Your 9/11 IT Headquarters

All the technology in the world did not stop 9/11. It will not stop the next '9/11', either. Technology is only as gentle or as brutal as the person who uses it. I won't bore you with the tale of my 9/11 experience (we showed up to work, 9/11 happened, we went home) because it's about as dramatic as that single scuffed gray floor tile on Aisle 6 of your local supermarket.

You know the one I am talking about.

Data Center Design and Disaster Recovery still remain the red-headed stepchildren of IT. Then disaster strikes and those unsung individuals who have been quietly working nights and weekends to keep everything together suddenly become the most important people in the company.

Weird how that works.

Let's Stick a Fork In, Shall We?

Congratulations and "I'm sorry" to the persons who kept up with reading my consistently-inconsistent posts about working in IT. I'm not keeping this place up - I know it and now it's time for me to clean house.

The big news - for me at least - is that I've accepted a new position in a new location that begins two weeks from today. I'll be putting "IT Manager" on my resume for the first time and the circumstances which got me here are so weird that they defy description.

After several months of weekly posts to Valleywag, I've decided to take a mentor's advice and kill this blog. Even though the real reason I haven't been posting over here is that the soon-to-be-previous day job takes 110% of my attention 110% of the time and slicing out pieces of wisdom I've gained is getting more difficult all the time, I realize that there's a deeper truth and it's time for me to face it.

So the future of this place will pretty much become a repository of processed information - a place to put the gestalt of what I have learned about IT - as I write it, which will not be daily. I think I might have some things to say going forward as little bits and pieces of my last 6 months start wending back through my head but I'm putting a placeholder in right now that says "(Not that it's a surprise to anyone but) I won't be publishing here on a regular basis." I'll still maintain the space as mine if I ever get to a point where I'm back in the game and a soap box is welcome.

Thanks for reading - I will be posting more regularly on my personal blog - http://www.timwoolery.net but that will be of interest to a much smaller community, I am sure.

Cheers!

Close Your Incoming Help Desk Calls in 1/2 the Time

Even as an engineer - the day job will have me support the Help Desk a day out of the week or more, depending on staffing. What I remember about working the Help Desk on a daily basis has convinced me that you can close maybe 90-95% of your calls in half the time by covering these points in the first minute: complete contact info, a ten-word version of the problem and a decision from you as to whether you have the resources to fulfill the call completely.

Complete Contact Info - the user's full name (correct spelling, please), their direct phone number and a backup and finally, their email address [it works, right?].
Ten-Word Version of the Problem - If this turns out to be a problem you'll escalate, how long will it take for the next guy to decipher the problem because you took two paragraphs to explain what you could in one sentence. Learn to edit your notes down to "THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG" first and then write whatever comes after it as context.
Decision: Can You Fix This Right Now? - You know the answer to this question better than anyone else? Are you fixing the issue or are you farting around? When it comes to phone support - nothing's worse than sitting there trying to troubleshoot a problem with no clear resolution. "Try that...did that work?" "No..." "Okay, try that...how was that?" "No...". Get a remote access solution for your users like Go2Assist or GoToMeeting from Citrix. Connect, troubleshoot and put together a clear picture of the problem. Do you have the tools and resources to move forward now? No? Get off the phone, then, please and call back when you do.

Use the fact that you hate doing phone support as a means, not to get out of work by ignoring it but get out of work by creating less of it for yourself. Watch what happens!

Achieving "Jerk-Proof" Customer Service

Consumerist.com had a great exchange from a reader over the weekend who evidently assumed the blog editors would side with him, the consumer, against a company he was having a disagreement with. He thought wrong. The 10-word version is: Jerk has a problem - everyone knows he's a jerk now.

I am still in search for the jerk-free customer service business model. Although I take comfort in knowing that no one else has found it - we can find amusement in the ways the system outs those who seek to abuse our quest.

Consumerist.com - The Worst Tip We Have Ever Received.

Stop Panicking about the Stock Market and Get Back to Work

We pause the current economic pants-wetting to remind you that IT will continue to be a valuable assset to whatever company you happen to work for regardless of the current national economic climate. We also remind you that you are an intelligent individual who will continue to find ways to keep the clothes on your back, the roof over your head and food on the table.

The US economy is nowhere near the record-setting unemployment numbers that it experienced during the Great Depression. Nor are people likely to be living in the streets, starving or going from riches-to-rags in a heartbreaking montage filmed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe. You were fine yesterday...you are fine today...you will be fine tomorrow. Calm down, get back to work and continue to maintain the value you have.

Reload Your Citrix Web Plug-in for Fun and Profit

(*** Note*** - This fixes Citrix / launch.ica issues for individual desktops. I didn't see much material on this in my Google searches and am documenting it for any other support person who doesn't troubleshoot Citrix regularly.)

So...Citrix clients...

Citrix being one of the foremost shared-app providers gives your Windows, Mac or Linux clients a browser-driven option to access your business applications rather than having to install the fat client on every conceivable laptop or workstation they might try to do business from. Very innovative - but what do you do when it fouls up? The application itself can be disabled in IE or Mozilla by disabling add-ons (see screenshot) but if the Citrix server, which normally pushes the web client, refuses to push the client - you really might be up the proverbial creek. What we found is, despite rebooting and removing the directory, the plug-in refused to push and Citrix kept pushing the launch.ica file and with nothing associated to that file extension, we couldn't open any published application.

Here's one of those times where Google didn't help - all my searches that included 'launch.ica' came back with a server-related solution and in this case, it was only one workstation. Am I stuck?

Not necessarily. You can visit Citrix and get the web client by going to the Client Downloads section. Don't be confused - XenApp is Citrix, download the XenApp Plugin and run the installer. When there, select the web installer only to install and allow it to load. Once all that was completed, the user was able to launch his published apps.

Advice for the job and for life...

VMWare stock dropped 15%...Wall St. is guzzling Maalox waiting to see if they will be bailed out. Your job security is evaporating. Your living costs are skyrocketing. Everything is quickly going to crap!

So slow down...and take a moment to breathe.

11 Ways to Bring Out the Awesome - from Zenhabits.org