Accidentally caught a perfect picture- including the roadsign... which curiously ties into my main thought this week.

Troubleshooting and Assumptions

Adminisk8or

08/27/2023

It's an interesting thing, when, being a network technician with years of experience, you sometimes get assigned strange tasks... like sprinkler work. Well, technically, that's an objective way to look at it; I got asked to connect a client's sprinkler system up to their Wi-fi, and then ended up programming in the zones and everything. It was an amusing day to spend a Monday.

But despite the fun stories, there's also the ...other fun stories. Like how I spent two nights in a row up til 2 AM upgrading a client's virtual machine OS's. Funny enough, most of them played nicely... but there always has to be that one, doesn't there? Most all the servers were running on Windows server 2012R2 to 2016... except on that was on 2012, and I didn't even think about it, and just assumed it was 2012R2... so when I tried upgrading over and over, I just figured it was broken, and created a new one and migrated data over... but also, that can be a fun task when you are replacing a WDS server... and it was not without it's seemingly nonsense moments at 1 in the morning.

But I made it. Actually, come to think of it, perhaps the most notable story this week was when we had a school whose phones mysteriously stopped working. As such, I was on top priority to get thtm up and running- especially with it being the start of the school year. After much looking, and checking in with their SIP provider, I and my manager came to the conclusion that it must be something to do with the firewall licensing. It seemed to explain well both the odd nature of the issue, and the coincidental timing, as the trial license had expired not all too long ago. After some gracious cooperation with our reps on that, we had the trial temporarily extended, and I assumed that would be that... but it wasn't. More troubleshooting that Friday morning, along with help from their SIP provider would lead me on to find the fix... and for once, it was not anything I could've even guessed was actually the problem.

The solution (too boring and irrelevant to discuss here- rest assured, it was a weirdly specific SIP trunk setting), I had expected would be either something I had assumed early on but quickly dismissed (like a Scooby-doo villain) or else it would've been something very close to what I had assumed. I have just become so used to get most things right on something, but then spending hours later diagnosing some big issue, only to discover I missed a simple, small but important step early along in the process.

It was a nice reminder to me that things are not always what they seem. Indeed, I was so caught up in the idea that "it couldn't have possibly happened by random chance" that I hardly gave that idea a chance. And wouldn't you know it, although it doesn't happen often, the demon of spontaneous nature struck when I least expected it. Sometimes I've been guilty of thinking that way- not just in terms of troubleshooting technology- but with things and even people. Out loud, I shun and spit at the idea of putting labels on people- and yet I cannot avoid being a normal human being and making associations between different people I see. I have been trying hard not to do so more and more each day- but if there's anything that'll bring it out in me, it's definitely when I hit the roadways. I'll leave it at that, and you can fill in the blanks.

But maybe there's an idea- don't make unnecessary assumptions (besides, you know what they say about assumptions, right?). Whether it's trying to fix something or meeting someone for the first time- just because it's happened before- even a hundred times- does not mean it's a constant of nature. And here's the craziest part- perhaps you can be the one to bring out that spontaneous difference...?

But that's enough rambling this week. Until next time, see ya! mixing