It’s a well known fact that my boss freaks out. He’s so high strung that any little mouse fart will send him up in arms. Crazy? Yes.
It’s also a well known fact in the IT area (obviously where I work) that he likes to feel important and needed. He’ll spew out buzzwords and ideas that have no bearing on the current problem. Why? To feel important and needed.
Case in point:
We had a server that couldn’t be RDP’d to. Our programmers complained to my boss, my boss freaked out and complained to me that I had to drop everything and fix it. Then he stands by my desk while I work my magic.
“Do you think the switch lost it’s config and the the port is in the wrong VLAN now?”
“Did anyone mess with the group policies of the servers?”
“Can you check the event log to see what happened?”
“Why can’t I get to the server internally?”
“Do you think someone hacked us and changed it so we can’t get to our own servers?”
The problem ended up being that the server had rebooted after some updates and had stuck at a BIOS PXE boot prompt. Easy fix. All of the above happened within 10 minutes. 10 tops.
So anyway, before this gets uberlong:
9:38 AM, I’ve been at work for an hour fully involved in 4 different projects (ordering of supplies, Laptop repair, Server install/updates, and a user’s email issues) when I get the following conversation via IM:
DB#2: something up with *servername* and *servername*?
DB#2: are you moving them right now?
Me: no
DB#2: they can’t login to domain…
DB#2: 10.***.***.***
DB#2: got on its admin login but not domain
DB#2: also *servername* wont come up
DB#2: at all in VMWARE web interface
DB#2: just got in *servername* on web interface but not in rdp…
DB#2: the nic keeps trying to aquire ip on it…
DB#2: i need these servers this week done…
DB#2: these servers are key to us being launched successfully…
DB#2: i can not get out on the internet on *servername*
DB#2: we have to have these working in the next few days
DB#2: if I hold up the dev team and the testing we are screwed
DB#2: we can’t afford a day on down time at all for them
DB#2: you still there?
Me: yes
DB#2: help here
DB#2: no responses?
DB#2: i need the stage envoronment working…
DB#2: environment
DB#2: right now the *servername* no internet…*servername* no domain login working…
DB#2: i need these up and the rdp fix applied so many people can get into them…
DB#2: I taunght the fact that we had the who hardware and evironments working in Oct and if it does not work I lose face with all…
DB#2: ?????
DB#2: >:o
DB#2: help
Me: I’m helping out – I’ll get to the stage environment when I can sometime this morning
DB#2: when is that?
DB#2: this major project depends on this…
DB#2: *** we need stage working in the next two days…
DB#2: is that possible?
Me: I’ll certainly try
DB#2: we have too….you don’t want the whole june 1st thing to be in flux if they can not test on the stage…
DB#2: what is on your plate before this???
DB#2: send me your priority list…
DB#2: by email this morning…
Me: I’ll certainly try
DB#2: the list? try?
9:58 AM
He really wanted me to stop everything I was doing and fix that? OK, maybe, but then he wanted me to stop everything again to send him a list of what I have to do in the morning? Seriously? 10 minutes later when I finish what I was working on for the past 40 minutes, I start to work on this. After another 8 minutes I find the answer.
Turns out that one of our iLo ports tried to take over an IP address of one of the servers. The other server just “lost” it’s domain knowledge randomly. I blame the Pakistani programmers we have that are constantly making changes to the servers, but that’s just me. And our company seems to be more concerned with saving face than actually doing a good job. God forbid we make a mistake, I mean, that’s just inhuman! That and it’s easier to wait until the last second and then pile as much shit on the IT branch as humanly possible.
Anyway, my two day (or was it a week?) time frame was finished in less than 8 minutes. Maybe I should go home early.
PS, the “RDP fix” he’s referring to is when I broke several MS rules and edited key DLL files to allow more than 3 RDP sessions per server. He wants me to teach him how. Yeah.
16 ellipses if you’re counting.