Bloggerlife.blog

11/07/2025

Today’s blog

Lynn Murphy Mark

No technophile here

I happily went to work yesterday, my head making a little list of all I could do with my six hour work day. Traffic was a breeze and I was there in less time than I usually spend navigating Highway 64 at the interchange with Highway 170. Usually that little traffic trap costs me an extra 10 minutes as everyone slows to a crawl to handle the volume of cars. I was listening to the Mothership, NPR, as I drove. All the traffic lights I faced were green.

I pulled in to the garage, got a primo parking place, and thanked my lucky stars. Up I rode to the 12^th floor where our little department occupies a corner framed by floor to ceiling windows. First I stop by the mail room – it’s the highlight of my day when I see envelopes in our mailbox. Yesterday some early bird had already collected the mail and brought it to our department mailboxes. Sure enough, there were two envelopes for me. Oh Happy Day. I say that because most of our work is driven by the mail we get from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. They tell us what to do and we try to accommodate.

It was happy news – two people applying for citizenship had their fee waivers approved and will not have to pay the $700+ fee.

This is very good news for my clients. Therefore I couldn’t wait to email them the receipt letters approving the fee waiver. The second thing I do after hanging up my purse is settle in to my desk chair and power up my computer. It’s as natural an action as breathing. Except there was clearly a problem going on as I tried to sign in. That little blue circle that goes round and round was busy stalling the usual procedure. I reached down and turned everything off at the power strip. That usually beats the machine into submission.

Not yesterday. As if to give me an electronic middle finger, when I flipped the switch back on, the only thing that showed was a foreboding all-black screen. I turned it off again and again I got the same result. The little white arrow showed up but did nothing but blink at me. Without a computer, it is hard to advise our very nice IT department that there is a problem. I remembered that I could send them a message through my iPhone, so I fired off a 911 type message to the Support Desk.

It didn’t take long for William to call me. I always feel a little foolish talking to a tech person because I use words like “thingy” and “I’ve got nothing” and, “I have to do what? How?”. So I told him the little arrow thingy was blinking but useless. He took some steps at his end and finally declared that my computer definitely had a problem, due to its age. Use the laptop you have, was his advice, only the laptop had the same black screen and blinking arrow. Apparently that was going to require an on-site intervention and he told me that “Polly will be there and I’ll send her to your office when she gets in.”

I’ve never met Polly but I would have baked her a pan of brownies for showing up. I was in another office for a meeting, so I left her a big message taped to my screen saying to come on in and do her magic.

When my meeting was over, I went back to my room and there was a woman I’d never seen before. It turns out that Polly is the owner of our IT company and she is working on site because we just moved to a new phone system and the whole of Legal Services is feeling frustrated by the change. Except for the Technophiles. Polly told me that switching phone systems in an organization is the single most complex move one can make.

She did look straight at me and tell me that it wasn’t anything I did, because my computer was full of problems. She offered to get me an updated laptop because she happened to have a new one available. She got it, plugged it in, made a series of clicks, and there was my “Welcome” screen. She had me sign in and it worked. She left saying to call if there were any more problems.

I felt so hopeful. That is, until I realized that all my other sign-ins weren’t working because the computer did not recognize my existing passwords. It kept insisting that I be “authenticated”, but would not accept any of my actions. Polly was long gone, so I sent my friend William another 911 message. Over the course of an hour, he had to call me three times to get me taken care of. 

By now, it was almost noon, and I had not been able to accomplish anything except for some limited actions that I can take with my iPhone. My list of “to-do’s” sat there unaddressed. By this time I had put in almost six hours, having gone in early. So I did the prudent thing. I cleared off my desk and went home after probably the most unproductive day ever. I did thank William effusively, though, because today, thanks to him, I might have a chance of getting some stuff done!