miscommunication
i'm not sure this is a miscommunication, but it sure was a mis-something.
i'm in hong kong right now moving 5 PCs over to our wide area network. for those of you who don't understand it, i'm changing a few computers so they are like the ones in your high school, where they're magically connected to stuff you don't understand.
the hardest part about this move isn't setting up the actual machine. that just requires running an antiviral program and changing some settings. the hard part is copying all your files from the local "profile" (mac people would call it user) to the domain profile. some files you need to copy (like documents, etc), and others you can't copy, because they include paths that will have changed with the new profile.
when it comes to moving files, i am really paranoid. as a result, i'm very careful. i back everything up before i move it. i test the hell out of it before i delete the backups (if ever).
today, around 1 o'clock, maggie, a wonderful woman here in our hong kong office, said "peter, where are my emails?" gasp. i know i copied those. i even checked to make sure i copied everything. but the most recent email was from dec 31, 2007. but i know i did it right. i'm so paranoid.
i spent about an hour on the phone with the windows genius at our china branch. all he could say was "you did everything right. i think there's no problem." but there is a problem, buddy! i just don't know what.
so for about four hours i was convinced i had lost my job. i mean seriously. i knew i wouldn't lose my job, but i really thought i'd want to. losing a branch general manager's emails for the most recent four months is not something you can easily brush off. especially after all my other traveling snafus.
then i stumbled upon this old profile called Doki. doki is a girl that worked here ages ago. long gone. but somehow, her email files were updated this morning at ten, about twenty minutes before i started working on maggie's computer.
sure enough, maggie had been logging onto doki's account. all of her emails were there. all of her files were there. everything was there. i did copy everything perfectly. i just copied the account labelled "maggie" instead of "doki".
thanks for letting me know, maggie! and hey! i still have a job!
comments:
yea, not really a miscommunication. Still funny though. Good read while bored in the vegas airprt.
Saulemander | April 25 @ 1:01pm
Paul, you are so...snazzy in the comment dept
klcomp | April 27 @ 3:25pm
it's a good story and it shows what I have always thought about IT jobs. If you do it right, nobody knows. If you do it wrong, put on the traveling music.
Paul | April 25 @ 4:08pm