robrdavis - Networking Guru

First off, my title is "Desktop Support Services." I'm the guy that comes to your desk because your mouse or keyboard stop working. I can install software as needed, but beyond that, I have almost no IT power within my company. I'm not the low man on the totem pole, I'm more like the low man next to the totem pole.

With that said, our office network is down this morning. Something happened with our ISP and due to the way things are set up, if we have no external (internet) connection, we can't access any of our servers, even those that are physically here in the office. I'm using a cellular card in my computer to access the internet so I can keep in touch with our help desk in Kansas City. While waiting for something to happen so we can work again, I'm also surfing the web and posting this to my blog...

One of our managers came to my cube (fortunately, I was checking work email at the time) and asked "So, what are you doing to remedy this network outage?" It took me a while to explain that since it's external, there's nothing that anyone in the entire company can do to bring it back up, let alone little ol' me.

It's amazing what people think you can do if your job is computer related. It's also amazing that people sometimes don't understand that there's a lot more than just flipping a little switch or plugging/unplugging a wire.

I find it ironic that I look at most of these people and think "There's no way I can do what these people do. They're engineers. They build bridges that span huge chasms and can hold up trains. They design airports and freeways and it's their designs that determine how well traffic flows." I just can't get my head around some of the stuff that they do. At the same time though, many of these same people come to me with questions that seem so basic; questions that I could have answered when I was in High School.

I forget sometimes that just because people are smarter than I am in some subjects, that doesn't mean that they're smarter than I am overall. We all have strong areas and weak areas, things we know and things we don't have any clue about.

It makes me feel good to know that generally people are just as dumb as me. It's just one big world of goobers.