I have a hypothesis that if I gave two newbie users who’d never worked on computers one computer each—one computer with Windows, the other with MacOS—tutored them in the general operation of each machine then turned them out on their own for one year, the Windows user will end up knowing more about using their computer than the MacOS user.
By the way, I’d have to restort to recruiting two-year-olds to find stark newbies at this point!
In this post about Windows errors, I got the title from a James Joyce quote:
“A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.”
Seems appropriate, doesn’t it?
I think Joyce’s quote indicates the normal approach we should take towards errors: they should provide an opportunity to discover both what went wrong and what to do, or not to do, in the future.
Except when you’re dealing with Windows errors. These things verge on the bizarre, and as if the shock you get sonically and visually weren’t enough, the verbiage is sure to send you into an apoplectic shock.
The programmers for Microsoft seem to have this idea that they’re writing software for other programmers with access to the source code so of course, why wouldn’t error number 0x08233FF make sense?
Here’s an example of one of these delightful specimens:
The server {AB8902B4-09CA-4BB6-B78D-A8F59079A8D5} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.
Yeah sure, I’ll just get on that.
Another I just walked into this delight very afternoon:
This is what happens if you’re foolish enough to click on the link to ‘Get help with this error,’ another window bearing the following gifts:
You silly rabbit! How dare you ask for help by clicking on the link to get help? What’s wrong, you gonna cry now?
There are other injustices at hand, the Event Viewer which Microsoft has devised for the sole purpose of user torture to show what “events” have been logged to various Windows logs, ranging from System to Application and includes Setup, Security and Forwarded Events (in Windows Server 2008 because they changed the logging setup in the latest versions, continuity be damned!) contains the machinations of Satan’s keyboard.
Say you’re a junior sysadmin, “tasked” with the job of identifying all logons to the server between certain times. Your tongue hanging out because you’ve been allowed access to the servers and you click on the Security category of the Event Viewer. Your heart leaps with anticipation (GOD RIGHTS!!) and then you meet Satan:
Just what in Zeus’ armpit does this mean?
Compare and contrast with an entry from a random Linux box I happen to have on hand, for just this purpose:
Oct 20 11:48:50 SERVER sudo: fred : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/var/log ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/less messages
H’m, whatever could this gobbledygook mean? It seems this user, fred, used the sudo command to impersonate the root user and the command he ran was /usr/bin/less messages.
NONSENSE! I CAN’T WORK LIKE THIS!
Once in a blue moon, you get a message that reads like it wasn’t written by a three-year-old Mongolian with access to only the HEX number set, but the key is, it’s almost always a third-party software vendor who, you know, actually cares their customer can easily decipher what the problem is. Yeah.
Yes, I’m exaggerating for effect, but if you’ve run a Windows installation for time, t ≥ 5s, you’ll run into this buzzsaw at approximately time, t ≥ 6s. (I like to layer my exaggerations for maximum effect.)
If you’re a system administrator, you’re also a teacher whether you wanted to be one or not and there’s a Grand Canyon between having knowledge and transferring it effectively.
The following is an example of how to do it very well using the clearest language, and an unhurried and almost jargon-free approach:
Anyone who wants to be a better technical communicator, copy shamelessly.
Mark Russinovich, of Sysinternals’ fame, tweeted a link to this rather in-depth (and I’m not kidding) article about Frank Boldewin’s extirpation of malware on a friend’s computer.
To get to that level requires a deep understanding of the Windows OS innards and reminds me of Nietzsche’s famous quote about abysses. Nevertheless, it got me thinking: of the Systems Administrators I know, which one of us (I include myself) would have been able to tackle such a dye-in-the-wool malware infection? Let’s try none.
At this level, it’s rather simpler to throw one A/V after the other at the problem and hope this fixes it, all the while exhibiting a large measure of faith that the issue had indeed been resolved. Barring this, there’s the always elegant “nuke and pave” method for fixing problems with which Windows administrators are quite familiar.
A short hike from this philosophical position leads to the question of whether this is a Good Thing™. Should I, as a systems administrator of one of the world’s most widely used Operating Systems, be able to routinely handle the kinds of issues met and defeated by the hero in the aforementioned article? Further, bearing in mind that the scenario encountered is nothing esoteric and in fact, is an everyday occurrence in many Windows “shops” nationwide. Yet, only a very small number of admins could perform all of the tasks in the manner outlined.
