“The pesky aliens have attacked! Sound the alarm! Call Central team! We are under attack!”
Now as crazy as this may sound, the aliens I am referring to are not from Mars. Rather the aliens here refer to our colleagues, bosses or someone high enough in the office hierarchy to order you around. This month I am going to write about how a network guy like me had to do something totally non-CCIE-related or even non-network-related. Heck, it’s not IT-related either! Read on …
Being one of the few network guys in my company, I am solely in charge of the Asia Pacific (APAC) region except India (I wonder why ;-)) as well as the Oceania region. An example that I would like to share relates to an incident not so long ago, oh let’s say about a month ago.
I was minding my own business one day playing around with Wireshark analyzing some network packets to further my packet analysis skills when all of a sudden an e-mail popped in my mailbox with the header “Help Needed! ABC (I am masking the actual country’s name for anonymity purposes) needs to purchase a NEW Cisco switch and it has to be configured according to company standards”. Sounds easy I thought.
I fired up Outlook (yes my company uses Windows. It will be years before we start using Evolution or maybe KMail? :P) and happily sent in a reply telling the sender that warranties are localized in Cisco’s case and that if she needed to get a warranty, she has to purchased it locally. Configuration of course can be done remotely either via RDPing to her PC with a console cable attached to the switch or if the vendor is willing to do very basic configuration on the switch for me to remote in and finish up the work. I sent the mail. After a few minutes, a sort of pissed-off email arrived.
Now I will just get to the beans of the email. In that email, the original sender had forwarded the email to her boss, who in turn came running after me with a big baseball bat demanding that I purchase and configure the Cisco switch and have the warranty transferred to them. I called the boss and informed him that this is not possible unless the vendors that I am liaising with for the purchase has an office in ABC country to which they do not. After a few rounds of persuading, I finally managed to get him to purchase the switch locally and told him that I will be connecting to his staff’s (the original sender of the email) PC via RDP to configure the switch.
The drama had ended at last or so I thought, but fate has a funny way of playing with me. A week after I configured the switch (a simple setup with the VTP modes, some specific VLANs assigned to some specific ports, etc.) I had a ‘Thank You’ email from the Japan office. Wow … a ‘Thank You’ note! Very cool! However after actually reading the entire email, I found out another request …
Again getting to the beans of the email, I was requested to help setup a new office by giving the power requirements of the network (ok … that’s my job), the power requirements of the servers (erm … ok not so bad, I can liaise with my colleague here who is in charge of the servers), the power requirements of the electrical devices here including but not limited to the fax machine, photocopy machine and shredder (what in the world?!!!?) and to top it all off, I was requested to provide an ample space for all the equipment above (for the networking and servers portion I could do but the other electrical appliances?).
I was stunned beyond words. I didn’t know whether I should laugh hysterically or cry silently. What do a fax machine, photocopy machine and shredder have in common with Cisco networking equipment? I am the person who analyses network issues and fixes them! What do I know about fax machines apart from knowing how to send faxes? What do I know about photocopy machines apart from successfully doing a duplex photocopy on a single piece of paper? I definitely have no ideas for a shredder, since I seldom print nor use paper (yes I am sort of environmentally friendly at times :P). These non-Cisco or even non-network devices have nothing to do with me. These devices in fact have nothing to do with IT! This is crazy… I need to speak with someone at a higher level and hope that this matter gets solved in the friendliest and best possible manner.
After another few rounds of e-mail exchanges, I later found out that the reason why all the lookalike IT devices were thrown to me is because the manager in charge of the office in ABC country has no clue about Information Technology. To him, ANYTHING with a screen and buttons and wires belong to IT. IT people can fix everything or at least can try and fix everything. That’s the idea that he has. It is true people … there are still some people out there thinking that anything with a wire and a screen with a couple of buttons is related to IT.
I also found out that this manager in ABC country had strong contacts within the company that could cause trouble for me if he wanted to. Hence in order to avoid unnecessary problems to my working life (hey I want to survive especially during the economy situation nowadays), I decided to comply by enquiring on the make and model of the non-IT devices that I was told to assist on. Being inexperienced did not help as I took some time to get all the information and to study each and every single one of them. I had to ensure that I came up with a room design that fit all three and being a network architect sometimes did not help either since what was really needed was a room architect! The good news is I learned a little more about the devices. The bad news was after doing all the unnecessary work, I was portrayed as a slow worker who takes too much time to come back with the information required on the devices.
To this very day, when I think of this incident, I wonder. How is this related to my CCIE studies? Preservation, that’s the one and only word that came to mind. I was put in an uncomfortable situation but in order to survive and still have a job, I had to comply. For the CCIE, again and again my patience and commitment towards this highly-regarded certification is tested to the max especially when battling time for both my family and my studies are beating me up badly at times. As of now, it’s the CCIE written I am concentrating so it’s not that much of a big deal but when the lab part comes in, it will definitely be a different story.
I hope you enjoyed the story above as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I am signing off now to read more on packet analysis. It’s becoming enemy no.2 behind my wife to my CCIE studies soon (currently Twitter and Facebook are enemies no.2 ;-)). See you in the next publication of the CCIE Flyer!
Nickelby Thane is a CCIE candidate who now spends a big portion of his free time on packet analysis studies apart from the usual Internet stuff e.g. Skype, MSN, spending too much time sometimes on Facebook and building up his contacts network on LinkedIn, etc. He can be reached at nickelby (at) hotmail (dot) com and he should reply to any suggestions/ideas/etc. unless the mail reaches /dev/null or when he is making fun of his poor wife.
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