Thursday 13 February 2014

Two days and counting to get a program installed on my computer.

Bristol University takes its computer safety seriously - some might say (eg me) too seriously. I wanted to align some protein sequences to see how similar they are and to do so there's a free piece of software that can be downloaded and installed. Usually it requires a click on "install" after download and within a minute the program is ready to use. Not so at Bristol University - I have to fill out a request for the IT team to grant me permission to click on "install". Two days later and nothing has been done - I'm not holding my breath that it'll be done by tomorrow either.
So thanks to a stupid system I'm going to lose a week wherein I could have done the piece of work instantly. Nice set-up there.

Fortunately a colleague who left has the program on his computer and as it is next to mine I'm using it. Otherwise this would have been a farce.

EDIT: On the quiet I've heard there's a relatively simple work around that I will test tomorrow. I won't say what it is for fear the IT gnomes find out and see fit to make life more difficult by blocking it.


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