a system lord's ranting

after serving a number of businesses in a span of just 7 years now I have learned this:

1. the same mistakes are being made over and over again, regardless
   of a company's size, number of IT staff, used technologies, and so on,
   wich makes my first months on any job fairly easy and pretty impressive
   in the eyes of  upper management
2. tradition and politics are more important than just about
   everything, including security and/or comfort, this interferes
   regularly with the first rule from above
3. climbing the hierarchy is harder from within a company, it's far
   easier to apply for such a position at another company, same goes for
   income, but... from a certain age you'd better stay where you are
4. covering your own ass is perhaps the most important thing to do
   in IT, even implementing whatever asked for by management (officially)
   could backfire, this covering your ass can be done by BCC everything to
   your home account (corporate mailboxes can disappear overnight)
5. it's extremely hard to cooperate with people you have never seen
   in real life (yeah, I mean you, yankees), video conferencing is nice
   but does not substitute for real life meetings
6. you can never have enough backups, and not just limited to files,
   but to procedures as well, trying them out from time to time is the
   only way to be prepared
7. write down all you do, even a sticky note will do, creating a
   summary, even years beyond, from a sticky note will be easier than
   trying it by heart
8. take babysteps, never ever run, do 1 thing at a time, don't try to make every change at once
9. don't be embarassed to ask for help, be it a consultant or a from a colleague
10. stay cool, stress can be helpfull sometimes but overdoing it will burn you out in the shortest of time

this being my first blog entry, don't be too hard on me ;-)

working together with colleagues from around the world can be a real challenge
especially if they happen to be from the US of A
why the big difference in attitude and work ethics between the old continent and the new world?

anyways, they mucked up (or so I think)

did anyone know you can bring down an entire Citrix Farm simply by screwing up the data store of just one site/zone?
and how to do this, you ask?
by giving just about everyone in the IT department full access to every
SQL server to run their own private project on live databases

also development consultants should be able to do this offcourse, or so our dear americans think

and then...

Europe wakes up, only to find out that all european applications who
have a database on an sql server inside the european site are no longer
working

Oooooops, sorry.....

this because of automatic replication, especially set up to have consistent databases around the world
well, consistency wasn't the problem, it was screwed up where ever you looked >:-?

on top of it all, also the master databases were being updated manually
by a certain employee (who will no longer be referred by as a dear
colleague)

is someone out there having the same issues with their counterparts from around the world or is this just happening to me?

well, cya next time when I have the full tale of how to rebuild a citrix farm from scratch

grtz

why is it that everybody thinks IT employees are the handy people of the compay

could you change that light, it's blinking rather annoyingly for weeks now
can you fix the squeaking entrance door
can you move those desks, it's time to completely reorganize the office
can you put in new power outlets under the new desks
can you put in new cabling for the new wing in our building

and so on

it usually starts out with a little thing like changing a light bulb
only to end up in IT employees being the do-it-all's
thus saving on technicians, in- or external

also for office management it goes like this:

"please don't interfere with our plans of moving or renovation" is what
you get when you have the slightest critique on the layout or whatever
of the renovation plans but...

when push comes to shove, they (upper management) find them selves
exposed to a hell of a lot of technical issues they know nothing about
and then off course,
it's IT that has to come to the rescue and make sure every wrinkle gets smoothed out

or even worse,
why didn't you (IT) foresee this, they say afterwards,
this then when you're mopping up their mess and probably take too long to their likings ;-}

same goes for telephony, although telephony is indeed being maintained by a sub department of IT
sometimes it is done by someone of an entirely different department who does this on the side
but then again, when he or she runs into trouble or isn't available then....
you guessed it already, I presume
yes, IT once again can do their magic
and offcourse without any current knowledge or any documentation whatsoever regarding changes to the system since the dark ages

it could be just me, or isn't it?

