self pity post....

[Domino]

TBH I almost completely lost an 8 host vm cluster of 147 VMs at the start of this week.

@Ric_ managed to shut down a machine at a production datacentre instead of the DR one.

@Beard took down the phone lines of an office that exclusively did phone support. at midday.

 

And @SimonD managed to delete a worldwide replication filesystem of almost 2TB and over a million files.

 

 

...trust me, you're not that bad.

[Ric_]

The epic phone issue with @Beard did mean that I got to work a 32 hour shift with him in Riga though

@Domino also forgot that I nearly bricked a very expensive conference phone earlier today! Not to mention the number of firewall configs I may have got less than correct.

[clareq]

I firmly believe I keep my job purely because I know how to use Google!

[strawberry]

If you never doubt yourself you'd be blind to your own faults. We all have confidence in you

[Domino]

Guys..GUYS.

 

Sit down, I've got this.

 

 

...makes everything better

[SYNACK]

Come to think of it there was also the 'eep the raid card on the one and only server has gone' moment fixed thanks to cooler heads on here that reminded me to check the SCSI lead was actually plugged in to it properly, it, um wasn't

[elsiegee40]

... and the exhausted pre-inspection me that managed to deny the master Administrator account permission to look at the staff shared drive late one Sunday afternoon.

 

Don't know why I did it or even what I thought I was doing at the time. It wasn't hard to fix, but it didn't half make me panic!

 

I agree with @clareq though, mastery of Google is the only qualification I feel I have at times. My IT qualifications are carved into stone tablets because they're so old. BSc Computer Studies from Lancaster Uni 1985 any use now?! (Over 25 years employment in IT doesn't feel like relevant experience when things are going belly up either )

Edited November 30, 2012 by elsiegee40

[hardtailstar]

Im in same boat little miss...

 

ive had a crap week, I cant progress in my job as theres no one above me and ive been told im not getting more hours, Ive had teachers whinge and whine because I asked for thier laptops to update some software.

 

I often wonder what a new job outside IT would be like but its playing with them and repairing them that brings me back plus one of the schools I work in are so grateful and nice to be around I dont want to leave just yet.

 

Ive only got a college cert, rest is experience or research.

 

all the best little miss.

[detjo]

No certs here either!

 

I used to know a guy who was a network consultant for a bank, and on a number of occasions he told me about ppl that went for interview for job doing .. network/systems stuff, and he was shocked at the lack of technical knowledge of some of them, and they had certs! He always said to me that having certs does not mean you can do the job.

 

I started this in 2007 coz i was bored working in an office. I heard about a place that would employ novices and train them .. so i applied and got a job.

At the interview they asked me what i knew about networking .. "sod all, i've played around with 1 or 2 computers at home and 'networked' them with a netgear router". That was as much as i knew. Told them flat out i know nothing about servers, but i built my own computer at home and could do basic troubleshooting.

Google is a friend indeed ... they said that at my interview, if you dont know the answer to something check google first (i was like wtf!). I since learned this is so true and provides a lot of answers.

 

Best thing they did for me was put me in a school that was so badly run, i couldnt fail to make it better .. i learned a lot there.

Now i run a small primary school on my own and still dont think i know a lot. I know enough to get me by there, with some ease, but that's coz i try to keep things simple. I dont look to bring in lots of complicated technologies and 'hard to manage' stuff, for 2 reasons: some of it is overkill for what they need and coz i know i will struggle to fit it all in my brain.

 

Lately i have had thoughts about moving on to something else, dont know if i will tho. And thats just because its a never ending line of new technologies emerging and research into what would work for the school ... and i cant be doing with seeing no light at the end of that tunnel anymore.

 

Guess we've all been there

 

Anyway .. that's my 2c

@Little-Miss PM me if you feel like chatting to a stranger and i'll help where i can ... if you wish. Keep chin up

Edited November 30, 2012 by detjo

[mattianuk]

I started at a new place in April, 2 months before my daughter was born, so A big risk. I went from a comfy job in the same school my wife was a TA at to a network manager in a large middle school. I got given £170k to spend.

 

I have no certs, no training. I had google and edugeek. I built a new network from scratch and doings thing I had never done before.

 

Week before last, one lunchtime people can't save. Next minute 4 days of downtime and having to restore data from a system I had spent 22k on making redundant.

 

Why? I pressed the snapshot button in testing, and forgot about it. I have never hated and doubted myself so much.

 

But I fixed it. I took a step back and trusted myself. You can do the same. Good luck!

[john]

Hugs for you Little Miss Were all here for you as we all have these days/weeks/months/terms/years... x

[witch]

I feel exactly the same way as you do, @Little-Miss and in fact in one of my schools I begged for some external support as I really couldnt cope on my own.

I have electronics certs from long ago and a partner who knows everything, but my knowledge is empirical - and so I cannot work backwards to work out what the heck has gone wrong as I dont know how to build from the bottom up.

But remember that the flip side of people getting cross with you because things arent done, is that most of the time they have absolutely NO idea what you do and so you can blind them with science to some extent. You may know that you are not coping with an issue, but they dont know that.

Google and edugeek will sort you out - and a local friendly geek who can help and is prepared to pop in or spend hours on the phone is the absolute best. There have been times when I couldnt have coped without Adams Dad @bossman and @Brpilot99 to name but two of the many who have helped.