I haven’t decided on answer. Requiring all systems administrators to understand their OS to this depth may be asking for too much from someone who’s not an OS developer. Then again, why not? Why should sysadmins be able to handle what is gradually becoming an everyday issue for users without blindly resorting to sometimes expensive third-party “solutions” or destroying the OS and data in performing an OS reinstallation?
I try to imagine what a UNIX administrator would do with this kind of scenario? Would the average UNIX admin be able to dive that deep and not drown? Are these kinds of scenarios commong in that arena? I don’t remember as it’s been quite a while.
Whatever the case, this is indeed heart surgery and if I were allowed to abuse the analogy a bit, a surgeon is no ordinary doctor. To perform that kind of work requires extensive schooling and experience, something 99% of MDs don’t have, and perhaps don’t want. The parallels begin to fray though, when you consider that if the occurrence of heart surgery was as common as malware infection is in Windows, perhaps anyone who called themselves a doctor would indeed be required to perform heart surgery.
Whenever I read “Outlook repeat logon prompts” in the ticket, I groan inwardly. This is one of the most infuriating problems I’ve dealt with because I’ve never been able to pin down the actual problem. Never.
I don’t know at which end the problem lies: with Outlook, with the Domain Controller, or with the Exchange servers’ various roles. Toss in the fact that it’s almost always related to Outlook Anywhere and you’ve a recipe for frustration.
I’d like something easier, please, like brain surgery.
It usually starts with your telephone ringing. Some disgruntled user is complaining they’ve been “having problems for a very long time.” If you’re an old hand at this, you know what to expect next: it’s very likely the user’s only noticed the problem recently, but their rationalization hamster is working that wheel.
Nevertheless, you take a deep sigh, reconfigure your frame of mind and get ready to evaluate their “problem.” If you’re lucky, it’s something simple. If you’re not, it’s resolution is going to entail a flight cross-country, several meetings with sour-faced people, and maybe a donkey ride or two. If you’re really unlucky, it’s your mom calling.
Whatever the case, you’re doing yourself a great disservice if you don’t go ‘under the hood,’ by which I mean, if you’ll pardon the lumbering metaphor: network sniffers. If you go to a mechanic because you’re like me, a total car noob and complain about the engine’s performance or whatnot, it’s usually the first step that the guy or gal will pop your hood to “take a look” while dollar signs rotate into view in their eyes.
Point is, that hood’s coming up and things get fixed and that’s how you should approach your work. Almost no one uses their computer disconnected from anything so if the problem falls into the category of slow access to some remote resource, one of the first stops on the troubleshooting railroad is whipping out the network sniffer.
I’ve been a Windows sysadmin for quite a while. In that small insignificant corner of the the computing universe, there are two pieces of (free) software that should be part of your kit:
Wireshark is the ne plus ultra of the free network monitoring and analysis packages. There are a few others, but I don’t care. You have these two, and you’re fine.
If you’re a big spender, shot-caller, well then your chariot awaits good sir: WildPackets OmniPeek (and I’m not giving you a link to it, big boy. You can do your own searching. Maybe if you buy me a copy …)
And learn how to use them. Laura Chappelle’s written some excellent stuff. And I’ll let you in on a secret: if you apply for a job at my company and you tell me you can analyze TCP/IP packets, you’ll jump to the top of my list immediately. Almost no one in the Windows world knows how to perform this rudimentary task. It’s a sure in, so take the time to take a look under the hood.
Several years ago, I was the lead designer, architect, and all-round champion of a big project. Everyday I went in prepared for battle with skeptics and naysayers of every stripe. Were it not for my blind devotion to what I knew was right and true, I would have given up—almost did, many times—and turned over the hospital to the inmates. Every day since, however, my design’s been proven to be the right one, by constant practice and testing.
Skeptics, I can take. Blind naysayers, on the other hand, happy to impede progress for various—almost always petty—reasons are the bane of my existence. I can’t stand these people and unfortunately, there were more of these than the former.
