House, I.T.
Inspired by a thought I had during "lunch" today...
"Customers lie." Reminiscent of Greg House's statements that patients lie and cannot be trusted to provide correct, useful information.
While I tried to eat lunch, a support call came in. The client had a working install, but downgraded their server to Windows XP from Veesta. That's all well and good, worked some magic and got them an extra code to unlock the "new" server.
I was talking with the customer thought our internal support guy, who was talking to our partner's support personnel who were actually talking to the customer. The partner support said talking to this customer was like pulling teeth (Dental pun) and it took an hour to find out they had downgraded the server and that's why it wasn't working anymore. After I worked my magic, the client's original Internet Unlock Code would work for them again, but for some reason partner support decided to create a manual unlock code to give to the client.
Partner support said the client's fingerprint hadn't changed. I thought that was odd, but wasn't sure how the licensing components got the fingerprint; whether it was purely hardware, or if there were operating system components in it. The manual code didn't work. So I worked my magic again and asked partner support to tell the client to do an Internet Unlock this time.
I went back to lunch and checked the code table in the database afterward. Guess what! The internet unlock code worked, and the fingerprint was not the same as it had been.
And now, a poem: "My Dream" by Ogden Nash.
This is my dream,
It is my own dream,
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt.
Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.
This was on today's Writer's Almanac. Even though G.K. read it twice, I still went back and listened to it again. Something about it struck a chord...
I also listened to a This American Life anniversary episode of some kind. I'm not sure if they purposely re-released it, or if my podcatcher randomly grabbed it again, but it was a good one. The first act was a bit from Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot, specifically her story about her family coming to visit her in New York for Thanksgiving. I always liked that story.
"Customers lie." Reminiscent of Greg House's statements that patients lie and cannot be trusted to provide correct, useful information.
While I tried to eat lunch, a support call came in. The client had a working install, but downgraded their server to Windows XP from Veesta. That's all well and good, worked some magic and got them an extra code to unlock the "new" server.
I was talking with the customer thought our internal support guy, who was talking to our partner's support personnel who were actually talking to the customer. The partner support said talking to this customer was like pulling teeth (Dental pun) and it took an hour to find out they had downgraded the server and that's why it wasn't working anymore. After I worked my magic, the client's original Internet Unlock Code would work for them again, but for some reason partner support decided to create a manual unlock code to give to the client.
Partner support said the client's fingerprint hadn't changed. I thought that was odd, but wasn't sure how the licensing components got the fingerprint; whether it was purely hardware, or if there were operating system components in it. The manual code didn't work. So I worked my magic again and asked partner support to tell the client to do an Internet Unlock this time.
I went back to lunch and checked the code table in the database afterward. Guess what! The internet unlock code worked, and the fingerprint was not the same as it had been.
And now, a poem: "My Dream" by Ogden Nash.
This is my dream,
It is my own dream,
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt.
Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.
This was on today's Writer's Almanac. Even though G.K. read it twice, I still went back and listened to it again. Something about it struck a chord...
I also listened to a This American Life anniversary episode of some kind. I'm not sure if they purposely re-released it, or if my podcatcher randomly grabbed it again, but it was a good one. The first act was a bit from Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot, specifically her story about her family coming to visit her in New York for Thanksgiving. I always liked that story.