November 7th

20 hours work
I got back on the ball this week. I started it off by changing my work hours to not something really more efficient, but something more favorable. I now work on monday 1-3pm. Tuesday-wednesday 1-5pm. Thursday-friday 12-5pm. I tried out my new work schedule this week, and just found it a lot more agreeable with myself. At the same time I'm getting used to some longer shifts for thursday and friday.

This week I've created several tickets and left them open for anyone to take advantage for the next days. I usually made tickets concerning problems that I didn't have time to start at the end of one of my days. Nobody took the tickets, so I just resolved them myself. Not too much of a problem, just giving myself work.

This week has involved a lot of documentation to get done. Both paperwork and digital. There was 3 computers new to sfos and I had to work on all of them. It was mainly the standard add the normal keyed software and sfos required software, as well as lot of program uninstalling for the crud that comes from hp. The new thing that I do now when working on computers is enabling the windows classic look and the classic start button with absolutely no fancy graphics to look at all. I don't know if I've pissed anybody off doing this on absolutely every single machine I've worked on. But, I figure that if I did piss anybody off that they'll just come up to the IT department and let everyone know of some problems going on. No one has been angered with me doing this on all computers, and especially no ones been angered with mark doing it on all computers way before I ever worked on.

The classic windows interface is very universally renowned for it's utility and ease of use and how fast it runs. Most people don't like the xp and vista start menus. Yet again, people enjoy the ease, utility, and speed with the classic start menu. In reality, no one cares about desktop graphical affects at all.

Back to documentation. I had to fill out many sheets of hardware and software configuration. I got those done away with timely over the week. As well as doing the digital documentation entries and adding sfos tags to the new computers. Next week I need to hunt down the user of the new hp laptop. This one didn't get documented yet. That would actually be computer number 4 I worked on.

This week did have it's annoyances though. One lady is just asking too much of us. I though I finished her laptop. She was wondering where all of the other software like quicken was. I was wondering what the hell she was talking about. She opened up what I then discovered was her laptop bag and had all of this xp software for her wireless keyboard, quicken, etc (her new computer runs vista). At least 10 extra things to install. Customize it right for her. She made a list out of 2 post it notes which made no sense at all. She wanted her laptop to use that night for work. I kept telling her to just use her old one for now in light of all this other stuff to do for her new laptop which also included massive changes to her email inboxes. She wouldn't have it, but I would. Couldn't really help it either. It's what happens when she makes appearances on the last hour of my work schedule and me needing to do other things during the day as well.

I found her requests to be never ending and her personality as never satisfied. She also wouldn't shutup and wouldn't let me get what she wanted done. Mark helped me out on the problem and took care of her email problems. Chris, my coworker was working on her laptop a little bit, but I was still the main shabang working on it. Mark somehow tolerates her while she just pissed me off more and more. She wanted her laptop for that night. It couldn't be done. She refused to use her old laptop for the mean time also. She wanted to work out some schedule with mark so that she could like pick up her old laptop in the morning. I just got even more pissed off, and channelled my anger into something constructive telling her that her old one works fine enough to get her work done for now in light of all the other stuff for her new one needs done to it after she came into the room.

She left both of her laptops there, and came back the next day and grabbed her old one to work on. I was like what the hell?

The most daunting task this week was priority for a computer getting shipped out to homer. So i did all of the software installation for that as well as documentation. Chris comes out of nowhere and I don't know how he did it. But managed to put more software on it. The end result was a whole lot of redundant software. I just left it that way and started testing the rest of the hardware for the homer computer like the lcd monitor that came with it and speakers.

Other stuff during the week was pretty low key. I replaced a gigantic crt monitor with a really nice 4:3 aspect lcd monitor. One of the people in the sfos labs now has more desk real estate.

From the previous week where one professor and or grad student had a new office put in and I hooked up their computer. I worked in there again successfully breaking a pair of scissors on the plastic conduit that guards lan cables to trim it up a bit so I could re-attatch to the wall the ethernet jack wall mount. It was originally just hanging off the wall by the cables after the new desk and counter tops were put in. I screwed it to the wall. I also replaced that persons really crappy ethernet cable with a slightly longer one for more slack and better cable integrity overall. The end result was that the dude had a longer better ethernet cable, the ethernet jack wall mount was not wall mounted, and the cables from which it use to hang by are still in great condition.

Most of my work this week centered around resolving my own tickets and working with getting tickets claimed by my coworkers solved by working with them.