Day 6 and counting

I had just started writing a post about how there had been zero progress on my workstation (lack thereof) situation when the friendly neighborhood IT guy swung by the cubicle I had decamped to. He did not, sadly, have my PC all fixed up and better than new under his arm; the resuscitation attempts are, apparently, still ongoing. But he wanted to try to make the wait for me as bearable as possible, which I certainly appreciated. Specifically he wanted, at a minimum, to transition me back to my own cubicle (doubtless prompted by the fact that all of my voicemails to him ended with “… so I’m still using my boss’s laptop at another cube, if you call me back I won’t be here but you can leave me a message …”). And I was fully onboard with that kind of stopgap approach, if only because today my boss decided it was the kind of day where he needed to play some music in his adjacent cubicle in order to carry on. And my boss’s taste in music apparently runs in the adult contempo/Kenny G/Michael Bolton vein. (I know that sounds like a bit of recycled Office Space humor but I could not be more for reals here, people.)

Anyway, the IT guy had a few potential ideas:

- Set me up with a loaner laptop in my cube. This seems like the easiest no-brainer approach but there must be some logistical nightmare of temporary assignment paperwork which kept it from being the very first thing he attempted.

- Steal one of the computers sitting unused in my office. Technically these are awaiting some new hires and should be configured for them when they start working here, but since they’re not here now … Even so, snagging them would require at least running it past the office manager, and of course she’s not in today. So that was out.

- Move my boss’s laptop over to my cube and plug it into my network drop, configure it for that location, etc. No-go because the laptop is actually locked to the desk there, and even though I’ve been using it every day for close to a week, my boss was (understandably, from my perspective) reluctant to unlock it and let it venture off to my desk because once you let a piece of GFE out of your direct control you never know when IT is going to abscond with it, never to be seen again (witness: the very situation I am in now).

- Try to get my old, pre-upgrade box back online and working again. And this, option 4, was ultimately what we went with. I say “we” but I just stood back and watched while the IT guy ran the machine through its paces, which was incredibly time-consuming because the computer had been disconnected from the network for a month and had to catch itself up on all the updates it had missed and whatnot. But eventually, I was able to log in.

So here I am – back at my desk, back with my slow old piece-of-garbage. But, this weird turn of events also means that I once again have my full complement of development software available, and I’m pathetically relieved over that. Yet at the same time it’s kind of a step backwards since I’m saddled with near-obsolete low levels of memory and processing power. But it beats the laptop, which was starting to have its own buggy issues (the one I mentioned in Friday’s post? Happened again later in the day Friday and first thing this morning.) and even though it really has nothing to do with anything productivity-wise I do feel better sitting in my own turf again. Meanwhile there haven’t been any breakthroughs to report on getting my new machine repaired (or just getting a new-new machine and moving on from there) but I haven’t heard about any setbacks, either (not that I can possibly imagine what that might entail), so … it’s not exactly progress, but it’s not exactly regress, either. What’s the gress-word for moving sideways or going in circles/not going anywhere? Aggress? That seems apt considering it’s the source of my steadily rising levels of general aggression.

BOOM CUT TO

OK, in the time it took me to compose all of the above (and get a modicum of actual work done) they actually finished repairing my new computer, and brought it back and set it up again. And at this point it actually has about 67% of the specialized software I need, too. So things are actually looking up, and at this rate I might be doing my thing full-time in another two or three weeks or so. Will wonders never cease.