Category: Work

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Not So Fast, Honey

About six weeks ago we were presented with my employer's plan to slowly start transitioning folks back into the office. Myself—and the other members of my team—let out a collective "UGH" because none of us are in any hurry to go back.

The plan started out with a month or so of strictly voluntarily returns not to exceed 25% (that TBH, I don't think any department took advantage of), followed up by a month at 50% capacity, and then finally back to "normal" at 100%.

Well, thankfully my enterprise isn't run by the type of Republican assholes running the State of Arizona who are hell-bent on getting everything opened back up, because we got notice yesterday that moving to Phase 2 (50%) is on hold "indefinitely" because of the rising number of cases in the state.

That does not mean that my team is not in the office at all. For the next several weeks we're in house, masked up and social-distanced every Monday for a half day to do some much overdue inventory salvage and tidying up the back-to-back episodes of Hoarders that are our two equipment storage rooms. A daunting task because as we discovered yesterday, there is shit in there from the late 1980s…

But at least we can walk in the rooms now.

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I've Got News for Them…

…Californians aren't the only ones.

From CBS News:

Californians want to keep working from home post-pandemic

Working from home could be one of the pandemic practices that's here to stay, CBS Los Angeles reports. A new survey from the University of Sothern California and the California Emerging Technology Fund explored Californians feelings about remote work, remote learning and telehealth after more than a year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers say they have found hesitancy about each of these practices have been swept away.

"Now we're seeing a seismic shift in the way people want to work, learn and manage health visits among those who have broadband access. Those changes give us a real opportunity to cut congestion and carbon emissions," Hernan Galperin, the study's lead researcher and an associate professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said in a statement.

The survey found that 42% of current, full-time remote workers want to keep working from home. Another 21% who also want to keep working from home say they are willing to go into the office one or two days a week. However, 17% of those surveyed say they want to go back to their workplaces five days a week.

However, the opportunity for telecommuting was not evenly distributed among workers. People between 18 and 34 were found to be the least likely to be able to work from home, with the perk being most available to people earning $60,000 or more a year. College-educated women were most likely to be able to work from home, according to the survey.

In distance learning, one-third of Californians 18 or older said they took an online class or training during the pandemic. Two thirds of those surveyed said they would continue distance learning if they have the opportunity, with the likelihood increasing with age.

Use of telehealth during the pandemic also jumped, with just over half of respondents to the survey being able to access their healthcare by phone, smartphone or computer. However, usage was also uneven in this area — people of color were less likely to use telehealth services, while seniors 65 and older used it the most, despite their lower levels of internet connectivity and tech savvy. The survey also found that Los Angeles County showed the lowest level of telehealth participation at 46%.

Wider adoption of telecommuting, telehealth and distance learning could drastically impact traffic across the state, the survey found. More than half expected to cut their commute at least once a week after the pandemic, while 70% of respondents who used telehealth services anticipate cutting their medical-related car trips by at least half after the pandemic.

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And Speaking of Disappointed

Remember a year ago when we first went into lockdown and I said I'd hoped this would be an opportunity for society at large to rethink how things were getting done?

I wrote this:

There's no going back to the way things were even a few weeks ago. The system was broken, and while this transition is going to be painful, ultimately we will all be better for it.

Oh the naïveté. To think that human beings would actually change their behavior for the better because of one little pandemic. What the last year has shown me is that human stubbornness, greed and stupidity are alive and well and going nowhere.

Why this rant? Seven days from now will mark the one year anniversary of working from home and last week we were notified by the powers that be that we are starting a "phased" reopening on March 29th. Because reasons.

Foolishly I thought I'd be able to negotiate only one or two days a week in the office during this transition, but my boss (who has been extraordinarily accommodating through this crisis) sent me a snarky email this morning pointing out that we have to start transitioning back into the office sooner rather than later so my one colleague (who has already been going in a couple days a week) does not bear the burden of all the hands-on stuff that needs to be done.

I'm already scheduled to go in tomorrow to do some equipment imaging, but I replied that I would just rip the band-aid off and return to full time in the office starting Monday. Fuck it. I've had my initial vaccine with the second scheduled for the 27th, so at this point I just don't care any more. And frankly at this point I'm back to wishing on an asteroid impact that just puts the human species out of its misery.

