Diary of a Wolfeman

I got handed a job from one of our other techs who’s out on personal time last week – add three drives to an existing RAID5 array. Not too much of an issue, right?

Except I’ve never done it before, and nobody else in the shop has done so on a Dell server (We like HP around here.) So, I dig up documentation and am feeling pretty prepared.

Day of the work, I beat my head against it for an hour and a half before throwing in the towel and calling Dell support. Turns out, we need to upgrade the firmware on the BIOS of the system board, the Windows drivers and firmware on the RAID controller before this can happen.

5 times. It’s ten revisions old.

Yeah – it was going to have to wait for another day, since I had already had their server down for 4 hours.

Fast forward to today: BIOS update went fine. Drivers had already been updated? Who did that, and why the fuck didn’t they upgrade the firmware? First firmware: won’t load. Shit. Try second firmware – it works! Cool. 2nd, third and fourth go fine also. 5th craps out. Well, let’s see how lucky I am…

Cool! It’s been upgraded far enough to to the reconstruction!
(over an hour later)
Cool-the reconstruction worked! Now to resize the partitions..
(almost two hours later)
…and it boots!

Run away quick!!!

Oh, we had some great fun in the office the other day. A couple of Microsoft reps came through the office to talk to us about Sharepoint and a push for a security seminar. We’re a Gold Partner, so this isn’t a rare occasion.

One of the first things they want to talk about though, is whether we are ready and have all the tools we need to push Vista and Office 2007 upon our loyal customers.

You could just smell the desperation dripping off these guys.

Word has come down from on high that every rep needs to pimp Vista and Office 2007 for all they are worth, and these guys have heard a few too many pep talks.

We all looked around the room at each other for a moment, shrugged, looked back at the speaker and said, “Nope.”

It took a few minutes for them to realize that “Nope” also meant we had no plans for pimping Vista for a while yet. Then came the hard question: “Well, why not?” with a huge undertone of ‘You guys are Gold Partners, you should be singing in the choir!’ and, ‘Ye Gods, I don’t want to hear this again!’

The answer: “Because we can only name one software package that is Vista-ready – and that’s Office 2007.

Because there are tales of potential volume-licensing nightmares in the air.

Because the 5 different versions of Vista are a nightmare to decipher, and it looks like the one our customers will need (not want, need) is the most expensive version.

Because we’re afraid if we do install it anywhere as an upgrade to existing hardware, that computer will be just two failed components away from needing a new license – if the existing hardware can even run it.

Because of this, any roll-out would have to be on new hardware, and that hardware is going to be expensive to get the bonus features enabled – now you’re talking tens of thousands of dollars just to get a new OS.”

So no, we’re not pushing Vista yet.

CLIENT: Our internet is spotty as hell, and the ISP says everything is fine on their end. Any ideas?
ME: Hmmm…reboot the router for me.
CLIENT: Ok, the lights are coming back on, looks like normal now.
ME: Okay, I’m in. Let me nose about for a bit and I’ll call you right back.

Poke poke poke…hmm. Nothing terribly out of the ordinary, let’s check the firewall logs. What’s this? Intrusion Prevention System says it has been fending off attacks? From inside? MEDIC!

So we dispatched a tech, and he brought us a present this morning: a horribly infested laptop, the many infections of which were swamping the network in attempts to propagate themselves to other machines, or phone home or whatever. Needless to say, little 128K fractional T1 line was not up to the task.

Neither was our 2.5M DSL line at the shop, as we found out when Mr. A+ plugged the damn lappy into our network – on the internal side.

Yet again, I am amazed at how someone with a certification can get one. A very stupid mistake. I can only hope that our systems were hardened enough to prevent infection.

A couple weeks back, I went to a “Roadshow” put together by those prats up in Redmond that consisted of an RV with a about 500 pounds of computer equipment installed, and driven by some old coot who “demonstrated” some of the technologies available. Complete waste of my time.

Sure, they had an install of Windows Vista to show off, but they put it on an old laptop lacking the horsepower needed to show off the new pretty Aero Glass interface, so what we really saw could have merely been an artist’s rendering for all I know. The coot in question hadn’t bothered to keep up on the latest news, admitting that several of the guys back at HQ had given him a bunch of reading material that he “hadn’t got around to reading yet.” It’s bad when your audience is informing you about the features of your product.

