Monday, October 6, 2008

Does anything work in Miami?

So, beyond all the jackhammering that we are hearing through the walls during the meeting, the Internet connection that the hotel is providing is very sketchy. This morning, it seemed like we had Internet access, but our client's computer could not connect to the VPN. I checked the settings, and rebooted her machine about 20 times. We called the help desk and they were pretty much no help. They just kept telling us to reboot, restart and retry everything I had already done. Then we lost total connectivity in the training room. All 10 machines lost their connection to the Net.
The client took her computer up to her sleeping room, and paid the 10 dollars and was able to connect up there, so it was obvious that the network serving the sleeping rooms was a different connection than the meeting space.

We called the hotel and they sent someone from Engineering over to help. Not a good sign. If there was a problem with my toilet, I would have been happy to see the guy with the light blue shirt and the workman pants on... keys hanging off the belt loop, but this was going to require someone a little more specialized. So, after he left telling me that he didn't know what the problem was, and that he wasn't sure if he did anything, We had some level of connectivity back up.
I talked to the hotel staff and told them that they needed to get the network contractor here onsite now... not just now.. but NOW!!!!

They came down with a cellphone and I talked to him for a minute and explained the problems we were having, and he told me he was in Fort Lauderdale (just great...) and that he would be here at 1:30 pm. The meeting was starting at 1:00 pm and at about 12:57 pm, we lost the connection again.

We started the meeting without the internet, and finally the contractor arrived. He said he was going to do some testing on the router, and about 20 minutes later, we were back up.
When I finally talked to him, he said that the router had been up for over 30 days, and that there was nothing wrong!
I guess he doesn't consider that the bandwidth we are paying for, not working... is something wrong.

Lies lies lies... Nothing was wrong, and he did nothing.. but it magically starting working again once he arrived...
I am not saying I am a computer guru.. but I wasn't born yesterday.

I asked if he was going to re-boot the router tonight, and he said he was planning on it.
Then I told him that he was going to have to be onsite tomorrow during our computer training, which he said he would be. So, we will see if he actually shows.

1 comment:

Michael S. said...

Steve's getting worked....again.....