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No Fucks Left to Give

Dell Quality Control has no fucks left to give. Nine out of ten Latitude 7210s ($1700 machines) we have received arrived like this. Yeah, the display can be snapped back into the housing, but seriously…

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#Mood

Alternating between this…
…and this. 

I do not like being back in the office. To minimize my possible exposure to the Covid, I am isolated from the few people who also have to physically be present within these walls, but that's not really the issue. What has sent me into a tailspin this week is the frustration I'm feeling at this whole process that I have to physically be present for. I suppose it's at least partly my own fault, setting up what I see now was an entirely unrealistic expectation that somehow I'd be able to crank out 150 (now mysteriously increased to over 200) machines in one week and be back in the safety of my own home thereafter.

But alas, that was not meant to be. An entire day was wasted because none of the jacks in the lab were live. Makes it hard to talk to the server that's serving up the images to be laid down on the machines. While waiting,  I went ahead and hooked up eight laptops to the switch and power strip—only to be informed once the jacks were live that I was now supposed to concentrate on getting the tablets out first. So everything had to be disconnected.

The image for the tablets had problems with the audio driver. Not insurmountable; I could always manually install it after the fact, but it was just one more roadblock that stood in the way of me getting back home. So I went ahead and prepped 10 tablets for our field workers, and as I was getting ready to provide the cellular info to our phone person…discovered these tablets had been ordered without any cellular capability. "Oh, we'll have to get with Emily to see if she has any cell-equipped tablets we can swap these out for."

So another day wasted. "Go ahead and start the laptops until we get the other tablets."

(It turns out that none of the tablets that were ordered came with cellular. Go figger.)

The laptop image was completely fucked. The guy who builds the images was fucking around with the image and uploading it to the server while I was downloading them. (Of course I didn't know this until the whole process hung and reached out to him to find out what the FUCK was going on.)

"Go ahead and start over. I made some changes to the audio drivers on both the laptops and the tablets."

The laptops ran through the install process…and then would hang when rebooting. Consistently.

Meanwhile there's all this pressure coming down from my supervisor wondering how soon they can start rolling these out. (Thankfully I'm not involved in that process.)

There seems to be a lot going on behind the scenes that I'm not privy to. As I wrote earlier, we've been without a department supervisor for a month now, and the woman who is reluctantly acting as "interim" supervisor is a micromanaging [fill in appropriate descriptive word of your choosing].

For the life of me, I do not understand the urgency at getting this equipment out. Everyone has been doing just fine with the machines main ITS gave out back in May, so I simply don't get why this has suddenly become a hair-on-fire emergency to get all the desktops swapped out with portable devices right now. It's not like there's going to be a cost savings on VPN licensing or anything.

So as of today I'm still dead in the water with the laptops. The audio driver issue with the tablets still hasn't been fully resolved, but a manual uninstall and reinstall seems to take care of it. I had been simply joining the machines to the domain and adding the various administrative accounts to the machine before handing them off to my colleagues, but after today's barely tolerable department meeting I said fuck it and decided to do it the right way, and went back to doing the "normal" amount of post-imaging work (installing specific applications, etc.) before passing them on. It slows the process down a bit, but at least I know they're going out the door with everything installed and working the way it should be. I'll not have us being accused of rushing crap out the door the way main ITS was back in May. (Things that still aren't working because they're locked down and they refuse to give us admin rights on the machines so we can—you know—actually fix their messes.)

My mood improved somewhat this afternoon when I finally accepted that conservatively, I was probably going to be going into the office for the next month at least, even though we are still on work-from-home orders until mid October. Of course with Governor Douchebag opening up the entire state again, who knows if I'll ever be working from home again.

Four days work. I had hoped to get this many devices done per DAY.

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Well, That Was Interesting

Today was my first day back in the office in over six months, and I have to say it was a pretty surreal experience. As I explained earlier I needed to be onsite to image approximately 150 laptops and tablets, something that for a multitude of reasons cannot be done remotely.

My colleagues spent a couple days last week getting the lab in order so I can self-isolate while performing this task, and I have to say when I walked in today I was impressed.

Unfortunately, because the room hadn't been used in nearly a year, all the network jacks in the room had been deactivated by main I.T. and—of course—there was no one on site today to turn them back on.

So I basically spent the morning spinning my wheels until I left at noon to head home and grab lunch. I'd arranged to take the afternoon off already, and based on the emails, nothing's getting turned on until tomorrow morning at the earliest.

