unNetwork

Novell Netware Fail

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:13:00 +0000

Click here to vote for this fail.

Powershell Remoting Again

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:24:00 +0000

The plan was simple: Create a script to remotely rename several hundred machines to match the new organizational naming standard. This would require pulling from several asset and employee databases as well as querying AD for user properties. “Powershell should be great!” The data pulls work fantastic, however, the rename not so much. It seems Win32_ComputerSystem.Rename method doesn’t work remotely – and Powershell remoting isn’t actually like being on the local machine at all, apparently. It is unfortunate that Win32_ComputerSystem doesn’t work remotely, and that we don’t have the Windows Management Framework deployed on the desktops so that we could simply run it as a login script. Currently, we’ve got no way to restrict the powershell command prompt and we’re not keen on using software restriction policies just yet. We’re examining the implications of deploying it to the organization. Still, it is a bit of a letdown regardless that even with remoting it isn’t like being on the local system. Looks like I may have to hack up some psexec solution.

Powershell Remoting – First “Real” Encounter

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:08:00 +0000

I’ve been trying to get into the habit of using Powershell remoting when it is convenient and the I’ve got an active window or ISE. I was testing a script which stores a password as a secure string, which of course is per-user. I was surprised to learn that when in a remote session, the process expects delegation to be configured to execute the script. I didn’t have time to see whether or not this was an intended behavior, but it looks like more and more I’m going to need to read through Windows PowerShell in Action Second Edition.

When Under the Gun…

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:19:00 +0000

Now that our Network Operating System conversion project got a date that seems really close – February 3rd – I feel a bit of pressure, especially since my once-working task sequence built in MDT 2008 now “mostly” works. I spent the better part of the day trying to troubleshoot why the domain join was no longer working, despite it prompting for valid username, credentials, and OU (and time and again my poor VM trying over and over with proper credentials and failing). Eventually I added a recover from domain failure – manual – task in the sequence, manually joined the domain and proceeded.

I was then a bit shocked to see that my recently-deployed Windows Management Framework didn’t deploy from the internal WSUS server. I haven’t checked the WSUS report or heard anything from the WSUS admin, so I figured that things had gone well. The few servers I checked had installed properly, but my newly deployed and fully updated VM didn’t have Powershell 2.0 yet.

I’m a bit reluctant to capture a whole bunch of stuff in the image as it pertains to updates as I’ve seen a forum post on technet today from folks recommending that users not update past a service pack for fear of changing build numbers and breaking a script. I’ve yet to use a capture image, too. Thus far I’ve simply used the base 2008 SP2 media and the task sequence – apparently, that is a no-no according to one post.

Windows Management Framework

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:07:00 +0000

Recently we were able to approve Windows Management Framework for distribution using WSUS. If you haven’t heard, the WMF is a package of tools that enables administrators to do some great things. Included in the Windows Management framework is Powershell 2.0, BITS 4.0, and WinRM 2.0.

The downloads come as two packages for Server 2008 and Vista, where BITS 4.0 is a separate installation. The great news is however that Powershell 2.0 and WinRM 2.0 can be easily deployed. With the help of Group Policy, servers enterprise wide can be enabled for Powershell remoting. If you’re looking for the Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 links, don’t worry – though it isn’t apparent at first the “Windows Management Framework” simply combines features that are already available in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and makes them available to Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. I am quite excited to be able to use a single Powershell platform to manage servers. Already we’ve been making great use of the new cmdlets in Powershell 2.0 such as Write-Eventlog to log our relevant information related to functions of servers, which we can then subscribe to or act upon using the built in tools in Vista, Server 2008, Windows 7, and Server 2008 R2.

*Update*

Jeffrey Snover [MSFT] asks

“

I would love to know
1) What sort of events you write to the log.
2) Are you using remoting? If so, how is that working for you.
3) What things would you like to see in the next version?”

Currently, we write the script results to the event log. For example, the one script I’ve done so far queries hard disk space. In the event it is too low, it will stop a service, delete some files that grow without releasing space automatically, then write the result of that action as well as the filenames to the custom event log.

