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Wednesday 4 July 2007

It's not fair

The sole purpose of this post is to have a moan.

I left work at 7.30 tonight, and my colleague was still there finishing things up. And why were we stuck in the office until so late? Because for a month now we've been having IT/network problems that prevent us from working properly.

Some background: we use translation memory software, and the memory database is stored on a server (it has to be, so we both have real-time access to it). We also store all our "working" files on the same server, as we both need access to them.

So for the last month, the connection to this server has been woefully unreliable, some days it goes off ten or more times. Each time the server connection is lost, if we're working in the the TM software, the whole thing freezes and the quickest solution is to kill it in Task Manager and start again. Can you imagine spending about 15% of your working day just re-starting a program?

The other really great thing that can happen is this: if the connection to the server is lost at the very time when you are "writing" to the TM, this can corrupt the whole database (two and a half years worth of translations here), rendering it useless. This has happened twice since I came back off holiday. Luckily, I copy the TM to my hard drive every morning so we don't have to wait for IT to restore the file from the backup.

And what solution does the helpdesk offer? "Work from your hard drive and copy to the server at the end of day so everything is backed up". And how exactly does that allow real-time sharing of the database? Well, they don't have an answer to that one.

I estimate that in the 10 days I've been back at work, I have lost 3 of them to this problem. Great productivity! Which adds up to things taking far longer than they should, and us being stuck in work until late to finish projects.

I did warn you it was a moan. :(

***UPDATE: they have bought a new server. Yay.***

8 comments:

StormRider said...

Hey Lis. Alan's freed finally. Thank all for the effort.

But...why the double 'moaning' Lis? Is there some unseen force coercing you into doing it? :D

Princesse Ecossaise said...

boooo! the French are supposed to work the minimum amount of hours per day and have 360 days of holiday a year! You're being taken advantage of Lis!

Princesse Ecossaise said...

LisLisLisLiiiiiis!

You've to come to my blog and pick up your blog award!

Anonymous said...

... I've only 54 days of holiday this year ! ... it is unfair !

Lis of the North said...

Heh heh hi stormrider. Well, I posted my "complaining" post twice because I think my home computer got infected with bad computer syndrome last night and it logged me out of blogger!

Oh princesse, I think I am being taken advantage of! I need to go and blockade a motorway to protest!
And thank you for my blog award, I'm so touched. :)

Hmmm, Hubby you work for a firm of skivers, it's hardly surprising you have so much time off.

Anonymous said...

I feel for you ! I know what it is to work with unrealible computers and it's a pain.

Anonymous said...

54 days holiday!!! (Is that for real?)

Lis of the North said...

Oh Zhu thank you. Things appear to be getting back to normal thank heavens!

SG - yes it is for real, but it's exceptional circumstances this year, because he changed companies within the same group and got twice the holiday allowance!