As the project neared completion despite its many man-made potholes, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the “CEO” would be handing out certificates of appreciation at a lunch ceremony to project team members. I felt we’d deserved praise especially knowing we wouldn’t be getting any raises—also, free food tastes great, doesn’t it?
With the appropriate paeans to teamwork, something called “shared vision,” and hard work over, the time to dispense that certificate arrived and I found I was excited. Sure, it wasn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, but I like framing shitty certificates, it’s a character flaw.
My name was called, I walked up, shook hands with the Big Guy, had my picture taken, got a nice “thank you for your service” (so this is what servicemen feel like) and walked back to my now cold—and as it turned out—rather crappy spaghetti, a silly smile of satisfaction pasted on the puss. What happened next almost detached my brain’s left hemisphere.
The number one hellspawn, the master of disaster, the naysayer-in-chief, Lord Voldermort himself. Yes, his name followed mine. I hadn’t even seen him in the “banquet hall,” which is what this restaurant called a never-used outhouse attachment to their building. And yet, here he was, walking the same path toward the same Big Guy, getting the same inconsequential “thank you for your service,” same camera flash capturing the moment for the company newsletter, the jaunt back to his lair chair, my smile pasted on his incubus face!
If it were up to this guy, we wouldn’t be here. He’d tried everything short of walking in with an AK47 and shooting up the place. He’d hemmed and hawed. He’d raised objections at such a furious pace, they seemed to meld into a raging stream of endless German profanity. By the second day he was on the project, he’d stopped extending anyone the courtesy of a “hello” preferring a vampiric scowl and toothy snarl.
The most painful part of the project for me wasn’t the many, yellow hours spent devising and conceiving solutions to all the varied technical problems that inevitably attended a project of this size. It wasn’t dealing with the personalities of all the geeks of varying corpulence welded into too-small seats around too many conference tables. It wasn’t the interminable meetings. It wasn’t answering the same interminable questions hurled by people who thought they’d stymie this know-it-all this time! It wasn’t formulating answers to those questions so they’d make sense even to my embryo of a son (at the time) only to see the answer make hardly a dent on their high-tensile-steel armored, Rhino’s backside brains. It wasn’t even dealing with Mr. Personality, Demon Hellion with diarrhea mouth.
No.
The most painful part of this entire thing was that I’d been the one who suggested Dickhead for the team. Yes ladies, I’d been asked who I wanted on the team and recalling a time in the distant past when he seemed nice—I’d taken his talkativeness as a sign of a lively brain, not realizing maggot-infested decay can have the same effect—I wrote his name down and welcomed myself into hell.
And there he was, his goat hoofs cladding past my table, cradling the same certificate I’d just got for doing nothing at all. He’d stopped “working” on the team after two weeks, choosing rather to disappear back into Cesspit Valhalla where the very best assholes are forged. The horns on his head glowed with what I knew he thought was pride, if such a virtuous feeling is allowed to exist in the pure darkness that is his heart.
My hands grew heavy as the slaggy, ersatz gold lettering on the certificate proclaiming the everlasting thanks of a grateful nation to one Frederic Woodbridge, III and his descendants now and forevermore, faded into a puke-green patina. This worthless piece of paper was now well and truly worthless. If they saw fit to slide one of these things across to the one person who had actively worked to sabotage the project, there was no standard, no judgment, nothing. It was utter meaninglessness. Crap. Vapid. Air-filled. Inconsequential. Trifling. Shallow. Weak. Paltry. Putid. Wretched. Magno conatu magnas nugas.
The certificate spent almost a year in the trunk of my car, after which I tossed it onto the top shelf of a bookcase in my study and there it remains still, the paper personification of a black hole.
Now that my son’s getting near two years old, I think I’ll restart blogging, if only because I heard today (an audiobook, 59 Seconds, it’s great, get it!) that happiness is a “warm pencil.”
My WordPress installation for /var/log is broken and I haven’t had either the time nor the inclination to fix it. I think I’ll just start afresh, perhaps even on another host. I don’t know.
When I know though, I’ll let you in on the secret, if there’s anybody still reading this wasteland of a blog.
November 1, 2011 
Posted in Journal, Miscellaneous 
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