Can you be more specific? You can't. OK, please hold.

Jul 21, 2009 01:37

This was pretty much my day today. I rolled out not one but two application updates today. At first things seemed to go smoothly, in spite of the lackadaisical attitude of the dba I was working with. The database updates went smoothly. The executables were pushed successfully. No screams of protest from the users. Waiting... waiting... cricket... cricket... think I'll get lunch. Yep, that did it. It's like saying, think I'll take a walk on a cloudy day and leave my umbrella in the office. Best way to ensure a torrential downpour.

I returned to my desk to find this message waiting for me, "Many users are reporting that they can log into [application] but they are receiving errors when they use [function].  Please advise."  Really?  "Errors"?  "Please advice"?  Here's some advice, I might actually be able to advise you on the problem if you are a little more fucking specific about the errors.  The person who sent this email to me is an IT specialist in the IT unit that supports an entire bureau of a government agency.  Your tax dollars at work.

So I finally got a screen shot from this genius.  It was just a database permissions error.  It took a while to chase down because the thing that was throwing the error hadn't been altered, so if it worked before it should still work, right?  Except maybe it had changed.  Sort of.  I think I may have put in some extra error trapping so an error that was always happening before was suddenly being noticed.  I made the changes to this application over six months ago and then back-burnered it while I worked on the other application that had to be launched with it (they use some common code).  (I should mention that I inherited these applications from another programmer who retired (lucky bastard) and left me his messes to clean up.)

Oh and just to make things more interesting, the IT department that handled distributing the new executables decided to write a new script to handle the distro.  This actually made sense since there are close to 50 users to update.  But they didn't distribute to the same file location as the previous version, so there are new shortcuts, and they didn't remove the old shortcuts on the user machines that point to the old file location, so i also had weird errors that were clearly indicative of running the old app against the new database changes.  Brilliant.

The other application seemed to be running smoothly, but there is some sort of issue with one of the users locking up in the database when she updates a record.  That's not good.  Especially since I am supposed to be on vacation starting Wednesday.  No word yet about the rest of the users.

In other, happier news, I finally got my volunteer confirmation from Falcon Ridge (Two days before the fest! Cutting it close much?).  I am working on the gate ticket sales crew which I think will be pretty cush so I'm happy.  I've got a tent and a bed and they're going to feed me most of the time so food is not a big issue.  I mostly just need clothes, sunscreen and bug repellent. And rain boots. And an umbrella. Tomorrow night - shopping for missing items and packing.

geekery, falcon ridge, work crap

Previous post Next post
Up