Since I came back to work after my vacation two weeks ago I have been struggling with my computer. I had to install some new encryption software as part of the company mandate.

I tried to do it from the office the first day, but got an error, so logged a ticket with the help desk. For 3 days they tried to get it fixed from home but no go. So I went back to work last Friday and they determined I had a bad hard-drive. So I opened a ticket to get a new hard-drive. Went back in this Tuesday to get the new hard-drive put in and all my files transferred. Got the computer back at end of day and worked that evening on my actual job.

Next day came back to get encryption software added to computer. Installed and ran the software. Went home. That night huge blizzard. 2 ft of snow. 3 - 5 foot drifts. Can't get in to computer, it says i have a disk failure, blah, blah, blah. Call the tech support guy, also working from home and he can't undo the installation because of a glitch and while speaking to him, his electricity goes out. We agree as soon as I get dug out I will go into the office on Friday.

Go in today at noon - took that long for the maintenance people to plow out my driveway. He uninstalls the encryption software and we start the computer back up and get blue screen of death and second hard-drive is also bad.

They steal a hard-drive out of someone else's machine and copy my same stuff over from Tuesday. Run disk check and is good. Start computer and get blue screen of death and missing a .dll file. So they take computer to run repair disk on.

In the meantime, I'm obviously not getting much testing done, but I only have one more test case that needs to get done by end of day. My second vacation starts next Monday. My boss calls and asks me if I don't have any hard plans if I can work some of my vacation days next week. I expected it, but it stills feel like a betrayal after all the work I've done. They want me to help someone else and do their testing, it's not even my testing.

I told her I preferred to take an entire week of vacation since it takes me several days to relax and get work out of my head. So I offerred to work next week and take off the following week.

So I have to go back into the office on Monday to get my computer, which will hopefully be working. Then I need to finish my one test case and work on someone else's work all week. Not to mention I still need to get the encryption software installed and working on my PC.

I'm depressed. It's such a struggle and it feels so unfair. I did 500 of the 2000 test cases we had this release in a team of 15 people. Just the fact that they even asked me to change some of my vacation hurts. Yes, I could say no and there most likely wouldn't be any repurcussions, but it puts pressure on me to say yes and help the team. Couldn't they even think of one of the other people on the team who could have done a little bit more work instead of asking me, who has already done so much?

I was joking with the tech guy about Karma and said I must have been a mass-murderer in a previous life to deserve all the crap I'm going thru right now.

Walked everyday but yesterday and today.