Pinheads

[zyzyly]

Last week the IT folks came and gave me a nice new shiny PC to replace the old wood and stone one I had been using. One problem--the new one doesn't have a disk drive or cd burner. I asked about it, and they tell me that they are removing them from all the pc's in the hospital so that people don't accidentally introduce viruses into the system.

This is stupid, because I teach classes on a regular basis, and all my powerpoint slides are now locked away in the network, and I have no reasonable way to transfer them to my notebook.

It's not just an inconvenience. I am teaching fledgling ICU nurses how to recognize a myocardial infarction on an ECG tracing. This could mean that people will die unnecessarily because of the short-sightedness of our IT department. The blood's not going to be on my hands.

I called the "help desk" and explained my dilemma. The "help desk agent" suggested two things. First, I might have IT put a network card on my notebook. That would be great, except I already requested that and IT denied my request. His second suggestion was for me to email my programs to myself at home and then transfer them from my home pc to my notebook. This actually works, but it is pretty damn inconvenient since that means I have to wait until I get home to work on them.

I am mindful of the fact that Jason is some sort of an IT guy at Cornell, and I am not painting all IT people with the same brush. I'm sure his department would never deny a dedicated nurse the tools he or she needed to save lives.

Comments

Cornell Office of Academic Computing Rule: No Death!

[jayspec.livejournal.com]

We here at Cornell are real big on the "not letting people die just so we don't have to disinfect machines" thing.

Although, I'm certain that if you mass mailed an attachment called "ThisIsAVirus.VBS" to everyone in the hospital, 90% of the population would open it.