One Week Later:We are on high alert, the system isn't running correctly after the upgrade, and of course it's all our fault. Our database server is not working correctly because the software can't connect to it. Regardless of the fact that every other server that connects to it are having no problems whatsoever and there have been no other complaints.
The World's Worst Software Engineer isn't complaining to us directly though, but going through a proxy, namely, the person who wanted the software in the first place. We are eventually informed that he is on his way down to see us, to see if we can help. What this really means is, he is on his way down so he can moan about the local database account, and stand around looking dumb while we struggle to fix the problems he has caused, with no helpful input from him. To top it all off, we still know nothing about the software, how it is setup, how it works or even how to log in to it. Much the same as him really.
It's mid-morning before I even hear from the guy on the phone. He hasn't bothered to come down, he just let the mother country reconnect and diagnose the problem. The main cause of the problem has been found. It has nothing to do with the database server at all (surprise surprise). The C: drive is out of space.
Why? You may ask. Only because the guy has stored 5.5GB of software on his desktop and the new software is taking up another 8GB in temporary files. However he just blames the paging file and demands it be moved to another drive.
We convince him to move the software instead as moving the paging file can have an adverse affect on a virtual server. Logic not being his strong suit, he protests slightly with no convincing argument. As a compromise, we agree to increase the disk space on that drive as well to ensure he has enough.
Thinking and hoping that the bulk of the stupid questions were over, he then phones me back to ask "What is that updates box that has just appeared asking to reboot the server?"
You're kidding right? "Errrrm... It's the Windows updates box informing you they have been installed and the server needs to reboot." I answer dumbstruck.
"Oh, is it?"
I nod sarcastically as I hang up. Can this guy get any worse?
Of course he can...
He gets all the software reinstalled and it still doesn't work.
"Did anyone do anything to the server half an hour ago? It went weird." He asks me.
I tell him no. "The only reason the server would go 'weird' is because you are on it." I think with a deep scowl as I hang up once more. Besides if it 'went weird' half an hour ago, why are you only telling me now?
The mind boggles.
The Next Day:
Nothing... Not a peep... Mid-morning I have to phone him myself.
"It's still not working" he tells me. "Was something done to the server overnight?" (Why does he keep asking me this? Does he really think we go around in the early hours of the morning messing up our own server, when he is doing a good enough job of it on his own?)
"No" I tell him. "We are not going to interfere with the server when you are working on it."
"Well it's worse today than it was when I left yesterday."
Those damn Gremlins again...
I leave him to carry him on speaking with the mother country as they try work out what is going on.
Half an hour later and the phone rings again.
"Office isn't working?" he announces.
"Eh?"
"Office isn't working?" he says again.
"Can you be more specific" I ask of him.
"The software doesn't detect it" he says. The software being his software that isn't installed or setup properly yet.
I launch all of the relevant software and they all load. I run a repair just in case and do the same with his software. Yes it had come down to this. I have had to take it upon myself to do the job for him. Blindly!
First port of call, the event log. And it is full of errors. I point these out and he says he has already seen them and fixed them. I listen to this a little skeptical and find a few other 'fixes' he has applied.
Turns out he has created a local user and put it in to the local administrators group manually. He couldn't understand why it kept disappearing though. I explained to him for the thousandth time since the first time I met him, that we have a little thing called 'Group Policy.' The local administrators are set centrally and anything set manually is removed. FOR SECURITY PURPOSES... in case we get idiots adding random user accounts to the local admins.
I delete the user and set the software to use local system despite his protests and then look into the errors again.
"There's an error in excel as well" he tells me.
I take a look and Google the error. It points in the same direction as all of the other errors in the event logs.
"What did you do to fix these errors?" I ask him. (As it clearly hasn't worked.)
"I just set them to use the local user."
"The one that we are no longer using and didn't have any rights in the first place?"
"Yes?" he confirms.
"And was the error in Excel there before you did this?" I ask.
"Oh yes..." He says. (I almost had a sudden choking fit that sounded something like 'BULL S**T!')
Ah ha! I re-edit the settings myself and put them back to what they should have been before he touched them. Lo and behold, the error disappears from excel and the software starts to behave, pinging in to action as it now has the appropriate permissions. Oh yes, broken by him and fixed by me. I don't get paid enough!
He hangs up again before I can ask about the rest of the software, presumably to talk to the mother country again. I would not like to see his mobile phone bill. Hopefully now though they can finally sort the rest of the mess out.
To top it off, he has installed the software back on to the C: drive. Why do we bother?
Much Later:
They know what the problem is by now, they just don't know how to fix it. It's déjà vu; exactly the same problem the guy had when he originally installed the software. It was the mother country who fixed it before, but nobody involved recorded what they did. I have a bit of tinker myself to try and point them in the right direction.
