Thursday, January 18, 2007

News, Good, Bad, and Late

First, the good news. My system problem, over which I have fretted the last several days, is resolved.

Now, the bad news. It was a really minor thing....and I didn't find it.

But I don't care. Much. Its fixed, the job works, and tomorrow I get to punch the system and see if it will run with the changes. Which, given my track record with this change, I won't bet on. But I said all along that this is the kind of work I want to do, and I've known all along that learning is painful -- if it was easy, anyone could do it. So I am really pleased to have had this experience, and I hope that it never happens again.

Incidentally, if you're interested (hello? Anyone out there? Ah, well...) I'll explain what happened. First, I put on a software fix. It said that to work properly, it needed another software fix, which I got and put on. That one said it needed eleven more software fixes, which I got and put on. All well and good. And then I tried to make the system accept it....and it wouldn't. Flat out would not. One of my coworkers suggested that the method I was using to get the fix, which had worked just fine with getting fixes from vendors, might not be the right way to get it -- I should ftp it. So I did. Threw away the one I wanted, plus the eleven others, got twelve new ones. Still didn't work.

Did you catch it? I just said what the problem was. Answer down below.

I also got to stay late, the result of diddling around doing things until it was too late to go home and dial in from there, as I had planned. One of our customers had a system test planned, and we needed people from multiple disciplines to hang around in case they had problems. Which, as it happened with mine, they did. You've never lived until you have two or three people reminding you that this is The Customer who's waiting for you to fix their problem, and are you done yet? The nice part is, though, problems in my area tend to crop up in the beginning of things, not all through the event. So once I got them working, I was able to go off and reply to some emails, write others, and do things along that line. Still had to hang around -- we got out of there about three hours after I normally leave -- but it wasn't bad.

I'm not much for conspiracies, but does it seem to anyone else that this administration is more than willing to do whatever it thinks it has to do, and is only grudgingly agreeing that perhaps other parts of the up-to-now-allegedly three part government had any kind of oversight because it lost the majority in both houses of congress? And will still do whatever it wants as often as it can, as secretly as it can? I am beginning to wonder what other nasty little surprises they haven't told anyone about. Not in any way to imply that there aren't things that ought to be kept secret - - of course there are -- but I would bet serious money that there are ticking time bombs in their files just waiting to explode. Their arrogance amazes me -- apparently Mr. Cheney told people the other day who were questioning him (I don't recall the venue, whether it was an interview program or what) that they ought to remember that Bush is the Commander In Chief. Which he most certainly is. But the last time I looked, that only applied to the military. Though I suppose there's a Secret Plan to address that, too. Perhaps we can't go back to kinder, gentler times -- or perhaps they only seemed that way when I was younger -- but I will nonetheless be so glad when this guy and his crew are gone.

The answer? I installed thirteen fixes...and only replaced twelve. Guess which one was bad?

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