The building was nearly deserted. I think I crossed paths with less than a dozen people—including my team. Even with that reality, I kept to myself behind the closed door and masked up on my infrequent trips outside.

On the plus side, it looks like I'll be able to do eight laptops per batch instead of the five I thought I'd be able to do, so I may still be able to get everything knocked out this week—assuming I have connectivity in the morning.

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Six Months

It's been six months since the Work From Home order came down at my place of employment. On Monday, however, I have to go back into the office for the next week or so. To be clear, this was no one's first choice.

Since we're now in a new fiscal year and the purse strings have loosened somewhat from what they were in March, the organization is doing the right thing in light of the current pandemic and issuing all its employees laptops. In my particular division, that amounts to approximately 150 pieces, all of which will need to have our standard software image applied prior to being deployed.

Normally this would not be a problem, but working from home presents a few challenges. Since I am the departmental imaging "guy" and want to absolutely limit possible exposure to COVID because I fall into a high risk group, my supervisor suggested that I image the machines at home. The logistical difficulty of doing this was not insurmountable, and I certainly felt comfortable taking on the task. Even imaging from USB sticks instead of over the wire I could realistically expect to get 25-30 machines prepped per day

That was all well and good, and I was actually feeling pretty excited about it because to be honest I'm getting pretty tired of just staring at a screen for 8 hours and doing precious little else.

Well, this plan was run by my supervisor's boss and she put the kibosh on it immediately. "Non imaged equipment cannot leave our facilities."

Well damn.

Enter plan B. My colleagues would clean up the lab (a closed room with its own door that had gone from being an actual computer lab to one very messy store room) and I would come into the office starting Monday for the next five days to do the imaging work in house. I'm not exactly thrilled with the prospect because I'm still very skittish about being out in public, but my organization has gone to great lengths to follow CDC recommendations in terms of social distancing, mask wearing, and hand washing, so it's not going to be like say, spending an entire day at Target. My supervisor told me that for the duration of this project I wouldn't be working any additional tickets (so no face-to-face interaction with our customers) and he felt that by keeping me in isolation in the lab this would further minimize my overall exposure.

Okay, fine.

Ben and I both went to get swabbed today. This was not prompted by my (or increasingly likely his) return to work next week, but rather an unfortunate encounter Ben had last week. I'll spare you the gruesome details, but suffice to say that the selfish, callous disregard displayed by a certain individual (whose identity long-time readers of this blog will have no trouble discerning) who may have exposed us to the virus—after all the care we've gone through to follow the rules and avoid being exposed—has resulted many subsequent sleepless nights and that individual becoming unwelcome in this household ever again.

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Not Looking Forward to Monday

It's not like I didn't know this was coming. I mean, I've been to this rodeo too many times over the course of my career to not see it.

Several weeks ago, our division director retired. We were all happy for him, even knowing at the same time what a great loss it would be to our operation. While we're waiting for a replacement to be hired, , we're reporting to his supervisor—a woman who neither wants or understands the role. "What exactly do you do here?" was one of the questions she asked him about a week before his departure. At the time we all thought it was because she was deciding whether or not a replacement would be necessary, but the last week has proven she had no clue whatsoever what his role in the department actually entailed.

And we (or at least I ) did not fully grasp how much interference the man ran between our group and those above.

Two weeks ago my supervisor asked us all to start keeping a journal of everything we're doing during the day. I emailed him and said, "So now we're justifying our jobs?"

He said no, it was nothing like that. He just wanted to keep his supervisor (who was now reporting to Miss I-Don't-Want-This-Responsibility) in the loop. While I like and respect him and have one of the best relationships with a superior I've had in my career, I knew he was lying through his teeth because—as I wrote earlier—this ain't my first trip to the rodeo.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that for the past month or so, I've had surprisingly little to do. The number of tickets coming in has dropped significantly as people have finally settled into this new paradigm of working from home, and most of the problems that do not involve VPN access or the usual run-of-the mill desktop support stuff are related to back-end databases and home-brew application support, neither of which I've had to deal with as long as I've been on board with the organization. Those have been handled by either my supervisor directly, or my senior colleague who has been doing that stuff for an eternity. The remaining usual desktop tickets are—because they start an hour earlier than I do—often snatched up by my remaining colleagues even before clock in. (Or as I am constantly bitching to my boss, snatched up and resolved, without actually accepting, making notes, or closing the ticket out in our help desk software, leading me to think they're still open and me wasting my time chasing issues that were already resolved.)

