Thin Clienty goodness

[tuba-man.livejournal.com]

Me 2 months ago:  "Hey, how's that thin client order looking for $Customer"?
Boss:  "Oh, it looks like $GuyThatJustLeft never ordered it, I'll get that ordered."
Me: "Ok, cool.  Thanks.  It's already been two weeks, so if we could get that rush delivered, that'd be great."
Boss:  "No problem!"

Me, 2 weeks later:  "Hey, any word on that thin client?"
Boss:  "What thin clie...oh yeah!  Sorry, I'll check in on that."
Me, 2 weeks later:  "Hey, thin client?"
Boss:  "$GuyThatJustLeft never ordered it..."
Me:  "I know, you said you'd order it."
Boss:  "Oh, right.  I'll get right on that."
Me: "Thanks..."

Me, 1 month ago: "Hey, can I get a thin client sometime this year?"
Boss:  "Yeah, let me go order that.  What model do they need?"
Me: *Painful throbbing in head* "$Model"
Boss: "Alrighty, I'll order that."

Boss, 2 weeks ago:  "Hey, the thin clients our customer uses aren't made any more, what else would work for them?"
Me:  *surprised he remembered before my now-scheduled reminders, reaaaally frustrated now too* "Oh, anything with XP Embedded should be fine.  At the very least, it'll fit in with the rest of them."
Boss:  "Sure thing."

Boss orders thin client...
Thin client arrives.   No XP embedded. In fact, no disk embedded.  No disk at all.  I poke around the documentation.  In said documentation is a license for Windows Vista Business Diskless Edition.  Included with that documentation is a booklet.  In said booklet is "Download the Altiris Deployment Solution at ..." in dozens of languages.

It's PXE boot, looks like plenty of documentation, easy installation of server-side software.


After 14 hours of my own time (Didn't realize what I was getting into, didn't bother checking the clock...) figuring out this PXE-based morass... (SQL SERVER?! AND WHY DO I HAVE 10 NEW SERVICES INSTALLED.  OH I'M SO GLAD THIS SYSTEM IS ALREADY DOING DHCP)
"Vista Business Diskless Edition" turns out to be a WindowsPE environment with nothing but a worthless client-side program that connects to the server, tells it its MAC address, disconnects, and reboots.

I got one of my cow-orkers to help me with some batch scripts to try and turn this thing into something useable.  All I really need are print drivers and an automatic RDP session...  I've got it set up to connect to a share, create (if ! exist) a folder based on MAC address, and store system-specific data there.  Looks pretty smooth, let's give it a shot.

NO.  IT WON'T WORK.  

Hey, did I mention that after every change to this WinPE environment, I have to rebuild the PXE image (10 minutes) and reboot the thin client (5 minutes!)?  My time was approximately 90% waiting, 10% work.  I filled up as much of that waiting as I could with other tasks around the client's office.

Hmm, Vista can boot from SAN or iSCSI...  No dice on that, even if I could get software-based iSCSI working in a reasonable amount of time, I don't have the hardware or disk space to support it.

I then had the brilliant idea to try and install what this Altiris crap calls an "automation partition" on a USB drive.  NO NO NO.  Windows refuses to acknowledge it at all.

I have currently given up on the software it came with.  In 2 hours, I've installed Ubuntu to a USB drive, installed and tested printer drivers, and enabled an automatic login that goes straight into the aformentioned RDP session.


Oh yeah, back on track...
Current cost to me:
-At least an hour or two's worth of productivity loss due to checking up on spacey boss 
-A night with 2 hours' sleep (mostly my fault, I'll admit). 
-My sanity
-My blood pressure


Current cost to my client:
-2 Months of a user unable to do half of his job.  (They each have a thin client and a full workstation on their desks.  Long story, probably classified.) 
-At least $1000 in billable time.  (They've got an MSA with us, but we charge for equipment installs.)
-Reduced productivity for their entire operation due to slowdowns caused by PXE image rebuilds


