Just another manic Monday

Last year, in July, I attended a week long SQL class in Houston. On the third or fourth day of class, I got a frantic phone call from the HEL. There was something wrong with the SQL server. It kept crashing. She was going to place a service call to Dell and she'd let me know later whether I needed to leave class or not. Dell had her run their diagnostics which either didn't report a problem or kept changing its mind about what the problem was so Dell overnighted us just about every part on that server that could be replaced. The parts arrived as did a technician the next day. He swapped out just about every part that Dell sent before the silly server finally came up and stayed up.

Anyway, last week, while attending a week long VB.net class in Houston, on the fourth day of class, I noticed that the SQL server had stopped emailing me status reports on the jobs I have scheduled to run overnight every night. I emailed the AKYM and the HEL to ask if something had happened to the server. Knowing them, when I didn't hear anything to the contrary, I assumed the server was OK and there was just some sort of hiccup they would deal with by rebooting the server since every time this had happened in the past I had kicked everyone off the server and rebooted it. Well, we all know what happens when you assume something. Come Friday, there were still no status reports.

So anyway, I get to work this morning to a SQL server that had crashed sometime after 10 p.m. but before 11 p.m. Saturday night. And the silly bugger wouldn't boot up without intervention. Whatever the Embedded Server Management is wasn't loading. The New Guy and I got it up and it ran happily all day with nary a complaint from anyone about performance. Since the New Guy is here, it's no longer my responsibility to figure out what ESM is and get it fixed. It's his job now. Small comfort since I'm the one who's been babying that server since it was installed last year. And it has needed babying. That is the most temperamental computer I've ever worked with.

Which brings us to the New Guy. As I said, he started today. He was supposed to start last month but personal issues prevented him. Technically, he is our Network Admin. He walked in this morning and I hit him with the temperamental SQL server and the fact we have no BDC (backup domain controller) because ours died a couple of months ago and neither the HEL nor I have any idea how to build an NT box to replace it. And then there's the web server that decided it didn't really want to be one. And let's not forget the three laptops we suspect are broken though we don't remember what's wrong with them because too much has happened since they were turned in and we honestly forgot we had them until we went looking for something else and found them instead.

So I spend time getting him set up and squeezed in because the HEL is on vacation this week. And I have to catch up with what I missed being out all last week plus the stuff I left sitting on my desk the week before along with the new stuff that cropped up today.

As I said, just another manic Monday.