Last Friday out of the blue in our weekly Skype, my boss told me that wants me to start taking care of all my senior colleague's open tickets because he was assigning him to a "special project." (At least those tickets that do not involve direct hands-on hardware intervention because he still doesn't want me physically back in the office for obvious reasons.) "Work with B (my other colleague) if you have any questions about something you don't understand, and of course I'm available to help you build your knowledge as well."

Now I don't know for sure if this is what actually went down, but based on her notoriety for micromanaging, I would dare say that Miss I-Don't-Want-This-Responsibility noted how little I was actually working on and wanted my boss to justify my continued existence in the department.

My supervisor fought hard to bring me on full time from temp to begin with, and I know he believes in me and my skills, so after speaking with a friend and sounding her out on this she said, "It's because he wants to keep you around, so don't think of it as punishment."

I appreciate that, but it doesn't mean I'm looking forward to this "knowledge building" exercise, but neither I nor my budget are ready to take early retirement, especially after committing myself to a car payment last March…

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Flashback Friday

I was trying to come up with a picture or two to post on Instagram for #flashbackfriday (since I missed #throwbackthursday), and instead of posting some old photo of me grimacing, I thought I'd branch out a bit and started scrolling through my virtual photo albums to see what I could find.

This led me to the year and a half I spent working at DISH, aka The Worst Company in the United States to Work For, and I realized that as fucked as things are in the world right now, working at DISH was still worse. I honestly don't know how I lasted there as long as I did, but it truly was my personal trip through Hell and  these pictures have reminded me just what an incredible job I now find myself in and how I'm actually appreciated for I do there.

Someday I shall write at length about those eighteen months at DISH, but for now I will suffice by posting some snarky-but-still accurately captioned photos:

Welcome to Hell
The Gates of Hell. Don't even THINK about passing through these after 9 am or you'll be subject to disciplinary action unless you and your supervisor have a damn good reason for you being late (and snowstorms do not count).
IT Tech area, aka the 7th Level of Hell
IT Tech area. If it looks like a frat house after a party there's a reason. It was run like one. (Something I was unaware of while working as a contractor, sequestered in a totally different area and not exposed to the effluent that was freely flowing here. (If I had been, I probably would not have accepted their hastily-assembled, last minute offer of permanent employment when my contract was expiring.)
The Build/Storage Room where I'd been sequestered AFTER I convinced the Demons to let me clean and organize it.
Demonic management decided the frat house atmosphere was no longer in the company's best interest, so it was time to clean and reorganize the 7th Level in Preparation. Preparation for what, you ask?
In preparation for THIS. The "T-Bar" and the new entrance that closes off the 7th Level from the rest of the floor. (Because apparently it was easier to seal off the frat house from the rest of the floor instead of addressing the underlying personnel issues that allowed it to continue.)
And, like everywhere else in the building, the Demons needed to track one's arrival and departure times from the Seventh Level.
The NEW Seventh Level of Hell. Just as clean and orderly as the old one, because…personnel.
Have a seat and watch souls being tortured while you wait for your own time to come.

Not a blatant ripoff of Apple's Genius Bar. Nope. Not at all. Nothing to see here. "Your Minions will serve you shortly."
Minions waiting to learn their punishment for yet another minor infraction in what became known as "the Friday beatdown." Or maybe it was the official opening of the T-Bar…
The bowels of Hell
All souls' paths lead to the abattoir.
Escape and single-image expression of my opinion of that company.
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A Month In to this Nightmare, and it's STILL True

Of course, it doesn't help that our I.T. Security group decided to roll out a brand new VPN client, rendering everything else obsolete and locking out anyone using a personal device to connect to the corporate network…

And no, I am not kidding.

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He Does Have a Point

Me (after reading yet another whiny email from one of our high-maintenance users who seems to have no clue that things are not business as usual): "There are certain people at work I just want to bitch slap."

Ben: "But then you wouldn't be following social distancing guidelines."

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Done With It

It should come as no surprise that the same people who wait until the last minute to request VPN to work from home are also the most clueless individuals in our organization.