2. I used remoting for the first time today, just as a test. I enabled the listeners via Group Policy for our ServersOU as well as the firewall rule for WS-Management 5895. Haven’t had a chance to use this power a lot yet!

3. Standard operators. Although I’m getting used to “-eq” and “-lt”, years of “==” and “>” or “<” will be hard to break. It is especially hard to transition when I go to the C# level to make a command line app or something that I’m not yet familiar enough with Powershell syntax to accomplish. If there is a place to leave the suggestions please comment – I know my colleagues who use Powershell quite a bit more than me (800+ line identity management script at one point that has since been redone in C# as a service) will have more than a few suggestions.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit to aid in Netware to Windows Server Conversion

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Just about a year ago I started messing around with the MDT 2008. I found it to be rather slick, despite the glaring crashes that happen frequently. Since then, MDT 2010 was released, and still it crashes. However, despite the rough edges, the results are very, very impressive. I haven't scratched the surface as to the power of how it can aid in any number of scenarios, but I have one in mind that will definitely be put to use.

I've created a task sequence that will install Windows Server 2008 SP2 (x86) if the hardware that installs the necessary roles for our file and print servers. What is so special about that? Well, it automatically partitions the drive, for one, then proceeds to do all sort of slick things like install applications, drivers, and custom scripts. If that sounds not so different than imaging, you're not far off. The MDT works in conjunction with Windows Deployment Services and can be used to capture images back to the WDS server. In fact, that is one of the recommended uses. For my purposes, however, it will deploy a new server preloaded with several applications that aren't "image friendly" thanks to their "tatoo" effect based on server name or other parameters. I've even added some custom Powershell scripts to the task sequence to automatically create a standardized folder structure for each branch office and create the shares with the proper permissions.

Once the new OS is loaded on the hardware, we're going to do a simple robocopy with a Windows XP workstation. This won't preserve any of the ACL's associated with the files, but in our environment that is part of what we're hoping for - to force the "crud" that has accumulated over the past 15 years to be sanitized a bit. Once the robocopy is complete, we simply power down the Netware server then re-IP the Windows server.

Printers will be pushed via Group Policy Preferences based on business logic using Item Level Targeting, and existing NDPS printers will be deleted from the machine based on a user login script that checks for a registry key that is also pushed via Group Policy preferences that has targeting based on the proper criteria.

Resources:

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Blog

Sample Application using Groupwise Administrative Object API

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 06:03:00 +0000

Below is a copy of the source to a C# App that connects to a domain and creates a nickname for every user in the CSV. This code can be easily modified (and was in our case) to set the LDAP Authentication field in Groupwise to enable authentication via services such as Active Directory.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.IO;
namespace GWAdmin
{

class Program
{
[STAThread]
static void Main(string[] args)
{
StringBuilder sbLog = new StringBuilder();
StreamWriter swLog = new StreamWriter(@"C:\alias-to-nickname.log");
try
{
AdminTypeLibrary.System GWSystem = new AdminTypeLibrary.System();
string strPath = @"\\fs\vol1\gw\dom\primary";
GWSystem.Connect(strPath);
List list = parseCSV(@"C:\aliasnohead-test.csv");

foreach (string[] strarr in list)
{

string poName = strarr[3];
string owner = strarr[4];
string nickname = strarr[1];
AdminTypeLibrary.Domain domain = GWSystem.Domains.Item("primary");
AdminTypeLibrary.PostOffice po = GWSystem.PostOffices.Item(poName, domain);
AdminTypeLibrary.User3 user3User = (AdminTypeLibrary.User3)po.Users.Item(owner, po, domain);
if (user3User.PrefEMailID != null)
{
user3User.PrefEMailID = null;
user3User.ClearAddressFormat();
user3User.ClearAllowedAddressFormat();
user3User.ClearInternetDomainName();
user3User.Commit();
sbLog.AppendLine(DateTime.Now + " :: Cleared PrefEMailID from user: " + user3User.Name);
}
else
{
sbLog.AppendLine(DateTime.Now + " :: PrefEMailID for : " + user3User.Name + " was blank. Skipping...");
}
AdminTypeLibrary.AdminObject ao = (AdminTypeLibrary.AdminObject)user3User;
GWSystem.Nicknames.Add(nickname, ao, ao.PostOffice, ao.PostOffice.Domain);
sbLog.AppendLine(DateTime.Now + " :: Added nickname: " + nickname + " for owner: " + owner);
}

