Oh man, where do I even *start*?

I spent most of today just sitting around *waiting* for my new server to 
turn up.

When it finally arrived, I had to waste more time on a conference call 
with the IT bods from the USA. (Apparently our director of IT doesn't 
know how to set up a conference call - yet he insisted that I sit there 
and wait for 45 minutes while he repeatedly tried to get it to work.)

When that finally worked, all I got was a bunch of people asking me dumb 
questions. ("Do you know the actual filenames of the database files? Do 
you have backups of all of those files? You know you need to install 
Windows from the CD and not try to copy the old Windows installation 
from tape, right?")

Eventually they shut up and let me get on with my job. But soon I hit 
the next snag: They want me to install Windows 2000 Server, but the 
manufacturer's setup CD only includes drivers for Windows 2003 Server or 
later.

(They think that using 2000 will mean the QA process is simpler - but 
then, they think I'm going to follow *their* QA process. Eventually our 
QA manager made it clear that the UK is going to be following the UK QA 
process. But they still don't really "get it". From where I'm sitting, 
it makes no difference at all what OS the server runs - so long as the 
software passes the tests we're going to run on it.)

To this end, I spent 2 hours and 20 minutes on the phone to a guy in the 
USA while he dithered and dallied over what to do about the problem. (My 
repeated cries of "I really need to leave now" and "I've got an 
appointment to get to" and "can't we sort this out tomorrow?" fell on 
deaf ears.) I wouldn't mind, but I spent most of the time just sitting 
around listening to the guy muttering to himself and chatting to his 
collegues about the weather.

We did manage to obtain an older version of the setup CD, but it 
wouldn't recognise my Windows 2000 CD as containing Windows 2000. (We 
don't really know why. The guy claims it's because the CD contains 2000 
Server and 2000 Professional. But I think he's just guessing.)

After many, many hours of trying to convince 2000 to install, he finally 
agreed to install Windows 2003 Server instead. This worked immediately, 
first time. That was at about 7:20, when I *finally* started driving home.

As you can see, this means that now the new server is going to be 
configured and set up by an American. Not by me. If they would have just 
let me install 2003 in the first place when it became apparent that 2000 
wasn't going to work, I could have been *finished* by now. But noooo.

The really irritating part is that *yet again* I'm going to have to put 
up with a server that somebody else has configured. If *I* had set it 
up, I would have written down every option, every setting, every button 
press, every minute detail of the setup as I did it. It would all be 
recorded and logged.

But I didn't; the Americans are setting it up. And they don't believe 
that recording stuff is "necessary". So tomorrow I'm going to have to 
waste hours trying to reverse-engineer what they've done. I find myself 
almost *hoping* that something will go wrong so that I will have an 
excuse to undo everything they've done and do it myself properly. But I 
know there is almost no chance of that happening.

I have a really worrying feeling that their "Oracle expert" might 
attempt to repair the Oracle database for me. I deeply hope that doesn't 
happen. Who knows what kind of a train wreck I'd end up having to fix...

On the other hand, we're supposed to be getting rid of this whole system 
"any day now". So this new server and all the new problems it's now 
going to have might not even have to run for very long. Maybe if I keep 
telling myself that, it'll start to not seem so terrible...

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

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