Geek Wannabe – Page 2

Computer Issues

Geek Wannabe, General Comments Off

Oct 102013

Last week at work, we upgraded our Quickbooks to the latest version.

This upgrade was long overdue. We’ve been using 2011 since I started. In 2011. More and more clients have been bringing in files created with the 2013 version, and in order to work on them we have to manually enter everything into our older software. Which is, of course, retarded—an accounting firm should have reasonably current accounting software.

So finally, last week, we upgraded to the newest version (2014).

Ever since then, our intranet has slowed to a crawl. Our computers went from slow to glacial. I can type something in a text field and then sit back and wait ten or fifteen seconds for the words to appear. Frequently our Quickbooks will pop up an error, to the effect of “Whoops, lost my connection to the server. I’ll have to close now.” The ladies in payroll have had intermittent problems trying to print paychecks and reports (apparently a known issue with this version).

We had the IT guy out today attempting to solve these issues. There was nothing he could do about the printing issue, and he blew off the performance issue. I’m not sure what he did all morning, but when he left around lunchtime I didn’t see any improvement.

And then they came after me to fix it. They had me call the software company about the printing issue—which I said several times would be fruitless because I hadn’t experienced the problem, could not recreate it, and would not be able to give them enough information to diagnose it. But the boss and the supervisor insisted, so I spent an hour and a half on the phone with them, running back and forth to different computers trying to get the problem to happen somewhere. Finally we gave up, and agreed that the next time someone has that problem, that person should call tech support right away.

And then… some time after four… the boss and the supervisor consulted over the phone about the slowness of the server, and thought perhaps the problem was all the older versions of Quickbooks still installed thereupon. The boss relayed via my supervisor that I should try uninstalling the older versions and see if that improved performance.

O_O

I noped out of that as politely and deferentially as I could. I do not want to touch the server, or be in any way responsible for what happens to the server. If I fuck it up, I can’t unfuck it, and I have zero confidence in the viability of our backup system. It’s one thing to FUBAR my desktop machine while attempting to fix a problem. It’s another thing to torch all our company data because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. The former would result in a Windows re-install, the latter could potentially put us out of business.

I find it a disheartening statement on the competence of our IT service that my boss would even consider this an option. I cannot for the life of me figure out why we’re still using them.

The Secret to My Speediness

Geek Wannabe 2 Responses »

Apr 232013

When Freda has something that needs to be entered quickly (as in, someone else needs it to meet their own deadline), she prefers to give it to me rather than New Girl, because I can get it done faster.

As far as straight data entry, I’m probably the fastest in the office. Partly this is because I’m a touch typist. Mostly, I think, it’s because I rarely use the mouse.

Maybe it’s because I started using computers before Windows (yes, I’m a dinosaur). Maybe it’s because I am a touch typist. Whatever, I prefer to use keyboard shortcuts. I move between programs with alt-tab, I access programs and shut down with ctrl-esc. I print with Ctrl-P, I copy with Ctrl-C and paste with Ctrl-V.

I get fidgety watching other people log in to anything. Everyone else in the office:

click user field,
type name,
click password field,
type password,
click OK.

Me: click user field, type name, tab, type password, enter. Takes me half the time, if that.

Even in Gmail I use keyboard shortcuts instead of the mouse. If someone can tell me the keyboard shortcut to attach a file in Gmail, I’ll buy you a beer.

I don’t know why more people aren’t using them. I think they may not even know about them—the first time the Director saw me shut down a Windows computer with Ctrl-Esc, he exclaimed “HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!” Once an accountant was remotely logged in to help me with something, and had the same reaction when I alt-tabbed to another window. Are they not teaching keyboard shortcuts in school? These things are seriously useful. I’m much faster and more accurate when I stay with the keyboard, and don’t have to come back hunting for the home keys.

Foiling Scammers

Geek Wannabe, General Comments Off

Feb 012013

I think I saved my boss from a scammer yesterday.

I’ve kind of become the unofficial tech person in the office. (I’m not sure how this happened; most of the time they figure out the problem themselves while I’m there.)

So yesterday, my boss was walking by and handed me his cell phone, saying “See if you can figure out what she’s talking about.”

On the other end was a lady with an Indian accent telling me my computer was sending some kind of tech-sounding thing to their servers, and she was going to tell me how to remove the virus.
At first I thought she meant his computer had picked up a zombie virus and was spamming people, so I said we’d call our IT guy—and she said “No, no one else can fix this, you need to go to our website.”

I basically told her it was our IT guy or nothing, and she hung up.

Then I did a search on the company she said she was from… “Windows Computer Services.” Scam city.

I relayed the info to my boss and went back to work. Stupid scammers wasting everybody’s time.

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