Diverse readings this week

System reliability, server logs, standard making...

I'm having my own issues with system reliability this week. My wireless connection on my laptop is not working. Sounds like a small thing, but we've now spent at least 9 total hours trying to fix it. As I went through the process of checking all the online help, downloading new drivers, beating my head on my desk, I thought about Butler's comments on individual and collective mindfulness. As a user, I was finding it very difficult to remain "mindful." Right now, at this time of the semester, I do not WANT to exhibit "mindful attention to abnormalities and alternative possibilities" (Butler 2006, 218). I just want everything to work! Yet, facing the dreaded tech support call, I knew that I should try everything I could to fix the problem because they would probably immediately ask me if I had tried the suggested steps online.

Well, they didn't. After three long hours, my wireless still doesn't work. I am now very, very good at installing and uninstalling drivers, however. Unfortunately, my computer now seems to be much less *reliable* that it was before. On Monday, everything worked fine except that I couldn't connect to the Internet via my wireless card. Now, all the "updates" and new drivers and everything that has been changed is causing all kinds of error messages to appear, and it's requesting me to migrate programs and all kinds of useless things. Now, my system is so slow it is basically unusable.

Our topic this week is technology environment management. This whole experience with tech support (nice, but useless in this case) and my computer problems has really brought home to me how little we notice our technology environment until something stops working. As Butler explains, we are so focused on our normal goals and procedures, having to stop and be mindful is very difficult (Butler 2006).