A response in avoidance of the Daily Post’s Writing Prompt https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/middle-seat/

Yesterday was not a good day.  Why, you ask?  Let me tell you about it.

So, I woke up with a migraine.  I knew the night before I was getting one, but I thought it would be gone by morning and all would be ok.  But it wasn’t.  I went to work anyway, but didn’t stay.  However, while I was there, I realized that it was password change nightmare day.  Our college has been told to implement a new password policy.  15-character passwords that have to change every 90 days.  Yesterday was day one of the new password policy.  They had emailed out “instructions”, but when I turned on my computer in the morning, I realized, first, that logging in wirelessly was not going to work.  I was in an endless loop.  To change my password, I needed to get onto the Internet.  To access the wireless system I needed to change my password.  See the problem?  Also, it is difficult accessing emailed instructions when you can’t log into your computer to check your email instructions.  Luckily I found a wire, plugged my computer into the system, and was walked through the password change.  Then, when I unplugged to go back to wireless nothing worked.  Took an hour to get everything on my computer to be happy.  We’ll see if it stayed happy overnight…

Then I checked my work email on my phone, and it wouldn’t accept my new password.  The “instructions” said that in order to log in on a phone or other mobile device, go to the Internet and change your password.  But I had just changed my password and don’t want to do it again.  I sent a note to IT support, but never heard back.  I still can’t access email on my phone or iPad, and am pretty sure IT support is drowning in a sea of faculty not understanding why they can’t log into their computers.  I am glad I’m not them.

Well, I lasted until almost noon at work, but then couldn’t look at a computer screen any more with the head thing, so I went home and slept for 3 hours.   Not feeling too much better, I made supper and then did the dumbest thing I’ve done in a long time.  I messed with my iPhone.  Thinking I might be able to resolve the password issue by changing the passcode on my phone, I did.  Turned off my phone, then tried to get back in.  No dice.  I had probably typed in the passcode wrong and remembered it as something it was not.  My phone locked me out.  I had to reset it.  And, before you ask, no…I hadn’t backed it up in awhile.  Yes.  I tell folks all the time to back up their devices!!  This is why.  Guess it’s time to do as I say.  Anyway, I left the phone restoring and syncing while I went to bed, and now I can see I’ll be spending the weekend trying to get it back to where it was yesterday morning.  AND backing it up.

Oh, I should also mention that in the middle of all this, our Shaw Gateway (our cable) stopped working.  Kevin came home shortly after it stopped, while I was swearing loudly at my phone and myself, and called Shaw. It was fixed in seconds.  Can’t say the same for my phone.  And I still have to figure out how to make my work email accessible on the damn thing.  Maybe it’s time to give technology a bit of a rest.

One fun thing happened yesterday.  Our carpenter, Davyd, replaced the caps on our front stairs.

Here is before (ugly spindles):

And here is after:

And here are kitties: