Thursday - 9-17-09

Well today started pretty well normal. I needed to leave for work early so I could stop for gas, and still get there early enough to change the oil in the fryer.
Cleaning the fryer went smoothly while setting up the rest of the stand. I was almost finished when I noticed an error message on my register. This is the third time I’ve seen the same error, and the fourth time I’ve heard of it coming up. So I called up to vault, who in turn calls IT. I told vault what it was doing, they radioed IT, and IT called me. I told him what it was doing, and he said he would fix it from his end. I knew he couldn't, the last three times they had to come over. Eventually he figured this out and said he would come down to fix it.
Based on what it’s doing, I’m almost positive the hard drive is going bad. Another thing that makes me think that is the problem started after a lightning storm, and we think the register got hit indirectly. But since I’m not part of IT they won't listen to me. The funny thing is I have more schooling in computers, and more knowledge, then most of the IT department.
So the zoo, and my stand, opens at 10am, and what time does IT show up, 10:45. Luckily this time of year I don't get all that busy. Then what does he tell me, he has to take the hard drive back with him to the office to look at it. He thinks it maybe have gone bad. That's only what I've been saying since the first time we got the error message. So he gave me a temporary credit card machine, and said I would have to do all the sales manually. It’s a good thing that I took the time to type up a price list, and have it on my PDA. I've only asked three or four times over the summer for them to type one up for me, and it never got done.
So, no sign of IT during my rush when the rain started. He came back around 1:45. He put the hard drive back in, and rebooted the register. It got a little further, but wouldn't boot to window, it just kept rebooting. So he called someone, I think the one person who works in IT that actually knows something about computers, and after talking to him for a while, decided that the whole register terminal was bad, and that he had to take it. So he unhooked everything and asked me if I could help him carry it out to his car, and I did, and he said he would be back in a few minutes with a working register.
Well, IT didn’t make it back until 4pm, which is when I close. So I was counting my money when he came in to hook up the new register. So I had to wait for him to finish, and then ring all my sales into the register, and print all my reading out. For running the whole day by hand, and tax being figured differently, I was only .21 off. So that’s pretty good.
After work we ran to Bob Evans for dinner. I kind of knew we would do that. There was a commercial on the other day, and usually when they have commercials on for something like that it makes Cathy hungry for it, and we go. After we got home, I cleaned the aquarium, which needed done for a few days now, but it was the first time I had the chance to do it….