Tag, you’re IT!

All right, I guess while I’m sitting here documenting things, I’ll tell you about my day (I know, I don’t really blog entries of the type “I got up, went to work, did a bunch of stuff, and then went to bed, and today was basically just like the 300-odd weekdays that came before it”). But anyway, I (reset alarm for 8:00, reset alarm for 8:30, reset alarm for 8:45,) got up, did all the usual shavey and showery stuff, skipped making a sandwich for lunch today because I was running close to late for work as it was, and drove there, dropping two filled business-reply envelopes in the Big Blue Mailbox On The Left. The first time I ever put something in the Big Blue Mailboxes outside our building, I stood there with it in my hand for well over a minute, scanning and rescanning the labelling and text on each, trying to figure out the difference between the two mailboxes. Luckily someone (no one I knew) came out and I (kind of feeling like an idiot) asked them what the difference was, and they said there was no difference, it just takes 2 mailboxes to hold the average amount of mail generated by a building this size. I put it in the box, and once they were no longer looking, slapped my forehead. (Contents of the envelopes to be explained in a future entry…actually, semi-explained in a very recent one. Bastards.) So I get in, grab some gutrot coffee and am just sitting down with it to blow the last of the sleepytime cobwebs out of my eyes, when a head pops around my office door and goes, “yyyyeah, the front printer in the mailroom isn’t working, do you, uh, think you can go have a look at it?” So I’m like sure…I have a shit-ton of actual Work to do, but I’ll go powercycle the printer in the hope it’ll keep the FMCs (Fix My Computer!) off my back for the rest of the week. Like that’ll ever happen :-)

Anyway, it turns out a powercycle (many powercycles) and a few smacks isn’t getting me anywhere. Now what? Well, my suggestion of “Get the HP guy out here, the stupid thing is still UNDER WARRANTY” went unheeded (as did pointing out the locations of two other perfectly-working printers within 30 steps of anyone’s office), so I spent much of my billable hoursday (the network card’s fried, replace it) reseating cards in a torn-open printer, reinstalling drivers on (the network card’s fried, replace it) the print server as helpfully suggested by HP’s Tier 1 support guy (yes it’s plugged in, yes it’s turned on, yes the network cable is attached…), hard-resetting (the network card’s fried, replace it) the thing using an obscure combination of clickybuttons, and trying to upload a firmware (the network card’s fried, replace it) update to the printer’s BUILT-IN FTP SERVER(!) (username null, password null), another helpful suggestion from Tier-1 Tom who doesn’t want to send out new kit, but (the network card’s fried, replace it) the network card’s fried, so the printer freezes up and/or throws an error code (the network card’s fried, replace it) before the 9-meg firmware binary is halfway uploaded. So someone in the chain of management has stopped running around like some kind of headless carbon long enough to get hold of GJM on the code-fucshia IT emergency hotpager (inaptly known as “gmail”), to get some sage advice: “the network card’s fried, replace it…”

Anyway, this is why I don’t do IT.

QOTD: “…game starts at 5:30, so we’re leaving here at quarter of 5.” – CL
“Wait…does that mean 15 after or 15 before?” – TG
“15 before there, Timmy. We learned that in grade school.” – CL
“Not MY grade school…” – TG
“That’s OK, time doesn’t matter when you’re working in the frequency domain.” – JP


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