Sarah, get lost

[protege]

Some more tech tales about our favorite employee

First one involves a keyboard. For some reason, a coworker's keyboard wasn't working. Rather than let me take care of it, Sarah had to get involved. She spent a good 20 minutes swapping out keyboards and mice (don't ask, I'm still going about that), plugging them into all of the USB ports...before going into the device manager, and started screwing around with drivers. Seriously? A quick unplug/plug back in would have fixed it. If not, reboot the computer. It'll attempt to reconnect the keyboard, and you're back in business. Instead, she screwed up the drivers, and I had to fix it. I could have had the keyboard taken care of in less than 5 minutes had she not decided to screw with it

Second one is why she's not allowed to mess with the server. Nor is she allowed to be in the server closet when I'm working on it.

Our server is only a few years old. But, it's no longer up to the job, and will sometimes lock up during the day. I've been keeping an eye on it, because if it fails...we're SOL. Every couple of hours, I run in there, and make sure it's behaving itself.

The other day, that piece of crap was not only handling its usual massive load, but was also trying to download a couple of Windows updates. All of a sudden, it sounded like an entire squadron of jets taking off in there Turns out that the system's resources were totally maxed out, and all of the fans (16 of them--12 in the case, 4 on the board) were running at full tilt, trying to keep it from overheating.

I'm in there freaking out, because I'm trying to kill enough processes, and nothing is getting the server's load down. I felt a "disturbance in the Force" behind me, and sure enough, she was standing behind me. Naturally, I told her to get lost.

Apparently, she was a bit annoyed that I wasn't showing her what I was doing. Seriously? I have a server to fix. It's failing, and I don't have the time to slow down and repeat myself a million times so you can take notes--and tell me what I'm doing "wrong." Fuck off and let me do my job. Plus, why the hell are you taking notes? Do you really think I'm going to let you in here again to fuck with the server?

Third, the website. She gets on a heavily-trafficked website to gather the reports she needs for her job. Several times a day, I get to hear her drone on about how "slow" the site is, or that it "broke." Then I get to hear her complain about how I "won't do anything about it."

Again, seriously? The site is slow...because their server sucks and can't handle the traffic. Believe it or not, but if millions of people are trying to access the same things, it tends to slow down. Nothing I can do about that. Nor can I do anything if you insist on using Chrome, which per the FAQ on the site, isn't supported. Yes, I know it sucks. Let me install IE11 already.

Did I mention the other crap she's done? Since being hired, she's managed to kill multiple computers, pissed off our 3rd party tech, and annoyed the guy installing the phones. She thinks she knows more than she does, and it's annoying. Still, at least she's no longer going on about SQL...without having a clue as to what it is or what it does

[SilverOrb]

What an idiot. I am no computer genius, but I can usually muck about and get it. Key is I know enough to- NOT screw anything up in the meantime, and to know what I don't know. Google is my friend, and I am not ashamed to call my computer tech Dad for advice. I also stay the hell out of the way in the event of a techy crisis.

[earl colby pottinger]

Why?

Why is she still working there if she messes systems up so much?

Why did she not do a reboot first? It is the simplest and least harmful thing to do if unplugging/count_to_ten/plugging_back in does not work.

What is wrong with the company that they allow anyone into the server room?

What is wrong with the company that the server has not been upgraded?

Do you have any budget for the server? Do you know where the bottleneck is? If it is hard drive access I would highly suggest you install SSDs, you may not need to upgrade the rest of the hardware.

You mention of the fans and that suggests the CPUs are maxing out. You really need a major upgrade to be safe. Will you ever get the budget needed?

[rose_metal_nz]

Will you ever get the budget needed?

Magic 8 ball says.......................... No.

Magic conch shell says..................... Nothing.

[Tama]

You know, when you mentioned you have to check it every few hours or you're all SOL, I thought of the Shining's infamous boiler/furnace...

[protege]

Why is she still working there if she messes systems up so much?

She's there, because she tends to kiss ass like a champ. Plus, she is good at her job. Not so much at dealing with computer issues. She thinks that she knows more than she does...which is probably why she didn't think of rebooting the computer. That would have saved her a *lot* of time.

What is wrong with the company that they allow anyone into the server room?

Small company, and the "server room" is just a closet. A closet, that also contains most of our supplies. Yeah, I know. But, it wasn't up to me. At least that without the server's login and password, there's very little anyone can do in there.

What is wrong with the company that the server has not been upgraded?

Small company that really doesn't like to spend cash. As built, the server worked fine for storage and running our applications. Then the company expanded its use--it now handles the email, printers, and was never designed for its current load. When built, it worked fine for what we were using it for. Now we have several people from other offices, logging via Terminal over a VPN.

You mention of the fans and that suggests the CPUs are maxing out. You really need a major upgrade to be safe. Will you ever get the budget needed?

It's getting replaced very soon--it arrived on Thursday morning, and was being worked on when I left work yesterday. Sure, we could have upgraded the old one, but why? A new one wasn't that much more. All that's left now, is to set the printers up, and configure our applications. As for the old one, it's probably being cut up for scrap.