>> I really hope I manage to sort out this giant mess sometime soon - 
>> because I do *not* enjoy being this worked up.
> 
> What /did/ they do, or are you still trying to trace their steps? Hate 
> that when someone comes in, changes a ton of things, and neglects to 
> inform you of those changes. I've had that happen numerous times, with 
> varying degrees of failure because I was not made aware of the changes.

It's just a case of these two guys brought a bunch of equipment along 
with them and went into the new server room and started *doing* things, 
and they're just in there little room *doing* stuff and *doing* other 
stuff, and *somebody* is supposed to be documenting every step of this 
process. Not to mention, half of this stuff was supposed to be formally 
authorised by management *before* anything was done!

Now, our manager knows nothing about computers. He'll sign any bit of 
paper you push in front of him. But that's not the point. The point is 
that auditors will expect to see a bit of paper with a specific set of 
signatures on it, dated before the time of the change. And that doesn't 
exist. The fact that it's an entirely redundant paper excercise is 
irrelevant. We didn't do what we should have done. This makes 
auditors... unhappy.

So I basically just spent my afternoon following these guys around with 
a set of logbooks frantically trying to write down everything they did.

A number of people seem to think that these guys are doing this to me 
"on purpose". They aren't. They're far too stupid to be devious. It 
simply doesn't enter their tiny little minds that we might even need to 
record or authorise this stuff.

Over at HQ, they have systems marked as "validated". These have an 
angelic halo around them, and you can't so much as *touch* them without 
getting authorisation and doing regression testing and so on and so 
forth. And then there's... EVERYTHING ELSE. And equipment beloning to 
the "everything else" set... you can do what the hell you like with. You 
don't have to record a bean.

So these guys seem to think that anything that doesn't have this magical 
"validated" halo, it's OK to just pull it apart and screw around with it 
with impunity. Over here, that's not how it works. Over here, *all* 
computer systems must be controlled. Even the ones that have nothing to 
do with our actual regulated work. EVERYTHING MUST BE RECORDED.

Repeatedly this seems to geniunely shock them. Like just this afternoon, 
one guy shut down one of the servers ready to remove it. So I recorded 
the time he shut it down. And he was like "wow, gee, you *record* server 
reboots? Damn, we only bother recording it if we actually add or remove 
validated software..." [The UK, however, records absolutely every time 
the server is touched. Every minor configuration change. Major config 
changes require formal authorisation...]

Aaaaaaanyway, it's the weekend! Bitches! So I DON'T HAVE TO CARE ANY 
MORE!!! :-D

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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