Lighter Side – December 2019
Sometimes things happen that make you just step back and say “hmmmm” and today is one of those days. In an attempt to get this website online and following what appears to be clear and concise on-screen prompts, I changed EVERY link on the site to point to a currently used website AND managed to completely remove THIS site from the management console. For those of you web-tech-speak challenged, I hosed the site, sent all traffic to a non-related site, and then removed any chance to edit and fix the mistake. Oops.
Short story long, you are reading this and must therefore conclude I was able to correct this heart-fluttering mishap and you would be correct, but not without contacting the hosting provider tech support and being bounced through 3 different reps before landing on the individual that was equipped with the magic ferry dust to correct the issue.
For those still reading, I didn’t answer YES to the “Are You Sure” prompts, nor did I press the big red button that said “Do something really bad to your website”, nor did I press that “Press this and get a random emoji every day for a month in your inbox” button. In fact, I didn’t “ask” for any such reallocation. There evidently is a little “undocumented feature” that if you did this step, followed by this other step, and then went back to that first step, oh, oops — BUT, dang, no one would EVER do that so we don’t need to fix the software.
Fast forward one day. The “fix” yesterday broke an unrelated site sometime over the evening. Just wonderful. So, with some digging and prodding, i was able to determine the issue and affect the changes to correct the issue. Goodness how a simple bug in software can add so much overhead to a process.
One day a former colleague encountered an HVAC repair technician with his head buried in a compressor box, soaked with sweat and mumbling. When asked what was wrong, the the tech replied “This crazy thing is driving me nuts. This is the 3rd time I’ve fixed it this week”. My colleague kindly replied, “I think you are mistaken, my friend. You worked on it 3 times this week – You have yet to fix it”.
Which brings me to the real point of this post — While we go about our days as system experts and knowledge workers we develop processes, create procedures, and develop guidance that help our clients navigate their landscape and make their lives more productive and predictable. Well, hopefully – so I challenge you to look a little deeper at the “What If’s” and “Whycome’s” of our craft and let’s truly perform a service that goes beyond the surface and deeply enriches the lives of those we serve. Sometimes we need to dig just a little deeper to not just work on an issue, but truly resolve it.
Happy computing,
\\//\\//olf
Guest post by Wolf Scott
CEO, Newcare International
wscott@newcare.io
https://newcare.international