Laptop technical woes

So...barely seconds after creating this blog to write about the NY bar, I didn't feel like writing or thinking about the damn thing at all.

Anyway, I've forced myself to at least talk about my experience with the laptop program, maybe to save people using laptops in future bars from freaking out.

This year BOLE used ExamSoft, software that quite a few people might have already used for taking law school exams. Having used it in the past for a number of law school exams, I can say it's pretty reliable, and I definitely feel better using it than the other software the NY bar used last year in that complete fiasco where people's essay answers started disappearing from the screen even as they were writing it. See LaptopGate.

The thing that almost gave me a heart attack was a problem with uploading the answers to ExamSoft's site after the exam. You obviously only get until 11:59pm that night to upload the answers, otherwise they won't be graded. I was able to upload the morning part and get a confirmation within 10 minutes, but I didn't get a confirmation for the afternoon part, no matter how many times I tried uploading it. After 40 minutes spent on hold calling ExamSoft's tech support (and now I'm too scared to look at what's going to be an astronomical cell phone bill since I went over my minutes - thanks a LOT Verizon for your crap minutes plan), I gave up. From the constant busy tone I got when I called later I figured there were a lot of other freaked out people having similar problems. Long story short...just keep manually uploading..and keep doing it...and do it again...and again...until you finally get a confirmation an hour and a half later that it uploaded. :P

More later...