Happy Labor Day to all my fellow American workers.

Our company provides today as a paid holiday, but I am working from home.

I have been working on a project at work for the past *two* years. I’m converting our manual accounting to electronic and the program my company purchased is a good one, but an unknown to the point where it’s not possible to get help via the Internet to any real extent. (Read: I can’t google my question and get an answer.) There is an email group, but one of the moderators, a guy who is actually very intelligent and knows the program in and out has taken a real dislike to me. What set him off was I broke an unspoken rule of the group. The software company sells Crystal Reports v10 to go along with their program, and insist it will not work with the newest version, v11. They want you to buy Version 10, for which they charge $200. I did not know the program was not compatible with their program, (funny thing is I’m using it, and it works JUST FINE, so go figure?) and I did not know it was against the rules to let others know there is a company out there that is very helpful to non-profits. Check out TechSoup if you think you might be eligible. They sell Crystal Reports v11 for $34. So I was just letting the others on the list know they could get it at TechSoup if they couldn’t afford to put out $200.

My goodness, the moderator threatened to ban me from the list if I ever did that again. Several people posted in my defense, and I apologized profusely. Then the supervisor of this guy got on the list and defended him. Nice move, guy. If I could, we’d drop this software like a hot potato. I ended up meeting both men at conference. The supervisor must have “short man” syndrome as my 5’4″ dwarfed him by at least 5 inches. He apologized and said the situation was handled poorly, and he told me the moderator was a great guy. I did meet him in person, and my assessment of him is he is just one of those tech people who don’t know how to relate to people.

In spite of our having met in person, he continues to respond to my questions with sarcasm and rudeness to the point that someone always comments on how they thought this list is to get help, not to be belittled. I only post when I’m desperate, and only three times since the conference. The third time he chose to ignore me. Fine.

Support from a trainer runs $120 an hour, and my company can’t afford to put out that kind of money for training. So I’ve had to muddle through the best I can.

We found a company in another state that offers a one year contract of assistance for $1200 per year, unlimited and we contracted with them, unfortunately the person I need to speak with most of all can’t help me immediately and usually when I have a problem I need immediate assistance. It’s usually a problem that stops me cold from going from Point A to Point B, and very often only takes a few minutes to clear up. I’m starting to wish we could afford the $120/hour person as she charges by 15 minute increments, and appears to be much more accessible.

Anyway, my goodness I can sure ramble when I get started. I’m working from home today, because I’ve finally gone live in the Accounts Receivables module. I have been entering data from July, and have to enter all the deposits for this fiscal year so I can start with billing tomorrow.

Unfortunately, things have not gone well this morning. First I attempted to connect to our server at work with my desktop computer, but discovered I cannot do that as I’m only running Vista Basic. Which of course meant I couldn’t connect the software which I’d loaded to my computer to the back end on the server. Our IT guy gave me a copy of Office, but gave me the wrong serial numbers.

After an hour, I got my laptop turned on. It takes me much longer to work with the laptop, because I am not accustomed to the keyboard. I got hooked up to the server, and opened the program and I have been waiting 20 to 30 minutes for each time I click through another screen. For example, I have to sign in to the program, so I had to wait 20 minutes to even get the log in screen. I logged in, and waited another 20 minutes for that to process. In the meantime, I’m trying to update a spreadsheet for my supervisor, and this is also taking 10-15 minutes for each step of the way.

This is aggravating to say the least. I determined I would work for at least three hours, before starting on our personal finances. It’s been three hours now.

So much for working at home today. I can’t forget about our personal finances, because I need to get bills paid. I did manage to get the data entry paperwork in order so at least that is out of the way.

Agh.

Yours Truly,

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