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The Best Laid Plans
I live by a few basic laws, one of which is, "Everything works on paper." Sometimes, all the IT governance and change control that an Information Technology Infrastructure Library- (ITIL) and agile-trained project manager offers isn't enough to deal with all the contingencies of system administration. The number of variables is too great. Sometimes, the number of dependencies is overwhelming to the point of boggling the most spotless of minds. Sometimes people make mistakes. Still, we march forward with the zeal and determination of a true warrior, never admitting defeat, googling until our fingers are sore, reading forums until our eyes bleed, and arguing our points in a few subreddits for good measure.
In the early days of the pre-Google Internet, I was updating systems one starry evening, hopped up on Diet Dr. Pepper and pepperoni pizza, when I got an error I couldn't get past. I tried several things to bypass the fatal error preventing my progress. Something was missing – a dependency, a permission, a setting, or something I couldn't pinpoint. I even resorted to searching Yahoo for an answer. Sadly, none came. The body of knowledge that exists now didn't exist at the time, and I was stuck. I had to back out all my changes and email my manager that tonight's maintenance had failed. I knew that the next day wasn't going to be a pleasant one for me.
In those days, it was common for managers and senior staff members to call out junior members as incompetent or, worse, to label them "clueless newbies." I took the instructions home to study them carefully again to see where I could have made a mistake that disrupted my entire evening of patching bliss. I found no such error.
I braced myself as I walked onto the floor and headed to my cubicle, hoping not to see anyone until I arrived safely. I made it, but the phone rang to summon my presence almost as soon as I logged into my workstation. My manager obviously received
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