Wandering the deep dark recesses...

No, not of my mind. Not this time.

The deep dark recesses of IT Land. It's a scary place, but come with me for a brief visit. It's dark, but, well...enlightening.

Because of the incredible amount of meetings I attend (and lose many hours of work time to) I finally decided that a lap top computer for work was A Good Thing. Of course there are many reasons to have one, but the biggest reason that made me avoid one was the spectre of lots and lots of homework many nights a week. However, when I began having to spend hours in meetings that were not entirely useful and saw how much work others were getting accomplished, I began to rethink the issue. And so I petitioned my team leader for an early "refresh" as we call the process of Getting A New Computer.

The new system arrived three weeks ago today. After waiting patiently for those three weeks, a technician showed up yesterday to Install The System. (It's worth the wait because then he must take the blame if Something Goes Wrong.)

I recall the days when a refresh took the better part of a day if not all or it, or more. (Yes, I am old, and I sound it.) Well, I was pleasantly surprised when Austin finished in an hour and a half. That's installing and moving my data from old to new. He rose and said, "That's it. You're good to go." And he disappeared. He walked into one of those dark recesses where he quickly disappears and there is no way to call him back. Really, no way.

I began to look, first of all, to see if all of my stuff was there. Most important thing...my stuff. Well, yes it all seems to be there, including (shh) the personal stuff too...music, some personal Word files, and such. Because the system administrator will not allow music, for one example, to be backed up, I figured "they" would not allow such personal things to be moved. So far, so good.

Then the fun began. Now, let me first off say that I realize just how little I know about computers. I am very much A User, and it is a black box to me, and that's the way I like it. Yes, even if I have problems with my home computer. That is what IT support gets paid for.

First off I couldn't access the internet. "This page cannot be displayed" for all of my favorites, and no, not the personal ones. I couldn't access the things I use for work. I know a couple of tricks to try on settings, but that didn't work and I opted to Leave It Alone.

Next up is that I did not know how to undock the lap top from the docking station. A good tug didn't work. My cube neighbor informed me you have to press the unlock button. Oh, of course. Having received No Instruction from Austin before he disappeared into the dark recesses, I simply pressed the unlock button and took the lap top. It was not until I tried to redock that I realized I must have done Something Wrong. Again my cube neighbor gave the lesson...power down before you undock! Oh...really?? I had no clue. And the local IT person gave me a stiff lecture on that, but that was later.

Still I couldn't figure out what was up. The mouse wouldn't respond. The secondary monitor was now the primary one, with the option to make the lap top's monitor the primary one not available. My cube neighbor gave me lots of advice, none of which worked and only seemed to inflame the situation. "Why don't you get rid of that frame around the docking station? (The one that supports the monitor.) It's in the way and you can't open your laptop with that there.) The IT person wasn't impressed with that either.

After an hour and a half (the same time the refresh took) I was still wandering in the dark, and things were not completely working. Two IT people were at the desk and Cathene had her "book of tricks" none of which were working. I was happy to sit back and watch the fun, after I'd had my turn of following Jon's advice and still being alone in the dark. This is when the lectures came, by the way, of not messing with the system, how to undock (Did Austin really not tell you about this? Uh...yeah. Did he really not leave a card with his phone number? Uh...yeah), don't tinker with the hardware, etc. I took it with a pinched grin and lots of head nodding, and a promise to get back at Jon...who has his system set up the way he was advising me to set mine up and somehow escaped the lectures.

At any rate when I left work, internet was still no go. I was glad to walk away and leave it in their capable hands and forget about it for the night.

This morning I came in and turned on the computer. Internet Explorer still would not load any web pages. However, in my email was a note from the IT group that my problem had been solved, "please verify by taking this survey". Fixed?? Why couldn't I get it work? Well, I looked at the settings again and tried things at random, and guess what, it now loads web pages. I have no idea what I did or why it works. Or why "they" thought the problem was fixed.

That is the deep dark recesses of IT Land. I recommend avoiding it as much as possible. If you must go, don't go alone, and don't stay long either. It's not a good place to even visit.