Computers

WARNING: Unfortunately negative post.

This has been an interesting year in the Appleverse. iOS 13, iPadOS and macOS Catalina were all dropped on us. This new software “regime” has been quite the challenge for me.

iOS 13 and iPadOS haven’t been that troubling. They generally work and do what they promised to do. I did find it curious that iOS 13.1, 13.1.1 and 13.1.2 all dropped in pretty rapid succession. That’s usually a bad sign that things weren’t up to standards and had to go through some quick resolution. There were either fixes or outright removals to get things out the door. I don’t like it when that happens, but I get it. I’m glad they stay on top of things well enough.

Catalina and Apple TV on the other hand… have been a complete shitshow.

Update: I resolved the Google Chrome issue. If you’re just interested in the resolution, please go here.

There are two ways to progress your career in federal IT:

• Make up work for others to do on the fly
  • Usually this involves process or procedure - these are your best weapons for this maneuver
• Sit on meetings all day to listen as others do what you made up for them to do
  • Then make up new things to do that have nothing to do with the progress you’re trying to make

It’s the way it’s always been done. Why change?

One of the things that plagues me in this business is the rampant ADHD. You spend a lot of time taking in tasks and trying to make mental notes, but very little time actually doing the work to catch up. When you do the work, it snowballs into other work that was unforseen.

I’ve struggled with this for my entire career. It’s exhausting. I don’t know what to do about it. The best recommendation I can give is that you should find a set of apps and workflows that make sense to you and help you keep your work life in sync across all of your devices. Use do-not-disturb often. Don’t feel bad about shutting people and things out so you can get code written or actions completed.

If you have any tips on how to get through your IT life every day, I’d love to hear them. Comment below.