Current cost to my company:
-An entire week's worth of man-hours that could have been spent much more profitably had I not been wrangling this thin client
-Potential billable time during this week:  I could have been doing something useful for other clients.  I also have put most of my time towards this client's MSA.  It's unreasonable for me to bill all this time to them since most of it has been spent waiting.
        - Along with that, this hoses the MSA's Effective Billable Rate.  (The MSA covers almost all standard maintenance a small/medium business would need on a regular basis.  The monthly service fee we charge them is supposed to cover an expected number of hours each month.  It's supposed to be somewhere around the same $/hr rate as our non-agreement hourly work, if not higher.  Thanks to this debacle, this month we're probably making half of what geek squad charges per hour.  The whole year is thrown off too.)
-Cost difference between the original thin client and the one actually ordered.  We billed the client for the original 2 months ago, back when $GuyThatJustLeft forgot to order the damn thing.
-My willingness to put any extra time in.
-THE CLIENT'S TRUST IN US
(Lately I'm wondering if anything other than that dollar amount will get noticed.  I don't blame them for worrying about money since we're a small business, but it feels like they're losing sight of the fact the other stuff.)


Moral of the story:  NEVER, under any circumstances, assume that the spacey boss will remember what you said.  Don't even assume they heard what you said in the first place.  Standard CYA measures apply, but holy crap, check up on those dudes like every 10 minutes if you need something.
 
TL;DR: 
Thanks, Boss, for ruining my entire freakin' week.  I should have babysat harder.  Oh, and the client isn't too happy with you either.

Comments

[ghostdandp.livejournal.com]

I never allow the powers that be to order things without a direct link from me to the thing that I want ordered.

They are welcome to discuss with me at that point. But at least I know we have a jumping off point.

[tullamoredew.livejournal.com]

I'd have stopped right where you saw the thinclient is not what you need.
The boss reminders email threads all printed out, and sent onwards.

Meddling and self education is all nice and good, but not when working and trying to achieve a specific goal

[tuba-man.livejournal.com]

Point well taken. I realized that had I put the brakes on the project as soon as I found it wasn't what was needed, I would have saved a lot of headache.

[tullamoredew.livejournal.com]

yup, my guess is a boss like that will never appreciate the hoops you jumped through in order to make things work anyhow

[tuba-man.livejournal.com]

He's very vocal about giving kudos where due, but he never really remembers them. Every time I talk with him to get/give a status update, it's like starting from square one. Like that episode of ST:TNG where Data had to keep sending bits of information to himself to get the Enterprise out of the time warp, I have to remember to retell the important bits from all the previous meetings.

[tullamoredew.livejournal.com]

being vocal to you isn't much, he has to be as vocal about you to the higher mgmt, and especially vocal when bonuses are due :)

[confectionqueen.livejournal.com]

thisthisthisthisthis.
Wrong type, stop, turn around, ship it back.

[manuka.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain. Altiris Deployment Solution for thins is great, once you can figure out how to make it work.

And I'm guessing you're talking about thins from a large company whose name is similar to a popular steak sauce. Getting thin client support from them is nigh on impossible. Nobody in frontline (read: India) seems to know what a thin client is. And the IVR system gets horribly confused when you say "thin client".

On the upside, once you tell them that you need them to transfer the call to Altiris (because if you call them directly, they want a contract number, but if the call comes from a thin client partner, they'll take the call, just need to know who's paying for it), Altiris support is pretty good. At least it was before symantec took over, I haven't needed to call them recently.

If your client used to run the SteakSauce model 5720, the 5730 will work just as nicely (and better). Alternately, check out the FX160 from that place in texas that rhymes with "Sell" and "Hell". I've also blogged a bunch about my thin client travails (http://blog.ianbeyer.com/tags/thin-clients).

[tuba-man.livejournal.com]

Just did a quick scan of your blog, it looks like it'll be really handy for me in the future! Thanks for the link, I'll check it out more when I have time.

[manuka.livejournal.com]

It's funny, because I posted those mostly for my own recall later on. They've turned out to be the most frequently and consistently read posts on the blog. I haven't done much with thins in several months due to other projects taking center stage (to wit, the more recent posts on streaming!). Maybe it's time to do some more experimenting.

[curmudgn]

SteakSauce Computers . . . I am so stealing that! It's exponentially better than my own "Hyphenated Computers."

[manuka.livejournal.com]

Wow... I'm flattered. Feel free to abscond with it.

[confectionqueen.livejournal.com]

When I started working in an office I learned the general rule of wait 2-3 days. After that, they've forgotten and won't get to it ithout a reminder.