Extra trips

Since the outbreak of Covid, I have been working in hybrid mode. I no longer have a permanent cubicle in the office and have set up a home office instead.

As a significant portion of my work is thermal modelling, which I run on workstations residing in the office, and which I interact through remote desktop, I have no real need to go on site.

In fact, going on site is a drop in work efficiency for me, the commute time alone is already a huge waste of time, and also the single external monitor set up in hybrid cubicle is just not sufficient. I need at least two big screens for thermal modelling and post-processing, laptop screen is too small.

Suffice it to say that I don't go to office unless I really have to, like for face to face meeting, for hands on work in the lab, when workstation died and remote command no longer works and nobody is there to help, et cetera.

Last Wednesday I had to go in to clean up the cubicles where my workstations reside in, as they are making them hybrid cubicles. Whoever uses those cubicles best not to mess with my workstations, they run 24/7.

Last Thursday I went on site for the bi-weekly staff meeting, this is the number one reason why I go to office, so usually I only go to office once every two weeks. Last Wednesday was the unfortunate extra trip.

To make things even more unfortunate was the CrowdStrike's Blue Screen of Death fiasco last Friday, which brought down my laptop. I went in office hoping to get the other laptop my manager has recently bought for me to use when dealing with a specific customer, but IT said they couldn't complete the setup due to CrowdStrike BSOD. So a total waste of my time and effort, and the third trip to office of the week.

Well, received notice late Friday night that IT has a workaround and affected employees can go on site on Saturday to recover their laptop. So ya, I went in yet again on Saturday to get my laptop up and running, making it four trips in a week that I went to office. No, I am not a happy bunny.

This week I should not have to go to the office, as the next bi-weekly staff meeting is next week, but the CrowdStrike fiasco also brought down one of my workstations, bollocks!

Getting the workstation to IT for support will take forever, and incur a charge as well, but thankfully a self-recovery step by step document is available and now that my laptop is working, I could look up the recovery key myself.

So I went in to office to sort out the workstation this week, making a trip that I rather not have to do. Too many trips to office in too short a time span. Absolutely not a happy bunny!

Other |temperamental thoughts| category entries.