Giving The Finger To Digital Technology

Newcastle Herald

Tuesday May 22, 2007

GIRL POWER AMY EDWARDS

FOR the past two Mondays I've been living in computer hell.

Last Monday I walked into work to find my email address had malfunctioned and I'd lost every email I had saved from the past year.

To make matters worse, a folder I had created to plan jobs for the next six months was also unrecoverable.

At first I tried not to copy the path my computer had obviously taken and go into meltdown.

I sat very quietly, got myself the strongest coffee I could find and rang our IT help desk in Sydney.

A pleasant-sounding man answered the phone and pretty soon he had the low-down about the computer malfunction at my work station in Newcastle.

"Have you turned your computer off and on?" he asked.

I informed quick-fix solution John that I had turned the computer off and on as well as cursed a few hundred times and threatened to throw it out the office window and it was still not restoring my emails.

Quick-fix John then rolled out the standard IT responses such as "there's obviously a glitch in your system", "we're working on the problem" and "Sydney are working on this as a priority".

Half an hour later I was informed that the so-called "glitch" had occurred while our computer system was being changed during the wee hours of the weekend and, unfortunately, none of my emails could now be retrieved.

Another strong coffee later and a few stronger swear words that my grandmother told me never to use and I set to work.

For the next week I rang contacts to get emails resent and tried to plan the coming weeks again.

I let the issue go. After all, what did I know? It's fair to say I'm pretty much computer illiterate.

To me a Blackberry is something you eat and a hard drive is a trip to Dubbo.

Even my laptop still has a floppy-disk drive in it!

Then the following Monday I walked into work to discover the pesky "glitch" had resurrected its ugly head over the weekend, turned into something more sinister like a virus and eaten my email basket again.

This time I rang IT with (well, let's just say, since we are talking about computers and I don't want to upset my dear grandmother) . . . the chips.

To the credit of my faceless IT consultant, who was forced to put up with my rant, he maintained IT mode and delivered the "Sydney is working on this as a priority" speech and "we'll get back to you".

I'm sure what he really did was get off the telephone and say to his fellow colleagues: "there's this super bitch at a desk in Newcastle and we really need to fix her PC pronto!".

Within half an hour my email was restored and, miraculously, so was every email I had lost previously.

We were finally speaking the same language.

To me a Blackberry is something you eat and a hard drive is a trip to Dubbo.

© 2007 Newcastle Herald

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