too much head, not enough desk

[4bit4.livejournal.com]

It's not so much the users that kill me, but the co-workers. I EXPECT users to be knobs, but my co-workers should know their shit. Especially when they've been there longer than I have.

co-worker: Hey man, can you help with this Oracle issue. User cannot connect to anything with Toad or Golden.
me: Nothing? Can you TNSPING?
Co-worker: Well the user only has longin info for one and can't connect to that one. Can't tnsping it either. but user can tnsping other dbs.
me: edit sqlnet.ora bla bla
co-worker: golden still doesn't work and the toad freezes when it runs this one query.
me: can I come over and look at it?

I walk down the hall and sit down. I associate the proper oci.dll for golden (known issue with Oracle 10g) and connect to a bunch of dbs and run a bunch of test queries. I test a few queries on a few DBs in Toad. Everything works.

I tell my co-worker that everything is working and go back to my desk.

The next day:

me: so everything is fine with that Oracle issue?
co-worker: no. User can't connect to one DB and his query is still not running properly.
me: Is the one DB in tnsnames?
co-worker: yeah I copied it from another user.
me: I'll have to look at that. The messed up query, will it run on another machine? (I go off to check the tnsnames.ora on the machine)
co-worker: user doesn't know if it will or not.
me: okay, that first db is not in tnsnames, I just looked. And the query is either bad sql or the user needs an updated Oracle version for that DB. Try the query on user's co-worker's machine. If it doesn't run, then it's the sql. If it does run, compare the oracle versions.
co-worker: it's just not working. I'm going to re-image the machine.

He's had this machine for 2 days now.

I'd take a hundred users logging tickets because the blue in their task bar is a different shade on their new computer than it was on their old computer (and yes I did once get a problem ticket for that) than take an hour each day to walk co-workers through fixes that shouldn't be that big of a deal when they've been working on these same issues for over a year.

Yay my first tech support rant.

Oh and I can't update my i-tunes.

Comments

[fallconsmate.livejournal.com]

Oh and I can't update my i-tunes.
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*giggling quite loudly*

[4bit4.livejournal.com]

I was hoping I'd get at least one laugh, thanks.

[moonsend.livejournal.com]

I have a cow-orker who thinks that re-imaging the machine is the first thing to do for most support calls. *headdesk* I hear you there.

[tanyad.livejournal.com]

I wonder if they work at my University? That seems to be the default answer to a lot of issues

[firon.livejournal.com]

To be fair, it can be a lot quicker to re-image that diagnose some of the more obscure problems.

[goose-entity.livejournal.com]

I had this argument when I was a freelance contractor. The permanent staff I worked with would reimage every 6 months, because the same thing would break in the same way every 6 months.

I spent a couple of days poking Google, and deployed (and documented) a permanent fix.

The message the permies got was "reimaging is not a solution. It is an evasion of the solution".

[firon.livejournal.com]

True, in some cases. Certainly if it is a recurring problem then no, reimaging is not a solution. However, in many cases the problem is easily diagnosed - a spyware infection for instance. And while removal of the spyware may be possible, it might leave the machine with issues, and in many cases may take longer than re-imaging. In those cases, re-imaging is a solution to the problem and potentially fixes other issues that are unknown to the tech.

That said, I agree that re-imaging as the ONLY solution to all problems is *very bad* :)

[4bit4.livejournal.com]

I'd totally agree about re-imaging in certain cases, spy-ware/viruses being at the top of that list. But in sooooo many cases it does nothing. As in this case. My Co-worker reimaged, and reinstalled all the same stuff and used the same .ora files and poof, the problem was exactly the same too.

This is the shit that just floors me.

[firon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if someone has just told you how to fix the problem, you don't go an re-image the drive instead. Especially if the fix is that simple.

[4bit4.livejournal.com]

It's weeks like this that make me happy when it's the weekend.