LAN Problems. Again.

Goddamn, if I didn't just get to work.

I suck.

On the way here, I was behind more people driving maddeningly slow then ever before. Why can't people just drive the damn speed limit?

Yesterday, I sat here for hours waiting for a password reset. The LAN folks decided to cut off all logins to the server I use to bounce to the 10.0 internal server. I'm not sure why. To get the service back I had to have a password reset, but because of the apparent Exchange related disaster (the company converted last week), the LAN people were too busy to even call me back. In fact, they didn't even answer the phone all day yesterday.

Every time I need anything done here I have to explain that I'm a Unix user. This is fairly exotic around here, and believe me, I'm really tired of having to justify my choice of operating systems, especially when I'm using the one that is obviously superior[1]. On top of THAT, because I'm a contractor, I'm not supposed to have access to the VPN. I have to keep that a secret, apparently. I'm kind of tired of the whole thing. I just want to work for a company that can provide a supportive environment for my activities. My direct supervisors (and the one above them, generally) are supportive. Like everywhere else[2], it's general corporate policy that causes problems. They always think they can make it right for me when they interview me, and then it turns out that they have no control over the LAN people, and the LAN people ultimately control my desktop access to everything.

Oh, and something with the Exchange cut over caused the Unix box I use to stop sending me mail from my cron jobs or anything else. This is very bad, because my report scripts mail out the reports automagically. Now I have to babysit them and FTP/email them manually until this is fixed. I supposed I could look at the machine myself, but since it's not MY box, I hesitate to mess with the config files as I could affect other people.

[1]No, I don't want to argue with you about it. For wide-scale networky things, Windows sucks. Period. You won't change my mind, so don't waste your time trying.

[2]Except InternetMCI and ANS. Neither of those companies exist anymore, but they were liberal about operating environments. In fact, they expected Network Engineers to use Unix. Windows was the exception, and in the Networking world, that's the way it should be.