Monday 24 January 2011

The Great Software Installation Debacle

The World's Worst Software Engineer - Part 1

A new day, a new piece of software drifts our way. It will change the way the company works and streamline our procedures. It's state of the art and will save us money, time and man power. Not to mention it looks good and can take our personalised logo.

Wonderful! Another sales pitch full of buzz words that sounds too good to be true (it probably is) from a company no one has ever heard of, and the brainwashed bean counters are sucked in as they marvel at its high-tech excellence. It is overly expensive but before we know it, it is approved, bought and paid for without even consulting IT. On the plus side, it is going to be installed, setup and supported by the supplier. What could possibly go wrong?

Monday 17 January 2011

Idiot in Training

Through the years we have had many trainees come to work with us. Unfortunately the first few we had were as computer literate as the rest of our users. They were not there for IT Support experience, but for work experience. Not a good combination in an environment such as ours.

One day a few years back, a fault comes in from an office that has a computer malfunctioning; nothing was appearing on the screen. This was a legitimate fault that after troubleshooting was pinned down to being a faulty graphics card. The computer was temporarily put out of commission and a replacement graphics card was ordered.

Monday 10 January 2011

The Exam Apocalypse

It's exam time again and all are panicking. Cue complete chaos and the end of the world as we know it... At least until Friday.

This time of the year almost anything can happen and usually does. It's all hands on deck in our department in order to help quell the oncoming turmoil and horrors of the assessments.

And so it begins... The sky darkens, the rivers run red and as expected the phone rings:

"IT Support."

Thursday 6 January 2011

The Wild Goose Chase

As with every 'good' IT Nightmare it all started with a phone call.

"IT Support" I answer one cold and icy evening.

A tumult rolls over the airwaves in a heavily accented voice. The guy is talking so fast I cannot understand a word he is saying. I wait for the torrent to end, every syllable merging into the next. I ask for him to repeat himself and it takes a good four attempts to figure out that he is having little issue with his speakers. In other words: No sound. I was wishing my phone was having the same problem.

I try to get him do a few small checks, but another heavy incomprehensible sentence, is the clincher. Armed with cables and a heavy heart I head over there in the cold; head down to the wind and nimbly avoiding the black pools of ice. It was going to be a long night. Turns out this is was going to be a walk in the sun compared to what was coming.

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