Stop Whining - Be Grateful!

There's plenty of stress, disappointments & flat out lying to contend with when you're trying to ride herd on a network. I know it & whine about it constantly, but there is a lot to be grateful for too, so I thought I'd list a few.

Bosses: They can make your life miserable, but I can pass the buck up to mine. She has to attend all the meetings where they talk endlessly about all the things they should be doing. I get to stay in the server room & do. Mine lets me set my own hours & never watches the clock on me. If I need an extra hour or day off, it's fine with her. Of course, she expects me to stay late as needed, too.

Help Desk: Those wonderful, front-line people that take all the flack for my mistakes & actually talk to the users. They answer the same questions - often stupid - day after day after day & manage to do so politely. Thank you! I couldn't do it.

Novell: OK, it's dying, but for file services, there still isn't anything else out there with finer control over permissions. I had more trouble getting 6.5 to stabilize than most previous versions (I skipped all the X.0 versions), but now that it is running, a reboot once a month is about all the attention those boxes need. Virtual Office is one of the best kept secrets anyone ever had.

Veritas: Alright, their licensing is a nightmare, but the basic product is pretty good. It's a little quirky at times, but the tech support is pretty responsive when you need them & once set up, you can pretty much live with it. (Gosh, I think my standards have gone down hill…)

3Com: They're not Cisco, but they're not priced like it either. Their middle range switches are solid & pretty quick. Plug them up & let them run. I'm still using some that are 7 years old.

Dell: Not only do they make a solid PC & laptop, but now they sell all kinds of other gear. Finally, a one-stop shop. No more need to price everything all over the place, although I still don't use their servers & switches. Just a personal quirk. I have no evidence they don't do a fine job, but I've been using HP/Compaq servers & 3Com switches happily for years. Why change?

HP Printers: They're not the cheapest, but they seem to be more solid than others we've tried. Their drivers are solid too. (I'm still recovering from some go rounds with Kyocera!)

APC: Rarely seen & always relied on, their UPS's are one of the foundations of the business. We had some remodeling going on & I watched circuits flicker & die as the electricians played their games. Network services stayed up!

Microsoft: Thank you for job security!