Tough day at work today. It reminded me of the kerfuffle I saw recently about how computers aren’t really working well for the Air Force, and I suppose what I went through today could qualify as an exhibit in that trial. It’s bad enough that both of the computers in our office need to be restarted regularly in order to work (I don’t count the third, because it can never stay on the domain longer than a day or two before it becomes completely impossible to use), but today brought the real sweetness — whole programs changing their minds about what I could open in them. Others not opening at all. Our “official” means of internal communications not even showing me the files I’d uploaded previously.
So things kind of ground to a halt, as pretty much each path of the remaining tasks I needed to do (after I’d exhausted every other task while waiting for someone to fix the one thing that was holding me up on at least two other projects) led to the one program that decided yesterday that it is was not going to let me access any of the files I needed to edit with that very program. And this, of course, produced a cascading effect; because there were at least four people out there who were depending upon me to get the work done before they could move on with something. Things that affect their pay. Things that affect their applications for positions and programs. Things that let them do their job more efficiently.
I can see the frustration. I’m experiencing it. I can’t see a solution outside of maybe tearing the whole thing down and rebuilding it. The thing is, every little thing — every little interaction between programs and files — is a new complication, a new layer of near impossibility, all lacquered over with a thick layer of “computer security.” It’s the cost of doing business anymore. The bad guys are always looking, always probing. Trying to find a way to exploit a weakness and steal information.
It seems computer security is as perishable as the equipment and programs we use. It’s like they’re always a step behind while trying to stay a step ahead, and the “balance” they’ve struck is to make the network just short of too cumbersome to operate at all. Then again, I’ve been here a dozen years or so and I don’t think they’ve done anything to the infrastructure either. Same switches, same servers, same fiber.
There are just too many bells and whistles if you ask me. And I don’t see them going anywhere, because I know people who find some new toy and love it to death. But then they move on to the next new, shiny thing. I’ve been around long enough to have seen a thousand things reinvented, and I think maybe it’s in the reinvention that we think the progress is being made, but it’s all seems to come to the same result.
I remember the days when we thought computers were the next big thing to make us more efficient. More productive. And I’m sure they have, although I wonder about the tradeoffs sometimes. The vulnerabilities. The abuses. And then the lack of will and dedication to keep it all up and running.
But then again, maybe it’s just the frustration of the day that’s got me going…
