Today I had what could be called my first run-in with a co-worker. I'm working what could be called an R&D role, checking out new stuff as we have ideas and trying to figure out if we could fit it into or have it replace parts of our current infrastructure in order to lower licensing costs (free ourselves from vendor lock-in) and decrease the amount of fscking around our IT department has to do.
We've been assigned a block of 12 IP addresses on our local sub-net to do whatever we want with. I've also got a couple of quad xeon's with large discs and ton's of RAM to play around with.
Anyway, we've decided (me and my manager) that it'd be nice to have an rnd sub-domain hanging off our internal DNS system so we can easily address stuff and create an index of all our current stuff at the base, so anyone wondering what us lazy pricks are up to can just go to rnd.OUR.DOMAIN.gov.au and have a bit of a browse and mess around.
There's a guy over the other side of the building who apparently runs most of the network here. He's an Indian dude with a really thick accent that makes it next to impossible to hear what he's saying most of the time. So I go up to him to ask about getting this set up.
Warning: this is basically what I think the dude said. As I noted before he was a hard one to comprehend.
petrol_pumper: Hey bro, I'm petrol_pumper; heard you were the guy to speak to about getting a subdomain sorted out.
BattleNerd: Oh yes well you see it's quite impossible you haven't even filled out the appropriate forms yet I'm sorry I just don't think it's going to be possible.
petrol_pumper: Ah yeah, I've already spoken to Mr. CIO about it, he said it would be fine and that<int>
BattleNerd: We didn't know what the risk is here it's not possible we run Microsoft server and it's very delicate network not what you are used to you can't just go around asking these things oh no that's not the way we do things around here oh no!
petrol_pumper: Uh, ok well how do we go abou<int>
BattleNerd: I don't know where you think you are or where you came from but let me tell you that it's going to be quite impossible I won't be able to do it unless I have the correct forms filled out and anyway I'm in charge of this whole network I don't have time to do what you want and anyway we have 100s of Microsoft servers here that need my attention we can't just let you go plugging in your own stuff what did you want to run anyway?
petrol_pumper: bind 9 on Linux; I've used it befo<int>
BattleNerd: Oh we use Microsoft server here we use Microsoft for everything it's a lot easier than bind very very much easier than what you us<int>
petrol_pumper:
ktnxbye.
This dude was a total loony. He reminded me of the freaks you'd see at college that think they know everything and will basically fight you to the death if you try to impart them with any of your own knowledge. Woe betide your hide if you should hint that you might know something they don't. I dealt with these people years ago, in school. Very surprised to see them working professionally with the same attitude. I'm beginning to think that those people who asked me if I'd worked in government before, and were wondering how I'd get along.. so is *this* what they meant?
I'm going to call the Indian dude BattleNerd.
Later on when I was talking to Mr CIO about my experience, he told me that when he first came to this company he had a little chat with BattleNerd. Anyway, Mr CIO was questioning BattleNerd about the links to the outside world we have here. Apparently we have a frame relay link to several other offices around the state. Mr CIO asks BattleNerd how many red, orange and green packets we have. BattleNerd, not having a clue what Mr CIO is talking about, goes into a tirade about how he thinks frame relay works. Along the way, he figures out that orange and red must mean "bad". So we don't have any orange or red packets - only green.
The attitude displayed by BattleNerd is a major source of frustration for Mr CIO, but that's another couple of pages of short stories.
Clearly, BattleNerd doesn't know anything about networking. Much less TCP/IP. He probably doesn't even know what a protocol is. He doesn't even know how to use traceroute or any of those fundamental networking utilities. All he knows how to do is ping. Example, last week the proxy server goes down, and The Rebel(my manager) asks BattleNerd why, what's happened. BattleNerd pings the proxy server machine and says he doesn't know it should work.
Is this why companies are so scared to use anything that doesn't have warranty and support? Because their staff are basically useless, and without 24/7 phone support they would be unable to fix anything that goes wrong?
How else would this companies network still be running with people like BattleNerd at the helm?
