Crashing.

The worst train wrecks are the ones you can see coming that you can't seem to do anything about. We had a vendor in yesterday and today to reinstall some software. It's software I've never used on a platform I've never used. I inherited the whole thing from employees who no longer work here in work groups that no longer exist. It had to be updated because we're paying a vendor redo some marketing items which they will create in this expensive management system that's been sitting unused.

So I knew nothing here. I've used a different version of the database, but things for Microsoft and things for Unix even if they are the same thing are nothing alike. I knew it could be bad because I knew I did not have any of the skills needed to support it.

The agony of knowing it would suck colored my long weekend. It made me anxious all day Tuesday. It woke me at 4 am on Wednesday with a near panic attack. I only calmed down when I realized that worst case I would look and feel as stupid as I actually was. And really, no one ever died from being embarassed by their stupidity.

It was, in fact, just exactly the train wreck that I expected. The vendor arrived while my boss was still putting a new operating system on the last disk drive. The ip addresses weren't set up on the machines and the person told to take care of it didn't know how (seems I wasn't the only one who's skill set was lacking.) The worst part, however, was that the database wasn't loaded. We spent the first 2 hours or so getting things to the point where we could try to load the database. We spent the next hour or so trying to figure out how to get a graphic interface for machines that weren't set up for one (because the install required it). We spent the next 5 hours loading the database and fixing things and reloading and fixing and reloading.

I say we because I would have been dead in the water if I had not called in every available resource. I got help from anyone who might know something. I got one guy to help with IP addresses he was amazingly helpful and even when he didn't know, tried to figure things out for me. Finally, when he came in following a funeral, I actually found the 1 co-worker who knew how to do exactly what we needed to do. He stepped in cold as he walked in the door and took it over and made it happen. He's my hero. He totally rescued me.

At around 5:20 pm my $2000 a day vendor finally started work on what he was there to do. We stayed until 6:30 and started again at 8:00 this morning. We were done by 1:30 today. Done fixed and running. Of course, now I'm wondering why they said we needed 2 days worth of labor for the install.

Psychically it was painful. I do realize now that the only way I could have avoided this would have been to learn the operating system before he came and to have gotten a test machine to do database installations on ahead of time. Plus I should have had the production machine drives ready last week. And installed the database before he arrived. Around here that means I never had a chance.

It's done now, a weight has been lifted. The machines are ready and after a day of feeling stupid and useless (and knowing it was warranted) I can go back to just wondering if I'm stupid and useless. Sounds like I should work on a training plan.