This involves editing several configuration files and changing the protocol. Luckily I have a backup of the configuration files from the old version. Configuration files he overwrote with the upgrade. The problem is there are so many files and each a mile long, that I am sure there are other changes that need to be made. I decide to let them get on with it, after all it's not my software and I am not being paid copious amounts of dough to install it. In addition we still have NO documentation on it whatsoever, and everything I do I am doing with my fingers crossed and my tongue sticking out in case I make things worse. I eventually realised that that was impossible.
[The Above:]
This only seems to open up another can of worms. The software is using HTTP, the guy is convinced that this means it needs to use the Internet. Of course it's using HTTP, is it a web server.The server is trying to communicate with itself. Why would it want to go out on the net, when it can go directly? I try to explain this to him, but because it is using HTTP, he clearly believes that this means it has to go all the way around the WWW before it can do it's job.
There's no sense in arguing, he's never going to catch on, I hang up, sigh and then cancel my leave for the next year and start looking up mental hospitals for the technologically insane. I may be needing one soon.
Another Day, and other bunch of idiotic questions:
I receive an email from him describing which ports need opening. There are a lot... I ring him up and explain (once again) that this is NOT required. Rather than repeat myself again, please re-read [The Above]. There were so many ports on the list that I am glad it doesn't see the outside world, as it would create more security holes than Windows 95.
He finally agrees and says he'll call me back when he makes some progress. I won't hold my breath.
3 hours later I have heard nothing again, this guy is just brilliant at keeping me up to date. I ring him back.
He has been sent some more configuration files from the mother country, they have done exactly the same thing I did last thing yesterday, only with one extra file. Fingers, toes and eyes cross... Please, let this be it!
Annnnndd... It'sss not!
He phones me back and once again we have yet another argument about the ports. This time he is armed with a port scanner. He is still insisting that we need to open the ports. HOW? WHERE? It takes another 10 attempts to get this through to him.
By this time I honestly believe I am trapped in some kind of satanic time loop of computer hell.
I ran the port scanner myself. Turns out that the ports are not closed. They are in fact very open. So open that something else is using them and causing an access denied error for his software. Can't this guy read either? The error was right there in front of him. I tell him to run a couple of commands (confusing stuff for him, but we got there in the end), to prove my points as the open ports list appears in front of him, along with what is using them. He goes off to relay the information to the mother country: Inaccurately no doubt.
The mother country eventually pull their fingers out and works some magic as the ports become suddenly accessible.
I later found out this was again down to our favorite person. The ports were in use: By the software. The guy had forgotten to disable some of the old services, when he had removed the old version and they were still running, taking over the ports and giving him errors that he didn't read.
It still doesn't work though and now he is blaming our proxy server. Even though the software doesn't use the Internet. It's going to be another week before anything else is done as the guy is on holiday the next week. That should make the users happy! I could feel my ears burning already.
Before he officially signed off I was particularly amused when he told me to look at it as if the glass is 'half full.' The software will receive jobs, but can't do anything with them. Talk about lame excuses, surely that is the same as saying, 'It doesn't work!' and 'It's completely useless!'
It had been a hard, 10 day uphill battle so far to say the very least, but it was finally time to go home and relax. Until the next week of course when he returns from holiday... Dum, Dum, Dum!
On that day you will know where you can find me!
Wibble!
Now read: The 6th and Final Part...
He gets all the software reinstalled and it still doesn't work.
"Did anyone do anything to the server half an hour ago? It went weird." He asks me.
I tell him no. "The only reason the server would go 'weird' is because you are on it." I think with a deep scowl as I hang up once more. Besides if it 'went weird' half an hour ago, why are you only telling me now?
The mind boggles.
The Next Day:
Nothing... Not a peep... Mid-morning I have to phone him myself.
"It's still not working" he tells me. "Was something done to the server overnight?" (Why does he keep asking me this? Does he really think we go around in the early hours of the morning messing up our own server, when he is doing a good enough job of it on his own?)
"No" I tell him. "We are not going to interfere with the server when you are working on it."
"Well it's worse today than it was when I left yesterday."
Those damn Gremlins again...
I leave him to carry him on speaking with the mother country as they try work out what is going on.
Half an hour later and the phone rings again.
"Office isn't working?" he announces.
"Eh?"
"Office isn't working?" he says again.
"Can you be more specific" I ask of him.
"The software doesn't detect it" he says. The software being his software that isn't installed or setup properly yet.
I launch all of the relevant software and they all load. I run a repair just in case and do the same with his software. Yes it had come down to this. I have had to take it upon myself to do the job for him. Blindly!
First port of call, the event log. And it is full of errors. I point these out and he says he has already seen them and fixed them. I listen to this a little skeptical and find a few other 'fixes' he has applied.
