Grumpy Techs

We’ve been busting our asses lately trying to figure out why our 802.11n-based wireless network isn’t stable.  The manufacturer (rhymes with, ::cough cough:: the latter of “Monte Cristo” or the most awesome gunk used for greasing pans and…stuff, i.e. Crisco) can’t even figure out what the problem is.  We’ve updated all the client drivers (and with over 700 clients, that was a BIATCH!!) and tested the security settings on the controller itself as well as ensuring all the access points have the latest firmware.  However, we’ve concluded that, for just some reason, a form of metaphysicalness has beared its ugly head as evidenced here:

Now we ask you:  notice anything a little strange about this window?  Perhaps a contradiction of terms…

::sigh::

Current Mood:  grumpy

I’ll probably get some flak on this one but I’m sure anyone who’s ever worked with this company in an “enterprise-level” environment can relate. I personally don’t drink the Kool-Aid when it comes to one operating system over another and prefer to think of myself as going with the flow, especially when it comes to whatever allows me a paycheck. That being said, I’ll work with whatever. Without specifically naming names due to trademark protection, let’s just say the two companies I’ll be discussion today are: “Crabble” and “Minisloth.” Y’all with me? Good.

Prior to my time someone withing the bowels of my employer had the “great” idea of putting Bootcamp (I’ll use that word since it could mean military training or…umm…something else) on a bunch of Crabble CrabBooks back ran the OS was running…ummm…not the current level of OS which rhymes with “shepard.” The previous version was actually a BETA version of Bootcamp and not the current version which allows one to run SP3 of Minisloth (again, not the current OS but the one that rhymes with “says-me.”) Only the current version of Bootcamp allows one to upgrade “says-me” to SP3. That obviously doesn’t fare well with a number of my coworkers who are running the previous version of Crabble’s OS and leaves a wonderful level of security exploits wide open.

You might be thinking “easy enough; just upgrade their CrabBooks to ‘shepard’.” Oh, contrare, dear readers. For, you see, only the must “cutting edge” CrabBooks will run “shepard.” The others must run the previous version. And since the others can only run the beta version of Bootcamp, they have to run old versions of Minisloth’s “says-me.” Of course, if we’re willing to purchase new hardware which come with “shepard,” we’ll be good to go.

Again, I don’t care as I could go either way. But, for those who “drink the Crabble Kool-Aid,” that’s something to think about. That or nothing a simple VM environment won’t fix.

Think I’ll fire up Ubuntu to move on.