) have computers that work passably well, and if Middle Desk is unoccupied, sometimes I try to use that one (but sometimes the monitor displays nothing but jaggedy lines and I back away slowly).
There's also a fourth computer, a mystery computer, an Inexplicably present Extra computer that's been crouching (waiting) on one of the shelves for months.
After a long and annoying yesterday evening and this morning full of switching out the tower from Old Slow computer and Inexplicable Extra computer a few times, and determining that I could either access the internet at a reasonable speed (via I. Extra) or access the network with all my files (via Old Slow). Yesterday I left Extra running a virus scan overnight to see if this morning I'd be able to get on the network. Nope. So then I tried doing the remote-access FTP server thing to get to my networked files on Extra - no dice. It accessed the internet fine, but immediately "removed" any file I tried to download.
Then I figured, okay, I'd switch everything back (again) to Old Slow, get some files onto a USB key, and go from there.
This time, Old Slow decided that I was fine to log in, but that it wouldn't bother hooking in to any servers or host trees or whatever.
Then I went to make D: faces at my supervisor (who I'd been avoiding), who sent me to the magical department administrator after a) commiserating about bullshit department politics where the most junior staff get the most crap equipment and b) wringing a promise from me to actually sit down and have a proper meeting (I was weak. In other news, I've recently stopped reading PhD Comics).
The department administrator told me she'd just ordered new computers! I told her I wanted to get some work done, ever! She told me I could sign out the department laptop (we have a department laptop?!), so I did. Except it had to be back before the admin team leaves for the day at 5:30.
Annoyingly, the department laptop is a sweet little Toshiba Protege almost-ultrabook. *weeps*
After trudging back upstairs and having the almost-ultrabook give me worrying Windows XP hissyfit messages, but getting logged in, but also not understanding why the desktop's keyboard isn't registering on the wee laptop, I was almost ready to get something done.
WHICH IS WHEN my dear beloved BF popped his head in to ask if he could email me a document for some quick proofing.
WHICH IS WHEN I started crying (just a little).
...and that's how I spent my morning. How was yours?
(In the interest of fair and full disclosure, BF then gave me a big hug and let me follow him back to his office to read the doc off his screen - even though he had to go teach in half an hour and probably had meant "please look at this while I'm teaching" not "please sniffle at my monitor while I pretend I didn't have last-minute prep to do".)
Oh, and all those lovely Ctrl+ keyboard shortcuts? Don't work on the department laptop. *headdesk*
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-14 05:22 am (UTC)Especially bureaucratic technology, which is always either STUPID OLD AND INEFFECTUAL, or SHINY NEW BUT YOU CANNOT HAZ.
I repeat: ugh.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-14 11:58 pm (UTC)*whine*
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-15 02:30 am (UTC)the computers in the science office at school don't always pick up the network drive and we have to reboot and hope it picks up the network drive. We started a list called "why these computers suck" so we can make a huge complaint/help desk ticket (that probably won't get anything accomplished so ....)