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Work sent me to D.C. at the end of July to swap out four old machines with new ones.  Our customers are mainly in Harvard Square but some have satellite offices in N.Y., D.C., and San Fran which we don’t get to go to often, so I was excited when I was asked.  I spent some time the day before copying the more frequently used non-standard software onto my external drive as the D.C. office is on slow T1 line and I could be there scratching my balls all day while waiting had I needed to download the software from our servers.

I planned to wake up at 5am to catch the 7am flight.  Naturally, I didn’t get up until a half hour later, didn’t bother to shower, and jetted out the house.  I was pretty much still groggy by the time I got to the airport.  I got some coffee, sat down, and proceeded to spill it all over myself.  And, of course, right after that they started boarding with no time to clean up.  The coffee was good so I kept drinking it during the flight, which was a little over an hour and a half long.  I had the urge to pee but since we were so close to landing, I held it in - big mistake.  Don’t you hate that when you really have to go all you can think about is the toilet.  No matter how hard you try to concentrate on something else, the toilet creeps back in.

All I could think about was the toilet when we landed ten minutes later and the toilet again when we rolled around the taxiway for good 5 minutes before slowly creeping to our gate.  I had my legs crossed the whole way and was dancing around in my seat.  I bet the old lady next to me was thinking I should get decaf next time.  When I finally got to a bathroom in the airport - argh! there was a line!  It was fairly short but all the sounds of water and flushing really didn’t help my situation.  I did finally find relief.

The taxicab ride to the office wasn’t bad except that the driver supposedly misheard the street name I gave him even though he repeated it back to me before we left, and had to go the long way around to get back to it.  But whatever, Harvard was paying.

I was supposed to be in D.C. for two days and refresh 2 machines per day.  When I got to the office they told me that only two of those machines were actually being used by anyone.  One other was disconnected because of a virus, the last was waiting for a new hire, and they didn’t need the data from either of these machines.  I thought to myself that this was going to be cake.  I’ll breeze through all four today and spend the rest of the time sightseeing.  Fantastic!  The machines were imaged by someone back in my office so all I needed to do was start them up, join them to the domain and copy their data over.  So I start one up.

Instant.  Blue.  Screen of Death.

Driver issue I thought?  Maybe it didn’t like the peripherals?  I unplug everything except for the monitor and power, but still, BSOD.  I thought the machine a dud, so I start up another.  Success!  It goes through system setup and loads up the desktop when I see a laptop battery gauge icon showing for this desktop.  To my horror of horrors.  No, my HORROR OF HORRORS!!! (yes, there was much internally screaming going on), someone had imaged these desktops with a laptop image.  A quick look at the software list confirmed it.  The third machine BSOD’d right away like the first.  I called Ben, our part time tech who normally images these machines for us to see if he knew who did it.  I know he didn’t do it because he was working with me when someone imaged and sent those machines out.  Turns out, it was our non-techie summer help.

Luckily I had brought an XP OS disk with me and a few blank cds.  The customers were understanding and said they would wait until the next day to get switched out.  Not so lucky - I only had non-standard software with me.  All the stuff that was supposed to already be on the image had to be downloaded from our servers - the very thing I had dreaded from the start.  It took about an hour to get Office 2003. About 40 minutes for Project, but much longer for Visio.  Then there was the rest.  The 11 hours I was there saw me running back and forth between two rooms, installing the OS, and then the drivers, and the updates, and finally software and then more updates.  There was a bit of daylight left when I finally got out so I walked around and snapped pics of statues and the capitol building.  I saw the Washington Monument from far off.  I was dragging my bags with me since I had gotten straight from the airport to work earlier - a backpack and duffel bag.  Note to self - bring luggage with wheels next time.  After 40 minutes of sightseeing and getting lost and sweating off 5 pounds, I found the Hyatt Regency.  Did I mention how humid it was over there AND that it was in the high eighties?

The hotel room was really nice and had two double beds.  I was starving and decided I wanted food more than a shower, so a quick change of clothes and a washed face later, I was back out on the streets.  I didn’t recall seeing any fast-food restaurants on my way to the hotel and didn’t see any then either.  There was this liquor/sub shop with looked kinda iffy so that nixed.  There were many fancy restaurants, expensive seafood places but all I wanted was burger and fries.  I finally found a bar and grill place called Billy Goat Tavern.  It was a nice low-key place to eat and I finally got my burger.

Back at the hotel there was nothing to watch on tv so I started surfing on my laptop.  Then I realized I forgot the power adapter back at the office, which was really shitty since the battery is only good for 30 minutes tops even with the brightness at the lowest setting and nothing big running.

I’m in the office before 9am the next day (after snoozing the alarm for over an hour, I’m horrible at waking up) and work for another 6 hours before I get out.  I was proud of myself for getting all this done with time to spare and getting the old hard drives encrypted and shipped out before I left.  It was 3pm and once again I’m dragging the bags to the hotel because I forgot to ask for a receipt when I checked out earlier that morning.  Turns out they don’t have a receipt for me because the room was booked through Expedia and there were no incidental fees (which doesn’t explain why I’m being charged $241 on my credit card, Hyatt, when Harvard already paid you! *points finger threateningly*).
There was about an hour before I needed to be at the airport but since it was so humid out and I was tired and cranky, I decided against sightseeing and went straight to the airport.  And I went to the bathroom before I boarded the plane this time.

A few things I’ve learned during my 5 years working as tech support at a well-known university.

1. Walk fast. It’s cold out, really cold - just get to the next building on the list already. But more importantly, walking fast gets you out of a suite quicker. The longer you stay there, the more time the workmates of the customer you went to see will have to think about all the problems they’re having with their computers that they’ve ‘meant to’ call in but never did. But since you’re here, let’s just tell you all about them because you have uber amounts of time right?

2. Don’t push Start on the coffee machine unless the ‘Ready to Brew’ light is on. Otherwise you get a shot of lukewarm dirty water into your cup and a wasted packet of coffee. It’s your lucky morning if it’s window cleaning day. While you’re waiting for the water to brew, watch the windows washers. They provide ample entertainment with their rope-swinging and squeegee-ing while you’re still in that pre-caffeine morning daze.

3. Don’t ever give a customer your cell phone number unless you make them swear, on punishment of deleting all fonts from their computer except for Wing Dings, not to give it out to anyone else, and not to call you on weekends or nights. That’s what the on-call techs are paid for.

4. Don’t linger in the kitchen too long. Unless you want to be swarmed with questions. See #1.

5. Don’t leave a wipe disk in a computer you don’t mean to wipe. It’s bad news. Really.

6. Your closet of an office is not a place of solace, especially with no blinds and no means of ventilation once the door is shut. The one-person bathroom, however, works perfectly. Except when someone’s made a doody in it recently. Escape and find another bathroom.

7. Don’t ever nod off in the office. Almost always someone will show up at your door, wondering why you’re not responding to them. Then you’ll have to wake up TO THEIR FACES. Oh horror of horrors!

8. The helpdesk/call center is only good for telling you that a person called in, with a computer issue. That’s right - what tech doesn’t love a help request all-inclusively entitled “computer problem”.

Last night I dreamed that I had started a new job working as tech support for another place. Except that I hadn’t told my previous employer that I was leaving so I was running back and forth working both jobs and getting stressed out. Work haunts my dreams. Is there such a thing as a voodoo doll of your job?