posted
OK, so today is the deadline for delivering the code on the skims, right? Well, what should happen but our joyful computer people - who I hope were not informed about the deadline, though the darkly suspicious part of me darkly suspects that someone didn't want to do all that work - decide that this is an excellent time to take the batch queues down for patching. Granted, they did warn us in advance, on an obscure forum (BaBar has dozens of the damn things, they start a new one every time someone wants his thesis reviewed) that nobody ever reads.
Well, there is, admittedly, a way around that, though since everyone and his test job will be using it, it's liable to be kinda slow. Strike two : Yep, our whole network connection goes down. Happy, happy, joy, joy. So I spent a while waiting for that, and indeed it does come back, _except_ for the computers I actually need, because they're the ones that have access to the data I want.
As you may guess, I was a touch annoyed by this time, so I tried running the stuff on our farm in Italy. Where, naturally, the newest version of the software - which I needed 'cos I was using some shiny new features - hadn't been uploaded. I'm told November 1st is a big holiday in Catholic countries. Besides, they're not only European, they're actually Italian; make that, "the week of November 1st." (I do not jest; my coworker is Italian, and this is what he said.)
Well, the good bit about all this is, I got to give up in disgust and go home early. Where I found to my utter and total joy that my home connection was out also. Oh, and incidentally, I couldn't get a dial tone for my phone.
So I spend some time power cycling stuff; no dice. By experimenting, I did eventually find that I could get a dial tone by disconnecting the little splitter thing that gives you both DSL and phone line from one phone jack. I used to think that there's nothing worse than the hold music you get in customer service lines; the Earthlink people have managed the impossible, however. You get little 'tips' like [Really Perky Voice] "Try turning your modem off, waiting for thirty seconds, and turning it back on! You'll be amazed! At how often this! Solves the problem!" [/Really Perky Voice] I wonder where they hunted down the Last of the Valley Girls? She ought to be in a museum somewhere.
So anyway, it takes me a few minutes to explain to the guy that
a) I have reset and power cycled both modem and computer several times already, thank'ee kindly, and b) No, I do not want to try again because then I would have to disconnect my phone ('cos I can only get a dial tone without the damn splitter) and then I'd have to call you again. Incidentally, is everyone on those phone support lines a Hispanic who speaks really bad English? I've called them three or four times, and I have yet to get a native speaker.
He advises me to buy a new splitter, and get reimbursed by Earthlink. Well, that's nice, thank you. Then I suddenly remembered that, hey, I've got the splitter from Cincinnati - why not try that? No dice. So I call them back - it seems we mis-diagnosed the problem, I really don't think I can have two defective splitters.
In the middle of that call, all spontaneously, my modem lights come back on.
I am just a little annoyed.
At least we got an extension on the deadline - site-wide outages tend to have that effect. I'll be highly motivated for testing the skims tomorrow, you may be sure.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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![[No No]](graemlins/nono.gif)
us computer people don;t like ir when god messes with our royters.
