Struggling with Computers

Technology doesn't like me. Back at Cornell, I once managed to destroy both of our departmental copiers. And I did it twice. And it all happened in the space of an hour. So I was not very surprised to discover that over the winter holidays the hard drive of my work computer had "melted" (according to our IT specialist) for no apparent reason. I requested a new computer (which I am owed as per the conditions of my employment). The IT person reformatted the part of the hard drive that hadn't melted, instead. Needless to say, it took the computer less than a week to stop functioning.

After I reported this disaster, it took the IT person until the day before yesterday to walk to my office with a new computer. Everybody knows that IT people have a tendency to get distracted very easily. Still, he did install a new, out-of-the-box computer on Wednesday. The next day (which ws yesterday) I came to work 2 hours early in order to prepare my classes for next week. My goal was to get all the work out of the way and have an uninterrupted 4-day-long weekend. When I came to work, however, I discovered that my "new" computer was dead.

Not only was I annoyed, I was also very bored. There is really nothing to do on campus at 7:30 in the morning if you have no computer.

When the IT person finally showed up, he started reinstalling (or whatever, I'm not good with the terminology) the computer. When I came to my office after teaching all my classes, I discovered that the computer was, indeed, working. The only problem was that something happened to the screen resolution and after five minutes of working on the computer I was on the verge of going insane. It turns out that the IT person connected a wrong monitor to this computer. How he thought I would be able to work on it is beyond me. We all know, however, that IT people have very weird ways of thinking about things.

Now he tells me that when I come back to work on Tuesday the computer will be in a working condition. Yeah, right. I'm so not going to work without bringing my own computer.

P.S. My home laptop also started acting up. But I think I managed to repair it. I won't go into the endless story of how long and painful the process was but it kind of seems like it worked. I feel very proud of myself. Maybe now I should take the job of installing my office computer into my own hands.