Problems at the Office

Oh dear. Today really hasn’t gone well.

It started OK with another drop in weight. Another pound dropped and I still don’t feel like I’m starving myself. I’ve recovered from the illnesses so thought I would want to go back to the grilled protein item and vegetables that I was eating, but they just don’t appeal. Hopefully I will continue losing at a steady rate and will then be able to go through my wardrobe and throw out the items that are too big.

Once I got to the office, I started the day by re-booting three SQL servers as we still haven’t been able to back the systems up using Netbackup. The backups are still hanging even after the reboot so we logged a call with Symantec in an attempt to resolve as soon as possible. They tell us that the reason they aren’t working is that the SQL servers need to have a patch installed. However they didn’t explain why the backups used to work successfully and now they don’t. I guess that’s one of the mysteries of working in IT. Things work today and not tomorrow and vice versa.

We are also trying to rollout Windows 7 to all the machines in the company. We’re concentrating on the Head Office at the moment but unfortunately we have a problem with printing. For some reason none of the main printers in the building work with Windows 7. We’ve checked the manufacturers site and apparently the printers aren’t supported. We’ve not got to look at a different solution as we need to get this sorted.

Had a run in with another department in the company as well today. I’d previously asked the cut off time for a Next Day delivery and was told 1pm. So at 12:25pm today I asked when the kit needed to be with the team if I sent the request now only to be told it had to be with them by 12pm. So started a whole conversation about what was actually required. All I needed was to know when the cut off time was and it lead to all of that. Why can’t we get people in that know what they are doing.

I did have some success though. I returned to the server I was working on yesterday – the one that blue screened 3 times. I decided to try installing a different operating system (Windows 2003 R2) via SmartSmart and surprise, surprise this time it worked successfully. So now I have a server that I can configure on the network to use as a new SQL server. It is going to enable us to have a spare SQL server available to run some DR tests. That’s going to be interesting, but it’s something we need to do, just to make sure we are happy.