}
catch (Exception ex)
{
sbLog.AppendLine(DateTime.Now + " :: " + ex.ToString);
swLog.WriteLine(sbLog.ToString());
}
swLog.WriteLine(sbLog.ToString());
swLog.Close();

}
public static List parseCSV(string path)
{
List parsedData = new List();

try
{
using (StreamReader readFile = new StreamReader(path))
{
string line;
string[] row;

while ((line = readFile.ReadLine()) != null)
{
row = line.Split(',');
parsedData.Add(row);
}
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
}

return parsedData;
}

}
}

Groupwise Authentication to LDAP (Including Active Directory)

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:27:00 +0000

We recently wrote a utility using the Groupwise Administrative Object API to programmatically populate the LDAP Authentication field. This field is what is necessary to authenticate to LDAP services instead of relying on Groupwise authentication. Here is the jist of how it went down:

Obtain list of users in Groupwise

Ensure Groupwise users indeed had Active Directory Accounts

Use Powershell script to obtain "DistinguishedName" attribute from all users

Use utility written in C# to access the Groupwise Administrative Object API to loop through each user and post office and fill in their associated DistinguishedName into LDAP Authentication

Enable Post Office for LDAP. This meant placing our LDAP certificate in the SEARCH PATH (not the agent install directory as described in the documentation) in SYS:\SYSTEM for Netware and C:\windows\system32 for Windows.

Links:

Novell Official Documentation on LDAP Authentication for Groupwise 7 (Applicable to many recent versions)

Novell Administrative Object API Doc reference (See User.LDAPAuthentication. Says it requires Groupwise 7 SP3 or later)

Big Changes - Windows 7 - Server 2008 R2 - Oh My

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Over the past few months I've had a few large projects. One of which is a replacement project to the "Kraken", which never did get put into full production use. The largest project of all was the domestic social network expansion project I embarked on (read: we had another child, a baby girl).

Apart from that, major file servers that used iSCSI over Netware are now running Windows Server 2008. Additionally, the printers at three large sites are now hosted on the Windows servers rather than being NDPS. Not bad!

On top of all of that, the big buzz lately has been Windows 7. With good reason. I've been using it since build 7000 in early January and am very impressed. I am now happily running the RTM version on my work machines, both desktop and laptop, as well as three machines at home. One of the best upgrades was from Windows Vista with TVPack to Windows 7 - Media Center 7 is a huge improvement.

Windows Server 2008 R2 was released as well and we've had the opportunity to load it only on a VM at this point, due to our aging hardware not supporting x64 and the fact that Windows Server 2008 R2 is Microsoft's first exclusively x64 OS.

Linux partitions, cont.

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 03:17:00 +0000

I mentioned I was having difficulty the other day expanding a Linux partition. Apparently there was an error with the file system before the resize, and it was compounded by parted expanding the partition. I was able, however, to install a fresh OS and use the reiserfs fsck (forget the exact BIN name now) to recover the partition...luckily the files I really cared about (the virtual machines) were easily identifiable and I was able to recover them. What a pain, though.

Arg, Linux partitions

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:48:00 +0000

Resize c0d0p2 to fit newly expanded logical disk. Seems simply enough, right?

Apparently not.

I hate dust (and laptop hardware)!

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:19:00 +0000

I knew I was getting dust issues inside the laptop a few months ago when the fan started running full boar while browsing the web. Yesterday I noticed something disturbing: My machine powered off suddenly. Dang! I thought to myself, but I wasn't too worried as I knew the likely cause.

My glass desk was exceedingly warm, certainly warmer than when we set the laptop up for "permanent" use here (I no longer use a desktop at home, as I've delegated it to being the HTPC). Today it happened twice, and I decided to put aside my hatred for those small little screws and get to work.

