The World According to Mitch

Those of us who try to keep  the banging of our heads against a wall to a minimum will have long since learned that we don’t know everything, and more often than not there is someone out there who knows more than we do.

“But Mitch, how can you say that?  I read your blog religiously, and when I don’t know something about computers I can usually find the answer on your blog!”  I know, but even I have to go looking for the answers sometimes… in fact, more often than not.

The problem is, very often the answer is not so easy to find…

This week I found myself trying to solve a problem that concerned a High Availability SQL Cluster.  It was maddening… I spent three days trying to find the answer, and from very early on I knew that I was going to have to look to others for help. 

As a blogger, the first place I start looking is… other blogs of course!

Now here’s the problem with that… when the answer is not as simple as a yes/no to track down, you may have to look through myriad blogs and articles and documents and forums before you actually find the answer… and often enough one blog or article or document or forum may not give you the solution, but it will point you in the right direction – either down a rabbit hole or sometimes into a snake pit.  Either way, I keep each page open in a new tab in my web browser, because often enough I will want to document how I got from zero to hero – or hero to bum, as the case may be.

So three days into trying to solve this problem, which took me to a dozen different articles, forums, and conversations on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (which indeed led me to three other articles), I found in four of those articles the pieces to the puzzle that eventually helped me to solve my issue.  It was done, I solved it… not alone mind you, but I solved it.

I looked at my desktop and sighed… I hadn’t rebooted in three days for fear of losing track of my path toward the solution… which of course I had to document for my client.  I could now close them all down.  Each browser tab (and yes, there were actually fifteen of them, excluding Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter) was now beckoning to me to shut them down.  One by one I clicked on the X in the top right-hand corner… and I was quite satisfied as they all disappeared into the ether.

As frustrating as technical problems may be – and I always tell people that knowing more will only lead to more technical and even more frustrating problems – when you solve them the feeling is truly euphoric.  That stress-relieving satisfaction that you fought AND WON.

Now how is that for a way to end a day? Happy Friday everyone, and have a great weekend!