Computer Blues

I'm excited because I'm getting a new computer at work, but it's sure been a dragged-out process. For about a year and a half I've been using a laptop (connected to a big LCD monitor) that used to be my old boss's computer. He got a new one and passed this one along to me. It's never given me any problems, but its performance has been a little sluggish in certain programs for some time now. And I have no real need for a laptop, because I don't have the sort of job that requires me to do work at home, so I don't need to lug the thing back and forth.

More importantly, there are one or two little tasks I need to do each month that, for whatever arcane reason, can only be done in Windows; even though I'm using Word on my Mac, there are differences from Word for Windows (that are just too ridiculous to go into, trust me), and one of them affects my work. So each month, I have to trundle down to the conference room. where there's a Windows computer setup. It's connected to a nice big Samsung LCD TV so that it can be used for presentations and stuff, which is sweet, but it's still a pain, and sometimes I have to shuttle back and forth a couple of times.

So I suggested to my boss that it might make sense to get me a new Mac, something with a lot more RAM and a bigger hard drive, that can run Windows so that I could switch back and forth on the same machine and thus work more efficiently. She presented the argument to her boss, who agreed. Naturally, these types of purchases have to align with the budget, so they told me to wait for the start of the new fiscal year, which was July 1.

July came and went, so I figured I should remind someone about it, and as I suspected, they had forgotten. After that, it took a couple more weeks for the business manager to come around and spec out what I needed, then another few days while he did the same thing for someone else in the office, then another couple of days for it to be processed...

Sorry, didn't mean to put you to sleep. My new iMac with the big-ass 24" screen actually arrived a week ago, and the two giant boxes (mine and the other person's) have been sitting in the business manager's office ever since. On Wednesday I stuck my head in and said, trying to seem really casual about it, "So, what do we have to do to get this puppy up and running?" He said, "I just put in the request to IT for them to come and set it up." Okay, I know it was a long weekend, but what were you waiting for?

Today the business manager came by and said that he was still waiting for the Windows software and the virtualization software that will work with it to arrive, because he wants IT to be able to do everything all at once, which certainly makes sense. But it's really killing me knowing the thing is just waiting there, twenty feet away from my cubicle.

Oh, and the boss's boss wants my 23" LCD monitor, since I won't need it anymore. Seems fair.