The Missing Data Conundrum

It's nearly quarter to two in the afternoon. It's been a busy day, but a productive one. A project I have been working on for almost four months has finally come to fruition. After months of working with a software developer, I finally have a working upgrade package for one of our vital systems. The code has been patched, the bugs eradicated and the end is in sight.

I had been given this project for the simple reason that I had heard the name of it sometime in the past. I had no idea what it was, what it did, who used it or why. I had been thrown in the deep end of the data pool. The current version we had was three years out of date, and the new version refused to work in our environment. It was my job to fix it!

To cut a very long and boring story very short. The software developer built us a new package and all was right in the universe. However, one part of it still refused to work, so on this particular Thursday, he had stripped it down once again and finally found the problem. Satisfied with a job well done, I thanked him, put the patched file in a safe place and sat back in my chair, giving myself a silent congratulations.

Then...

Non Self Service

I have always been amazed at the actions (or lack of)  of people when a problem occurs. They will moan and groan, and blame everyone under the sun, but will do nothing to help themselves. Is it because it happens with a computer in the room? That as soon as a crisis hits, they immediately switch to dumb mode until someone points out a simple solution and forces it upon them.

For instance, when an electrical fault occurs I am always perplexed at the mentality that causes these people to ignore simple safety or logic. There are several examples already posted on here and here is another.

A couple of weeks ago, the late shift upon me again, I get a phone call from a tutor. He informs me that a woman in his class had just received a rather severe electrical shock from a plug socket in one of the new classrooms.

Oi You!

A few years ago we had a woman working for our company who was almost "allergic" to IT to say the least. It was ironic really as she was a tutor and taught IT for a living.

She could also be one of the rudest people you could meet, epecially if she had a technical problem.

One evening I was working a late shift and had the pleasure of two run-ins with her in less than an hour.

During the start of my shift I had to sort out an important meeting room, making sure everything was working and that the users could log on. This resulted in me going back and forth, if I needed parts or to reset users passwords etc.

Customer Service Hell

A colleague of mine was telling me about an incident a while ago with a user.

It was a Monday morning and the department was extremely low on staff for various reasons. Ofcourse when you are short of man power, as Murphy's Law states "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

With only a few people to solve the IT mysteries of the workplace, several crisises hit at once with not enough people to cover them all. It ended with only one person in the office dealing with the telephone complaints and the queue of requests coming through the door.

Just as my colleague was wishing he had never turned up for work that morning, things got a whole lot worse. It started with a phone call.

The Corrupted Hard Drive

So one morning we have a chap (widely known for his giant lack of common sense) come through the door to our office carrying his laptop. He explains that the laptop was not booting and asked if we could take a look at it.

I asked what was happening and I got a vague explanation that the Windows XP installation was cycling at boot up. At least thats what he said.

I switched on the laptop, but instead of watching the laptop attempt to start up XP I got a "NTLDR is Missing" error and nothing else.

The guy mentioned that there were several "important files" on the c: drive (a big no-no in our company, everything should be saved to a network drive and/or USB, making hard drive failure a doddle.)

Exchange Server Down

The other week our Exchange Server had a serious issue that prevented about 2 to 3 hundred of our 3500 users not being able to get to their email. Due to the type of problem it was going to take around 24 to 48 hours to fix the problem. We put up an alert up on our website and got to work. During that time we received numerous phone calls from different users:

1. "Hi there is the email down?"
   We explain the situation...
   "Well please can you just get it going again now just for me?"
   

New Computer

A while ago we spent an entire fortnight upgrading all the Computers and Monitors in an entire Office Block. Nice new flat screen monitors. Faster systems with double the RAM, faster, dual core processors and keyboards and mice that haven't yet been violated by coffee or a bacon 'n' egg sandwich.

The Monday morning after we get a phone call:

"My Computer won't work." comes the reply

"What seems to be the problem?" I ask.

"It won't switch on."

"OK" I say "Can you check the power cable for me and make sure it's plugged in to the wall and that the sockets are switched on."

Upside down

"My email isn't working; please can you take a look." I am asked as I walk down the corridor. So I take a detour in to one of the Managers’ offices and stare in disbelief.

The computer was seated on the desk but the monitor on top of it (an old style CRT) was upside down with the swivel base pointing up at the ceiling. The screen surrounded by post-its and bits of paper with messages and phone numbers on.

"It just doesn’t seem to send anything" the Manager complains.

"Urrm, why is your screen upside down on top of your computer?" I asked (quite reasonably I thought) ignoring the email fault temporarily.

"It's not. Just the monitor is." He says "the screen moved upside down about three months ago, so I turned the monitor over. Must be a fault with the video card."