Sharky's Most Recent Posts

Pilot fish gets a call from a site manager who wants to restore the data that was deleted the night before. Exactly what will that require?

Network connectivity for this company's testing lab isn't what it should be -- and when one tester complains to IT, IT's response isn't what it should be either.

An outside vendor handles spam filtering for this small university, but it's not unusual for users to forward spam that sneaks through to this pilot fish, and sometimes it's tough to figure out what's best to do. Not this time, though.

Y2k is fast approaching in this government mainframe data center, and this manager's reaction to her Y2k status report is a little extreme.

This small company has 12 regional locations scattered around the U.S. -- and it's about to open another one.

User calls the help desk at 8 a.m. with a laptop that has stopped connecting to wireless networks -- and two hours of fruitless effort later, the call ends up with this pilot fish.

With stepped-up virus and malware attacks, the IT department where this pilot fish works is pushing out security updates to all users' computers -- complete with a reboot countdown.

This pilot fish has to deal with customers -- real customers, the kind who pay the bills -- all the time. But one in particular is, well, difficult.

This pilot fish's most computer-illiterate user calls while fish is in the dentist chair -- and there's a bit of a communications gap when he calls her back.

Support call comes in from the marketing department, where they're trying to set up a high-resolution color printer. The problem is getting the company's only two Macs to print -- and this pilot fish doesn't know Macs.

Pilot fish's wife, the IT consultant, gets an alert at 10 p.m., and he drives with her to the client site. But when he walks in, there's a shriek of disgust.

Pilot fish accepts a job at a small business-supply store, and his top priority is keeping the application server running -- but that's easier said than done.

User calls the help desk complaining that his computer is making loud noises -- and from past experience, he knows that means trouble.

Help desk pilot fish fields a call from a user -- one that starts out wrong and doesn't get any better.

Flashback to 1975, when this pilot fish and her husband both work for a big state university -- fish in IT and her husband in the chemistry department -- and their computer is a campus mainframe.