Boss comes in, his left ear glowing from an hour-long conference-call.
“New job for us,” he announces, “Remember we migrated all that data out of that old database ages ago?”
We nod and mumble, not wanting to get drawn into that particular slough of despond again.
“Well, the client reckons we’ve done it wrong and they want us to check all the data for discrepancies.”
Groan. How tedious. The original work was done by a freelancer who has since retired to the Bahamas on the money we paid him.
“OK,” I sigh, “Where’s the old database hosted?”
It’s not there anymore.” Replies Boss, “They’ve deleted it.”
“Well I like a challenge. “ I quip, “How are we to communicate with this deceased database then? Clairvoyance? Ouija board - could take a while and we don't have any tumblers.”
The unexpectedly rubber edge of my rapier wit bounces harmlessly off Boss’s icy glare. “There’s a backup of it that just needs restoring.”
“OK, where’s that then?”
“It’s on the public share in Resourcing’s domain.”
I try the IP address he gives me. “Nope, no access to there from here.” I inform him.
“Never mind,” he says, “We’ll get server support to copy it for us.”
“Where’s it going then?” I say. He tells me and I try logging in there, thinking it would save a bit of time to set up folders and suchlike. “Windows could not log you on….blah, blah...” So, no access to that either then.
“I’ll get it sorted,” he says wandering off.
“The database software is on there though, right?” I call to his rapidly departing back.
“Nah, you’ll have to install it,” he replies.
"Do we have the install files?"
"No, you'll have to download them."
So.
We have the deceased remains of a database sitting on a server I can’t access, which needs to go to another server I can’t access, upon which there’s no software to run it anyway.
I start to sing quietly.
“Wake up ev’ry mornin’, same thing for breakfas’ so that every mouth can beeee…”
“And you can cut that out for a start!” he snaps.
*Sigh*.
I feel your pain.... so glad I got out of IT before I went totally nuts lol
ReplyDeleteLOL - but you're a miracle worker, right? Probably you just have to use your healing touch on your monitor & it'll be fixed right up :)
ReplyDeleteHave you switched it off and on again?
ReplyDeleteSimilar thing with us - you have to set up your own access to a system via another system that you don't have access to, that no one will tell you where to get access from nor why you need it - you just DO
Uncleandy - I keep hoping to get out of IT one of these days but they will keep paying me!
ReplyDeleteBug - How I wish I could heal computers with my hands. I reckon I'd be the most sought-after person on the planet!
DFTP - All good clean confusing fun!
Update: since I wrote the post... The software I needed was downloaded and turned out to be corrupt once it was copied to the server. Then we couldn't get the install to run because some other process was using all the CPU, meaning nothing else could run. Then the copy of the old databases was too big to copy across the network. So it was compressed, copied and the server did not have winzip, and Windows compressions was not man enough for the job - cacking out at a piffling 2 gig (the file was 40+). So we had to raise a change request to get winzip. Then, when it was all done, all they wanted was a measly count off records in ONE table. A 5-minute job that has taken at last count THREE WEEKS!