by The title says it all. Back during my machinist days at the US Mint in Philadelphia we had a one week course in analytical trouble shooting. The course used a ficticiuous maintenance Machiinist called Ferd. Ferd always jumped to the conclusion about a problem. He walked up to a machine that wasn't working and assumed the motor was shot only to find out after he changed the motor that the circuit breaker had kicked. He never took a few minutes to analyze what is wrong and systematically exclude the obvious reasons. (Could the power cord have come out of the wall?)
As I am the senior Admin at $WORK I tend to be the mentor to our High School Admins. I always tell them to take their time, "Don't be a Ferd". Take a step back, think a minute. Just because a user can't load a web page does not mean the main router is toast.
So the other day I was a Ferd. Try as we might to take our time to solve a problem there are times that we are under the gun, maybe looking down the double barrels of a problem and we become "Ferds" and don't fully look at a problem and think a second before we make a move.
So exactly 5 minutes before I am scheduled to leave the office, seconds before I click "Shut down cimputer." I get a call from one of my users at a school that just lost their on site Admin. After I step through my normal troubleshooting steps I can here the printer start and stop. On the other end of the phone is a stressed out user with a line of people with money to put on their kids accounts and the user can't print a receipt. So I tell her to issue paper receipts and I will be there first thing in the morning with a replacement printer. I quickly setup the replacement that is on my desk, bundle my stuff up and head out for the day.
The next morning my calendar sends me a reminder that I have to make a stop. No problem I'll go early and get it done. Well that 5 minute diversion turned into 30 minutes. Now I am under the gun as it is 30 minutes to the school. I get there, 45 minutes late, and the user is livid (She didn't get my message about my mishap).
I start to swap out the printers and the line at the window is getting long. No problem we will be off and running in no time. Not! The printer doesn't work. Heck it worked fine just 24 hours ago at my desk. As I don't make many "House calls " anymore my bag of tricks and troubleshooting goodiees is empty. I try everything I can think of (except the one thing that would have saved my butt) and figure the printer is shot. After a few calls I find one at another school just 30 minutes away. So off I go with the irate user grabbing for her voodoo doll and wringing its neck.
When I get to the school the spare is not an exact match. But this school has two of the printers I need, I will just take one. I show that school's admin how to print out the config and do the same on my "bad: printer. When I look at the config it jumps right out at me. I had a typo in the gateway. Welcome to Ferdville my friend. I quickly fix it, grab my stuff and head out. Why the heck didn't I do that first.
As I get back to the original school I plug in the printer and still nothing. Time to just sit back, take a breath. I figure out what was wrong, in all the moving things around after I decided it was the printer I somehow disconnected the patch cord from the wall. Plugged it back in and bingo receipts started flowing like a waterfall.
All of this, about 3 hours, was due to me assuming I typed everything in correctly. I did not check my work and I jumped to a big conclusion, the wrong one.
I sat there for a bit and just kept mumbling "What a Ferd" to myself and the user thought I had finally went nuts. There was no excuse for the issue except that I did not follow my own policy. Read what you typed at least twice when editing a config setting before hitting the submit button. It also goes to show you that even the most experienced admin will have one of those days that you wish we had a rewind button for the day and just go back to the beginning and start over.