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I hate system administration!
Oct. 14th, 2004 05:28 pmHate it hate it hate it! As bad as I hate politics!
The hazard of being the lone programmer working for end-users directly, not part of a software development team, is that they figure "oh, Alex is clueful about computers, she can figure out this system issue." But, programming is EASY. If it doesn't work, you can drop down into the debugger and see exactly what the computer is being instructed to do, step by step. This may be quite tedious and I've spent joyless hours debugging in my day, but rarely do you get to the "bang my head against the wall because I can't think of anything more productive to try" stage. System administration, however, means dealing with evil mysterious black boxes, i.e. other people's software and hardware. Often the problem-solving flowchart bottoms out into incantation over chicken's blood and toad toes. HOW DO YOU PEOPLE WHO DO SYSADMIN FULL-TIME STAND IT? It's wonderful and satisfying when things work according to how you think they will work, but if not, ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!
( techy details )
Just for shits and giggles, tried calling Linksys tech support. They have outsourced tech support to India, apparently, and these drones just follow the script. You might as well replace them with some kind of web robot. Tech support was quite insistant that I tell her who the ISP was, and whether I had plugged the router into a DSL modem or a cable modem. My answers of "don't know, but that's irrelevant" and "neither" did not go over well, and she started telling me I should download an automatic configuration tool to set up the router. Like, hello, if I wanted the factory default settings I could hit the reset button. No comprehension of what I was trying to tell her, that this was hooked up to a LAN not a modem. Hung up on tech support.
Expect zero from tech support, no matter what. You bought it, you're on your own.
The hazard of being the lone programmer working for end-users directly, not part of a software development team, is that they figure "oh, Alex is clueful about computers, she can figure out this system issue." But, programming is EASY. If it doesn't work, you can drop down into the debugger and see exactly what the computer is being instructed to do, step by step. This may be quite tedious and I've spent joyless hours debugging in my day, but rarely do you get to the "bang my head against the wall because I can't think of anything more productive to try" stage. System administration, however, means dealing with evil mysterious black boxes, i.e. other people's software and hardware. Often the problem-solving flowchart bottoms out into incantation over chicken's blood and toad toes. HOW DO YOU PEOPLE WHO DO SYSADMIN FULL-TIME STAND IT? It's wonderful and satisfying when things work according to how you think they will work, but if not, ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!
( techy details )
Just for shits and giggles, tried calling Linksys tech support. They have outsourced tech support to India, apparently, and these drones just follow the script. You might as well replace them with some kind of web robot. Tech support was quite insistant that I tell her who the ISP was, and whether I had plugged the router into a DSL modem or a cable modem. My answers of "don't know, but that's irrelevant" and "neither" did not go over well, and she started telling me I should download an automatic configuration tool to set up the router. Like, hello, if I wanted the factory default settings I could hit the reset button. No comprehension of what I was trying to tell her, that this was hooked up to a LAN not a modem. Hung up on tech support.
Expect zero from tech support, no matter what. You bought it, you're on your own.
