Week#2

6 min readJan 18, 2022

Disclaimer: I am in a pissy mood because of my life choices related to where I chose to work and why I still haven’t gotten around to speaking French. So basically this is a 2 part rant. Enjoy.

I am at a loss for words this week. Much like I was when I received a request for IT support yesterday.

I have around 9 years of IT experience, with 4 of them in IT security and despite that because of a lack of staff(and some capability), I am often left fending off request which leave me bemused. I did point out to my boss during my year-end performance evaluation that I don’t want to perform the IT support role and that making me do IT support is like asking a “2:30 marathoner to run a 4 hour marathon. He would do it, but he won’t really be challenged”. My boss did promise to phase me out and give me better responsibilities but at this point he is just giving me better responsibilities and I still have all of my old ones including the ones which someone else should be taking over but they are incapable of doing even basic tasks.

I try to take challenges at work (and in life) because whatever forces me to think and apply my judgement is helping me grow as a person (atleast that’s the kind of nonsense which is in my head. Maybe one day I will realise that life is all about living it and actively finding challenges is not the best idea. Or not. Time will tell.)
I try to concentrate on my more “worthy” work, I delineate time and apply “Do not Disturb” on Microsoft Teams for certain work periods, I even try to work from home as much as possible but somehow people don’t seem to be bothered by my quest for growth. (I often just end up going to the office even when I don’t want to because people can invent problems and I am too nice. Actually, there is a survey for the IT department and the last day to submit is 25th January. After that…… I’ll still be nice because my parents just raised me to be nice. I am not happy about that. I want to be an asshole.)

Yesterday, I was in the middle of a process which I had automated to such an extent so that the end users just have to perform 4 clicks on an iPad they will receive from us. But the team for whom I did the automation told me that even the 4 clicks are too complex for the end users (which makes me wonder if people can’t press “Next” why even hire them, but then I am not working in management). So I was in a bitchy mood as is having to do the manual labour task, wanting to smack the iPads in the faces of my tormentors when I got a message. I was hoping for a good distraction but the message went something like this:

“Hi Aru, can I kindly ask if you could check my computer remotely? It has just completely lost all power and I can’t get any life out of it at all. ’
I’ve just ordered a new power cable from Amazon in case it is a power charging thing. Can you check anything from there?

I had to re-read the message a couple of time before I really understood what this person wanted to me remotely check his computer, when it was turned off. HOW? I mean, seriously HOW? Should I encode myself as a digital signal? Even if I managed to do that, I will be not be able to transmit the signal to that computer because it is OFF.

At least he didn’t interrupt important work. Once, I was on call and I was interrupted by someone who claimed their headset was not working. When I dragged myself to his table, I found that his claims of having tried everything were utter bullshit because his volume was turned off.

But the winner still has to be the user who came to me, claiming his screen wasn’t working. I arrived at his desk and in all my IT wizardry skills, simply turned on his monitor. (I also had to ask this person not to download UTorrent on his work laptop. Yes.)

A big part of my job is to make a poker face when I am called over for such issues and to be an agony aunt. Maybe eventually I will find a job which can value my skills a bit more (C’mon French Skills). But until then, I will keep coming to you with hilarious stories about middle aged men and women who cannot operate computers.

(2nd) Rant of the week

I have to admit, I miss long runs. I love running in general, I love the Vo2 max workouts and the hill repeats. I love racing and I love running in a group. But the solo 2+ hour efforts, where I could just get lost in thought as the scenery passed me by, nothing can replace it. Long runs are my coping mechanism to everything in life and not doing them sucks.

At this point, I am beginning to wonder if I will ever be able to run again properly. It is just past 8 months and I still have the niggling pain. Having spent thousands of my hard earned money on every conceivable strategy I am now contemplating either having a botox injection(doctor’s suggestion) or having a joint aspiration via surgery(my frustration).

I am an engineer, so I think about problem solving in the most logical sense. The bone has an edema, the density of the bone is fine and it has no fracture lines. The edema, if drained, will solve the pain I am having. It will be matter of rehab from there and given that over the last 8 months, I haven’t been anyways been able to do what I want, the surgery will atleast give me a defined timeline. I have been patient with the injury, I have given it rest and time to recover. I have been nice to my body and I am more than aware of what recovery from a surgery would entail. If the botox injection doesn’t solve the problem, I am willing to go for the surgery.

I want to be able to run normally again, to walk without pain and to be able to move without having this knot in my stomach that the next step will hurt. I want to spend more time outdoors than in a physio’s gym or on a table getting needles shoved in my hamstrings. I want to spend my money for something other than dealing with an injury. It sucks that despite doing everything right, it is not even 30%. And I don’t want for this to sound as a complaint. This is loud contemplation of my choices at this point. Never take your mobility for granted.

Pictures from this week:

Chalet à Gobet is located not too far from where I am living. I don’t know why it is famous among runners, maybe it has a nice running loop, I’ve only been there once when I was riding my bike past the area. Now that I’m close by I wanted to checkout what the deal was.