Things about work.

Most days, things here at the 'B run pretty similar. People call with routine problems, we contact people with routine problems, I get bored, read my book, play Free Cell on the computer, spend lots of time on the Noiseboard being bored, etc. etc.

But occasionally it gets "exciting". And by exciting I don't mean like CTU exciting, but different. Which tends to mean everything breaks at once.

A little history. We're currently in the process of phasing out our older, modem-based communications in lieu of more modern web-based communications. The project has been going on for a while and is slated to be finished by the end of calendar year 2006.

So, of course, these new and exciting problems almost always have to do with the new web-based services that are going to be our premiere services and where we're trying to push everyone to.

The latest round of fun consists of the fact that we're experiencing massive slow-downs for one of the products. (And of course, since they're linked, when one product is affected the other one can be as well.). It's been going down intermittently for the past few days, seemingly getting worse as it goes along. Not that the slow-downs get longer, but the extent of time they go on does.

So, here at the Help Desk, we get all the calls. "Are you having a problem?", "Why are we getting this error?", "When will the problem be fixed?" To which the answers are "Yes," "Because of issues on our end," and "I don't know."

It's that last one that scares me.

Honestly, if I was a member company, my cup of confidence wouldn't be half-full, quarter-full, or even dregs-full, at this point.

I assume there must be smart people working here to have set all this web stuff up, but I remember saying to my boss the last time this happened, "Did they test any of this before they rolled it out?"

Seems like we're getting sucker punched by problems all the time. Issues we never saw coming.
Amazing foresight, that.

Anyway, thought I'd just take a few minutes to bitch while the phones were quiet.

At least, if nothing else, it makes the day go by quicker.