Skip to main content

An Excursion: The Leadup

I have been working from home for something like eighteen months now. It's long past a novelty at this point; it's just how I get stuff done for work. Sure, I get to have my own snacks and do push ups without any funny looks, but at the end of the day, I'm trying to get work done.

Now, as it so happens, I have a work laptop that requires company-issued credentials in order to log in. This isn't super uncommon, so I don't really think much about it most of the time. However, if you have to renew those credentials, things start to get a little bit more interesting. I remember a long time ago, I used to have to get a new badge that was encoded with new credentials. It was very much a process where I had to rely on others in order to complete.

These days, there is a self-service portal that lets me go through the motions on my own. That's much better than the bad old days, but since I'm not working from the office lately, that means having to do this remotely. That's not bad in it of itself, but it does add a degree of risk to the whole process. If, for whatever reason, the remote process goes awry, then I will be at home without valid credentials to log in to my work laptop. Essentially, it has to work perfectly or else I will be locked out.

Want to guess what happened to me the other day?

Yup, I was unlucky enough to have something go awry. I'm still not entirely sure what happened, but I worked through the process one afternoon. It looked like it had completed, and I finished out my afternoon without problem. When I tried to log in to work the next morning, however, the laptop just would not accept my credentials. I tried a few different things, including just plain restarting the laptop, but nothing worked.

Well, we have a helpdesk that I can call, so I tried calling them. Nothing they suggested seemed to work, so their last resort was to try plugging directly into the router instead of using the WiFi. I'm not entirely sure I understand how that would solve this problem, but they mentioned that they'd seen it work in the past.

However, that meant that I had to dig up a cable to hard-wire into the router. I'm not sure I've needed one of those in a long time, so I actually had to rummage around to see if I could find one. Sadly, I came up empty. Either I was flustered and I didn't do a good job, or my memory had failed me and we didn't actually have an ethernet cable handy. In either case, I didn't have an ethernet cable handy, so that really only left me with one option: drive in to the office.

I can't remember the last time I actually did that, so it felt very much like a field trip. I mean, I was going to be there anyway and I was probably going to have to be there long enough to last until lunch, so the Mild Wife packed me a lunch. I can't remember the last time that happened. Usually we just sit down and have a meal. All in all, it was annoying, but I tried to make the most of it.

With the benefit of hindsight, the whole thing was amusing. I mean, what are the odds? Not only did I have to renew my credentials, but that process had to go bad, the usual troubleshooting had to fail, AND we had to be missing a cable. It was like the perfect storm of shenanigans.

Next time, we'll talk about my adventures on said excursion.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All Good Things ...

August 8, 2009. Over twelve years ago, I started blogging with this simple post . I didn't really have a great reason for starting the blog, other than I wanted to try it out. I wanted to try writing and putting it where others could read it. I don't know, it just seemed like a new adventure to try. Along the way, there have been all sorts of posts and all sorts of life events, but through it all, I kept writing. It just became a part of what I do at some point. It wasn't a matter of whether I was going to write a blog post, it was a matter of when. The Mild Wife has described it as a "writing practice," and it was one of the reasons why I kept writing. Honestly, it's good practice, and it gives me an opportunity to hone my craft. I'm no professional author, but we all have to write stuff in our everyday lives. Why not give yourself reps to get better at it? However, I think it's time for that practice to change. My weekly anecdotes sure kept me amused...
Post a Comment
Read more

An Excursion: Getting Home

So, in the ongoing saga that I have been writing about the last few weeks, a perfect storm of random occurrences led me to taking a trip to the office. Once there, I went about my day, but leaving led me to wander through a mine field of geese and goose droppings . Incidentally, I also happened to mention this to my coworkers, and one of them introduced me to the nickname that Canadian geese sometimes go by: the " cobra chicken ." All in all, that one day led to much hilarity. Still, at this point in our tale, I wasn't home yet. The Mild Wife was out and about that day, so we had agreed to carpool. I was going to hop on the bus, and she would pick me up from a BART station. We've actually done this a bunch, and it had become my go-to means of transportation before the pandemic started. It saved me from having to deal with rush hour traffic, so I was actually a big fan of this process. I expected far less traffic on this day, but even so, it was a sound plan so that...
Post a Comment
Read more

Waiting for the Suck

I've mentioned it before, but I like to watch some Netflix while I do the dishes . I don't remember when I started the practice, but it's become a routine at this point. It gives me something to focus on while I do chores, and it makes the whole experience more enjoyable. All in all, it seems like a good idea to me. Now, I know that my screen time is limited. I'm certainly not going to wash dishes for two hours, so I can't watch an entire movie in one go. Heck, half the time, I can't even watch half of a movie in a single session. Ultimately, that drives my viewing preferences, so that I tend to favor episodic shows. Basically, that's how I watch some show or another: one dishwashing session at a time. Recently, that's been the Star Trek: Enterprise show. I never watched it when it first came out on television, so this is my chance to see the whole series. As with many series, there are some good episodes and some not-so-good episodes. Still, it's a...
Post a Comment
Read more