Damn those company computer guys! 
I came into work this morning about 10 and load up my VMware Player running FC5 via USB and fire up CAD or other work apps as usual. I tinkered around in a report program called LogPlot that generates graphical logs of dill logs. I hadn’t done more than a half hours worth of work and I notice a window pop up showing a progress bar and two buttons: Reboot Now and a disabled Reboot Later button (Similar to shown but this one is from a more recent one). Not thinking much of it for probably 30 seconds, I decide “well I better start shutting VMware down just in case as you never know.” Besides I wanted a clean shutdown since this runs off my USB drive.
The progress bar got to the end and I half expected the “Reboot Later” button to become available but it didn’t and I started seeing the usual flickering of icons disappearing. Crap! I’m pissed! This wasn’t critical but could have been. So I decided to send IT a bitch email:
I just want to respond to whomever rolls out the workstation updates that I lost about a half hours work just now because I was unable to choose the “Reboot Later” button as it was disabled. Yes I briefly saw the message and assumed it was doing the installs and that the reboot later button would become available after the install. The lost work was not critical and can be redone quickly, but my point is that you need to loosen the grip and give us the chance to save. We are not all sitting at our desks to see these things just pop up out of the blue.
Thanks for your consideration,
Normally they are quick to respond but not this time. Will see what if any response they might have. IMO, they behave as if IT is what makes the company our primary business. I know company IT guys often get brushed off as not important, but in my position as a CAD guy, I generally look up to my superiors being scientists and engineers, not the IT guy. I’ll have to blog again to give a better insight as to why I have such a bitter stance with my own company’s IT guys later.
More Insult to Injury
Well I now have my reply from our IT guy. Hey that rhymes! So it seems I’m the only lame brain to have fallen victim to their split second decisions. An apology for may have been a better spice to have thrown in here too. Here is the reply:
Well! Isn’t that special. Man o’ man! All I wanted is the option to buy myself more time to reboot. I don’t remember how much time that countdown was but I will say that I do have some CAD drawings that take a considerable amount of time saving back out to the network. Oh well… I’ll stop my bitching right about now.