No, That's Not What I Said

A communication gap; a grammatical dispute; whatever you choose to call it, I had it yesterday with the IT representative. I was told on Wednesday that 15 minutes of my computer time would need to be allotted to said IT rep to encrypt my computer. She hopped on and realized that I didn’t have Vista, so she couldn’t encrypt anything. This brought up another issue of finding time to install Vista, then encrypt. This process was to take approximately four hours, or half of a theoretical work day. I was also informed that it would need to be done before the start of spring semester, which is Monday.

There was going to be no ideal time for this type of hourly realignment, so I just decided to get it over with as soon as possible and signed up Thursday morning to be the crimp in my workweek. After agreements were made to the start date and time, I asked if I needed to do anything with my computer beforehand and was told “No, everything on your computer will stay as it is”. I somewhat happily hand over my computer at the end of Wednesday and tried to figure out how I’d accomplish what needed to be accomplished with very limited computer use the next day (see future post on paperless society).

I returned to my office on Thursday after scrounging for food at Coffman (if you need anything during winter break, you better not plan on finding it on campus) and joyously greeted my computer as if it just presented me with a document forgiving my college loans. My usual routine (ritual, some may say) after logging on is to immediately go to iTunes and find the classical station. I can’t stand to be in an office with no music. Ninety percent of the time it has to be instrumental otherwise I get too distracted. After finding the iTunes “button” and realizing that there would be a learning curve as I discovered where all of my icons were now hidden, I was frozen in space as I stared at a blank iTunes page with the pretty multicolor lines resembling the old green-bar paper where my music titles used to be. No titles. No printing of any kind. Nothing. Screaming commenced. Okay, screaming on the inside.

After resolving to remain calm, I searched around for my dearly loved files finding nothing. NOTHING. I then politely emailed the IT rep lamenting that I may be missing a few music files and would she know where they might be? She replied with revealing that if they were on my c: drive they are now wiped out. I quickly reviewed the previous day’s conversation: “Do I need to do anything specific before you install this?” “No, everything on your computer will stay as it is” “No, everything on your computer will stay as it is” “No, everything on your computer will stay as it is”. LIARS!!!!! FUCKING LIARS!!!!

This scenario points out a common scene that plays out every day in every work place and every gas station around the world. There are concepts that people within certain groups assume everyone else outside of their group will now come to realize as a given because it’s been long enough now that this concept has been known. When I asked if I needed to do anything specific before they violated my computer, they assumed I already knew to back up my hard drive. To me, my hard drive is the computer. If I stick a CD in to save something, then it’s not on the hard drive. If there’s no CD or other magnetized form of media emblazzened with my choice of information, then it’s on the hard drive, aka the computer. I now understand that my computer is made up of a network which will always be okay but which everyone has access to, and the hard drive which is mine alone but also mine alone to back up. Fuck.

Why did I mention gas stations earlier? Because now when it is stated that one can use a credit card to pay for gas, it is implied that the credit card will be inserted into the gas pump and not brought into the store to be held by another human. I watched as a woman older than me was trying to grasp this concept while the store clerk was trying to lead her back out to the pump to show her. She couldn’t understand why someone just couldn’t take her credit card right there and just pay for the stuff. They’re right there, why can’t they do it? Good question. Because the new store financial system doesn’t allow it. You know the one, the system that is supposed to make our lives easier (also expanded on in the future post referring to paperless societies). Does anyone know where I can get a cheap flashdrive?