2002-11-27 - 9:17 p.m.
AN URGE TO REBOOT THE HELPLESS GUY
Opening an e-mail message took three minutes at 7:30 a.m. By 9:00, with several more people in the office, it took five minutes. By 9:10, the e-mail didn�t open and the attempt crashed my computer. By 9:30, I had re-booted three times and no one could do anything. A secretary had scheduled to take the office server down and put it back on line on Friday. Obviously, we could not wait that long.
In the old days, I would have taken it down and brought it back on line before 9:00. Now that we must go through a helpless desk for permission, such things are not possible. The helpless guy is not available until some time between 8:30 and 9:00. Besides, it takes time for the most computer-savvy secretary and the most computer-savvy attorney (me) to play chicken over who will have to talk to the helpless guy. Getting the secretary to do it is better achieved by finess than power. Eventually, she blinked and sighed.
First, the helpless guy wanted to know why we thought that rebooting the server would solve the problem. We gave him a technical answer. It wasn�t good enough. We gave him the lay answer: because the problem gets worse each time someone turns on her computer and links into the system. It wasn�t good enough. In disgust, I brought out the big guns. �Tell him it�s woman�s intuition.� Like the good, not-to-sure-of-the-female-species geek that he is, he accepted it and released the computer from his remote clutches so we could reboot.
Quite a bit of time passed. We had to shut down all the computers that were logged on. When the server�s mind is overloaded and it can only remember one thing every twenty minutes, the log-off is, well, I thought we might celebrate Indepence Day in front of the server.
Eventually, we were ready. The secretary put in the password that I had wheedled out of a computer guy I�m not supposed to talk to. It didn�t work. She said some rather ladylike bad words. (I didn�t know there was such a thing.) I then realized that we needed to change the user name but the computer liked the old user name. I did what I would have done with a badly behaved child. I said what I had to say (with the keyboard) and walked away. When I came back, the computer had done it not because I wanted it to but because it wanted to.
We logged on and told it to shut down. It shut down and spontaneously rebooted. It had no intention of taking a nap. It didn�t like naps. It was too old for naps. We tried again and, like a naughty toddler, it popped right back up. I did what any mother would do. I held its keys down until it fell asleep.
A short nap and it woke refreshed. Only one task was left: telling the helpless desk that we were back in business. Then he said it. �I told you it was going to work.�
It was a good thing that I was two hours behind my usual departure time. Otherwise, I would have rebooted the helpless guy.
LAST YEAR: Giving Quarter
LAST FIVE ENTRIES:
Whistling in Chinese Restaurants
Veteran of the Calculus Wars
Tossed Out
Not Strictly Kosher
Short
Culturally Deprived
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Copyright 2006 by Ellen |
