I don't want to be a network administrator!

Today was a really not-fun day at work. For the last week and a half we've been having serious issues with the network, including losing wireless access for people using laptops, certain people's sudden inability to print, extreme sluggishness when accessing files on the server and also with our accounting system. That last one is the most problematic because without that system, we can process orders, create invoices or pay bills.

By Friday last week the IT consultant we work with had the wireless connectivity up and running again, but the accounting system was still sluggish, but at least it was usable. On Tuesday of this week, I had a network guru friend of mine come in to look at our network and make some recommendations for improvement. She also tried changing one or two things to see if she could improve the performance of the accounting system software. Wednesday everyone was happy because MAS500 was working like a dream - perhaps even slightly faster than it had before our problems began last week.But today was the worst. Things started off okay... well MAS500 was slow again, but not as slow as it had been last week.

But as the day progressed, it got slower and quirkier. Users were getting all kinds of error messages, they kept getting booted out of the system, or they had problems logging back in. And today I got to be the one people looked to for help - and since network administration really isn't in my skill set - I really had very little to offer. So I did what I could - gathered as much information as I could when errors came up and reported them to our MAS500 consultant, tried some suggestions from our regular IT consultant, made a date with Embarq to come check out our modem (since it has an amber light where it is supposed to be green), and told people they gotta cut down on the size of their email inboxes.

So I definitely feel for the other people who have had to play default network administrator person even though, like me, that's not in their skill set. Even if it those skills were in my skill set, I'm pretty sure I still would not want to be a network administrator. I miss Steven!