I'll Be Home for Christmas....Eventually

 

With so many changes and innovations happening at almost lightning speed, there's certainly nothing boring about being alive in the 21st Century. Though I know my body will eventually slow down, I'm convinced my mind won't. Always active and engaged, it'll never atrophy; if for no other reason than just keeping up.

But if there’s one drawback to living in the computer age, it’s how dependent we've become on all our busy little machines. Oh don't get me wrong; the PC is a phenom. When humming along and doing what it’s tasked to do, it remains an amazing tool and modern marvel of advanced technology. However when it doesn’t, we might as well be working with stone hammers and hieroglyphics.

A broken computer can bring life to a standstill.

Case in point: yesterday was the last day before K-love/Air 1 generously let the staff begin a 4 day Christmas break. Woo-hoo! There was even talk of it being a half day, although nothing was confirmed. Just in case, I went in earlier than usual with the underlying hope of getting to leave after lunch time. Or making an earlier than usual exit at some point during the afternoon.

(Actually, the day before a holiday at K-love is really almost like a holiday. Even if nobody sends out a memo, by 1 or 2:00 it’s as if we were in a theatre and somebody yelled "Fire" -except for the heartiest of souls who remain at their posts out of duty or demand, by early afternoon the building is basically deserted.)

However, everybody in my department was asked to put in 8 hours yesterday- which, coincidentally, is what we're being paid to do so there wasn’t a lot of squawking. Besides, programming often works late on pre-holidays just out of necessity. Somebody has to keep what’s on the radio running, not just on the day before but on all the off-days created by the holiday. So that’s where we all were at 5:30; although by then we’d just about buttoned up the last remaining tasks  and were already looking ahead to the time off.

The last stragglers had left by 4, so there weren’t a lot of us left when it was our turn to depart. I still had just one more little thing to do before leaving, so I stayed behind while wishing ‘Merry Christmas’ to the last of my co-workers. It’s rare I have the traffic/continuity office all to myself so I actually didn’t mind being left behind for a few minutes. Sometimes it’s a lot easier getting things done without the other guys around, and I was looking forward to 15 minutes of concentrated peace and quiet to wrap up this last little repetitive duty and with a clear head that everything was done at least through next Tuesday, call it a week.

Because some of the K-love tasks- like final edits and checks to the program logs, which I was doing last night- take a little longer than others to complete I seldom leave before 6:00 on any work night; in fact, when I stay to do some freelance work, too, it’s often closer to 7. Yet last night I was just sailing through the logs, nothing more, and had found almost nothing that needed fixing so figured I’d be on my way, out the door and on the road maybe even before 6:00. Though leaving that much sooner last night would merge me into the rush hour commute still in its prime rather than at the tail end, I’d still be getting home much sooner than normal. Probably even before 7.

But it didn't work out that way.

While I was working in the scheduling program- and almost done- to make an even hastier get away I had the brilliant idea to tap into the time system and clock out simultaneously. Kill two birds at once. But when I hit the ADP desktop icon for the time system, it froze; not just the application, the entire desktop died.  Nothing worked. And any edits I’d made in the programming scheduler- not many, and I was working on Tuesday when things stopped so nothing super critical had been lost. I’d still have to redo the work at some point, and I hate having to redo work. With no other choice, though, I did a re-start. And waited. And waited.

The machine didn’t generally run this slow- which concerned me- but after 10 minutes I could eventually log back in and re-access the desktop. At least I could see it.  But again, nothing worked; the ions, all frozen. So, I could not redo and finish the Tuesday log and clocking out had not been completed. When things crashed the first time, the scheduling program likely quit too. I wasn’t worried about that as much as the ADP program, which was shared by everybody and I’d never not been able to clock out before.

It was still running- somewhere- whether a server somewhere internally, in Cyberspace, or both, I didn’t know. All I know for sure is that my system had completely crashed  Dang.  So it was on to re-start number two.

It seemed stupid having to re-start the computer just to turn it off again, but the ramifications of leaving the clocking out procedures incomplete- or the ADP program still running for four days- was unclear. Neither was probably a good idea. There wasn’t anyone to ask either. The help desk was gone, and there were only a couple people still working and neither of them worked in IT. Clearly on my own, I crossed my fingers and hoped the second re-start would do the trick.

But it didn’t. I couldn’t tell if the desktop was frozen anymore, either, because on this second try, the screen didn’t show any sign of life at all. The monitor remained completely dark. It looked like a picture of North Korea at night from outer space. Now what do I do?

Though the computer is my friend and I like them and, except for last night, can usually handle turning them on and turning them off without any difficulties. I even know a few steps beyond Alt-Control-Delete. Basically, I know just enough about the way they operate to be dangerous; frankly, anything with circuitry and its own logic is pretty much over my head.

But as I stewed over my next options, I recalled someone saying that a hard boot can occasionally be useful during the trials and tribulations I was experiencing last night. So that's what I tried next. Why not?

And 10 more minutes later we’d made some progress- the computer came to life again. I saw the lights on the monitor flicker on and, down below, the start-up lights on the computer come on as well. But still, the active desktop didn't. My space shuttle screen saver was gone and the monitor screen was now white. Like a blank piece of electronic paper. At least white was different, but I’d never encountered a white screen before. Fortunately, it came with a box and instructions to select "Option One" to restore the desktop to its former settings.

Which I did. But then the entire system crashed. Computer, monitor, everything.

It’ was now past 6:30, on the night before our Christmas break, and all through the building, not an IT person was stirring; it was just me and my mouse. And a dark screen.

Of course, though nobody was around, somebody from, IT and Studio Tech is always on call for major operational failures and assistance. But this didn't really qualify. Certainly not enough to bother someone who'd already left for the day. And if it was something ridiculously easy to fix, something I could've figured out myself, I didn't want a co-worker to know I was that stupid.

So I muttered a few not so nice words under my breath- because cursing at malfunctioning electronic equipment always gets them to perform correctly again- and did another hard re-boot. 

After another 15 minutes later, I was once more able to log in. And though the active desktop still wasn't working, the ADP program came up (amazingly left over from two or three restarts ago; maybe a mini-Christmas miracle for yours truly?). None of the other icons worked, but the monitor screen was no longer showing the pinwheel of death, either. But I could at last, call it a day- about an hour and 20 minutes after I'd intended to- but the computer could no longer hold me up

It was almost 7:00 straight up, and I was at last able to clock out—at just about the same time as on any other Wednesday night. Sigh. However, whatever was delaying my departure, the Help Desk can figure it out Monday; I’m sure it’s probably something really simple. And I'll be able to redo the stuff I was working on before the computer went sideways; which will also be simple.

But all that crap I wrote in the beginning, about the glories of living in the age of computers?  Forget I said anything...