…I'm still reporting into work tomorrow. Unlike pretty much all the other departments (and in direct contradiction to what his Director has ordered) our Director has said it's "business as usual."
This is also seems to be in direct contradiction to what was going on last Friday. We were scrambling to get everyone with desk jobs set up with VPN access because my manager told us he'd heard that in all likelihood we'd all be working from home this coming week. (How, exactly, that's going to work for desktop support since a lot of what we do is hands-on, but hey…this is new to all of us, and to be honest I actually end up doing about 85% of my work remotely anyway, so maybe it will be fine?)
While I have a very nice Dell laptop at work, I had been hoping for months to get VPN configured on my Mac so I wouldn't have to drag the work machine back and forth in the event the need arose. (We don't generally provide 24/7 support, so there's been no need for me to work from home.)
I kept running into roadblocks getting it working, either with macOS itself or with the Cisco client I was provided. I finally gave up a couple months ago after attending a meeting wherein we were informed that the organization was going to be blocking all access from personal devices in the near future anyway.
Funny how a little global pandemic can change things.
Anyhow, since we'd been getting several inquiries from users in our department on how to set up VPN on their Macs, we got I.T. Security involved and got the most recent Mac client downloaded and configured.
I'd gotten our certificate installed and working on my machine before I finally gave up those many months ago, so when I actually installed the latest client and it worked Friday afternoon, I was surprised to say the least. I installed the the Microsoft Remote Desktop client, and viola! I was connected to my work computer.
Of course, since I'm the de facto Mac expert in our group, I was now suddenly in great demand, tasked with getting every other personal Mac user working as well.
The one machine I attempted it on Friday afternoon after my own did not go well. Hopefully I can get everything worked out tomorrow, since it appears we're all going to be working a normal schedule, pending any overnight changes.
(The good news is that even if any of us fall ill and can't work and don't have the humungous amounts of sick leave accrued that seem all too common at this place (like me since I'm a new employee) they will be advancing us up to two weeks from our bank if needed. Not great, but better than being hung out to dry.)
Early last week, I saw where all this was headed, and anticipating the worst, I'd gone ahead and ordered a few upgrades (an SSD, an additional 4GB of RAM) for the old Dell we had at home in the closet so it could be my main pipeline back to the office in the event of an emergency.
Everything arrived Saturday afternoon, and while I could've returned it to Amazon for refunds, I decided to go ahead and do the upgrade, having completed an identical upgrade to Ben's aunt's computer last summer). Needless to say, once I got Windows 10 installed on the new SSD (in and of itself a trial by fire), and everything set up, connecting back to the office was a no-brainer.
Ben's path through the virus outbreak has been just as murky. With every other school district in the state shutting down from 10-14 days starting tomorrow, his particular district had made the decision to stubbornly remain open—although students were being given an additional 3 days of spring break next week so faculty would convene to work out a plan going forward. As of about a half hour ago however, that changed as well, and now his district has joined the rest of the state and will be closed for the next ten days.