Focus my attention
Learned this years ago: deadlines focus my attention. Under pressure, I’m more effective. There, my secret is out.
Today, I was invited to take a long weekend, starting this evening, and all of a sudden my work load became intense. So much to get done before leaving. And with years of practice, I was ready to “get ‘er done”.
First up; shipping that laptop that has to be gone tomorrow morning. I’m not doing tomorrow, so today it is. Find a box, and pick the best combination of packing materials available (bagged air). Just enough to keep things from bouncing around, and then a layering of plastic tape to keep things closed until touchdown. Done. Checked off.
Next, that printer that “died” yesterday. Although the estimate for repair was outrageous, I was invited to ignore common sense and call it in to a local repair shop. Done. The parts may arrive on Monday; until then, a misdirection of the pertinent print queues and the calm returns to the trouble waters.
High priority, a laptop that has developed “blue screens” as an alternate to productive behavior. Back up the data, reformat, reinstall and test. As it turned out, the user did manage to crash things later in the afternoon, but it might be due to some documents that aren’t “healthy”. If you know what I mean. At least we know it’s not hardware.
A user with a CD to burn. Wrong software. Confusion over .BIN and .ISO and .whatever. Showed off my “change the file name” trick and we’re happily cooking.
That’s part of the day. Any more would be too much detail. Suffice that I’m now weekending, and at peace.
