Five weeks ago, my work computer started acting up for no apparent reason, as the software suddenly gained the impression that the fonts I was supposedly using were a figment of my imagination. I've been able to work by logging on as Administrator rather than as a regular user, but I've been struggling to get someone to fix it ever since. This is the problem I was addressing in my most recent blog post, which I made on Tuesday.Yesterday, I double-posted the blog entry to another website I frequent, Hardcore Nerdity.
Shortly afterwards, we received an e-mail from the CTV Help Desk stating that all office workstations were going to be upgraded automatically overnight. Our supervisor sent out an e-mail telling us all to leave our work computers turned on overnight. I e-mailed her back, privately telling her that if this update made my computer start working properly for no apparent reason, then I was going to hit it.
Two hours after sending that e-mail, I was setting up my work for the next day while logged on as Administrator, and when I turned on ProCAP to make sure that everything was in place, it gave me the same "unmapped font" error I'd been receiving under my username, which meant that I would be unable to do any work at all on the computer until this problem was identified and fixed. By this point, all of the admin team had left for the day, so I left frantic phone messages and e-mails and waited to hear back.
Shortly afterwards, one of my work colleagues updated her Facebook status, announcing loudly that she didn't need a new cell phone but noting that she was doing this in order to tempt irony to break her current cell phone so she'd have an excuse to buy a new one.
I responded by telling her DO NOT TEMPT IRONY YOU FOOLISH FOOLISH FOOL or else her cell phone would burst into flames and burn down her apartment. (I only remembered much later that she used to be our office department's fire marshal.) I elaborated further by explaining that, after I'd sent an e-mail joking about my computer fixing itself for no apparent reason, it had broken down even further for no apparent reason.
Three hours later, while lying awake in bed, my brain put two unrelated facts together and I realised what the problem was. For perfectly good reasons, I'd changed the Windows file associations so that RTF files automatically opened in WordPad instead of Word, but for some reason, ProCAP stores some font information in RTF format. I got out of bed, walked over to my computer, changed the associations back to Word, and bang, everything was perfectly fine again. After five weeks. Within two minutes.
I e-mailed my supervisor today, explaining the situation and taking responsibility for screwing up the computer in the first place, although we both agree that IT and the software development team have been about half as helpful as a sack of toenails. I also told her that this might have been resolved much sooner if only we all still worked in the same office space; if I'd been able to call someone into my office and have a "Well, where did you last see your keys?" conversation, then my brain might have plugged the two facts together much more quickly. But no, I no longer catch the subway down to Osgoode station and walk over to 299 Queen St W; nope, I'm alone in my house, and real-time conversations now take several hours over e-mail.
I sent that message and then surfed onto the Toronto Star webpage to see that this morning, someone was shot during gunplay on the platform at Osgoode subway station.
I'm afraid to keep talking.
Leave a comment