You know those days where you feel like you’re busy all day long, but have very little to show for all your activity?

Today was one of those days for me.

The worst part was dealing with multiple, futile, network issues.

One of my laptops is missing the certificates needed to get onto the encrypted network. Apparently, there is no easy way to remedy this problem, although I did spend an affable 30 minutes at the Help Desk talking to Matt as he searched for drivers and certificates. Eventually I abandoned my laptop and headed back to my office. They were going to keep looking and see if anyone else knew a possible solution. (Let me make one thing clear, I love our Help Desk guys. They’re nice, funny, and will find an answer to your problem, even if it takes awhile. Compare that to other help desks (ahem) and I think you’ll agree with me. So I’m not saying this was a failure on their part. I’m jsut saying this is how my day went.)

The second network issue was trying to figure out how to get my PDA on the wireless network. A couple months ago I tried, and then gave up since what I really needed it for (a calendar program that could sync with GroupWise) was working perfectly. And I have a perfectly good laptop. So I just dropped it. Unfortunately, my boss has been getting a ton of PDA questions, and one recurring question is “why can’t I get wireless in HSC?” So I picked up that abandoned task and ran with it. And I learned several interesting things. Apparently, OIT policy for PDAs is they will not support them. If you can get your PDA on the wireless, that’s fine. But if you can’t, too bad for you. So I again sauntered back down to the Help Desk. After several guys going, “I can’t get it to work either, but if you figure it out, can you let me know?” I ended up talking to one of the guys in Networking, who apparently didn’t realize there was a problem, and told me he’d work on it and get back to me. So again, a solution is in the works (and this solution will be helpful to other people as well, which is good) but as a task, I’d have to say my success rate was pretty low.
But on the bright side, I was able to help several people, so that’s always a good feeling. So I suppose the day wasn’t a total loss.