The disaster that is a Windows update

On Monday, after I was done work at 4 pm, I had a Windows update on my work laptop that was pending and had it installed. I left my laptop on for another hour before I turned it off for the day.

I started my workday on Tuesday just after 7 am. I woke up too early. In a way, it was good.

I booted up my work laptop. I could not get Microsoft Teams to launch. I needed it to train the new hire. Rebooting and relaunching Teams did not work. I absolutely dislike whenever there's a Windows update. Ideally, it should work. When it's bad, it's incredibly bad.

At 8 am, I started training the new hire. I noticed that no matter what site I was trying to access, I had to enter my username and password, and my credentials could not be authenticated. I then saw a Windows message saying to lock my screen. I did it. Guess what? I was completely locked out of my laptop. Great.

At work, there's a self-serve password reset. I tried it and couldn't connect to the server. Lovely.

I then called the IT helpdesk. The folks there suck. The woman I spoke to said that she couldn't unlock my account and had to pass it over to her colleague. He would call me back. I asked at what number. At my Teams phone number. Um, no. I have Teams on my locked laptop. You can't automatically assume that the phone number on record is accurate. I gave her my cell phone.

I tried logging in after fifteen minutes. Success! I was able to log into my laptop and train. Sadly, I lost an hour of productivity.

The male helpdesk guy called me half an hour after I had logged in. Such a crazy delay! Apparently, since this Windows update happened, many folks have been calling the helpdesk for assistance.

Such a horrible update!

Technical support - hit and miss

I have made this observation in the past, but the various helpdesks that I have at work suck. I dealt with one guy who was incredibly useless.

In a particular software application, there is a field called Area. It's essentially your department's name. I clicked the dropdown field and none of them matched what I belonged to. On top of that, the documentation had a broken URL to the application, so I had to ask about both issues.

I got the proper URL. The guy told me to select one and let my colleagues know what I had selected. Huh? He was so out of it that I asked if I could connect with a subject matter expert instead. I did (at least he got that right) and she was a ray of sunshine. She answered my questions and created an area just for me with all the proper access rights.

It's nice when I go from frustrated to happy. That guy needs to go, though. Even the woman told me that!

Dopey guy calls the helpdesk

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Lunch chat

My guy and I chatted for an hour. It was evening for him and it was around the lunch hour for me.

He told me that he misses me. I know that he does when he tells me first. I am often the one who says it first. Naturally, it's mutual.

"Are you interviewing today?" he asked me, as it was the case on Monday.
"I'm working with the students today. Our IT helpdesk is useless!" I exclaimed.
"That doesn't surprise me. So, you're being the helpdesk. You're more like the help bombshell," he replied.
"You're sweet, as usual. That would make a good Hallmark card greeting," I noted.

We both laughed. Some of the things that we say to each other should not be in a greeting card!