Those higher up the IT chain have decided that in the interest of corporate security, they need to lock things down a bit, so as of last week we were no longer able to request VPN access for users who were using their personal computers to get on the enterprise network via VPN. Makes sense, considering how vulnerable to attack the vast majority of home PCs are.

So the new protocol requires getting the name of the enterprise PC the users will be taking home, their personal cell number (for 2-factor authentication required for the initial install of the client), and a list of applications they need to access that would be inaccessible if they weren't granted VPN access. Simple stuff, right?

In theory, yes. But then I end up with users like the guy I had today who was requesting VPN for three of his direct reports. First email request asking for these three items was returned with only the PC name for one of his reports. Second was only the list of applications that the three employees would be using. Finally, when I told this user his request could not be fulfilled without the other PC names and cell phone numbers did I get all the info required. "I guess you guys are really busy right now, huh?"

Why yes. Yes we are. Because of people like you who can't read an email all the way through.

After the accounts were created, I sent out emails to the employees, telling them they were set up on the back end and providing instructions on how to install the client on their company devices. As a courtesy I cc'd the guy who'd put in the initial request for them.

I immediately get an email from the genius saying, "[Employee Name] isn't in the office today."

So? SO? How does this affect ANYTHING I just emailed you?

But you know what irritates me more than this generic brand of cluelessness? It's the people that somehow think everything is still business as usual and can't understand that certain things they used to take for granted simply cannot be done at the moment.

No Karen, you can't just "stop by and pick up a projector for a meeting."

Firstly, there's a skeleton crew in the office to begin with and absolutely no one in I.T. is onsite, and secondly, who are you scheduling a meeting with considering no one is in the office?!

SMDH.

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So This Happened Last Night


As I've mentioned, since last Tuesday I've been working from home. I won't lie. It was stressful, and I swear I did more during those four days than I normally do in twice that amount of time.

My boss was kind of surprised that I hadn't brought my company-issued laptop home, and was instead connecting back to the office via a perfectly serviceable Dell desktop that I'd pulled out of storage and just upgraded in anticipation of all this going down. Not knowing at the time how long all this would last (or if we'd even ultimately get approval to do this) I didn't want to have to drag the laptop back and forth in addition to my personal Mac.

He was also surprised I didn't have a dual monitor setup at home. I told him it's no big deal; the ol' Dell supported only a single VGA connection without a separate video card and like I'd said, it was working just fine.

"Order yourself a video card and go downtown and grab a second monitor," he said.

I reluctantly said I would, but as long as my current setup was getting the job done, I didn't feel any urgency.

Well, a lot can happen in 48 hours amid this Coronachaos. Friday evening we received a notice that starting Monday all our facilities would be closed to the general public except by appointment. Shit was getting real. Add to that rumors were circulating that Phoenix was going to join other municipalities and go into lockdown mode next week.

So after some further contemplation, I last night I texted my boss and told him that instead of ordering a card for my personal PC, I was just going to go downtown (while I still could) and retrieve my company laptop. He said that was great; he was planning on heading down with his wife after dinner to retrieve her equipment (same organization, different department).

We met downtown last night around 7:30, and I have to say it was eerily quiet. Phoenix has always pretty much rolled up the sidewalks after dark (even on weekends), but last night it was dead.

We grabbed his wife's equipment and then headed to our work area. Once I got to my desk I realized that the docking station for my laptop only had display port and HDMI video. I know we didn't have any VGA adapters, but I knew I had a USB C-to-VGA dongle at home that I occasionally used with my Mac.

Since I was there, however, I decided to just grab everything: the dock, my company-supplied Verizon hotspot (the power went out at home briefly last week), my wireless keyboard and mouse, and finally the incredible Bose noise-isolating over-the-ear headphones we got a few weeks ago—the reason for which I'm still trying to determine

We had the cart loaded and were heading to the elevator when my boss said, "Where's your monitor?"

I would've loved to have taken it as well, but I told him I didn't think I could.

"Of course. Go back and get it. Anything to ensure you're as productive at home as you are when you're here, especially since this telework situation may last weeks…or longer."

So there we were.

This widescreen monster has been on my radar as something I'd like to get for for home since it first appeared on my desk at work, but could never justify the cost considering I mostly use my Mac in the evening on the coffee table or on my lap. But this is definitely a joy, even if it means I have to work in the den.

I think I'm going to get spoiled.

