My Corner of the Interweb

Back Foul Creature!

Mood: Frothing.
Music: Battle Without Honor or Humanity, Tomoyasu Hotei

OK...my job is not without it's little peaks and valleys. I'm sure that your job is much the same. Now, I have a skill that makes any job I take, from consulting to construction, from the US to Far East Asia, devolve inevitably towards a single, horrible, gut-wrenching task. That skill?

I can fix computers.

Vice-President, Project Director, Project Manager, Executive Producer...doesn't matter the title. At some point, I'm getting called into the office of someone who has well and truly bollixed up their system...usually someone important, and usually just as something of critical importance is required. Never fails.

Today? My boss "did something" to prevent his accounting package from working. Those of you in the know realize that the first week of January is NOT when things should be going wrong with accounting packages. Now, before I go much further with this, I should place this in perspective. The accounting package and server are operating just fine. The other finance people have no problem working with the accounting package, and so this is not even remotely the catastrophe that it could be.

However, it did not help matters much. This morning, I'm trying to get a Safety Manual out for Hearst. It's pretty important...not terribly so, but still something I'd like to be able to check off my list of things to do.

In comes my boss, and wants to know what javaw is, and why his computer is asking him whether it's ok to let it do what it does. Javaw is just a Java virtual machine, and it's not that big a deal that it wants to check the internet status. I check it out, it's no big deal, and I go back to my office. This, by the way, should have been my first warning.

Just before I leave, I see that MS wants to update the machine...so I check the updates to make sure that they're NOT Service Pack 2 for XP, and they're not, so I let them go through. This should have been warning 2.

20 minutes later, he walks back in and says that his accounting package is not working. The accounting package, by the way, is a SQL Client-Server based package. This should have been the last straw.

But I'm distracted. So I go about tweaking settings and so on, all while my boss MUST get on his computer.

Can't get the accounting package to work, so I uninstall it, and reinstall it. Just the client. I ain't that ambitious.

So along the way of installing a 10 step update, I realize a CD is missing. I didn't just realize it. It got screeched at me that I missed a step when I tried to patch the year-end 2004 update. I had the wrong version installed, and why the hell didn't I have 5.0 installed instead of 4.5, you bonehead?

So I look for the CD. Nowhere to be found. We keep a book with ALL the updates in it, neatly labelled, and all in order.

Except, apparently, this one.

No one knows where it is. We look for 45 minutes. We don't find it. I call the company that makes the software, and ask politely if I can download it. The nice lady with the Southern accent explains that she can't do that, because it's a FULL update, and only comes on CD, but she's happy to send me another one.

Fabulous. At this point, it's 3pm, I haven't eaten lunch, and I'm getting grumbly, when my boss declares he has to leave, and splits for the day. Whatever. At least he won't be asking me if it's fixed every 10 minutes like he has been for the last 3 hours.

Now, I wander into the accountant's office and ask her where this CD is again...because it's a mystery. Why on earth would this CD be ANYWHERE but in this book? I am very careful about updating the system, then handing her the update docs and software when I am done. Just in case, you know, I need to do exactly what I'm doing at that moment.

She doesn't have it. Looked everywhere.

Except, apparently, in the To Be Filed tray on her desk. To be filed as of, say, last October, but whatever. Found the CD, so all's good.

I install it. Nothing. Still choking.

I'm resigning myself to base installs of OS and all that other crap when it smacks me in the face.

WHY did it try to stop javaw from accessing the internet? Why was there a request for OS Security patches?

XP SP2.

You knew it. You patched your system with SP2. You didn't KNOW you patched your system with the devil...but you DID.

And all at once, your system decided to secure itself against everything in the known universe. Including, say, the SQL server we have running.

Only took me FIVE hours. Not bad, really. Considering I now am not going to get my work done today, and I haven't eaten lunch. I am writing this while waiting for the uninstall process for SP2 to complete. (Also known as Exorcism.)

Tomorrow should be an interesting conversation when I ask him how he managed to patch SP2 without knowing it...especially in light of the mails I regularly send telling people NOT to patch SP2.

Nothing like being the IT guy...

Posted by Glenn at January 5, 2005 04:05 PM