Some IT departments are simply bad. I have been struggling over the last few weeks to obtain login access to the computer I use in the clinic. Without access, I’m unable to view any of my patients’ medical records.

I called the helpline responsible for the computing systems (5-HELP). After several prompts and minutes of waiting, I explained to the support staff my problem. He replied, “Oh, that’s a hospital computer, you need to call 4-HELP.”

I subsequently dialed 4-HELP, and waited through a suspiciously similar system prompts. The support staff on 4-HELP explained to me that even though the computers in question were in the hospital, they were controlled by the university. Hence, I would need to dial 5-HELP for support.

I explained to him that I had already done that, and he retorted, “You’ll have to speak to you departmental administrator.” I asked my program director’s secretary what I needed to do, and she told me that she had done “everything possible to activate my accounts” (translate: I’ve done nothing). I would have to dial 5-HELP for help.

Painful.

computing, medicine computing

The other day my laptop got “wormed” while I took down my firewall to do some software patches. I had forgotten to disconnect from the Internet, and after 30 mins of patching, my computer started acting weird. Before I knew it, a gazillion pop-up windows materialized on my desktop, and the computer became non-responsive, even after reboots. This is the one of the worst things that can happen to a computer literate user. I got hacked. This is what I get for not upgrading my copy of IE 6.0.

Sadly enough, the mirrored drive on my hard drive was not accessible (boot sector was hijacked), and I did not have a second computer to link up my laptop drive to recover some files. I spent the next 3 hours installing a non-IBM version of Windows XP and hunting Thinkpad drivers online. In the process of fiddling around, I discovered that my USB ports were blown–typical USB header on the laptop gets pushed back into the motherboard after long-term use. One of the capacitors were oozing as well.

Hardware and software failure almost inevitably means a new computer. What will my next computer be? Will it be a Mac? In the meantime, my computer is still functional, albeit in a limited form.

computing computing, rant

I used to enjoy tweaking computers, whether it involved fiddling with the latest linux distro or optimizing boot times on my operating system. Not anymore. The other day I was trying to figure out why my relative’s computer was running so sluggishly. I had configured it over a year ago, and it booted in less than a minute. Now, it took nearly 2 minutes to reach the desktop. Execution of applications after a double-click crawled painfully.

The system is an Athlon 1800+ with 1 gig of ram and a GeForce4 video card. There is no reason for the computer to be slow, especially without any newly installed software. It turned out that the McAfee antivirus program was the culprit, which reinforced my distaste of all antivirus programs. Moreover, McAfee’s uninstall program failed to remove a component that lingers in the system processes to prevent worms from disabling the antivirus program. The program was, in essence, a virus itself. How ironic.

It took me approximately 45 minutes to pinpoint the program and wipe out the badness. However, I hated every step of it. I didn’t enjoy the challenge of solving the problem of a slow computer anymore. It was a chore. In the end, I was glad that my stint in the tech support industry lasted only 1 month in college. Maybe my next computer will be a mac…

computing computing