Scott Ludwig was kind enough to recently enter a post about my being “out of pocket”. Unfortunately, I still am to some degree. I should really probably explain.
For the last sixteen years, I have been accustomed to doing all of my work, correspondence and gaming on a company owned laptop. In that time, I developed the habit of responding to my clients and friends rather quickly, as all of my information arrived on the same computer. One computer; one system. It worked very well, right up until last Thursday.
One week ago today, a friend of mine stopped by the office. It just so happens that we work for the same company. I am a Vice President and well respected Engineer Manager in the firm with a lot of responsibilities. My friend is one of the very best IT guys I have ever met. Although the company would make a distinction in our relative ranks in the firm, I do not. I value everyone equally, a trait which lands me in trouble sometimes with the CEO, COO, CFO, etc. Such high level folks sometimes expect platitudes and subservience by the truckload. They don’t get that from me. You actually have to earn my respect. Some of you who know me the best will recognize that trait in my service to this club. Yeah, it often gets me in trouble here too.
At any rate, this friend of mine works on all the computers in my office. We have a pleasant lunch together, some wonderful conversation, and he leaves to travel further down the road and visit other offices, working his technical magic along the way. The problem is, this time his technical magic was decidedly not in my favor. I did not discover the extent of his modifications until after he departed. During his visit, I had received several automatic notifications of new posts, private messages, and the like that had arrived from the NWC. As per my usual habit, I clicked on one of them so that I could remain up to date on the club’s events at all times. This time was different. I was immediately greeted with a screen politely informing me that access to the NWC website, any and all of the NWC websites, was denied. It was at this point that I realized I could no longer monitor the happenings in the club during the work day while I was logged into the company’s intranet system. Bummer, dude! The only ray of hope was that I would be able to access the NWC websites once I got home and was operating outside of the company’s intranet system. Well, at least I could still read the posts on my cell phone, although typing a response on the medium was entirely out of the question except for emergency situations. It just takes to long.
When I arrived home that evening, I was ready to plug back into the club and catch up on my neglected forum responses. I turned on my laptop, clicked on Internet Explorer, pulled up my list of Favorite website locations, clicked on the NWC web address, and was greeted with the same red framed screen informing me that I was denied access to all NWC websites. OK, so this is really beginning to suck at this point.
In the week that followed, I have implemented some stop gap measures to retain some level of operability, but I will not be able to be as responsive as I once was until I manage to purchase a new, personal laptop and undertake loads of configuration. In truth, even then, it is never going to be as efficient transitioning between two laptops as it was to simply do everything I needed to do on one. My new situation is a bit Orwellian to me, as I do manage to make quite a bit of money for my firm every year. Still, as any of you who work with a corporate entity will know, you actually can fight City Hall, but it is not always a wise choice to do so. This is one of those times.
I will continue to improve the efficiency of the new system in which I am consigned to operate. I just wanted you all to know that I am not ignoring you; I just had a rather major problem dumped directly on my head. In the interim, as Andy would say, enjoy your “early Christmas” gift.
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