There are days when I really do wish I could turn my life into a 24/7 unedited live video stream, not because I seek my 15 nanoseconds of fame, or because my life is just so fucking awesome and interesting, quite the opposite….
More of a fly on the wall documentary on the fall of Rome, as seen by Biggus Dickus, hypocaust and sewer worker.
But business and commercial and practical realities mean it cannot be so.
So, hyperbolically, because we all like a bit of hyperbole… fnaaar fnaaar
The day starts with a router swap, the old one is dead, except, when I get there, it isn’t, it’s not working because someone at the ISP made a Radius server edit, and to fix it all they need to do is put the correct CHAP user name into Radius.
You’d think they have this data in their customer files, but no, so the fall back position would be to log in to the router, oops… and get it that way, but even when I tell them the CHAP user name and they sort their Radius server, they still can’t log in to the router, probably because the vty sections of the config is all screwed up, yes, they managed at some point 12 months ago (the customer tells me) to lock themselves out of their own router.
When pondering how this can happen and being passed between various dweebs at the ISP, none of whom appears to know more than one single command or task each themselves, so it takes teamwork Sam, I see how it happened, the guys at the ISP are using the Cisco telnet session to chat to each other, what the fuck could possibly go wrong….
You start to worry when one of those dweebs asks me if I know what the command line “length 0” means in the vty bit of the config….. (term len 0) I just tell him “Don’t ask me bud, I’m just the bloody field tech….” while making cock-sucking motions with my hand and mouth.
So, two and a half hours later we have eventually replaced one perfectly good router with another perfectly good router, and given the ISP the chap username for their Radius server, and sorted remote access to the box for the ISP, this qualifies as a successful job…. rock on Tommy.
Next I’m informed there is an urgent job an hour away down south from me, no sweat, but, the part, well it’s five hours away from me up north, so some dweeb has been given a part that costs maybe £230 new and sent on a 5 hour drive to me.
Then, they work out that the site is due to close in about 6 hours…
There ensue 4 separate telephone conversations with the brain dead fucks in head office, explaining to them that a package a 5 hour drive away from me isn’t going to get to site any quicker if I drive one or two hours north to meet the dweeb driving south half way, on the contrary, due to the vagaries of motorway systems, junctions, and no crossovers between north and south bound service areas, all we are going to do is fuck things up and delay matters.
Besides, I tell them, three fucking times, me and the dweeb in question have already spoken on the phone, it’s sorted, he has the GPS co-ordinates of the ideal place to meet me and do the handover.
Two more phone calls from the brain dead fucks in head office.
No response to the emails from me to them asking for more info, as it stands I have a site address, a closing time, and I’m getting a box with a new router…. you know, things like site data, contact numbers (particularly out of hours) and configuration data might be a fucking idea….
….crickets….
So, I eventually get to site, literally ten minutes before it is about to shut, thinking fuck it, I’m here, the dreaded 4 hours SLA is only just out, with any luck I can convince the store to accept the package before we all fuck off home for the night, 4 hours overtime for me, cool.
The best laid plans… the brain dead fucks of earlier also happened to tell me we were under the hammer, 4 hour SLA with penalties, the store manager, despite it being 10 minutes before closing, can’t decide whether to shake my hand or just drop and give me a blow job, you see, the site has been hard down for three full days now….
Ah.
So I spend the next two and a half hours on site trying to get all the data that I need to configure the new router, I eventually get half of it, in a “just send the cunt a 9 meg attachment with all the documents from the proj, including all 350 client sites, and let him work it out” which would be good, or good enough, if the bundle sent to me was complete, and updated, and contained all the info I needed.
Every 20/25 minutes I’m calling out of hours support, who keep telling me they have called 3rd line support, and they are gonna get back to me asap, two hours in, for reasons that shall become apparent later, I call them back and tell them I’m bailing in 15 minutes, whether the required info is supplied to me or not (as I type this, still no contact…lol) at which time out of hours support admit that when they said they had spoken several times to 3rd line support who were gonna get back to me, what they actually meant was they had left voice-mail messages for 3rd line, who weren’t answering the phone.
Well, that was a waste of time, but hey, just think of the overtime.
My overtime clock is now sat at 5 hours and we all decide to call it quits.
I drive 10 minutes to the frankly ham-beast skank slut I texted while waiting for 3rd line to call me back, yeah, she’ll lock the kids in their rooms if I wanna pop over for a quick coffee and empty my balls into her.
I’m in and out that door in 30 minutes including the leisurely smoke and coffee, her kids are hearing strange men’s voices but she tells em none of their fucking business, go to bed, we go upstairs, we strip, she kneels on the bed, I fuck the slob doggy style, she sucks my cock clean, I dress and leave….
Just time to catch the Thai takeaway before it closes, that’s another 15 bucks on the expense account for this job, chow down on some nice grub, slug an alcohol free beer ( I know, but I’m driving, and don’t want a coke etc) and head home.
I arrive home just after midnight having accrued 7 hours overtime on this job, at time and a half, and having achieved sweet fuck all for the customer…. but hey, I got a free thai dinner and got paid to empty my balls… and Nero could only fiddle while Rome burned.
Still heard -crickets- from my own HQ or the ISP 3rd line support about the job itself.
The site itself is of course still clearly hard down, day four of same…
No doubt someone is going to have to go back to site and sort it.
The site itself, one of those mall retail park places, and everything hangs off a single fucking DSL line, no backup, and the computers struggle to run XP, hell, they would have struggled when they and XP were all new.
The staff, think people of wal-mart, you won’t be far wrong.
Meanwhile everything on site is 5 days out of sync, by everything I mean stock control, inventory, sales, cash, staff hours and rotas, POS specials and updates, the works, and it’s a prace bets now on just how many days out of sync such a creaky and weedy system can function before it goes tits up for good.
Waiting for the crash?
We’re living through it.
