Thursday, June 14, 2012

Blog June Post 15 - It's days like this....

You need patience and more technical skills then you have.

Yesterday afternoon tested me in a lot of ways.  Yesterday morning was peaceful and there was not much traffic in the Urunga branch library - mainly due to the rareness of a sunny day.

So when I went to open a link from an email sent via one of my professional email lists to see what seniors were doing with iPads - I was surprised when the screen screamed (silently) at me that there was a virus and what did I want to do with it - so I put it in the "vault."  Then the computer went stupid - pages after pages opened and wouldn't stop - EEEEKKKK!!!

So I did the sensible thing - I clicked on the scan and repair button.  So it scanned and then found some serious hard drive errors - EEEEEKKKK!!!  So I hit repair to which it asked for an activiation code - WHAT ACTIVATION CODE??!!  At this point I phoned our ever trusty IT officer.  BTW - we don't have an activiation code for that software.

Considering my trusty IT officer had had a challenging day he thought it would be good to escape to the seaside so quickly suggested he'd come and take a look.

So the bad news is yes there is a hard drive issue and it has wiped all the programs off the computer.  Good news is that it may still be salvagable and we have another staff computer for circ.  Bad news is that I then had to set up email on the other computer as well as try to get it to act like the main print server. FAIL!!  I tried various things.  I managed to get the slip printer to work - YAY!  I managed to get the drivers in for the printer/copier machine - YAY!  But could I get the public machines to talk to the printer/copier?? FAIL!!!

So this morning I will walk into the branch feeling a little bit defeated and I will start the day in a frustrating position of trying to get something to work.  Hey, I managed to work it out in Dorrigo but do you think I can remember what I did??  NO!!  You know when you just fiddle around until you get something to work but then you can't remember what you did?  Well that's what I did in Dorrigo!!

On a side note, I have asked our IT officer that perhaps it would be a good idea to use the rest of my equipment budget to purchase some spare hard drives as I think a trend is happening.  All of the computers were purchased at the same time and they are coming up to 4 years old.  Two hard drives have already decided they have worked too hard - it is only a question of WHEN not IF that more hard drives on our library computers will fail!!

A bit off topic but I'm about to venture into a task that I have never done before.  I have the appropriate training and qualifications to do it but I have never acted on it.  So I'm feeling a lot of self doubt but I'm going to have a go.  You may hear more about it in coming posts - depending when it all begins to happen.  But the important message here (and probably relates to what I have written about above) is that you should always HAVE A GO!!   And perhaps a couple pack of minties wouldn't go astray to stop you screaming and scaring the customers!!

1 comment:

  1. I am jinxed. Staff computer number 2 has just died - well it looks alive but nothing will launch. IT for me this week = a GIANT FAIL!!

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