What a day!
Aug. 22nd, 2008 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lady_songsmithFirst day of lab, and I'm TAing. It began when my 10-15 minute drive took me a full 30+ minutes to do, rendering me late to meet the breakfast delivery. The delivery person was very understanding, thankfully.
We had just about enough bagels -- some left over, but not too many -- but we had way too much coffee. Not sure what that's about. I was expecting 38-ish people, I wound up with 43; I ordered enough coffee for 50. Grad students at 8:30? I figured I'd barely have enough.
On the subject of food -- lunch was a half-hour late. I repeated, "it's not my fault" to myself a lot while waiting anxiously. We had just barely enough, though, so I'm glad I tacked on an extra half-dozen sandwiches yesterday when my prof casually mentioned that we'd have "a few more than 40" -- after I'd asked 4 times if the final expectation was 35-40 people, before I ordered food.
The real fun of the day was the computers, though. They broke. A lot. And when they did work they ran like molasses. The tech people keep saying, "Well, they're 5 years old, so you can't expect much out of them." Sorry boys*, that doesn't fly when the professor, both TAs, and several students in the class are running laptops 5+ years old (mine's 6) and having no trouble at all. But more than that, if these so-ancient computers are decrepit and slow, what possessed you to upgrade SPSS 10, which had been on them and worked fine (as much as they ever do) to SPSS 16, which wants 1 GB RAM to run at full efficiency??
And then you give us two carts full of computers that are barely charged at all -- but you had supposedly just checked and upgraded all of them. And I find out when I go bug you about the broken computers that one of the two main problems we're having is caused by a time/date error in the BIOS.... which breaks every time the computers run out of charge. Are we seeing a causal loop here?
I swear, there's some rule that tech departments must be populated by the dumbest people to ever handle tech. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
agatha_b excepted.)
Also, I'm now soaking my feet, because while I wore my comfiest wedges, they weren't really intended for dashing all over buildings all day long tracking down tech people. I think I only sat down while I ate lunch.
Tomorrow, flip-flops. Murphy's Law being fully active, I'll sit all day.
*I can say 'boys' quite confidently, since our tech dept. doesn't have a single female on staff. This bugs me.
We had just about enough bagels -- some left over, but not too many -- but we had way too much coffee. Not sure what that's about. I was expecting 38-ish people, I wound up with 43; I ordered enough coffee for 50. Grad students at 8:30? I figured I'd barely have enough.
On the subject of food -- lunch was a half-hour late. I repeated, "it's not my fault" to myself a lot while waiting anxiously. We had just barely enough, though, so I'm glad I tacked on an extra half-dozen sandwiches yesterday when my prof casually mentioned that we'd have "a few more than 40" -- after I'd asked 4 times if the final expectation was 35-40 people, before I ordered food.
The real fun of the day was the computers, though. They broke. A lot. And when they did work they ran like molasses. The tech people keep saying, "Well, they're 5 years old, so you can't expect much out of them." Sorry boys*, that doesn't fly when the professor, both TAs, and several students in the class are running laptops 5+ years old (mine's 6) and having no trouble at all. But more than that, if these so-ancient computers are decrepit and slow, what possessed you to upgrade SPSS 10, which had been on them and worked fine (as much as they ever do) to SPSS 16, which wants 1 GB RAM to run at full efficiency??
And then you give us two carts full of computers that are barely charged at all -- but you had supposedly just checked and upgraded all of them. And I find out when I go bug you about the broken computers that one of the two main problems we're having is caused by a time/date error in the BIOS.... which breaks every time the computers run out of charge. Are we seeing a causal loop here?
I swear, there's some rule that tech departments must be populated by the dumbest people to ever handle tech. (
agatha_b excepted.) Also, I'm now soaking my feet, because while I wore my comfiest wedges, they weren't really intended for dashing all over buildings all day long tracking down tech people. I think I only sat down while I ate lunch.
Tomorrow, flip-flops. Murphy's Law being fully active, I'll sit all day.
*I can say 'boys' quite confidently, since our tech dept. doesn't have a single female on staff. This bugs me.
