March 27, 2008 by Dan Siegel.

My son is scouting for engineering schools, and came across www.engineeringedu.com. He also discovered its jokes page. Apropos my earlier blog today, the site (http://www.engineeringedu.com/jokes.html) features, among others, this little ditty:

New Lyrics to Beatles Song - “Yesterday”

Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,
There’s not half the files there used to be.
And there’s a milestone hanging over me.
The system crashed, so suddenly.

I pushed something wrong,
What it was, I could not say.
Now all my data’s gone,
And I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.

Yesterday,
the need for back-ups seemed so far away.
I knew my data was all here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday.

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March 27, 2008 by Dan Siegel.

I always say, “Never train on live data” because if something happens, it’s a “problem,” to say the least. Today I failed to abide by my own words. Guess what, something happened. The database with 98,542 records shrunk a bit — to 6 records. So did my stomach.

Having never seen this before, I called Tech Support. The rep hadn’t seen it either. He put me on hold and found out a couple of the other reps had heard of this. What did it mean? That the database had crashed and I needed to restore it from a backup. And, of course, the firm didn’t think there was a backup! Fortunately, I found a copy of the database file, and all was well. Of course, I strongly recommended that the firm backup the data — and when I return for more training, we’ll use my training databases.

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March 20, 2008 by Dan Siegel.

I have owned Dell computers for at least 15 years, and have 8 current Dell PCs, laptops and servers, and have never had a problem with technical support, even when I have been shuttled to India. Although my tech support calls are rare, I have always received knowledgeable service, until this morning. When I called, I was connected with Rakesh Prabhakaran, the poster child for why people hate foreign support. I had to repeat everything two or (mostly) three times, and when he finally “resolved” my issue, all he really did was disable the problem (a malfunctioning floppy drive) not solve it — and this took nearly 30 minutes. When I asked for his name, and the case number, the line went dead. Argh! Fortunately, I called back and, roughly another 30 minutes later, the problem was resolved by another Indian tech who at least seemed to understand English. When he was done, he forwarded me to his supervisor, and I explained my earlier nightmare. I still like Dell, and find their products to be consistently reliable, but all it takes is one Rakesh Prabhakaran to make you yearn for tech support that actually speaks and understand the customer.

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