on laziness

I just got back from a trip to Europe and I have discovered that, not only do I have to give a talk this friday (who needs time to prepare these things anyway, huh?) but the research planning that I had been organizing for my division now has a single project rather than three. How is this possible you will ask? Let's ignore the last minute talk for a moment, since this is quite common and I actually couldn't care less about it. It is the research planning that is driving me insane.

It turns out that the other 3 people in the group working on this research planning (a set of proposals for research in promising fields in our division for the next 5 years) must have thought that bothering to look for some information about three different projects would be too much. Not only that, but their great work for the last week is an A4 piece of paper with four scribblings that essentially reproduce ONLY one of the projects that I detailed in a report I gave them as a starting point before leaving for Europe! Now, when your boss gives you the opportunity to propose a few research projects in an area you like, you should take advantage of it. Believe me, it doesn't happen very often. And yes, it is a pain in the neck to do the background reading and the filtering of interesting but not promising or promising but not-so-interesting topics. But for God's sake, all these guys have done is to screw up the setup I left for them last week! How can people be so lazy?

Talking about laziness. About the time I left the IT guys sent an e-mail asking everyone to change their e-mail password every 6 months. As the good employee that I am, I changed mine as soon as I got back. From that very moment I couldn't log in or read my mail. I call IT support and I get told "not to worry because more people have the same problem and we are working on it". They are working on it. Nice. But I can't read my mail AND they have not sent a general e-mail telling people not to change their passwords until the problem is solved. Is this laziness or plain stupidity? I can't even decide.

Lord, give me patience...