My Dell Vostro 1000 was pretty easy to crack open, and things flew along, right until it came time to pop off the main casing. I thought I had gotten all the screws. I had, save one. Ah, no problem...I'll just...get...it...ugh. The dang thing is out of reach of my screwdriver bit. No worries, I'll use a longer one. I'll just...get...it...ugh! The longer bit won't fit in the hole! What kind of crud is that?! No worries, I'll go grab a screw driver that is more slim and will fit no problem. What?! The phillips head is too large for the screw?! This is rediculous.

So after about 20 minutes of trying to get that single screw, I finally went looking for my repair kit for my glasses. I spent another 20 minutes looking for it, finally finding it tucked away in a linen closet (great place for it, I must say). I pop out the screwdriver and pray that this screwdriver is not too small. Hark! It is not and the screw comes out. I proceed to take the case off and access the inner sanctum of the laptop where hte problem is clear as day. About 1/8th of an inch matte of dust between the fan and the heatsink that blows air out of the laptop. Pop the sucker off, clean it out with a few blasts of air, replace and we're in business.

I get the whole laptop back together and get ready to put the keyboard in when I look down and see 4 screws instead of my expected 2. Arg! No worries, I'll back track...backtracking...all the way down to the heatsink and fan. It is a good thing I did, because the fan wasn't screwed in. I closed it up again and was glad after 2.5 hours I was finished with a task that shouldn't have taken more than 40 minutes.

I hate working on laptop hardware.

Hyper-V First Impressions

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:42:00 +0000

I've recently had the inclination to give Hyper-V a go now that it wasn't only a release candidate. After a brief setup and install, I was impressed with the responsiveness of the MMC snapin. Compared to VMWare's Infratructure Client (VIC) it is a huge difference. VIC has on often crashed, hung, or otherwise frustrated me. Performance wise, Hyper-V seems to be about the same as ESXi for us. The differences, of course, are that I don't have to store files on VMFS and I have complete control over the server, rather than only through VIC. It is rather refreshing!

I am rather looking forward to Windows Server 2008 R2, because Hyper-V promises new features, including live migration. VMWare is in trouble if that works well!

Windows 7 Impressions Continued

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:46:00 +0000

Today I took the plunge and installed W7 on another partition at work, now that the MS Employee posted the RSAT for the public beta. I was rather impressed at the speed at which it performed.

Also interesting is the new take on ADUC, called ADAC (Administration Center). I couldn't get it to connect to our 2008 Domain, but I am assuming that is because it is expecting Server 2008 R2 Domain for all the new features.

Other than that, there are a few neat changes. I like the taskbar grouping. I have 4 monitors and the taskbar has been cumbersome in the past. I have been using a vertical taskbar to work for awhile now, so I can see more windows. With the new layout, it might be more efficient. Time will tell.

Additionally, there are a few little features like the "wiggle" a window to minimize to desktop that I'm currently finding out about.

Official Windows 7 Impressions

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 22:08:00 +0000

The official Windows 7 Beta has started. Friday was a bit frustrating as the response overwhelmed Microsoft, but I was able to get a Windows 7 Beta key, as well as download the real ISO. Upon installing it, I had some mixed reactions to the new task bar. Maybe it will grow on me. I'm also sad to see that the icons for shut down, disconnect (when in terminal services) are once again changed, now to text. I rather like the Vista buttons. My only request would be the ability to turn the shutdown button into a "log off" button (for servers, anyway).

Asside from that, a few rough edges need to be worked out obviously. A patch is already on Windows update (which I also could not get to run, likely due to the initial rush) that fixes an issue where Windows 7 would corrupt MP3's, removing a few seconds from the start of the song each time the song is accessed. Whoops.

I was half tempted to install Windows 7 on my HTPC at home, however, with bugs like that I think I'll pass for the time being and just figure out how to get the guide data for the Clear QAM expanded basic channels.

Disaster Recovery and Backups

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:41:00 +0000

Our organization has a network of distributed servers connected mostly by leased-line T-1's. Over the past 24 hours, a ton of rain has fallen and by the time the emergency team organized and declared several remote sites in danger, it was too late: We were told the best we could hope for is powering down the servers and hope they were high enough to avoid flood waters.

