Hard Day's NIght

I am weary. I stayed up until 11:00 (up at 5:00 AM - rinse and repeat) working with people all over the world (literally: US, Manila, Sweden, India) to resolve an issue. The system that is in question has too many connecting points to other systems, so troubleshooting this has been difficult. Finally a smart feller in Sweden found what he thinks the real issue is and has contacted the Third Party who supports it. Usually, that is enough, but I went ahead and gave him a call anyway. just to be sure.

Being on cal this week will surely be taxing, as it is the end of the month and we all know that means SAP and related systems problems. While I did not get called last night, working on the issue until 11:00 made up for it. Is it September yet?

In other El Gee news..My curiosity with Islam (no, I am not converting, just learning what I can) has lead me to some "jihad wary" web sites. The sites have news links and some of the stories will break your heart, while others will make you laugh.

I have been dealing with a rash of calls from our help desk and their first level support. For those who work in tech support, you would not be surprised by the calls that get passed on to us. My group is not a technical group...we manage the issues. The people who call us are supposed to be filters to make sure the issues we get are legit, but they are failing in that duty. I wish I had the energy to document them all, but that would just take too long. Needless to say that if the local people just asked a few more questions, they would have a much better idea what is going on.

Let me give you one example. We received a call stating that the customer was unable to send and receive e-mail. The local person did all kinds of troubleshooting but still could not figure out what the problem was. My colleague calls the customer back (remember, we are not a tech team) to get more info. he soon learns (by asking just a couple of questions), that the person has no network activity at all. Mail was just the first thing he noticed was not working. Now it would be easy to go off on the end user and say they did not offer enough info, but in the world of I/T, you ask all the "silly" questions because they will give you insight to the solution.

The phone just rang and it was the L1 local guy. "El, we are getting lots of calls from end users who say that they cannot log in to the Windows PC unless they reboot."

"And?" I asked...

Silence.

"Well, it sounds to me like a DHCP issue...I would put up a front end message telling the customers that if they have trouble logging on to the Windows environment to reboot and if that does not work, to stay on the line so they can be assisted.", I offer.

"Great idea!", he replies and ends the call.

{Sigh}