Saturday, October 08, 2005
Friday fun & games
It's like a United Nations around here. Even the white guys have foreign names. That may explain why people don't understand what I'm saying. Either that or they don't listen to fat white broads (to use the vernacular).
I set up a meeting about a connectivity problem possibly caused by a firewall timeout (rule 0). My boss had mentioned it back when I first interviewed with him a month ago. I thought it would be a fact finding session so I book a room. I find out my boss wants a hands-on session with the firewall guy. I cancel the room and send out a notice to that effect. I call the firewall guy 45 minutes before the meeting to make sure he's available. I'm pretty sure I say see you at your desk before I hang up. We get to his desk and he's not there. One of his helpful teammates thinks he's gone to the can.
My boss and I use the time to get on the same page as one of our teammates. We look at a log which shows the timeout error but no datestamp. I find out that my teammate had assumed that testing had taken place just because the error was there. We need a recent occurrence to look at the firewall log. Then he tries to say that he never told me that there had been testing. He asks me for the MQ log which we both already know doesn't show any errors. Quoi? It works out OK because we come to understand that the connection is made as soon as the application server is started. It's been a few minutes so we call the firewall guy and find out he's waiting in my meeting room.
Once he gets back to his desk, my teammate tries to find a log with a datestamp and the error
with no success. Finally, we start looking at the firewall log anyway and confirm that it is indeed a rule 0 drop. The firewall guy then confirms that the default gateway is wrong on the application server.
I have to get one of the guys in what would have been the Server Team at CLA to fix it. His name, believe or not, is Robin Williams. He must be a comedian because he tried to tell me that the MQ on this server is from JBoss not IBM.
I need to create an emergency change request to fix this, but I don't have the ticketing system icon on my desktop yet. I find out that the SLA for this kind of thing is three weeks. Quoi!! My boss had submitted the request after I started. I call the Service Desk and get it escalated. The desktop guy is at my desk within an hour to do it. Unfortunately, no one around me has ever had to create an emergency change request. I get a good lead and spend the rest of the afternoon playing around with it.
There doesn't seem to be any sense of urgency around here. I'm starting to get that "back in the saddle" feeling but not for the right reasons.
Another good thing about the new job: their WAS is at an older unsupported version that I'm familiar with.
D.
I set up a meeting about a connectivity problem possibly caused by a firewall timeout (rule 0). My boss had mentioned it back when I first interviewed with him a month ago. I thought it would be a fact finding session so I book a room. I find out my boss wants a hands-on session with the firewall guy. I cancel the room and send out a notice to that effect. I call the firewall guy 45 minutes before the meeting to make sure he's available. I'm pretty sure I say see you at your desk before I hang up. We get to his desk and he's not there. One of his helpful teammates thinks he's gone to the can.
My boss and I use the time to get on the same page as one of our teammates. We look at a log which shows the timeout error but no datestamp. I find out that my teammate had assumed that testing had taken place just because the error was there. We need a recent occurrence to look at the firewall log. Then he tries to say that he never told me that there had been testing. He asks me for the MQ log which we both already know doesn't show any errors. Quoi? It works out OK because we come to understand that the connection is made as soon as the application server is started. It's been a few minutes so we call the firewall guy and find out he's waiting in my meeting room.
Once he gets back to his desk, my teammate tries to find a log with a datestamp and the error
with no success. Finally, we start looking at the firewall log anyway and confirm that it is indeed a rule 0 drop. The firewall guy then confirms that the default gateway is wrong on the application server.
I have to get one of the guys in what would have been the Server Team at CLA to fix it. His name, believe or not, is Robin Williams. He must be a comedian because he tried to tell me that the MQ on this server is from JBoss not IBM.
I need to create an emergency change request to fix this, but I don't have the ticketing system icon on my desktop yet. I find out that the SLA for this kind of thing is three weeks. Quoi!! My boss had submitted the request after I started. I call the Service Desk and get it escalated. The desktop guy is at my desk within an hour to do it. Unfortunately, no one around me has ever had to create an emergency change request. I get a good lead and spend the rest of the afternoon playing around with it.
There doesn't seem to be any sense of urgency around here. I'm starting to get that "back in the saddle" feeling but not for the right reasons.
Another good thing about the new job: their WAS is at an older unsupported version that I'm familiar with.
D.
