Saturday, October 06, 2007

An Exercise In Frustration

I want to tear my hair out.

I just had VPN remote access installed in the work laptop.

And of course, I needed to disable and change proxy settings, and get connected to the Internet first before accessing my work platforms.

I've no idea what the new software and folders did to my wireless settings. Try as I might, I couldn't access my home wireless network. The system couldn't even find it!!!

The Microsoft Wireless client couldn't even display anything. It kept showing me an error window. Even after I ran article 871122, nothing worked.

Through the Intel Pro Wireless client, I could see which of my neighbors were online. I also privately giggled at their choice of profile names. But I just couldn't see my own. Obviously I couldn't log on at all! And that not very stable Wireless @ SG kept playing hide & seek on the detection screen.

I don't have any friends who are experts in IT. Well, none who I can call at midnight anyway.

So I dug out the ethernet cable and hooked up with the land modem instead. But the system couldn't read it!!!! I was still offline.

WTF??!!! Needless to say, I couldn't access the work emails and the shared drive. Like that, this weekend no need to work. Work will just have to resume on Monday.

I shoved the laptop back into its sleeve before I yielded to the temptation of throwing it over the balcony.

I give up.

I'm going to pester the IT people on Monday. I don't care if they think I'm stupid. I better settle all these here before I run into the same problem overseas. That will suck ten times worse.

I really really hate tech stuff.

Update 8 Oct 2007: Can you beat this? IT has no idea what's wrong. Away from home, the laptop and its wireless works fine. IT tried everything I already did. Like that, no need to work from home. Ever.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

i wonder why you bother.

my motto is: "just call IT!!!" but i will first check if the power switch has been turned on.

Anonymous said...

Actually, yah. Weekend no need to work.

Anonymous said...

still couldn't?? hmm. but i'm terrible at IT related things too. i have no idea how they work :p

Anonymous said...

if it's any comfort, i hate tech stuff too. and i hate that VPN remote access. here's still fine. but when i'm overseas, i get kicked out all the time. bah.

wildgoose said...

Just call IT! My VPN never used to work (although I called IT many times) until they upgraded the notebook. Perfect reason not to work from home. wahaha...

Unknown said...

I can so totally empathise with you on this one. My wife has also been so frustrated about all this connection confusion. For me, I just email any outstanding work to my gmail account and work from there. Life is too short to kill the IT department (or ourselves) over such failures....

Anonymous said...

Oh dear! VPN! That's a horrible word for me. I hate how it takes ages to get it up and going. Good luck.

imp said...

arrrgh. thanks people. i need all the luck! will make IT sit down with me and take me through the steps. so dumb i am.

wildgoose said...

Cool Insider - do you know you're not supposed to forward stuff to your internet email accounts? an ex-colleague got a stern warning on that before.

imp said...

wildgoose: heh. i think can. we just got an email reminder last week on email forwarding and usage of the blackberry. i was grinning. so long it's not a restricted email. we're just not supposed to configure our official emails to redirect to our internet emails. whatever else will be in our thumbdrives.

Cavalock said...

DEMAND a new laptop from IT! ;)

imp said...

cavalock: i wish!