irony...

As the only IT guy in our company in North of Orange County, I support all of our Nothern California offices and field workers. Most of that work can be done remotely, so at this point that hasn't been much of an issue. I'm based in our Oakland office. We also have an office in San Jose and a small office in Sacramento. Fortunately, everything works out pretty well that I'm not spending all my time on the road.

I take the train into work in the mornings and grab a company vehicle for my travels. It generally works out pretty well as I avoid commute traffic and don't have to worry about the wear and tear on my personal vehicle. However, it seems that every time that I plan on going to the San Jose office, something comes up here in Oakland that keeps me from leaving at the time I plan. The more urgent my need to be in San Jose, or the more time critical my arrival time, the harder it is to leave Oakland.

For example, today. Everyone's up camping and I'm meeting them tonight. (See my previous post) I drove the truck into Oakland today with the plans of leaving here by 10, spending some time in the San Jose office getting someone set up on their new laptop and leave there by 1 or 2. Unfortunately as I was pulling into the garage, I got a phone call informing me that our network is down. Fortunately, it's only our WAN (internet) connection. Unfortunately, nearly everything we do requires that connection to access our corporate servers. Our phones are all VOIP, so nobody can call out as that's all internet based as well. Time cards need to be completed and turned in by 11:30 on Fridays. Yep, internet access required.

Fonrtunately, being the computer guy, I have connections. I have internet access via a cellular card. Unfortunately, my computer is being used as a timecard kiosk. ...which means I have to go.