 

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Don't Let Anyone Tell You Different

Working from home is hard.

People have this fantasy that you lazily roll up to your computer with coffee in hand, wearing your pajamas and robe (people wear pajamas?), and it's just clickity-click-slippered-feet-on-your-desk and before you know it the day has passed and it's time for you to log out.

I still get up at the same time I always do. I still shower, shave, and dress like I'm actually going into the office. I put my shoes on. At about the time I'd normally leave the house to head downtown, I get in my car and drive over to Starbucks to pick up my morning coffee. Then, instead of heading downtown, I turn around and go back home. I log into my computer, remotely connect to my machine back at the office, and join the group peer chat that's already been going on for an hour (we're all maintaining our normal schedules). At that point the flood gates open and the tickets start pouring in.

I have done more work over the past three days than I do in a typical week.  It's a little more difficult because I'm not physically there to troubleshoot issues, but so far that hasn't been insurmountable. (We have one guy—someone who still maintains COVID-19 is all a hoax—he read it on Facebook!—on the ground who is handling the stuff that requires a physical presence.)

The biggest issue right now—and the one that absolutely galls me no end—is the sheer number of people who discover they're going to be working from home and don't. have. a. clue. Today, in a continuation of yesterday's theme, was last minute VPN requests. And then there are the, "Do you guys have an extra laptop I can borrow?"

No Karen, all our spares were loaned out last week. "But, but, but…"

Sucks to be you, beyotch.

This (emailing them directions) is how you set it up VPN on your home PC. And this is how you start up Remote Desktop to connect to your machine at work. I had one user yesterday who I swore had Rip-Van-Winkled in from 1992 because he couldn't comprehend any of what I was telling him.

Yesterday I was so wrung out, after I logged out for the day I went to lay down and take a short nap and I ended up sleeping for four hours.

Today isn't quite as bad, but I'm ready for this week to be over. At this point, however, with all the news about the country facing an unprecedented eventual 20% unemployment rate and poverty the likes of which the United States hasn't seen in a century in the forecast, I'm thankful that Ben and I both have jobs that seem to be—at least at the moment—fairly secure.

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It's Official

Starting tomorrow, I'm working from home until the end of the month—and maybe longer, depending on how this all goes.

I'm fine with that.

Today we had a dozen or so people just show up demanding laptops or last minute help setting up VPN because—apparently—those same people had no clue what was going on and/or were incapable of reading and following directions. And then there were the additional dozen or so requests for VPN access, a process that in and of itself takes 24 hours to wind its way through the system.

I was never able to replicate the success I had installing the Cisco AnyConnect client  on my Mac with any subsequent Apple devices that were presented to me. I finally gave up, and arranged for those Mac users to borrow Dells to take home. Kind of disappointing, but there's just so much head-wall banging a boy can endure.

No one knows how any of this is going to shake out, especially for those folks who have next to no experience working from home on a daily basis (myself included—at least in this role), but it's a little late to think about that now. The organization has let the work-from-home genie out of the bottle and there's no stuffing it back in at this point.

I think of it as a learning opportunity.

And I'm still going to do the get coffee first thing, even if it means having to go through the drive through…

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As Of Right Now…

…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.

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Prime Time (Part Three)

It goes without saying that Fred offered me a job after only chatting with him for a half hour or so. He was impressed with both my continued architectural history as well as my knowledge of AutoCAD and the systems behind it. "We're always having to call in our outside consultant when something goes wrong. It would be nice to have someone in house who can troubleshoot this stuff."

From my Journal of July 9th that year:

I called Fred yesterday morning with every intention of turning down their offer.  I knew I was probably throwing away a great opportunity, and the thought of going through this whole temp thing one more time didn't exactly appeal to me, but the more I thought about what Jim (Fred's partner)  had said during our interview last Wednesday, the more I was convinced this was not some place I wanted to work.  However, after voicing my concerns about working hours and overtime with Fred it became abundantly clear that, unlike Jim, he was willing to make whatever reasonable accommodations were necessary to get me in there.  When I questioned him about this, Fred said, "Aw hell, you aren't going to be working with him anyway."  Yeah, right.

Someday I'm going to start listening to my inner voice, because this was most certainly not one of them. Things started to sour almost immediately, as the job I was promised by Fred was most certainly not the job his partner had me performing.

