Welcome to the first entry in a new series… er… category… maybe tag… hell I dunno… where I sit back and spill the beans on some of the true tales of my life being an IT guy. I hesitate to call this a “series” because who knows if I will actually keep this up. But I figure that somewhere, somehow, these short anecdotes deserve a small corner of the Internet to be forever preserved. I’m pretty sure I’ve told these tales to my kids, but just in case I didn’t – maybe they’ll read this someday and they can hear me tell it in my voice.
In the late 1990’s (1998 or 1999, I wanna say… right on the cusp of year 2000 hysteria) I worked at a small outfit run by a local family. This family was headed up by an elderly couple who made a business out of selling and servicing Canon copiers. The old man and woman were rich beyond their wildest dreams but they saw fit to stick around in this small corner of north Alabama. They decided to “retire” (meaning: they wanted to stay at home and secretly tell their sons what to do and influence people) and give the business to one of their sons. This son had proven himself to be good with business acumen and was trusted to run the company in the way that he saw fit. I’m pretty sure the elderly parents still had their fingers in the pot somewhere, but I was never fully clear on the relationship and how it worked out.
This family had a second son who was a bit more personable and less cutthroat. Nevertheless, he wanted to have a slice of some kind of business and convinced them to fund a small company focused on selling telephone systems to local outfits. This complimented the printer business pretty well and allowed both brothers to hire local people to run around town and take care of larger business’ needs in copiers, printers and telephone/voice mail systems. It was so cooperative that the two brothers shared a single building and both companies were completely intertwined inside this facility.
At this point I should probably point out that I’m typing this completely from memory. Not only memory, but my interpretation of these two brothers and how their businesses came about. I’m not 100% clear on the formation of the telephone business. Regardless, I liked both of these brothers and they definitely had their personalities.
I worked at the printer/copier business for the somewhat more cutthroat brother. I was starting a career in information technology quite by accident. I had spent 4.5 years at a television station. It was at this television station that I realized the stress of the news and media business weren’t entirely compatible with my personality. I ended up supporting the newsroom computers and new-fangled non-linear editing stations in addition to my regular duties as Senior Chyron Operator. This was in the time of Windows 3.11, Winsock… and later, Windows 95.
This brother that was running the copier business had some foresight to a situation that was brewing. His field technicians were dealing more and more with network printing, a flavor of problems the technicians didn’t understand. They weren’t network engineers but these companies were asking them to fix the copiers that were on the network. At the time, a lot of secretaries (er, administrative assistants as they are now called) couldn’t tell the difference between a network problem and a copier hardware issue. They called this company and asked for help. My dude saw the writing on the wall and he decided that he needed to hire some network engineers.
But he didn’t just want any network engineers – he wanted system administrators for his own internal network… and… as he convinced mom and dad… he could make back our salaries by making us billable to fix *all* of the network, server, and computing hardware problems.
…and that is how I came to be at this company.
There’s plenty of stories of this wild time all over the Internet. As I’ve said, I have a few to contribute and here’s one such amazing tidbit.
I had a bad habit of feeling irritated when someone interrupted my focus on a problem. This is something I still struggle with today. Writing, coding, problem-solving, architecting… all of those things require concentration and it takes a pretty long time for me to get into that zone. (Aside: that’s why my blog is so empty, as I don’t get time to focus). I didn’t hide my irritation well and I’m sure my vibe was not well-hidden.
There was a woman on the telephone company side of the building who was a regular problem. She was a grandma of one, and that one girl was quite literally a princess in her eyes. Her life was devoted to this grandchild, and everyone could tell that if she had her way, she wouldn’t be sitting in a squeaking chair that struggled to hold her weight. This woman was an unhealthy 4 or 500 pounds. Maybe 600. I’m not sure. But she had a reputation for some of the most violent mood swings you’d ever encounter in a person. She also fancied herself as a woman who was up to date on technology.
I begged to differ.
At the time, this telephone company’s CRM application was a real awful mess. It required a server running on Windows NT (which I was running in the building). The application couldn’t tolerate any hiccup in the network at all. It was using the old-school Microsoft networking technologies that had a bad issue with just shitting itself for no apparent reason. This application would suddenly start firing off error windows and often lose data when this happened. It was a real disaster.
The known issue with the application was so hopeless that everyone in the building knew that when this application started misbehaving or throwing errors all you could do is reboot the workstation. These workstations were usually Windows 98 at the time, because… ya know… we were bleeding edge.
Grandma knew absolutely everything about this application, as she would often tell people. She knew how to fix it, how to work with it, how to support it… everything. She assured people that she was the only person in the entire building that knew anything about the application.
One day, grandma rings me up. I was chest-deep in a major problem for a customer and didn’t really have the brain bandwidth to supply to her because… well… she creeped me out with that whole grandchild devotion thing. Just think of a stereotype and it applies. My irritation wasn’t hidden (as usual) and I’m sure it set her off on the wrong foot.
“It’s happening again,” she scoffed into the phone.
“What? What’s happening again?” I half-growled.
“<application-i-can’t-remember-the-name-of> is throwing errors again. Why can’t you fix it?”
(i can’t fix it because it fucking sucks, that’s why)
“That’s a known problem,” I sighed. “Just reboot the machine and it’ll work again.”
Now she was pissed. “I… did reboot it.” Long pause. “The error is still on the screen.”
“Even after you rebooted it?”
“YES.”
I thought long and hard about what could be wrong with this thing. Yes, it’s a shitty application. Yes, it’s a real pain in the ass. But this is a known issue and the reboots always solved it. Had our single c: drive Windows server finally died? “Ok, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
I tried to wrap up what I was doing in a way that I could pick it back up later since this was looking to take a long time. I said something to my coworkers at the time (more on them another day) and walked over to the lady’s desk.
The error was still on the screen.
“Yeah,” I said, “just reboot it.”
“I TOLD YOU I ALREADY DID THAT.”
I stared at her for a moment. People were looking in our direction. I’m not sure if they felt sorry for me or were scared of Grandma. Maybe both.
“I…” I don’t know what made me think to ask her, but I screwed up the courage. “Can you show me what you did?”
“OH MY GOD.” The woman visibly rolled her eyes and slammed a hammy fist on the table. Pictures of her granddaughter jumped at least two inches off the table and fell back in a disarray. I expected her to reach down to the tower and hit the power button or grab the mouse and wrestle the pointer to the lower left of the screen to hit Start –> Shut Down.
But she did neither of those things.
She pulled her fingers back and exposed the index finger, then extended it to the monitor power button. She pressed it.
The monitor went off.
She waited, murmuring to herself.
She pressed the button again. The monitor came on.
The error message remained.
“SEE? I TOLD YOU REBOOTING DOESN’T FIX IT.”
I stared at her for a moment. I reached for her mouse. I clicked Start –> Restart and let the machine reboot. I stood in awkward silence as the very slow PC rebooted and came back to life.
I opened the application. It displayed without error.
We stared at each other in quiet understanding. I didn’t know what to say, so I just walked away.
To this day, 24/25 years later, I’m not sure what she said to anyone in that room… if anything.
But I’ll always remember how she was adamant that she knew what she was doing.
Tune in next time when we ask…
…WHAT voltage regulator?
Galaxycow 