Okay, that was way too interesting

I answered a call in Bass 203 tonight - a professor was having trouble with a presentation. It turns out that the computer in the room wasn't reading her flash drive. And just to make things more complicated, the computer was something strange that I've never seen - it was a pc-type monitor of the sort I'm familiar with, with USB ports on the side, but as far as I could tell it didn't have a tower. And I don't know where the cords went, because it was all stuck inside one of those annoying snazzy-looking wood(ish) computer box/desk/things. My guestimate diagnosis was that the monitor USB port didn't have enough power for the flash drive - or that it just didn't want to read the thing for some reason.
So I went back to the CMP (where I had to wait to be let in) intending to get a mac laptop and a pc laptop, one of which ought to work). We were out of PC laptops. I don't know why. We have something between four and six of them, and looking at the schedule, only one of them (at most) should be out right now. But we only have mac laptops in the cupboard. I get the laptop back to the room - and it won't let me log in. I've seen this happen before on other macs, but it's only even happened to me in a lab, where you can just move to a different computer. I tried all of the username password combinations I know (which is 3), none of which worked. So I couldn't even check the USB drive on the Mac laptop.

Apparently Steve had been there yesterday - and everything worked just fine.

I really hate it when I can't fix problems. Even when everyone is really nice about everything.
And did I mention that the prof was deaf, so all of our communications happened through an interpreter?


And this after yesterday's marathon video-camera and harddrive checkout. I want nice boring shifts all next week.