Breaking Stuff

I know that Dustin has been up since the ass crack of dawn. Because he IMed me this morning to gloat over how he was going to post first today. And, here it is, many hours past the ass crack of dawn. And not a peep out of him. Eye of the Tiger my fanny!

So, because I am stuck at my desk waiting for tech support to call back, I hereby declare today’s theme to be… well… tech support.

Let me give you a bit of background. This summer, we had a vendor come in to show us how to use a piece of server software that is allegedly going to make my job easier (honestly, the best way to make my job easier would be to make the people I support smarter and that’s not happening anytime soon). In an attempt to speed things up, he installed the software on his own before he got here. Now, I’m sure that he had the best of intentions, but he didn’t leave the best of documentation. Which, in this case, would be defined as any documentation.

I think that we can all see where this is going…

(All of my geeky readers are inwardly cringing right about now)

Last week, I attempted to upgrade our software. And, of course, it promptly stopped working. Something about an upgrade requiring a complete uninstall and reinstall and us not having the standard configuration. And us having no documentation. And me being a complete and utter idiot.

Well, I tried my best to fix what I had broken, but it was clearly beyond the grasp of my limited knowledge. I might be all woman, but, like the stereotypical man, I hate to stop and ask for directions. However, it was becoming  abundantly clear that I was about 37 miles from the freeway, in a bad neighborhood, with the sun rapidly setting and my gas needle nudging towards E. So, I swallowed my pride and called tech support.

I can say, with no hesitation whatsoever, that I am convinced that I ruined this poor guy’s Friday. Not only is our installation not a standard configuration, it’s nowhere near what they normally do in situations like ours (attempting to run their software on the same server that is also serving as an Exchange server). And, of course, the guy who installed the software in the first place isn’t available.

So, this poor guy is muddling around our server attempting to repair what I broke. And calling me every now and then to ask questions that I don’t know the answers to. What a fantastic way to spend a Friday afternoon!

To his credit, he’s been exceedingly nice about the whole thing. And I’ve made a solemn vow to never upgrade this software ever again, even if they do come out with an upgrade that will tell my users when they’re being stupid, fix whatever problem the user created and then run out and fetch me a stiff drink.

And, yes, I am totally aware of the hypocriticality of me complaining about how difficult stupid users make my job when I am in the current position of being a stupid user making someone else’s job difficult.

I’m also aware of the fact that hypocriticality isn’t a real word.

Whatever, it’s Friday.

Anyone have any good tech support stories to keep me amused while I wait?

Update: Tech support gave up in frustration. They’re going to call back on Monday when they’ve (hopefully) figured out what in the hell is going on. I feel better, lots better, about not being able to fix this myself.