The Tech Wife's IT Frustrations

The Tech wife is back.  It's time for entry number two.  Again, kudos to Bill Simmons of ESPN for coming up with this idea of having his wife blog so he can watch more sports, as that is what I am doing this week. 

I work in higher education, you know a University, located pretty close to the center of Silicon Valley.  It's funny because I feel like we, the employees, are the cobbler's kids' without any shoes.  IT in education presents a few challenges, most of which frustrate me to no end.  My frustration list...

• I get an e-mail almost 10 times a week that says the same thing 'Your mailbox is over its size limit.' For me that is 700MB. My colleague gets the same e-mail that says her limit is 500MB. Why the difference? We keep deleting and archiving our messages, but to no avail. Where do I get more MB? I wish you could just buy them at Target like anything else.  Instead I have to go through the IT department, my boss, etc. I bet that kid on campus that makes the fake IDs (come on, you all know/knew him/her) can probably score me some MB faster.
• My job deals with a lot of paper (Think applications, transcripts, etc). I think the paper in my office alone killed a small rain forest in Africa. There has to be a way to send these files electronically that is safe and secure. Think how many universities in the world would use this service!. Not to mention I could trash all those filing cabinets in my office leaving me plenty of room to do yoga, cartwheels and other 'work' stuff.  That brings me to my next bullet...
• FILES!! When I need to get a file from 1980 I literally walk downstairs to a storage room we have named the "dungeon." This 'room' is dusty, smells of mildew, has a crooked floor (no doubt from the weight of the files) and has all records dating back to the stone age. There needs to be a way to get these files saved electronically so that they can live out their existence in cyberspace and I can access them with the click of my mouse.  Thanks to my allergies (see Brian's previous blog), I avoid this experience at all costs.