Late Night

Well, it was a late night here last night at the office. We were undertaking a project that would quadruple our bandwidth...a rather simple change that we estimated would be done around 7:00 p.m. So, obviously, it wasn't going to be done by 7:00 p.m.

First, the vendor who was in charge of the upgrade was over an hour late. He was supposed to be here between 3:30 - 4:00 p.m. Arrival time: 5:15. That's a poor start to the evening. But, hey, no big deal. The hardware was here and it had been "tested" back at his company so all he needed to do was open the boxes, disconnect our current hardware and put the new equipment in place. Right? RIGHT?

Wrong. It became clear around 7:00 p.m. that something was amiss. Had we missed a step? So, what do you do when nothing works? Call support. So, we attempted to get support. No answer. Of course. The vendor tech who was here? Couldn't get support. And, by the time we actually got through to someone, it was 10:00 p.m. And, well, no real answers there either. By 11:00 p.m., we started switching back to the old equipment. And by 1:00 a.m., I was on the road home.

So, 8 hours of work and we ended up right where we started. Quite a productive evening. We've determined that we have some misconfigured hardware. Apparently the "tests" the vendor performed where not done in the correct environment with the right settings. They had us confused with another client. YIPPEE!

No surprises. I had told my boss we would be here until at least midnight. Nothing ever goes smoothly. Why do you think there are so many tech jobs? Incompetents. That's what keeps the job market alive.