cause I've seen the same thing happening at all the sites I have worked on

don't get me wrong, I do like the challenge of any puzzle I get to sink my teeth in
but just a little more respect, and less taken for granted would be nice

hence the title you could read in different ways
either as a whole sentence or delimited

well, done ranting for now
cya next time

hi guys and dolls,

yet again I must break down on the americans
sad but true, I now understand why Bush got re-elected
it is because of his way of doing things
he is a true american, thru and thru

READ ON AND SHIVER:

monday morning following the final departure of my american counterpart I walk into the office,
unaware of problems, as innocent as a newborn baby, I get going on the daily jobs
changing tapes, checking logfiles, checking and/or starting services, checking spam, oops, I mean mail and so on

I always arrive half an hour early to get a quiet moment
and then, as users got their coffee and logged in to their systems....
I get a lot of calls,
every call is a problem but not the normal monday morning issues
you know those, right?
like:

"it's been like more than 48 hours since I left the building and I can't remember my password anymore"
"my screen stays black and pushing the power button on the pc doesn't change anything"
"my mouse and/or keyboard don't work no more"
"I can't find this or that file, I think someone has deleted it, not me off course"

no, they all say exactly the same thing
I can't log in into my citrix and/or terminal server session
meanwhile checking my mail I see a number of mails telling me that the sales guys couldn't get in neither

? I think, cause at that moment I am logged in on 1 terminal server
and I have the citrix management consele sitting right in front of me

mind you, I have a user account for my daily operations and only use a domain administrator account if it is really necessary
so, when I try a guest account (for our jobstudents) I indeed get an access denied during the login

anyway, upon checking several possibilities I find out that the user permissions on this server have been altered by....

that's right, THE AMERICANS

to cut a long story short, because of the departure of the american
system manager they (THE AMERICANS) deemed it necessary to deny logon
rights to just about everyone accept for quite a few american IT guys
and my own personal account

even the european domain administrator couldn't log in, not exactly a tiny mistakeh to makeh if you'd ask me
but then nobody did ask me or even tell me of their plans

so, analyzing the american mind is easy:  just do it and ask questions later
and most of all, don't let your colleague's know what you are doing until it is done
this way there is no discussion possible and it's a go for launch all the way

yet again I ask myself and you all also,
has anyone else out there have the same experiences with THE AMERICANS?
just let me now so I can sleep easier knowing it's not just me

so....

cya next time for more ranting

hence the title of my blog, yet another rant:

why is it so damn hard to admit failure?

a project has to be stopped as soon as:

...it will cost more than it should,

in this case being 17 percent more than budgeted and this when the project is
only 2/3 completed

...it takes a lot longer to complete, even beyond expiration date
again,
in this case 3 years to be completed for 2/3 and that 2/3 is far from
being a working thing
and this for an application with a lifespan of one decade

it's a guy thing, me so think, you know the one,

dad is driving somewhere and knows he is driving the wrong way

but instead of turning back, a true guy will keep on driving

just until he sees any kind of sign or clue to get back where he has started
from

cause, let's face it
IT is a boy's playground,
woman are scarce and even then seldom key players
maybe a bi-sexual leadership wouldn't be so bad

it is even harder when you know that the developers are on the other side of
the big blue ocean

thus, a face to face honest open dialog is not possible

every video conference you get the same bullshit excuses and dodge balls

every meeting there is one or more key player(s) missing

so you can never discuss the whole project

the budget problem is circumvented by writing down expenses to another
manager's wallet

bad code doesn't exist,
the problem is that users give misleading info

a slow program must be because of a badly configured network
or because of a slow server,

be it a citrix misconfiguration or a underachieving database server

anyways,

there is some light shining in the darkness

after nearly 2 years of refuting all brought up excuses they finally gave in

and admitted <grin> there are some minor code issues </grin>

so let's work together from now on and forget all previously mentioned problems
this last meaning there are updates of all sort happening all of the time
without any notice to anyone on this side of the big blue, mind you
now it's working, now it isn't anymore
here a crash, there a hung sever

why can't we all just get along (Mars Attacks, Jack Nicholson)

so, done ranting for today