Turns out he has created a local user and put it in to the local administrators group manually. He couldn't understand why it kept disappearing though. I explained to him for the thousandth time since the first time I met him, that we have a little thing called 'Group Policy.' The local administrators are set centrally and anything set manually is removed. FOR SECURITY PURPOSES... in case we get idiots adding random user accounts to the local admins.
I delete the user and set the software to use local system despite his protests and then look into the errors again.
"There's an error in excel as well" he tells me.
I take a look and Google the error. It points in the same direction as all of the other errors in the event logs.
"What did you do to fix these errors?" I ask him. (As it clearly hasn't worked.)
"I just set them to use the local user."
"The one that we are no longer using and didn't have any rights in the first place?"
"Yes?" he confirms.
"And was the error in Excel there before you did this?" I ask.
"Oh yes..." He says. (I almost had a sudden choking fit that sounded something like 'BULL S**T!')
Ah ha! I re-edit the settings myself and put them back to what they should have been before he touched them. Lo and behold, the error disappears from excel and the software starts to behave, pinging in to action as it now has the appropriate permissions. Oh yes, broken by him and fixed by me. I don't get paid enough!
He hangs up again before I can ask about the rest of the software, presumably to talk to the mother country again. I would not like to see his mobile phone bill. Hopefully now though they can finally sort the rest of the mess out.
To top it off, he has installed the software back on to the C: drive. Why do we bother?
Much Later:
They know what the problem is by now, they just don't know how to fix it. It's déjà vu; exactly the same problem the guy had when he originally installed the software. It was the mother country who fixed it before, but nobody involved recorded what they did. I have a bit of tinker myself to try and point them in the right direction.
This involves editing several configuration files and changing the protocol. Luckily I have a backup of the configuration files from the old version. Configuration files he overwrote with the upgrade. The problem is there are so many files and each a mile long, that I am sure there are other changes that need to be made. I decide to let them get on with it, after all it's not my software and I am not being paid copious amounts of dough to install it. In addition we still have NO documentation on it whatsoever, and everything I do I am doing with my fingers crossed and my tongue sticking out in case I make things worse. I eventually realised that that was impossible.
[The Above:]
This only seems to open up another can of worms. The software is using HTTP, the guy is convinced that this means it needs to use the Internet. Of course it's using HTTP, is it a web server.The server is trying to communicate with itself. Why would it want to go out on the net, when it can go directly? I try to explain this to him, but because it is using HTTP, he clearly believes that this means it has to go all the way around the WWW before it can do it's job.
There's no sense in arguing, he's never going to catch on, I hang up, sigh and then cancel my leave for the next year and start looking up mental hospitals for the technologically insane. I may be needing one soon.
Another Day, and other bunch of idiotic questions:
I receive an email from him describing which ports need opening. There are a lot... I ring him up and explain (once again) that this is NOT required. Rather than repeat myself again, please re-read [The Above]. There were so many ports on the list that I am glad it doesn't see the outside world, as it would create more security holes than Windows 95.
He finally agrees and says he'll call me back when he makes some progress. I won't hold my breath.
3 hours later I have heard nothing again, this guy is just brilliant at keeping me up to date. I ring him back.
He has been sent some more configuration files from the mother country, they have done exactly the same thing I did last thing yesterday, only with one extra file. Fingers, toes and eyes cross... Please, let this be it!
Annnnndd... It'sss not!
He phones me back and once again we have yet another argument about the ports. This time he is armed with a port scanner. He is still insisting that we need to open the ports. HOW? WHERE? It takes another 10 attempts to get this through to him.
By this time I honestly believe I am trapped in some kind of satanic time loop of computer hell.
I ran the port scanner myself. Turns out that the ports are not closed. They are in fact very open. So open that something else is using them and causing an access denied error for his software. Can't this guy read either? The error was right there in front of him. I tell him to run a couple of commands (confusing stuff for him, but we got there in the end), to prove my points as the open ports list appears in front of him, along with what is using them. He goes off to relay the information to the mother country: Inaccurately no doubt.
The mother country eventually pull their fingers out and works some magic as the ports become suddenly accessible.
I later found out this was again down to our favorite person. The ports were in use: By the software. The guy had forgotten to disable some of the old services, when he had removed the old version and they were still running, taking over the ports and giving him errors that he didn't read.
It still doesn't work though and now he is blaming our proxy server. Even though the software doesn't use the Internet. It's going to be another week before anything else is done as the guy is on holiday the next week. That should make the users happy! I could feel my ears burning already.
Before he officially signed off I was particularly amused when he told me to look at it as if the glass is 'half full.' The software will receive jobs, but can't do anything with them. Talk about lame excuses, surely that is the same as saying, 'It doesn't work!' and 'It's completely useless!'
It had been a hard, 10 day uphill battle so far to say the very least, but it was finally time to go home and relax. Until the next week of course when he returns from holiday... Dum, Dum, Dum!
Wibble!
Now read: The 6th and Final Part...
Awesome Blog, keep them coming!
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