Surprises

For almost three years I've had a dockable laptop at work. The central processing unit and drives I use at work are from the laptop, but I use a bigger flat-screen monitor and a slightly bigger ergonomically designed keyboard at work. But in recent months - especially after Stephanie set up the router at home - I take the laptop home every night to work on work and whatever. Having moved the laptop around a lot and even dropped it in airports before, it shouldn't have come as any surprise that the laptop was falling apart - keys falling off, monitor/top starting to come off, touchpad losing its grip - before the three years was up before we are slated to get new laptops. I was surprised last week when one of the Information Technology staff people discovered that the warranty was still in order and got most of it fixed. However, I was not that surprised today to read at work that the three-year replacement schedule for computers has fallen victim to budget-cutting. Apparently effective immediately - just a month or two before our computers would be replaced - desktop computers are now on a four-year replacement schedule and the laptop replacement schedule is still under study. (Pictured above is the laptop, post-repair.)

Another unfortunate surprise very late today was part of the Review of the PC(USA) as a Whole survey research that my colleagues and I have worked so hard on. Late last week I made some late new tables that I shared with the Review committee Monday morning. And then this morning - as per the general request of one of our supervisor's supervisors - I sent these tables, electroniocally - to various top people in the PC(USA) national agencies. Instead of sending these to the top people in our own agency, I just sent them to the person who had requested them. Turns out he was out today, and so the top person showed up to a meeting where everyone else had these tables - as per my e-mails - but this person was not. Her aide called me at 5:20 p.m. to request but it was clear to me that both of them were mad - not a nice cap to a big project. We'll see what happens Wednesday if my colleagues work with me to finish one more new table.

-- Perry