It looks like we may get a chance to test our disaster recovery strategy after all. Good thing our tapes are sent off site at least once a week (so at worst, we'll restore to Wednesday morning).

Windows 7 Beta 7000 Download (7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso)

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:23:00 +0000

7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso
It seems a lot of people are trying to get their hands on the Windows 7 Beta that is currently unreleased. A bit of information has already been leaked to the internet. The following details are proportidly available:

Filename: 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso

MD5 Hash: f9dce6ebd0a63930b44d8ae802b63825

File size: 2618793984 bytes (2.44 GB)

Along with the screenshots shown below. At least one blog has apparently been toying with eager downloaders by saying that it is hidden and all they have to do is find it. What these folks may or may not realize is that many downloadable copies of Windows come pre-loaded with "rootkits" and viruses. A lot of folks who are eager might not even bother to verify said MD5. I am of the opinion that if you are wanting to try Windows 7 to help test the various features you ought to get into one of Microsoft's testing programs.

I myself am looking forward to trying Windows 7 for the new Media Center features, but I don't know if I would use it in my Media Center setup before the OS as a whole is ready for prime time.

2618793984

MS08-067 RPC Vulnerability

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:41:00 +0000

Last night I got the word that our director wanted MS08-067 patched ASAP, so I went into work to patch our servers and develop a script to deploy it to the workstations. We don't utilize tools such as SCM, and our WSUS deployment isn't ready for use, so we needed something quick and dirty.

I developed a VBScript that ran on login to execute the proper patch for 2000 or XP if the user was an administrator. All of our employees are local administrators (much to my chagrin), whereas another group of our customers are simply restricted users that log into DeepFreeze machines. Whats more, the DeepFreeze machines are not under my departments control. As a result, not all machines have been patched.

It is interesting to note, however, that the first worms have already hit the net. I'm hoping we won't see a repeat of Blaster, because that was absolutely aweful.

Space and Time (and NTP)

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:22:00 +0000

As I wrapped up a few changes and committed them to SVN, I asked my supervisor if there were any issues that were going to interrupt my next project on my list of stuff to do. He chuckled devilishly as I queried relentlessly for an answer, before responding that our director had been consistently wanting to make a priority of workstation time.

I had known since we implemented our 2008 Domain in May that we were not yet syncing to an external source, and NTP packets are blocked at the Windows firewall. As a result, the time for the domain differed from, say, cell phone service from Verizon by 2 minutes. After hearing that it was an issue of concern, I promptly modified the firewall and set the PDC to get time from us.pool.ntp.org. Life was blissful as all machines will be updated by tomorrow. Mmm.

w32tm /config /syncfromflags:manual /manualpeerlist:us.pool.ntp.org

Directory Services Breakthrough!

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 03:53:00 +0000

I was working on my directory management web app today and am nearly all wrapped up with a pretty big feature - a single password reset for both eDirectory and Active Directory at the same time!

You might think this is a small feature, until you realize how terrible iManager is. There are alternatives, like Microsoft's ILM, or Novell's DirXML, however those products are pretty expensive and quite frankly, overkill. Our eDirectory environment is on the way out, and most of the data in it is not 'clean', so we don't want to replicate that over to our new "pristine" Active Directory.

That being said, I was squirming a little when I had to extend the schema for Microsoft's Office Communication Server. Hopefully it will be worth it...

Netware, iSCSI, Server 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:58:00 +0000

Netware has been kind to me. Over the past few years, my advancement in the IT industry has been meteoric, and for that I am extremely thankful. It is, however, a dead OS. Many folks are thinks Netware and Novell still has a future, especially with their OES migration, but I have lost the faith.

Case and point: Today I converted an iSCSI target from a NSS volume to NTFS. It was a rather simple process - copy the files off, use the initiator on the Windows server to attach to the target, reformat drive NTFS, drop files back in and redo permissions.

