Disconnected but tethered with Mercury in retrograde
What a craptastic day this was. As least in terms of work…
Booted up my laptop like I do every day. Everything was all right. Got my VPN going. Opened up email. Clicked on the first spam message and hit the delete button. Spinning ball… Okay, didn’t think anything of it. Sometimes computers need to take little cat naps. Then. Dun dun dun… Blue screen of death. There was a (somewhat) encouraging message that Windows was collecting data and would restart shortly. There was a (somewhat) comforting percentage informing me of how far Windows had gotten in the process. 0%. Okay, I’ll wait. 0%. After a looooong time still 0%.
I am pretty brave about hard rrre-astarts so that’s what I did. No love.
Texted my boss to get the support TELEPHONE NUMBER. I *usually* deal with technical issues (fortunately rare) via chat. But iffya can’t boot up yer ‘puter, ya can’t chat, roight?
On the third try, I got to a PERSON without getting disconnected. (I much prefer chat.) I described the problem (I had taken a picture of the blue screen message) and provided my laptop serial number and other requested info. My support guy was great as far as it went but he couldn’t do anything about my problem, which needed to be escalated to my nearest business unit, which is Detroit. Detroit? For a nano-second that threw me for a loop even though I knew Detroit was the closest OFFICE to my telecommuting location and that WAS my location as far as support was concerned. Just odd to work in Ann Arbor for 14 years and suddenly be working in Detroit except still working in A2 or wherever… I almost said something like, “actually I’m working on the Shores of Gitchee Gumee,” but I suspected this person was in India and who knew if he was familiar with Lake Superior. So I caught myself and said, “Yes, Detroit.”
So I waited ALL DAY for a call that never came. I decided not to pursue it further today. My boss’s reaction was something like, “Hey, you get a free day!” I had a nice day reading (and swatting *moe*-skee-*toes*) in a great location but I couldn’t GO anywhere because I needed to be near my laptop when my callback came, which it didn’t. But I will be back in my primary work location on The Planet Ann Arbor on Monday and I will be DOGGING it then.
The pic is courtesy of the GG and he actually sent me a full-size pic for once so you can embiggen it (and it’s not a goddamn bear). The presence of these deer in our front yard delayed yesterday’s early morning laundromat trip for five minutes or so. The freighter behind them only adds to the pic (embiggen). There are certainly a lot of deer around here but we don’t see them all that often, I think because there is a huge forest habitat for them around here and we don’t have gardens to entice them.
We do seem to have a resident hare this year. I haven’t gotten a pic yet and not sure what to name him/her.
June 11th, 2021 at 10:36 pm
The blue screen of death is scary, especially if it’s for work. We had little to no tech support at school or it would take forever; it was very frustrating!