Do you have the ability to follow simple instructions?
If I told you to plug in 3 cables to specific ports on a switch, could you do it?
If I asked you to bridge a connection in the two middle ports, and give me a management link on the clearly labeled management link (NOT THE TCP RESET PORT)..Could you do it without taking away an hour of my time in the evening?

I write this post, since someone couldn’t succeed at one, more than one of the following, or all of the below:
1) They have no ability to distinguish the different letters in “MANAGEMENT” or “TCP RESET”
2) They can’t tell the difference between a 2 and 0 .
3) They cannot follow simple directions with color coding.
4) The person in question makes a “Dee, Dee, Dee” from Carlos Mencia look like a college grad.
5) This person works in Information Technology, but doesn’t understand the concept of a bridge, a management link, or a “TCP RESET” port.

Since the person responsible for a job tonight couldn’t do any of the following, my evening (a.k.a. precious drinkin’ time) was ruined by an hour call trying to do basic troubleshooting with the help desk to help some n00b onsite realize that the “TCP RESET” port IS NOT(!=) the “MANAGEMENT” port. So not only does the person on site has an official certificate of a “Dee, Dee, Dee,” But the person working the help desk isn’t any smarter. Carlos Mencia, if your reading this, please give both of these people official certificates to be official “Dee, Dee, Dee’s.”)

Rule 1 of troubleshooting is to check Layer 1 of the OSI model(Physical Layer, meaning cabling, and PHYSICAL CONNECTIVITY). Troubleshooting starts at the layer 1 and makes its way up, after each previous layer has been eliminated as the cause of the problem. I learned this in High School, so there is no excuse for anyone working in IS not to know this.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 10:25 pm and is filed under Computers, My Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.