What struck me the most was the file transfer speed. Using the same hardware, copying files off of the iSCSI storage I topped out at about 30Mbit/s. Copying those same files back to a Server 2008 machine with the same NIC to the same iSCSI target I averaged about 450Mbits, with the lowest speed at about 300Mbit/s and the top around 600Mbit/s.

The iSCSI targets are fantastic. These specific units were from LeftHand Networks, and work well, although at a premium price for their software. I rather enjoy the Microsoft iSCSI target, but we're still facing issues backing up the enormous files even disk-to-disk (nevermind the fact that BackupExec seems to lock the file so the initators lose contact with the target).

Network Management Solutions

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:34:00 +0000

I got to thinking today about how little insight we have in our network at the moment. At one point we operated a plethora of different tools that gave a lot of redundant info scattered in various places, and now it seems like they haven't been maintained so we have almost no insight into our network.

I got to thinking about it, and I like what OpenNMS offers, combined with the hardware information available in HP Systems Insight Manager. Unfortunately neither are currently set up for automatic information and alerting in our environment.

I recently had my wisdom teeth removed, so I was out for awhile. As a result, it feels like I don't have any work on my plate after clearing everything up before I left for sick leave. Once I'm finished with my plan for deploying the Kraken, I think I'll jump on an implementation and investigation of this.

Unexpected Group Policy Behavior

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 04:38:00 +0000

One of the things we need to provide is an environment where computers behave one way for a certain group of users in a lab and another way for the same user in a different lab. In order to centrally manage that, we began utilizing Group Policy.

We have users in one OU and computers in another at the same level. As such, a computer policy GPO should never apply user settings without using loopback processing.

My understanding of how it should work is like this:

We apply a group policy with security filtering to a group of computers. Loopback processing is enabled, so the user policy processes. Unfortunately, I discover that without the user group being a part of the security filtering, the user policy in the loopback doesn't apply because it is security filtered. So the security filters looks like this:

LAB-A-Computers
UserGroup-1

As expected, the group policy processes, loopback applies, and all looks well.

Now, enter LAB-B. LAB-B has a similar setup, however needs different policies. All the computers in the same OU, so the GP is linked at the same location.

However, when a user who is in UserGroup-1 logs into LAB-B, LAB-A's looped back policy applies for some reason, because LAB-B has looped back, but apparently linkorder comes into play. I would not expect this behavior.

Currently I'm waiting for a response from the Microsoft forums in order to receive advice on how to achieve what we want.

A Sys Admin's Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:32:00 +0000

A friend of mine and I were talking about how sometimes certain folks can get worked up over little issues. As we talked, I was reminded of a saying that a former supervisor would often say, "If only I had just one application to support..."

His comment implied that as a Systems Administrator, we are often responsible for dozens if not hundreds of individual systems critical to the success of the organization. I've been told I can seem like I do not care about the plights of others when their system is not working as designed, but in my mind, I look on it as a minor issue that will be resolved in due time (which helps me keep the stress level down, too). Then I remember to put things in perspective: Given the scope of our operation, we are essentially a nation-wide enterprise, with 45 remote sites, various business units and needs, political pressures, WAN bandwidth diversity, and a sleuth of incredibly complex and intermixed systems. To me, a big problem would be when many of the little systems stop functioning (say, because the DNS servers were unresponsive!).

Chaos

noreply@blogger.com (Mevious) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:08:00 +0000

It is beginning. As a critical time approaches for our organization, processes and procedures developed months in advance are thrown out the window in favor of chaos. Rather than using established protocols for communication and work prioritization, those who can call most often to management get serviced immediately, even after it is established that it was their own fault (for breaking protocol) that caused their inconvenience in the first place.

As an analytical person, it does bring a sense of sadness and unnecessary stress to life. To know that efficiency has been traded away to satisfy a "squeeky wheel", both in the knowledge that current and future work processes will be slowed down, stopped, or cancelled to satisfy the request, and knowing that the work that went into planning for that eventuality was ultimately ignored leaves me with nothing to say except express a sign of disbelief as I'm asked to work 10, 12, 16 hour days or possibly more to meet deadlines that should have been easily met.