Today I went to a conference put together by SonicWALL, maker of firewalls and other related products. A team of 5 guys who all seriously knew their stuff and had an actual presentation to give. The whole spiel was about as close to 50-50 sales / technical as they could get it, but unfortunately they mixed the whole thing up during the day. Would have been better, I think, if they had separated it out more so that the techies and sales guys didn’t have to sit through the whole thing to get what they needed.

On the bonus side, the Westin Hotel (750 SW Alder) laid out a great spread for lunch, including some of the best cheesecake I have ever had. I was almost licking the plate clean.

I have to say, I’m rather impressed.

Today was the first day at the new job, and several things pop right out at me as improvements over the former:

The boss understands the value of good tools. The first thing they did today was hand me a laptop and get me configured on the network with all the software I will need just to get things done around the office. A rather rocking laptop, even if this one is only a demo model to hold me over until my official laptop comes in – which will have a docking station and dual flat-panels. Sweeeeet!

Even more surprising was that I get a desk to put it all on.

The boss also understands that the little things add up – mileage is reimbursed at the Federal rate of 40.5 cents per mile. Yay!

Most importantly, the boss understands the value of time spent doing things internally, even though we can’t bill for the time. Yes, it is a bummer to spend a few hours a month doing things that we can’t bill for, but those things will help keep us efficient so we do not waste more time later on down the road repairing things that could have been fixed earlier in less time, before they blew up.

I am feeling so much better already. I’m almost (dare I say it?) looking forward to work!

Those of you who check timestamps will note that this entry was posted during working hours. I am, yet again, home from work early because there was no work.

This month is looking particularly bad for us. In part, I think the problem stems from Back-to-School shopping – people are already in the stores, and I think they are more willing to simply replace a problem PC than fix a problem unit that is probably a couple years old. (Last year wasn’t a good year for sales, so there are aging PC’s out there.)

This may translate into a handful of on-site configuration calls, but it will mostly be bad for biz. This leaves me facing a potential loss of income as my boss cuts hours due to revenue loss.

Fucking yay.

The rest of the problem is directly related to my boss’ inability to either implement a sales plan of his own or find someone to do it for us. Our Managed Services package is a solid product, but that doesn’t help much if no one can sell the damn thing.

At least the day wasn’t a total waste, as I did find a handful of jobs to apply for.

Things I have said to my customers this week…

…”Well, the fact that your computer is located 6 inches from a forced-air heat vent probably has something to do with why it is shutting down.”

…”Sir, if your neighbors locked you out of their wireless network, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

…”You’re telling me the Phone Company tech put this phone line into your network jack?”

…Sign on door: “No Solicitors, Politocal Pundits or Religious Fanatics Allowed” “Well, sir, I feel pretty strongly about data backups – I might qualify as a fanatic…”

Today I signed the Death Warrant for our last legacy system: the West-side shop’s Point-of-Sale machine.

This is the last machine in the shop running Win98. The cash drawer for that shop is electronic, and the only way to open it was to use the POS software it came with, which only runs on Win98. Seemed to me to be a stupid reason to keep a legacy system around, so I went down to the Shack and came back with a small bag of parts.

How the software works is pretty simple, and I could probably have found something on the net to duplicate the function on a WinXP box – all it does is route power to a serial connection. This would require a few hours of digging and configuring and testing though, time my cheapskate boss is unlikely to want to pay me for. Modding the drawer to use a switch and external power supply took me all of a half-hour.

For a moment I thought I was going to have to run an extension cable from inside a computer to make the solenoid fire – it takes 12V instead of the usual 5V. It turns out we just happened to have some 12VDC transformers with Molex plugs lying around though (we use them for showing off case lighting systems). So, a quick mod to the design involving the end of a Molex four-pin Y cable, and now I have a stand-alone cash drawer with an Evil-Genius-type Big Red Button.

What does all of this mean? It means that tax day is coming up, and everyone who hasn’t already spent their return on computer stuff is getting ready to pay the taxes they owe. This means our phones are eerily quiet, and I have time to do the little things I have been meaning to get to for the last couple of months. Of course, this won’t last – El Cheapo is going to start stipulating mandatory time off any minute now.

