You ever have some days where you wake up and know how the whole day is going to go? And then it really doesn’t? That was today.

I set my alarm for 6.30 every morning, on the pretence that I’m going to get up and do things, but really so I can doze in that lovely half-awake, half-asleep state for 30 minutes or so. If I’m being really lazy, I can stretch it out til about 7.30, but I usually drag myself out of bed around the radio DJ plays a daily showtune (they get stuck in my head. It is bad). Why showtunes? I have no idea, but they’re sufficient motivation to get me up, and they’re on at the same time every morning. Except this morning. I was halfway into the shower before I realised it was 6.45. Even then, the shock of being ambulant so early convinced me that someone had changed the time on my clock radio, my watch and my mobile phone, and I had to stay awake until the newsreader provided the time.

Unfortunately, I have now conditioned myself to get up when I hear the word “showtune”; this works better than an actual alarm, which I can sleep right through, but a rendition of a song from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (the most annoying thing I have subjected my ears to) brings me awake, upright and scrabbling for the volume control in about 0.2 seconds. So, hopefully, this is just a temporary aberration, and everything will be back to normal tomorrow. Just in case, I’m setting 3 alarm clocks.

I arrived at work to find an email from a manager which said, “Someone has left and someone else is going away for quite a long time. You and your colleagues are now responsible for their work (which has nothing to do with your own, but will be a valuable on-the-job training exercise). You have 3 days to pick their brains before they leave.” I wasn’t too concerned about this initially, partly because I like learning new things, but more importantly, because it isn’t going to affect me on a day-to-day basis. However, one of my colleagues (who will be directly affected) saw things differently, and circulated a terse email to the manager, several other management staff, - and intentionally or unintentionally - all of us, which basically boiled down to:

1. It’s not in our job description (I know because I helped write it);
2. We don’t get paid for it, and the staff member normally responsible gets paid better than us;
3. It’s not remotely like what we actually do, except that machinery and electricity are involved in both cases;
4. We are pretty busy already;
5. We need proper training, otherwise it won’t be long before someone either breaks something expensive or loses a finger, and we’re on holiday for the next week;
6. It’s really not a valuable or relevant skill;
7. It is SO not in our job description.

Which got me thinking. I’m not quite in the same situation as the others regarding (1) and (2), but I would definitely agree with (4) and (5). I arrived this morning to find nearly 100 of the machines I am responsible for have been upgraded to Office 2007, with no forward notice. Now, being the geek I am, I’ve been using Office for a little while at home - in fact I’m writing this in Word 2007 – but I am in no way prepared to support users on it. I only discovered the upgrade had been done because the minute I walked in the door, some guy grabbed me to ask how to crop images in PowerPoint. After about 10 seconds of brain-not-engaged, I went, holy cow, how is this guy running 2007? After 30 seconds, I went, arrrrggh, upgrade! It took ten minutes of random clicking before the guy found the Crop tool himself. We went to a training session last week which was 45 minutes of PowerPoint presentations and hands-off demos, and I haven’t had time to go through the training material yet.

Shortly afterwards I did get a phone-call from someone on the Apps team, but it was mainly about a few machines which hadn’t imaged. I ended up having to initialise the re-image on one machine manually, which took most of the morning, because it isn’t near a phone, so I had to phone, note down instructions, hang-up, complete instructions, note results, report results, repeat ad infinitum. Interestingly, I managed to send one machine into an infinite rebooting loop after adding a file containing IP information to be picked up by the imaging tool. I’m reasonably sure this was due to the file not saving correctly if it was named when created, and it worked when I created an empty file, entered the information, then saved and named it.

Several more hours were filled with various minor tasks that always have to be done post-upgrade: license authentication, checking that applications still work, figuring out which of the 5 possible boot disks actually works, and what the other ones do.

I was just about to escape to my nice, quiet afternoon shift at my second centre, when the person in whose department I am physically based caught me. Apparently a third department wants to take over one of my rooms since their usual office is going to be next to a demolition site. No indication when this will take place, exactly who will be using the room, for what, or for how long; and the memo hadn’t been sent to anyone in my department either. It’s not really a problem at the minute, but if the room is still unavailable in September when term begins, I can see it becoming a serious issue in terms of capacity. A more immediate concern, which was brought up today, is how I am going to get the large ceiling-hung sign which announces my presence (subtle!) down, and back up again in a room where the ceiling is twice as high. Not only this, but the building is swiftly becoming an almost impassable obstacle course because of the summer renovation program.

The thing is, despite all of these apparent problems, I had a great day today. It’s been so quiet recently that I’ve found myself quite bored. Today I got to solve problems, help people out, and learn some new techy things; I really enjoyed it. I thrive on having something interesting and useful to do. I hope there are a few more days like these to keep me on my toes through the summer!