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Murphy was a !*#/÷
10 years ago
So this week, I started a major project for work. Actually, let me step back and explain a little about my job. After working in retail in various capacities for many years, I finally finished my Bachelor's of Science in Game and Simulation Programming. With that, I was able to land a job working as a Software Support Specialist at a point of sale company. So I've gone from working in retail to doing tech support. For retail. My Master Plan is to do this while going into business designing small app-sized games (and eventually bigger projects as well).
In any case, the office I work at is generally divided into the sections: grocery, hospitality, and hardware. I work in the hospitality department, so I generally work with restaurants, bars, and the occasional church or university. The products my department supports are entirely different than the products supported by the grocery department. The only similarity is that they both run on computers.
Recently, I was asked to assist with a major software upgrade for a chain of grocery stores that have contacted with us, spread throughout Illinois and Missouri. The project includes a major software upgrade, add well as upgrading the servers' memory and replacing a few computers at reach site. The list of stores is being split between our office and another of my company's offices in St. Louis. I'm scheduled to upgrade two stores a week for the next 6 to 8 weeks. Most of them I'm doing on my own, which makes me nervous, but they wouldn't have given me this project if they didn't think I was able to handle it. Thankfully, the first two stores were designated "training" stores where me and my St. Louis counterpart would be trained by someone who helped design the systems in how to perform the upgrade.
Monday night was our first training install. It did not go well. It was going along fine until we tried to run the upgrade program itself. An hour later and we found out that at some point, the program freaked out entirely and uninstalled itself. And then, one of their servers stopped communicating. Eventually, we got the server back online, but none of the programs we needed were running. We got those running, but then the registers didn't work. We spent the next four hours trying to piece the system back together, and finished just in time for the store to open again. As a result, the project has been pushed back almost two weeks.
Like I said, Murphy was a !*#/÷.
In any case, the office I work at is generally divided into the sections: grocery, hospitality, and hardware. I work in the hospitality department, so I generally work with restaurants, bars, and the occasional church or university. The products my department supports are entirely different than the products supported by the grocery department. The only similarity is that they both run on computers.
Recently, I was asked to assist with a major software upgrade for a chain of grocery stores that have contacted with us, spread throughout Illinois and Missouri. The project includes a major software upgrade, add well as upgrading the servers' memory and replacing a few computers at reach site. The list of stores is being split between our office and another of my company's offices in St. Louis. I'm scheduled to upgrade two stores a week for the next 6 to 8 weeks. Most of them I'm doing on my own, which makes me nervous, but they wouldn't have given me this project if they didn't think I was able to handle it. Thankfully, the first two stores were designated "training" stores where me and my St. Louis counterpart would be trained by someone who helped design the systems in how to perform the upgrade.
Monday night was our first training install. It did not go well. It was going along fine until we tried to run the upgrade program itself. An hour later and we found out that at some point, the program freaked out entirely and uninstalled itself. And then, one of their servers stopped communicating. Eventually, we got the server back online, but none of the programs we needed were running. We got those running, but then the registers didn't work. We spent the next four hours trying to piece the system back together, and finished just in time for the store to open again. As a result, the project has been pushed back almost two weeks.
Like I said, Murphy was a !*#/÷.
