Productive day with a new laptop

Monday was quite a busy workday. It was nice that my manager was away, which should be the norm!

I had a conference call on my way to work. There are three of us on this call. Two of us have something meaningful to contribute each week. Our third colleague has little to contribute that is of value on any given week.

At the office, I spent my first half an hour on the phone with my cell phone provider. I got my employee discount applied and got reimbursed $32 CAD for the difference this month. Yay!

Moments later, I spent time collecting money towards a farewell gift for a colleague who is leaving the company. I find that if I don't organize such events, no one does it within our department.

Twenty minutes later, I received an e-mail indicating that my replacement laptop had arrived. I went to turn in my old Windows 7 laptop for a new Windows 10 one. The IT folks were helpful and pleasant under the circumstances. Every employee is getting a new laptop, so to orchestrate such a massive change takes a ton of patience.

Naturally, my configuring everything ran into bumps. I needed a new cable to connect one of my existing monitors to the new HDMI port on my laptop. The folks who had those cables were unavailable. Luckily, I bumped into my colleague in the washroom who had an extra cable. It made a huge difference trying to do work on a 14" screen for most of the day to a larger 32" one!

Of course, I couldn't download all the software applications that I needed from our company portal. I spent some time with an IT person over the phone to troubleshoot the issue. Ah, fun!

Tonight, I let my laptop run, sync, and sort itself out at home. Magically, everything works now. I can download the software programs that I need. My connection to the company's intranet works. I'm almost shocked.

I also managed to spend an hour late this morning reviewing documents and answering questions that my students had. We also had a relaxing lunch together with good conversation.

I love a productive day, especially when I chat with so many different folks.