22:53 - 03.01.06
tech2
Sunday afternoon at work was a bit of a challenge.Not a lot of activity with the public other than a steady stream of travellers voting by special ballot. My phone rang just after I got settled. One of the front liners in the tech department. The supervisor I had been dealing with delegated the task of badgering me for bit and pieces of data to him. Decided that I would be ornery about it. I've been raising the same issues for years without the courtesy of a response or any action. This time I am not accepting that strategy of breaking everything down to its least component and sweeping it under the proverbial rug. I asked that tech to ask in writing why it was that we were still being sent the 1997 list of electors with two other events in between now and then. What had happened to the clean data we all sent in those two events? Thesupervisor eventually called me back but his only response was that he was the head of the department - don't you know. Well yes I do but so what has that to do with the observations I've been making and the questions I have been asking. He just continued getting ruder so that ended the conversation. I went back in my emails as far as hasn't been erased by Elections Canada and started sending him all the reports I had submitted over time. His parting comment was that he would make it easy on me and count a one line communication from me as a report. He got the pages of documentation from 2002 and 2004 and 2005 for his reading pleasure with reference to other sources too.
I spent yesterday preparing for the next layer of duties while waiting for the official end of Nominations period. That has been somewhat stressful in other events so I was just happy whnen the 2 pm deadline arrived. No surprises. One candidate still owes me one piece of information and he has until 2 pm tomorrow to produce it or I can withdraw my approval. We'll see how that shakes out. Worked on the logistics for splitting polling divisions with too many electors. Also fussed over the candidates meeting we are required to hold by the end of Friday. Most of the candidates would prefer to be out knocking on doors right now but I have to try anyway. The computer system kept crashing so I spent a fair amount of time talking with technical and telephone specialists trying to keep the beasts operating. The fax and photocopier were broken down too. One would have thought that MR Mercury was seriously retrograde right now but it isn't so.
My finance officer and I had finally been able to slip out to deposit our petty cash cheque into the bank so we could pay ot some out of pocket expenses to a couple of staff.My inancial officer had called on Thursday and asked about the account status. She was told we would have to come in to reactivate it as it was considered dormant.No Problem. Next morning we arrived and were told that it had been closed down the day before because if or despite her call of the day before. Now we would have to come back the next day to reactivate it. How does that compute? Doesn't but banks have a monopoly here and there is no other venue that we are allowed to use. I expect another minority government and therefore another election, will occur soon. It seems silly to keep opening and closing the same account but the only alternative I have to keep it open is to put my own cash in to cover the bank charges. I already subsidize tax payers with my own time and salary. Not going to give anymore until there is some reciprocity.
Today was one of those "bad" days. More problems with the server and the stability of the connectivity of our suite of computers. The theory at head office is a faulty line leading to the modem.We've rebooted and reconfigured that puppy I don't know how many times. The frequency of the crashes is increasing and the length of time required to get things operational again is taking longer each time too. The local phone company sent someone I suspect is one o their best techs. Jus that air about him you know? He went through every possible contingency and then some looking for a weakness. While he was doing that I was on the phone with the telephone specialist in Ottawa -three way conversation occurring over the better part of an hour. I don't believe it is the line.Could be the modem itslelf but that doesn't explain how the one printer keeps going wonky just before everything else crashes or why there are remote print commands showing up in the queue.
My assistant and I went out after that exercise to check some of the really new areas abuilding. Our numbers are still not right so we needed to see the physical set up of those new streets. Again the meddling with the boundaries I had drawn originally has really messed up the way the numbers are falling in some of the polling divisions. One poll being three times the norm while the next is one third courtesy of someone who has likely never set foot in this city. Oi. The upside when I arrived back at the office? One ofthe workers from the Iraqi election team has joined our staff. They brought in a CD of arabic love songs - soothing, at least for me. The one young person who shows the greatest potential had to go to a funeral today. Worried about their Mom. We got to talking about near death experiences and they wanted more information. Said they'd been studying various systems of mysticism for a while and saw this as an opportunity to dig a little deeper. It was obvius that comfort was received and accepted even though the death that occurred was a hard "that's not fair" one.
We finally made some headway in completing some of our real tasks after we returned.The silence from the head technical people in Ottawa has been deafening since I sent them copies of the memos I have from previous years. Now what? I spent time talking with our printer about the timing for our production of ballots, elector lists and revised voter cards for those polling divisions I am now going tohave tomove to another school because there are too many people listed in one poll. Good chat and we both commiserated with each other over the impossible deadlines we are being set. We had one of those threatening memos from headquarters about how our performance evaluations were going to be carried out by people who have as much knowledge of our work as the average voter. The average voter doesn't get to grade us based on the performance of software and processes set by staff who have never actually had to carry out their plans. As for the software and hardware we use? Well that speaks for itself doesn't it dear diary? However just keep putting one foot in front of another and soon we'll be done. Only 19 days to go. Yee Haw.
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