Tag Archives: Mac

Two Birds One Stone

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I need to vent and I need to write a new post… I’m having one of those days where you feel like you haven’t done anything all day, didn’t accomplish anything and basically ended up doing everything you’d never planned for. I’ve been on the phone on and off with the hospital, with work, with the IT helpdesk, with the doctor’s assistant. I’ve been trying to solve an issue for two days in a row now and I’m becoming more and more impatient the longer it takes to solve the problem.

I’ve spent most of last week on filling in and sending out expenses claims for public transport and a dinner voucher which I’d received a couple of months ago. It takes at least half a day to sort this out as I have to do this separately for bus and train. It’s extremely time-consuming, not just sorting them but also having to fill in the forms. On top of that I had to take a compliancy test which took forever because I had to watch lots of informational movies and answer about 20+ questions.

I succeeded in the end but it took time… *again*. All of this had to be done before the 15th of this month. I realise it’s still early but I was already taking other things into consideration and in hindsight I’m glad I did. There’s also this evaluation that I need to write, a report about objectives and how and/or if you’ve achieved those. This is done through a web application that you had to fill out at the beginning of this year, back then you needed to set your goals for this year.

At the time I could easily access that tool but ever since I’ve tried to log in again I’m getting errors. Yesterday I had planned for writing this evaluation because I had finished all the chores and tasks that were on my to-do-list ahead of time in case something would go wrong. I didn’t want to find myself having to rush or being all stressed out for not planning this in time. I did… but of course, Murphy -once again- is sitting right next to me keeping me company for the last two days.

As I can’t access that tool, I can’t write the report, so the deadline of the 15th is getting closer each day. You might think ‘why doesn’t she call a helpdesk’… well I did. Our helpdesk is based on foreign grounds and most of the time incompetent, they put your ticket in the system, promise to call you back but never do. Let alone the moment they hear you mention the words ‘Apple Mac’, they instantly refuse help as they are not hired to give support for anything other than company laptops.

I’m a designer, I need my Mac as the company laptops don’t suffice, so I bought my own MacBook Air a while ago particularly for work. I got VPN access, I can access and use the mailserver through my mail client. But I don’t get support because I’m not mainstream thus an exception to the company rules. So far I’ve always managed to solve any (network related) problem even the VPN settings which were a pain to obtain and sort out. It took a while but I got the job done.

Each new policy becomes another drain as I have to deal with a multitude of intranet websites, logins and tools to work with. Ever since the company merged their systems with the global systems, it has been total chaos. I’ve managed to find workarounds or solved issues, just not today… nor yesterday. I’m anxiously waiting for thé phone call whilst day two is slowly ticking away. Pretty sure the problem will be solved next week, one day before the deadline, wanna bet?

Meantime I’m wondering, why am I getting so impatient… At least I’ve finished another post which was scheduled last week ;)

Murphy Has It Coming

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I feel I’ve been wasting my time lately with all sorts of things that seem to pop up out of nowhere. I had one bad issue after another over the last three weeks. First of all my computer died and as you can imagine I was not happy about it because I have invested quite some money on extra hardware and software to upgrade it and keep it running smooth. It was still the perfect computer to me until it unexpectedly gave up on me one day while I was busy studying and working.

I heard this loud tick, my monitor went black and I could hear the fan slowly coming to a halt. I knew straight away that it was the power supply so I did some research online and found out, it had been a hardware issue waiting to happen. Apple knew about this since they released this computer, they’ve managed to sell faulty products for three years… Of course I checked to see if there was a repair program, there was, but it closed in January this year and knowing Apple I shouldn’t expect extras…

I did call though… and on top of all the crap, I had to deal with an extremely annoying person, who kept telling me that I didn’t register that computer with Apple. She had that tone in her voice like she was almost accusing me of stealing the piece of hardware. Later, after I’d spoken with a really nice person at the Apple dealer who’d explained to me how to check my registry, I found out that I was indeed registered. It only confirmed the fact that I’d been trying to have a conversation with a right cow.

I’m still thinking about making an official complaint, it was something the manager at the Apple store mentioned to me. It just doesn’t sit well with me and I don’t wish to be treated like that especially not by a company that has become extremely arrogant over the years. To be honest, I was so pissed off, I was ready to swap to PC… that should tell you something *wink*… It’s solved for now, I’m using my good old Powerbook: it doesn’t have enough power to do anything else besides email and internet.

But it works until the proper stuff is in. Of course it took me ages to transfer most of my files to one of my removable HDs. Lucky me I could borrow some gadget from my brother to connect a harddisk through USB to another computer to transfer stuff but I still need to find a case to put these old harddisks in so I can continue to use them. Something like this would be awesome… Anyway… when I finally had setup a proper work space I found out that my business domain had been hacked *bring it on!*

So I’m still cleaning up the mess… I had to delete websites and reinstall them, it’s the kind of stuff you don’t want to do when there are more urgent issues to deal with. I’m supposed to study the next couple of months to update my webdesign knowledge. I started reading some O’Reilly books on CSS, Drupal, Flash, CMS, SEO etc. and it has come to a grinding halt ever since I ran into these horrid problems. On top of that -since I haven’t got a start date yet with the new employer- I still have to apply for jobs.

I actually received a phone call last week from the owner of an architectural design agency who wanted to meet me and have a chat. I’d applied for a job the week prior to his phone call but the job was no longer available. He said he was impressed with my CV though and invited me to meet up with them. I’ll have to visit them this Thursday and in a way I’m really looking forward to this. I know they use Drupal to build websites while they’re also in need of Drupal freelancers: 1+1=2? *wink*

We’ll see… for now I have plenty of work to catch up on so if you wonder why I’m quiet again that is your answer. So if you will excuse me, I have someone called Murphy to deal with, I think I’m going to pwn him…