Beach at Palm Beach Plaza - The Beach Shared by El Andalous
I bet you all imagine me sitting by the beach as I dial into my teleconferences, with the waves lapping in the distance, an ice cream sundae on the table beside me.
Unfortunately, the reality didn’t match up to the expectation.
I started off sitting on my balcony (in the shade). I got the items I needed together - my work computer, my power cord, the dongle, my adaptor, the SecureID. The power cord only just stretched to the computer in the shade, but “only just” was still enough!
I powered up the laptop, inserted the dongle, and waited. And waited. And waited. No connection.
I tried the repair facility and it said something about needing Network 2 access. From this, I gathered that the IT Dept would need to give permission for the dongle software to be downloaded. My teleconference was at 13:30 and it was now only 09:30, so I wasn’t too worried. I used my blackberry to ask Willem and Jerome for the HelpMeIT number.
I spoke to IT and everything looked hopeful until they told me that I needed a wireless internet connection before they could download the software for my dongle. But without a dongle, I didn’t have internet access. Catch 22! We ended the call with me agreeing to look round the resort for somewhere providing WiFi.
I thought I’d seen a few of the places along the beach offering free internet, so I first tried Palm Beach Plaza – if I had to buy a drink to get access, I would rather they have my business than anyone else. I got there and the window proudly proclaimed “Free Wifi”. I settled myself down and waited to be served. And waited. And waited.
Finally, I decided to go inside and fetch someone, I pushed the door, but to no avail. The bolt sat firmly entrenched in the lock. Palm Beach Plaza was closed. Doh!
I gathered all my stuff and hiked it over to Il Gusto, which I knew also had free Wifi. I sat down and waited to be served. And waited. And waited. At least the sky stretched out blue before me, the sea glittered, and the air gently massaged me with its heat.
Eventually, I received my diet coke and I asked the waiter for the internet code. After a bit of confusion about what he meant when he said that the code was “four ten” (it was 10101010), and after the computer subsequently refused the code, and then after I'd discovered that I needed to connect to Il Gusto and not Il Gusto Restaurant (but no Il Gusto connection was available, so they had to restart the server), I finally got my wifi working.
With a sense of success, I clicked on the VPN connection, went to get my SecureID… I looked in my bag, I looked on the table, I looked on the floor. It was nowhere to be seen.
So, off I went again, back to Palm Beach Plaza. The table and ground around it were empty. No SecureID. So, off I went, this time back to El Andalous. I could have kicked myself. The SecureID was sitting there on the table, patiently waiting for me to collect it. Typical!
Finally, I arrived back at Il Gusto. I clicked on the VPN connection, got my SecureID… and, guess what, the SecureID was blank. Not even a flicker of a number. It was unusable. After all that!
I phoned the IT Dept and they gained remote access of my computer. Just as the IT guy was looking around on my computer and deciding what to do, the security patch upgrade flashed up and said it would start in four minutes. The automatic upgrade started, and I had to hang up and wait until that finished.
Ten minutes later, the upgrade completed, and the IT guy phoned me back.
At first he thought the dongle wasn’t working because I’d bought it in Switzerland. Wrong.
Then he thought that the dongle was malfunctioning or tied to an inappropriate network – but it worked without a problem on my private laptop.
I plugged in the dongle so that he could see more details, then we tried the dongle with and without the wifi.
Eventually, we got to the stage where the IT guy downloaded or installed something – I am really not very sure which – but anyway the internet connection circled round and round as if trying to put us to sleep. By now it was about midday and the battery on my blackberry was running low. The longer it took, the more worried I got that my phone would conk out and I would be stranded with no help. I could also sense the IT guy’s frustration as we both just sat there and waited.
Finally, the procedure finished. We checked that the dongle worked, and everything was fine.
Off I went back home. I went to sit on the balcony, but by now the midday sun was beating down, so I dived into my bedroom (the connection is better there than in the lounge, for some reason), turned on the air conditioning, and tried to retrieve the slides for the teleconference that I knew were waiting for me in my inbox.
However, Outlook refused to update, claiming that there was no connection. But if I looked at my VPN, it said it was connected. That annoying Citrix thing kept on popping up every two seconds to tell me that it couldn’t synchronise. Aaargh! I now had only around 45 minutes left until the teleconference.
I stared at my laptop, bewildered. What more could I do? At this point, Microsoft Outlook took pity on me, because emails trickled through and the first ones to pop in were the ones I needed most. There’s that Devil’s luck again!
I quickly downloaded the slides, amended them, sent them back, and asked the agency to send them to the attendees. I now had 20 minutes until the teleconference. I checked a few emails, willed the email to the agency to go through, and opted to set up the teleconference in good time, just to make sure.
And then my air conditioning broke down. I glared at it, but it continued to pump out warm air. I didn’t dare risk going into my lounge with the even weaker internet connection. I would just have to sit there and sweat, if I wasn’t already!
I clicked on the link for the teleconference; the connection dithered for a while and finally decided to send me an error message. I tried again. More dithering from my computer and then the same error message. It was now 10 minutes until the teleconference. I made several additional attempts, but no luck. It was now 5 minutes until the teleconference.
I decided to move to Plan B (I did have one), which was to use my blackberry and just do everything via telephone rather than via WebEx (shared presentation). But when I dialled in on my blackberry, the teleconference facility refused my conference code. It was now 2 minutes until the teleconference.
As explained, I’m not really a phone person, so I was a bit confused as to whether I needed to press Alt on my blackberry to get the numbers rather than letters or whether the system would automatically recognise them as numbers if I was using it as a phone. I tried both ways multiple times. Still it wouldn't accept the conference code.
I now wished that I hadn’t left my new phone in its box. At least with that one I would have presumably been able to see which numbers I was typing (or maybe not). Meanwhile, the teleconference should have started five minutes ago.
I eventually went to email Willem to inform him what was happening, when he replied to say that he was cancelling the teleconference. People (management) were just hanging on the line and no-one could enter the teleconference unless I started it .
So after all that, after 4.5 hours of chasing an internet connection, it was Mission Failed.
I remember Liliana saying to me “It’s not easy to live your dream”. She was right!
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