The Glade 4.0

Power outtage overnight.
User can't see anything on his monitor.

Monitor through laptop docking station. Opened lid, laptop is on. Docked, nothing. Power cycled laptop and monitor. Monitor has power but is in standby. Plugged laptop directly into monitor and switched video output, display comes right up. Foamy switches out docking station and tries again. Back to square one. Same problem. Foamy switched monitor, still nothing. Foamy looks under desk and sees a KVM switch lit and blinking. Presses button to switch to other channel.

Voila. *Headdesk*

Ok, that was not the one that really made me feel dumb...Stay tuned for more right after this...

*this*

Now there is no network connection, user can't log into network. Check all cabling, switch docking station back to original known good, remove IP phone from between wall and PC, plug directly into wall jack (known live because the phone was active) NOTHING. Error message: Media disconnected. Logged in as local admin and checked Device Manager. The NIC had been disabled. Reenabled and immediate connection.

If I learned anything from my A+ from years ago, it was always check the physical first before fudging with the software side. Not this time apparantely. Such is the life of a fairly green Desktop Support guy. I had been doing helpdesk for almost 5 years, and now I am getting my hands a little dirty crawling under peoples desks.

So much to learn, but what a great experience so far.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

If it makes you feel any better:

First let me say that I never, EVER, experience fear, except when I work on electricity. It is very strange that other things do not frighten me, and very very strange that I have what is borderline phobic for electricity.

Ok, that said:

I'm replacing the outdoor flood light at my house. This involves rewiring. So, I kill the power at the breaker box... to the entire house (see above).

I remove old floodlight, and expose and separate wires.

Now, before I can touch these wires, I must make sure the electricity is dead. Safety first right? Unfortunately, that's not enough. I must see with my volt meter that it's on, and then off. If it's just off, I don't know that I'm using the volt meter right or that it's working properly (yep. see above).

So, I turn the power back on at the breaker and test the wires. No reading, no matter what I do. But since I know it was working earlier, now I'm really nervous.

Cannot figure this out for 30 minutes. Finally determine that the light switch was off.

Turn on, see power, turn off, see no power, install new light.

Yeah.

first check the most ironic thing possible. THEN check connections.

I spent 3 weeks trying to determine why my building's envirnmental control computer kept rebooting itself. Even replaced the computer, reimaged, new drivers, etc., etc. Nothing fixed it.

And then it occurred to me that the facilities manager kept her office like a sauna... Yes, thats right. The HVAC computer was overheating because the facilities manager had turned the HVAC too high in the room the computer was in.

my favorite ID ten T error was when I was trying to figure out why my Desktop PC would not work.

I had just upgraded my video card and RAM.

I am looking at everything I could think of. But I cannot get this **** to work. I check the surge protector, make sure it is powered on, I check the devices plugged into the surge protector, they are all on. I made sure the monitor had power, I could not even get the tower to give a beep code, no power at all.

I swapped the video card back to the original card and pulled out the new RAM, putting back in the old. Nogo...

So in frustration I just sat down on the bed. I grabbed the power cord from the bed and got pissed and chucked it across the room, pissed because the tower would not turn on.

Then in a sudden flash of insight.... I walked over to the power cord I lobbed across the room and plugged the tower back in. It booted right up.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Three times today while walking by people's desk I got stopped to see if I could figure out what was wrong. Three fixes, each under a minute. Three calls back to the help-desk to cancel the tickets.

I really have a hard time not laughing at some of the things people have me fix, I'm not in IT, just an Analyst.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones