Not the worst day ever, but not a good one either. Had to be downtown by 9am this morning (I wasn’t really needed until 10, but being early would be helpful.), so I left the house at 7:30. Ran into a little bit of traffic on the toll road, but nothing huge. I remembered while on the toll road that I couldn’t take 66 in like I planned because it’s HOV only until 9am. So I got on the beltway to take the GW Parkway. Not a problem. The GW Parkway was fine, too, until it came to an abrupt halt at 123. I don’t mind sitting in traffic, but I do mind being late. At 8:45 I called my boss, since the woman I was meeting downtown didn’t respond to my email asking for her cell phone number until I was in the car this morning. Not helpful. My boss contacted the lady, so she knew I was stuck in traffic. So I didn’t fret anymore about being late. And I got there by 9:30. Two hours to go 36 miles.
I found my way to the training room I would be spending the day in and said hello to the woman I was meeting. Let’s just call her Space Cadet. She’s completely scatter-brained, and everything she touches falls to pieces. And that includes me, apparently. My purpose today was to be on hand to help the testers whenever they ran into something they either didn’t understand or they thought might be a defect. And that part of the day was fine. I headed off some user-error issues before they could blow up and handled some actual defects with the system. Not a problem. My frustration came from my internet connection, mostly. I’m not allowed to connect to the LAN because my computer does not belong to them. I had a wireless modem, but the signal was awful. And inconsistent. I could connect, but then I couldn’t get anywhere, or I could go to one site, but not check my work email…and not being able to check my work email, or rather send any work email, was the biggest problem. So I took my laptop out to a lounge area in the hallway, both to try to get a better signal (through the window) and to call my boss to get her opinion on a potential enhancement to the system. I got her answer and then tried to send an email with an attachment, necessary for a meeting that was going to start in about 15 minutes. I managed to send the email, but when Space Cadet opened it, we realized I had sent an older version of the attachment. And then I couldn’t connect to my email. Again. I could connect on a local computer, but I couldn’t transfer the file from my laptop to that computer. The local computer wouldn’t recognize my thumb drive. We were able to have the meeting using the older attachment anyway (I just described the changes over the phone), but we were delayed and Space Cadet was really flustered. (The delay was mostly her not understanding that I could just talk about the missing parts of the attachment because I had the updated document right there in front me.)
The meeting was over by 12:30, which was about when I was planning on heading back to the office. Space Cadet had one other tester scheduled for 2-4pm, but no one expected me to stick around that late. That tester, naturally, walked in right then and asked if it would be okay for her to start now, rather than wait until 2. Space Cadet said she had meetings until 2 or 2:30 and then asked me if I could stay and help the tester if she needed any help. I agreed because I really didn’t have any reason not to. I got some stuff done during that almost two hours on a local computer, but I couldn’t check my personal email there (blocked websites). I tried my luck with the connection on my laptop and was able to check my Yahoo mail. Thank goodness I did. I had an email from Dad telling me that the building security people called them. They have my phone at the front desk. I hadn’t even missed it! Apparently, I left it in the hallway around noon when I was trying to send that email before the meeting. And there’s no telling if I would have noticed it was gone before I left for the day. So I ran to the security desk and the very nice ladies there gave me my phone.
I really didn’t have it together today. I tried to leave without my coat, too. Then I had to sign out at the same security desk and the ladies told me it’s a good thing I have my head screwed on tight, ’cause I probably would have left that somewhere, too. Too true.
I got stuck in traffic a little on my way back to the office, and then work was nonstop until I left at 6. All in all, it was a very long day. Oh, and I didn’t have lunch until around 3:30, when I finally got back to the office. Somehow, I wasn’t starving. But lack of food may have added to my crankiness this afternoon. And now I’m home, and I’m going to have a very boring (but very healthy) dinner of steamed vegetables over rice. And a glass of wine. 🙂