Diary of a Wolfeman

…you make and ass out of ‘you’ and ‘umption’.

Started off the day with our “Lead Tech” calling in sick, so I had to pick up some of his workload. This turned out to be a good thing and a bad thing. Good for the client, bad for me.

The task was to re-locate an office network one floor down. Three companies used to share a building in NW Industrial, but one company moved out. Company B opted to expand into the vacant space. It’s an older building, but it has been pretty thoroughly wired-up over the years, so no real problem, right? Ha.

Assumption: All three companies were sharing out a T1 for internet access. Therefore all we really need to do is swap out the old hub for a shiny new switch and maybe supply a couple of new patch cables.

Reality: Two of the three companies were sharing out the T1, Company C actually had their own little wiring closet with a DSL link. Funny how Mr. Lead Tech failed to notice this when he did notice the hub – which is in the little closet.

So, there I am, without any of my tracing tools trying to figure out why in hell I can’t get a signal no matter what I do with the wiring. After 1.5 hours of head-wall-interfacing, I finally got their other phone tech on the line and he told me about the DSL. No fucking wonder I couldn’t get an IP. Ok, new office network needs to connect to old router…hmm. Router is already full, and all of the old jacks will be used by Company A’s expansion. Lines 1,2, and 3 are labeled, but where does 4 go?

Through the wall, around the corner, up the next wall to the roof, along that rafter there, where it…disappears into the insulation. Crappity. Well, I’ve traced out (the hard way) every other line in this bloody place, I’ll just unplug it and see who complains. Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Ok, test a few stations – they’ve all got network access. Maybe it wasn’t in use. Maybe I’m done. Cool! Wait – is that copier networked?

Yup.

On a home-run to the router. Instead of the switch across the room. Of course there aren’t any other outlets on that wall, and the bloody thing can’t be moved. Hmm…there’s about 100′ of wire over in that corner they aren’t using, and that wall doesn’t go all the way to the roof; if I drape that line over that rafter there, and tape it to the top of the false wall…

Got a ladder?

Ten minutes later of me doing my squirrel impression, and the copier is back on the network, Company B is live, and their voicemail server even works. Total time: 2.75 hours.

Estimated time if (A) Mr. Bonehead Lead Tech had asked the right people and / or actually looked at things or (B) I had had my network tool kit with me: 0.5 hours.

Okay sure, we got to charge more this way, but it also made one part of my company look damned stupid to a long-term customer. Not necesarilly a good thing.

So, Saturday morning up at dawn to drive up to Lakewood Washington (known for it’s ..umm… fog?) to “get the player tracking software installed and running.”

Yeah, right.

Bossman and I arrive at 9am to discover that the programmer who is doing this did not catch the flight last night due to ‘a problem with the plane’ and instead caught a morning flight. Okaaay…

So, we’re here, what’s the server doing? Been turned off because there was no reason to have it on for the last three months? Ok, that makes sense. How about the end terminals? Been turned off and stuffed into kiosks for a year-and-a-half because they bought them waaaay to soon? Okay, they’ll need updates then.

10am- Proggy rolls in. 11:30am- Proggy is finally ready for a meeting, but his laptop drive just kerplooied due to extreme age. That was his development environment. Casino manager takes this amazingly in stride. Break for grubbage.

12:30pm- Proggy decides that current network infrastructure has somehow been changed in ways he does not like, and we must re-arrange certain things to bring everything on to one network. Comes up with stupid reccomendation which we ignore, and simply install a second NIC on the server. *Poof*- Marketing now has access. And you were saying…?
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There are many things you study in school without any idea of when the subject may become useful in real life. For many students, Creative Writing is something that really goes beyond them. “I like to read,” they may say, “but I’m not a writer. When will I ever use this in real life?”

The answer, grasshopper, is on your resume.

The other day a potential employer emailed me a long list of essay questions they wanted me to answer. So, I dusted off the old thesaurus link, dragooned a buddy into the role of editor (thanks, Greyduck!) and buckled down to work.

An hour or so later, I sent off said missive. Today, they called to schedule an interview.

Hit the books, kids. You’ll need it in a few years.

The past two days at work have almost been enough to make me want to quit my job and go back to cutting firewood or pumping gas for a living.

Monday: had to call my 9am in-shop appt to remind him about it. He came in at 9:45 for help getting his wifi card to work – just as our wifi test routers dies. No problem, I’ll ad-hoc with my laptop…(quick flash of BSOD, then spontaneous reboot) What do you mean NO OS FOUND?!?

Later that morning, drive out to cool oldster’s house to tell him his computer (that we built two years ago) needs at the least a nuke-n-pave and maybe a power supply. Wait, what’s this “adblaster” program? It lets you send thousands of emails at once? You’re a SPAMMER?!? AAAUUUUGGGHHHH!!!!

Then I find out a solution I proposed and partially implemented for a new customer isn’t going to cut it – 10 minutes before I was to go finish it up.

Tuesday: Spent 3 hours hammering at a laptop that I later find out may or may not have a networking problem – first, we have to see if the Sonicwall’s stupid 5-user license (on a biz-class firewall? WTF?) may be watching MAC addys and killing me.

Spend the rest of the day at aforementioned Monday site bashing away at a Linksys WRV54G router and VPN connection. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. At least, not until there is more than two positive user reviews on the entire Internet. Great product in theory from one of the top manufacturers – who completely dropped the frelling ball when they built this stylish piece of shit. Spend the money on a more reputable router and hire a specialist to install it.