From the resignation letter I left on Fred's desk the day I walked out:

Despite your assurances that I was not hired as simply a "warm body to fill a chair" that's exactly the feeling I've gotten since I started working here.  It became increasingly obvious that my getting any sort of IS responsibility was never going to happen; control of that system is never going to be wrested from the other members of your management team.  As just one example, the ongoing problems with Lisa's computer could be easily solved if anyone had bothered to listen to what I had to say.  Unfortunately it was always the mantra of "Call Emron! Call Emron!" whenever something went wrong, even though the man has demonstrated again and again his inability to provide long-term solutions to these problems.  I even got to the point where I stopped fixing the easily-repairable glitches with my own setup because I've received the definite message from above that I'm not to touch anything.   Fred, I've built systems as complex as yours from scratch and don't appreciate being treated as if I don't know where the on/off switch is by management personnel who have demonstrated time and again they don't know an icon from a hole in the ground.

So two months later, after receiving (and cashing) my pay check, I left my resignation letter on Fred's desk and walked out after lunch.

I did find work in the I.T. department of one of the country's most prestigious law firms in the country shortly thereafter. While stressful, I learned a lot, made friends whom I'm still in contact with these many years later, and decided that yes, this was the career for me.

Unfortunately, that all fell apart about eighteen months later, when the management team left en masse, resulting in the promotion of a micro-managing mess (who had no leadership experience and even less people skills) to oversee the department. Within months, all of the desktop techs (including myself) had quit.

I spent one more short period of time working as a temp at St. Mary's Hospital. I'd been referred by a previous coworker from the law firm, who had left St. Mary's for a permanent position at another business. The money was good. Too good. (Something else that's been a red flag for me in years since.)

The department was run by a nurse, who attempted to police us as if we were nursing staff. One morning I arrived ten minutes late and was told my tardiness would go on my permanent record. I bit my lip to prevent laughing to her face and saying, "Bitch, I'm a contractor. I don't care about your permanent record bullshit." I quit shortly thereafter. It was no wonder they couldn't keep people…

My romantic life continued to be a hot mess, although there were no lack of sizzling encounters. My journals for those last years of my 30s are littered with the names of men I hooked up with but whose faces I cannot recall for the life of me. Again, I think unrelenting search for connection stems from the underlying loneliness I wrote of earlier.

My housemate Michael, however, was doing much better on the romantic front, and started dating a man named Raymond. Raymond and I did not get along, and while it hurt me deeply, it came as no surprise when Michael announced that they were moving in together, and I would have to find another place to live.

At this point, with both my professional and romantic lives in shambles, there was precious little holding me in San Francisco. After arranging to stay in my Mom's spare room until I found work, I packed up and moved back to Arizona again.

Michael and I did not part on good terms, despite our near ten-year friendship. I left without saying goodbye. (Michael and I have long since patched things up and he now one of my closest confidants.)

Long story short, I ended up back in Phoenix in my mom's spare bedroom. I found a job relatively quickly at Avnet, and ended up celebrating my 40th by myself; all my long-time friends still in SF.

(To be continued.)

 

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Oops!

So once again I find myself imaging and prepping a boatload of PCs for deployment. I don't mind; it's pretty mindless work and I can still work tickets in the background.

When I started this most recent round, after laying down our base image I ran updates and I usually do, and saw that there was a Windows 10 update available. We never see this pop up, so I went ahead and applied it. This brought us from 1809 to 1903. The most obvious change was new wallpaper, but I'm sure there was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. Anyway, I pointed this out to my colleagues and asked if I should go ahead and update all the machines as they come through. They said they didn't see any problem with it, so that's what I've been doing.

Late yesterday afternoon I ran through the process and it seemed to take extraordinarily long for the update to complete, and when it was finished it seemed…off. For shits and giggles, I checked the version. It was now 1909.

Okay…whatever. I did a couple more machines and updated my own work laptop.

Everything worked fine until I went to install Google Earth on the first of the machines. It wouldn't install. In fact, it seemed there was no connectivity at all to the outside world. I checked my own laptop. Same problem. I mentioned this to one of my coworkers and he said, "Oh yeah, there was an email from enSilo that said not to upgrade to 1909 because it doesn't work with it."

UGH.

So as I type this I'm reimaging my work laptop and the other four machines, setting us all back to 1809, the standard that's been pushed out for the past year.

It's going to be a long day…