Having Dedicated IT Is a Good Thing and a Bad Thing

Dear readers, Stella knows she hasn't been writing like she should, but give a girl a break. I'm starting a new job after more than nine years of total stability (at least in terms of the circumstances of my employment, if not the actual daily duties of said employment which in fact changed so dramatically and regularly as to make my head spin). There have been one or two things to take care of, not least of which is remembering to put on Real Shoes before I leave the house for the Real Office. I'm pleased to report that after a week of steady grown-up shoe wearing that my feet did not enter a state of agony today, a major accomplishment.

My Home Office-Real Office insight for today is this: real IT support is a mixed blessing.

On the one hand, it is a bit of a relief not to have to horse around with my router, firewall, networking settings, opening ports, configuring which virus scanning server to avail myself of, and the like.

On the other hand, I must wait for people to do these things for me. I'm finding that the few things that I'm able to do in the new job are being somewhat hampered by my lack of access to assorted network crap, or want of the client-server version of the database app installed on my laptop. It is tough to adjust to being a mere customer rather than a purveyor of these services, and to add insult to injury I know no one and thus don't know where to go to get the things I need done done.

And please don't get me started about what an idiot I feel like for not being able to prise the laptop off the DVD drive/psuedo-docking station. I'd like to use the real docking station and thus be able to undock the thing, but when I unlatch the DVD bit, I feel that I may break the whole rig by dragging it apart too vigorously.

I am a mere customer, with problems that will surely make the dedicated IT staff roll their eyes. Let me just apologize up front.