You have no idea how much that last part hurts me to say. The Great and Powerful Techie From Hell says to get a specialist. Ugh.

So there I am out at one of our corporate client’s locations today when one of the SalesFeebs walks up to me, asking why his computer is so slow.

“Slow?” Sez I, “I just doubled your RAM a week ago – it should be screaming.”

Some few minutes of investigation later reveals that the network is being dragged to it’s knees by something. This is pretty bad, since the most important software they run is network-enabled. Time to do some packet-sniffing…

Packet-sniffing leads to crawling behind the racks to trace a patch cable, which leads to their security cameras. Cameras? WTF are they doing on the network? Call to the boss:

ME: Why are your security cameras connected to the internet?
BOSS: Mr. C likes to check them from his house, why?
ME: It’s killing the sales network, and that new software you just spent so much money on needs the bandwidth.
BOSS: What can we do about it?
ME: You can bring in a third DSL line for the cameras. That will take about three weeks and cost you another $50 a month, plus some additional hardware.
BOSS: Hmm….can’t we do anything else to speed things up?
ME: Well, I can always disconnect the camera system’s internet, but that might irritate Mr. C.
BOSS: To hell with him! He can watch Baywatch reruns instead. Kill it.
ME: *poik*
SalesFeeb: Hey, the network’s back!

Okay, maybe they aren’t all ‘go’, but things are shaping up here. And by ‘here’, I mean at the new shop.

I’m firmly ensconced in the basement now, which is going to be weird for me, since it reminds me so much of my garage – but I can’t smoke down here. I keep finding my hand reaching into my pocket for smokes.

Aside from some minor cleanup and organizing, the benches are ready for work, and I even took in my first customer this morning – one of the other guys is on his way over with the drive adapter and storage server I will need to actually do the work on this laptop.

The computer I’m typing on right now is pretty nice though – 3GHz P4 proc, a Gig of RAM, and a snazzy mod case with LED fans and a case window. We definitely won’t have any overheating issues down here due to the chilly temps, but it has all those extra fans just in case. This thing smokes right along, too, but I’ll have to shell out for a new video card on my own if I want to run any games on it after-hours.

All I need now is some nice speakers so I can play the music I brought with me :)

and it speaks binary.

Revelation for the day: it is quite possible that the next person that reads your resume will actually be an OCR scanner searching for corporate buzzwords. In a presentation from a former HR hiring director today, we were told that larger companies have resorted to page scanners to enable them to sift through the hundreds of resumes they receive from on-line aplications and email submittals. So, most resumes that they get are weeded out before ever being looked at by a human.

On top of that, those that are seen by a human are often sorted in a stack, so that only the top third or so of a page is visible, and that page has about 3 to 5 seconds to catch their eye before it gets tossed.

When I was instructed in the art of resume writing the first time around, I was told that it should be basically a good quality picture of your work history, and a longer resume equated to a studio portrait rather than a snapshot. When I started looking this time around, I shrank it a bit to make it more of a picture post card. Now I find out they want more of a thumbnail, and like a personals photo, it had better have tits to make any sort of impression.

To continue that analogy, put all your skills right at the top to get that wonder-bra lift, and using the most current corporate buzzwords turns that turtleneck into a little deep-v-neck number. That thick sweater of bullet points in your job descriptions is now crammed together into a belly shirt to show off that cute navel piercing, with maybe just a hint of a thong coming up over your low-rise jeans to suck them in.

Always make ’em ask for your digits though: References available by request.

The following is a rather long-winded rant regarding the trials and tribulations of a job-seeker in this ‘booming’ economy. I had originally planned to keep this to myself, but hey, if I can’t rant here, where can I rant? Read on at your own risk.

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I think I have to admit now that the chances of me getting an industry job are too goddamn slim to mention. Time to go grab myself a McJob and pray for something better to eventually come along.

So, if you’re hiring, you know how to find me. Just about anything other than hard labor at this point. (I’d do that, but my knees and wrists wouldn’t take it for long.) My non-industry job history includes washing dishes, flipping burgers, pumping gas, running a deli and some light carpentry.

This kinda shit just really pisses me off. Here I am, an IQ close to 140, a decent education and a ton of skills and I can’t find a fucking job because the economy went to shit. Our glorious president has granted tax cuts to companies who ship jobs overseas and refuses to acknowledge the fact that he is in that office to serve the people, not the corporations and has no fucking regard whatsoever for the poor schmucks like me who just want to go to work every day and earn a living wage. I don’t need to be rich, I just need to feed my kids, pay my bills and got out to dinner a couple times a month. Is that too much to fucking ask?

So, while I’m not above taking charity, I’d much rather work for it. Support your local Techie From Hell: break a computer. Back up all of your data first, then just right-click on your antivirus tray icon and select ‘disable’. Now, open up Internet Exploder and do a websearch for pr0n – that should do the trick.

To the sales staff over at New Horizons Institute:

I can understand that you are frustrated in our current economy. Though the pundits proclaim the recession is over, unemployment is still on the rise, and people are not likely to be enrolling at your fine academy.

However, when you blatantly advertise on job-search websites offering ‘certification internships’ that do indeed cost money, without ever mentioning your tuitions, don’t be surprised when the folks you call are quick to decline. And when they do decline, don’t vent your frustration at your lack of sales by slamming the handset down in the cradle.

To the rest of you, this is what happens when you stupidly base your salary on commission: the economy takes a nosedive, everybody stops spending money, and you wind up with no sales. Get some skills and get a real job, salesfeeb.