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A rather pointless waste of a morning
Aug. 27th, 2020 11:10 amSo, for various reasons (namely: I have been using my personal laptop since I began working from home in March, and do not have the relevant software installed), there is one research skills class which I have not taught for more than six months, and instead two of my colleagues have taken it in turns to teach it. However, next week, there is a scheduled session for this specific class, and both of my two colleagues are on leave, meaning that there is no one but me to teach it.
Thankfully, this has coincided with a partial return to work premises for my colleagues and me — I was not actually yet due to return, but all the various procedures and documentation was in place for me to do so, and I got permission to come in today to install/test various pieces of software on my work computer, in preparation for the class I would be teaching next week.
And so, for the first time in many months, I made the 45-minute walk to work. It was a bit strange: I was pleased to see there were far fewer cars on the road than was typical in the past, and I enjoyed walking through the allotment and seeing all the plots heavy with harvest. It was a bit tiring, as although I've obviously been exercising during lockdown, I have not had to walk while carrying heavy bags for a very long time.
My troubles began when I arrived at the library: there was a complete failure of all IT hardware across the entire building and network. I could log onto my computer, but I couldn't connect to the internet (and therefore couldn't install Teams and Zoom, or test the other software I needed to test, as it requires internet access), no email was working, and all websites were down. This has been going on since yesterday afternoon, and shows no sign of being resolved.
After hanging around for half an hour, it was clear that the problems were not going to be fixed in a timely manner, and so my manager told me to go back home. And as a result of not having been able to install/test these various things, the class I was meant to come into the office and teach next week is not going to be able to go ahead (this morning was my only window before then to do all this necessary preparation), and the students are going to have to get the prerecorded video of my colleague teaching it from last week.
So the whole episode was entirely pointless. At least I got to see the allotment, I suppose.
Thankfully, this has coincided with a partial return to work premises for my colleagues and me — I was not actually yet due to return, but all the various procedures and documentation was in place for me to do so, and I got permission to come in today to install/test various pieces of software on my work computer, in preparation for the class I would be teaching next week.
And so, for the first time in many months, I made the 45-minute walk to work. It was a bit strange: I was pleased to see there were far fewer cars on the road than was typical in the past, and I enjoyed walking through the allotment and seeing all the plots heavy with harvest. It was a bit tiring, as although I've obviously been exercising during lockdown, I have not had to walk while carrying heavy bags for a very long time.
My troubles began when I arrived at the library: there was a complete failure of all IT hardware across the entire building and network. I could log onto my computer, but I couldn't connect to the internet (and therefore couldn't install Teams and Zoom, or test the other software I needed to test, as it requires internet access), no email was working, and all websites were down. This has been going on since yesterday afternoon, and shows no sign of being resolved.
After hanging around for half an hour, it was clear that the problems were not going to be fixed in a timely manner, and so my manager told me to go back home. And as a result of not having been able to install/test these various things, the class I was meant to come into the office and teach next week is not going to be able to go ahead (this morning was my only window before then to do all this necessary preparation), and the students are going to have to get the prerecorded video of my colleague teaching it from last week.
So the whole episode was entirely pointless. At least I got to see the allotment, I suppose.