I want my IT staff back

I can live without power and people to boss around.

I can live without regular paychecks.

But I’m just not sure whether or not I can survive without on-premise tech support.

It could be worse.  The other day I was talking to a woman completely stumped by why her computer wasn’t recognizing her new printer.  I have, at least heard of printer drivers.  And when a friend of mine was having problems redirecting his domain-name specific email to Gmail, I read Google’s instructions and figured it out.  Arcane web site issues – at this point just bring them on.  If it can be solved by going on-line, pointing, clicking and searching FAQs, it might take me a while but sooner or later I’ll get it.  (I might have to look up a technical term or two on Wikipedia just to be sure that I know what I’m doing, but I’ll get the job done.)

In fact, it appears that I’m turning into other folks’ computer expert.  This makes me nervous.  It’s one thing to find the extra space my mom accidentally put in her customer address mail merge template that makes the labels print wrong.  It’s another thing entirely to give someone serious advice about a tool they use to run their business.

After all, I haven’t even had to buy a computer on my own since 1992.

So what if I’ve spent a couple of decades around technology people?  To the hardcore geek types I was a “fluffy marketing person.”  Then again, to my employees I was the scary boss who expected everyone on the marketing team to really understand the products we were pushing. 

I guess the best way to describe my technical expertise is this:  if you need a point-of-sale, have I got some suggestions for you.  But when it comes to deciding on a replacement for my own on-its-last-legs laptop, well, that’s another matter entirely.

(I don’t think I’ll be exploring career options at Best Buy if this consulting gig doesn’t work out.)

let's talk about toilet paper

Standing in the Wal-Mart checkout line yesterday with another $12 mega package, it hit me:  My toilet paper consumption has increased exponentially.

It’s just another side effect of working from home.

I guess this shouldn’t be all that surprising.  After all, offices have bathrooms.  Bathrooms with toilet paper.  So for those of us spending our days in an office, a certain amount of our toilet paper just shows up, neatly installed on the toilet paper holder by an invisible nighttime janitor.

If you do the math (and when you are standing in line at Wal-Mart on a Saturday, there’s certainly plenty of time for any calculations you’d care to undertake), eight hours at the office is a third of a 24 hour day, so logically toilet paper consumption would increase proportionately.  Even if you factor in the fact that eight hours of an average day are spent sleeping, usage should only double.

That doesn’t come close to the increase I’m seeing here.

Many small businesses join a warehouse club like Costco or Sam’s to save on office supplies.  As for me?  Well, I haven’t needed to buy legal pads or fancy pens since I started working from home.  Lately, however, I’ve been thinking that a membership might be worth the cost.  I'm pretty sure those discount clubs carry toilet paper, don’t they?