Mountain Clams

Tech Support

If you have ever called tech support for any reason, you know what I'm about to say.

In my case, my server (orcsports.com) was running slowly. People could do stuff as long as they didn't have to download an image from the server. This is really odd behavior, needless to say. So I went to see if I could figure out what was going on with the server. Why was it so slow? I did my usual checking, even tried rebooting it, downloading the latest patches, all that. No change. I couldn't even reach it from within the network that the server is on!

Well, I couldn't spend the whole day looking at it, so I went back to work. When I got home after work, we did the usual evening stuff. Then, around 9:00, I sat down with the server again. Okay, server, just you and me. Let's figure out why you're so slow. I ran through my usual checks again and got nowhere. So I figure, alright, I can't think of anything else to try, and I know this is probably futile, but I'll try calling tech support.

I get on the phone with operator number such-and-such (spoken so quickly that there's no chance you can write it down in case you need it later). She actually kindof sounds like she knows what she is talking about, or at least knows how to find out what she needs to know. In spite of that, her first recommendation: Reboot. She then runs through a list of half a dozen other things that I already tried, and puts me on hold a couple times to talk to other folks who might know what is going on with the connection. In the end, we were hesitant to make any substantive changes to anything and decided to just "wait and see."

In the morning, everything was working fine. It's been working fine ever since (knock on wood). Who knows who did what, or why it was doing what it was doing. It's one of the great mysteries of the universe. I'll go ahead and credit tech support with the fix for now. I certainly didn't do anything.

... And as I try to post this to my blog, I get an error from blogger.com! It's not my fault, folks!

Labels: orcsports

posted by Brett @ 1:55 PM