Hugs to you, Little Miss xx

Edited November 30, 2012 by witch

[TheScarfedOne]

@Domino and @Ric - been there on the shutting down the wrong box! I shutdown a live HyperV host the other day by mistake, causing mass failover...groan! It happens to us all! Hope all is ok @Little-Miss, lots of EduHobnobs. This is what the community is for, Ive been working with preferences for a while - anything I can take a look at? Drop me a PM...

[daveyboy]

Been there, done that.

 

Just remember - everyone else thinks you're a 'wizz' with IT, and never forget those moments when 'It doesn't work' turns out to to be its not plugged in or whatever....

 

They look to you because you give them hope, and......' its got a plug on it' - so Little Miss will know..........

 

Chill. If we can, we'll help.

 

Its always something simple. something we've missed, something we didn't know about, something that with a couple of clicks - or lines of code that we can do. If its not, start from the beginning, start simple, start afresh.

 

The weekend is here. relax, wine, movie, pamper, beer - whatever it is. It will come to you - you just gotta relax.

 

If it doesn't, post here, see what the rest of us think.

 

Never forget - we've all been there, all dreaded Monday morning......

[daveyboy]

OK, OK, OK you wanna example?

 

Once, I banned '.com' on our proxy server - thinking about those dangerous batch files..................

 

(It really wasn't me - and if you're reading this YOU know who you are - but I'll take the rap for it ! ....)

Edited December 1, 2012 by daveyboy

[cpjitservices]

Been there myself too .... failed my CCNA by 2 points and was gutted took me weeks to pick myself up and carry on... even though I failed it I still managed to get a job in networking and I've learnt more than Cisco could ever teach me..... It's all about getting stuck in and being confident and having oodles of patience, and what youve got to do is when you think the job is at its lowest inject some fun into it by learning something new, I've been bored doing the same thing day after day and had considered a change in career but the truth is I love it.. it;s hard wired into me...... If I get bored I go on ebay looking for books on various things in IT like BIND for example and JUNOS, and will put a lab together and learn!

 

I think its therapeutic.....

[bossman]

@Little-Miss:

 

I actually uninstalled our DNS by ticking a box as I hadn't read the screen properly, I didn't realise until a couple of calls later when endusers rang the helpdesk, it was then an uneducated guess to go back in and untick the box and re-install DNS, luckily the config files were still there and DNS just recreated itself hehe! @webman will tell you what a total idiot I felt that day and still feel bad about it today.......but I can now laugh about it.

 

@Little-Miss:

There is one little secret I can let you in on is..................................................The secret of the universe is...............................42

Never forget that and you will go very far my friend.

 

We all think very highly of you so don't ever reproach yourself............................that's an order hehe!

[sonofsanta]

Let us not forget the relevant xkcd comic:

 

[Little-Miss]

You guys are the bestest.... :')

 

*rolls up sleeves* Right, lets try again...

 

Think biggest thing is i'm still dealing with the mess of rushed post-fire installs. Had no time to stop and take stock of the situation...

Edited December 3, 2012 by Little-Miss

[Earthling]

Absolutely been there, felt that.

 

Looking back over my 42 years, there's been many times I've felt that way. Moving from one mainframe to another, moving from mainframes to pc networking, starting a new contract was always difficult, not knowing what you're going to find, who you're going to find, and quite frequently in a strange place away from home and family.......and then Microsoft release another new version of Windows and off we go again.

 

Would I have changed any of it? Nope.

 

Would I have done anything else? Probably, if I could have found anything else I was this good at faking.

 

[north-ict]

@Little-Miss I am glad you did lay out how you feel because as you can see from the responses your not the only that may feel that way and we kinda get lost into the idea that we are. Keep your chin up. We all think that sometimes even I do but don't let it get to you.

 

No ones perfect and we as humans are always learning no one knows everything.

 

Listen to this and start your day on a good note. The Avengers Assemble - Main theme - Extended (HD) - YouTube

 

[kaphc]

Oh this post has been such a good one to read on a Monday morning! There is so much I don't know and so much I need to learn. Being a lone tech and now supporting 8 different primaries is a minefield - my credit is good in some, but in others I am trying to work my way through someone else's setup and it feels like I'm plaiting fog at times!

 

My confession is the PC that I couldn't get to attach to a wireless network for 3 months and had sent away twice for maintenance. Turns out I was entering an "!" instead of a "1" in the wireless password - and it was Windows XP so I couldnt't even view it!!

 

I always think IT is such a flipping hard profession sometimes because we spend a lot of our time dealing with problems .. sometimes there's just one problem too many!

[witch]

My confession is the PC that I couldn't get to attach to a wireless network for 3 months and had sent away twice for maintenance. Turns out I was entering an "!" instead of a "1" in the wireless password - and it was Windows XP so I couldnt't even view it!!

 

Now THAT is the sort of problem I mean - you need never actually admit to that to anyone at all. YOU know you did it, and YOU know you won't do it again but "they" don't need to know!

 

I often feel that everyone else is allowed to make mistakes except us- we are just considered incompetent if we do....

[Hedghog]

Just reminds me of the difference between "principle" and "principal" in powershell, spent days working that one out before I could put the year 7s on

[Domino]

I often feel that everyone else is allowed to make mistakes except us- we are just considered incompetent if we do....

 

See, I find myself quite often faced with some piece of software I've never seen before, and told to fix some problem; when I've never seen it working.

 

Anyone who complains about me taking some time in that situation faces my wrath. They normally only do it once...