Hey Greyduck – maybe we should build a dual-resume and bill ourselves as a team gig…

As I have said before, the Bossman can be a bit of a raving idiot sometimes. Lately, he has taken to formally writing people reprimands when they fail to follow the ass-headed procedures we have around the shop. (Okay, maybe they aren’t so ass-headed as they are difficult to follow when the craziness that is our business gets up in your face.)

Today he finally got around to me. I took time from the multi-computer rollout I was doing today to drive over to our HR office for a friendly little get-together where they shoved almost two pages of bull-puckey in front of me with a signature line on the back. It detailed two seperate instances of “infractions” that Bossman thought warranted a formal reprimand.

The first and largest dealt with a Sunday job that went into the shitter. Our Techie-in-Training is pretty good at wiring, so he was heading the op, and I was being brought in to polish off the wiring, configure a router and wireless hotspot – only the wiring was only 1/4 done, and the gear hadn’t even been ordered yet, let alone delivered.

So, I helped T-i-T get the wiring to the point where it was a one-man op again and left the site after conferring with the client and explaining why I was leaving. As luck would have it, things went pretty downhill after I left – the customer got pissed, T-i-T froze like a deer in headlights, and Bossman got bitched out the next day, and he creditted the guy 3 hours labor to make amends – all without asking me about it at all. The first I heard of this is when HR Lady tossed the reprimand at me.

The second point was to nag me for not calling in to authorize a couple hours of overtime to fix a completely hosed network at a huge client’s site when I had the client’s CFO breathing down my neck to get it fixed. Then there was the part where I didn’t tell anyone that we needed to get a tech up again the next day. This is all part of another job that Bossman and I stayed at until 1:00am not a week before – a $25,000 gig, and getting it right may let us actually keep them, where screwing up even the slightest will lose us this client. Well, I was busy fixing the problem, not worrying about the time. Yes, I should have at least called after I left to verify – I’ll give him that. But when I was done, it was working – there wasn’t a need I could see for sending someone back out. (It is just a nasty coincidence that another problem cropped up after I left.)

I read the whole thing, then started explaining what actually happened with the first one. By the time I got done, I had not only cleared myself, I got to say to his face in front of HR Lady AND the new General Manager how he had offended me and wasted all of our time by not coming and talking to me about this BEFORE he set formal paperwork in motion. That two-page document will be a two-sentence document if he ever actually bothers to have me sign it.

This meeting actually turned out pretty good for me – now all three of them know for certain that I can walk into a bad situation and not only come out looking pretty darn good, I can make the other guy feel sheepish in the process, without ever raising my voice.

Don’t fuck with the Wolfe.

I am now greatly familiar with every single bump on the road from Beaverton to La Center.

We have a client there with an aging NT 4 domain controller we’ve been having some difficulty replacing – seems the security settings are bolloxed somehow, and it won’t give up control to another server, no matter how we try to coax it. I went up an hour after our lead tech to deliver the replacement.

I got there, and we found out the plan he had concocted would require a copy of Windows Server 2000 – you can’t upgrade straight from NT 4 to 2003. Wouldn’t you know that is the ONE cd he did not have with him. Back on the highway to Beaverton.

Got the cd, got some lunch, back on the highway to La Center. Arrived only to get a call from the manager, asking if my presence was strictly necessary, since the shop is short-handed. Well, not necessary as such…

Back on the highway to Beaverton.

——————

Things my clients have learned over the past week or so:

1. When a tech tells you your three-year-old laptop is behaving strangely and you should budget for a replacement and do something about backing up your data, do so. Don’t bitch at us 6 months later when it goes tits-up and you have no backup whatsoever of your company’s financial data. You were warned.
2. When you pay over $200 for someone to re-install Windows for you due to spyware / virus damage, sit the kids down and talk to them about safe surfing habits before you let them get back on the internet. (No shit, that computer came back the very next day, completely un-usable.)
3. Do not yank on the cables connected to your computer in an attempt to remove them, or you will – complete with the connectors they are screwed down to.
4. The purpose of a UPS unit is to keep your servers powered-up long enough during an outtage for you to shut them down safely after saving your data – not so you can blithely continue working. Had your brand-new, less than two-week-old server been powered down and had your UPS not been completely drained when the spike came back up the line, it probably would have survived. Now I have to replace almost the whole thing.
5. No, that is not covered by the warranty.