Momentary Panic

Yesterday afternoon, I’m sitting at my computer having has a fairly productive morning. Got things accomplished, feeling good. The IT guys who are here setting up our network are hard at work running wires and cables throughout the office, it’s been a good day. Then, one of them says he just needs to hop on my computer to connect it to the network. Foolishly, I say “oh, okay”, thinking he’s just got to add another connection or something. There were a few little warning bells in my head, but I didn’t think much about it (like I said – end of the day.) Then he restarts my computer, and I can’t log in. Can’t do anything. My blood pressure starts to rise a little, and I ask him what he did. He stares at me blankly, and I notice that one of the fields that is supposed to be in my login window is gone. I ask him what happened to it, and again, blank stare. I say “well, this is not okay, you have to fix this. Now.” We then also notice that he’s botched the new girl’s computer similarly, so she and I are both getting nervous. He goes over to her computer and starts putting CDs in, getting into the BIOS (is that the right way to say that, all you IT guys out there?), trying to change the administrator password. It doesn’t help that D’s computer is French, that she has a French keyboard, the commands are in French, etc. She and I start speaking to each other in French about the situation at hand, and we’re not using the most charitable terms – but we’re trying to be polite enough to at least not say this in English, since he understands some English. At this point, I close my laptop and basically tell him that I don’t think he knows how to fix what he did, and that I’m going to call my office in Washington, but before I do that, he needs to explain to me very carefully what happened. It comes out in fits and starts, and he says something about changing it from a domain environment to a workgroup environment, and he needs to create an account in the workgroup. I tersely enquire as to how he proposes to do this when we can’t get into the computer at all. Another blank stare. I ask why he didn’t set up the account before restarting the computer. Deer caught in the headlights. At this point, D and I decide to cut our losses, although we have a feeling that her computer is in worse shape than mine, and head out for the evening. The IT person in the Paris office has just left for three weeks of vacation, and I’m hoping fervently that there will be someone in DC who can help me, I just have to wait a few hours for the office to open. (Who loves an 11-hour time difference? I do, I do!)

We leave and go get dinner – have a lovely evening conversing about all kinds of things, making plans for what we’re going to do this weekend in terms of sightseeing and all that, and frequently commenting on how we’re both still really hacked that our computers got messed up, that the guy who messed them up had no idea how to undo what he’d done, and that he didn’t seem all that interested in fixing the situation, what with having spent a good amount of the evening looking at his watch as her computer spiraled downward under his care. Sorry for the run-on sentence, but we were using a lot of them last night, I figured it would help capture the mood. Okay, that’s not exactly true, I was mostly just being lazy. Moving right along.

I get home and call the DC office, and fortunately, our IT guy can help me, I dial into the VPN and everything gets fixed. Apparently, this happens a LOT to people when they travel, which is why we are so often warned about letting ANYONE ELSE touch our computers. I have now promised to bring our IT guy back a few bottles of wine from France, and to never let anyone touch my computer unless they bear a striking resemblance to him, me, or the other guy in our IT department. This may mean that I will have to spend the rest of my time here printing things off of someone else’s computer, but at least my computer will work. Pete, Jeff, Darren, Charlie – feel free to laugh…or just shake your heads sadly.

But D’s computer has been really messed up, and our IT department couldn’t help her. The guy who messed it up in the first place is back, and trying to just change the administrator password back to what it originally was, so that our IT people can fix it tonight. We are doubtful, and I feel really bad for her, because I know how frustrated she is. I mean, honestly I also feel bad for this guy, because he’s obviously in over his head, and I know that none of this was intentional. But he’s still probably off my Christmas card list.

So, that happened.

Things are actually starting to happen and move forward here – the local guy I hired is out getting some data we need, so that’s very helpful. I was told that he would need direction, but that he could do the job. So far, that seems to be an accurate assessment, so as long as he can continue to take the direction that I give him, then we should be in good shape. I’m really glad I’ve had the chance to come here, it’s been a much better experience, both personally and professionally, than the project in Pakistan. Pakistan wasn’t awful, but this has just been so much better.

I can’t believe that London had another series of bombings yesterday – awful. Since I can’t get into Yahoo, I don’t know if I’ve heard from my cousins, so I hope they’re okay. It’s just bizarre, and I imagine that it makes people more than a little edgy. I suppose I’ll find out for myself when I’m there in a couple of weeks. I can’t wait to go, I think it’s going to be wonderful. (There will be lots of pictures taken there, too. Snapfish just isn’t going to know what to do with the stacks and stacks of film I’ll be sending them.)

I’ve got to get back to setting up our resettlement framework. I am just wild and crazy, I tell you!