Even BEFORE 9/11 this was bad news

This grade school includes two buildings about five miles apart -- one for the elementary grades, the other for the middle school, reports an IT pilot fish who supports both sites.

"We are connected to the main network downtown, about six miles away, which is also where our Internet is provided," says fish. "I'm the technology coordinator for both buildings, and my office is in the middle school."

One day around mid-morning, fish receives an email from the business manager at the elementary school, making sure fish has authorized a technician to be on the roof checking the Internet connection.

What guy? fish replies. There's no Internet connection on the roof. Business manager responds that the tech has already been on the roof and is gone, so she can't ask him.

Nice of her to think of checking with me after she let him on the roof, fish grumbles. Since the mystery tech told the business manager that he was a subcontractor for the school's server management company, fish emails that company asking if they had sent someone.

The response: No, they have no open tickets, and no one authorized the guy, and the school should not let him up on the roof.

"Too late for that gem of advice," fish sighs. "I contacted the middle school office to ask them if there had been any visitors wanting to go up on the roof, and of course there had. Once again they didn't contact me first, assuming I already knew about it, and he was long gone."

At least this administrative assistant grilled the tech for information, made him sign in and had the building maintenance guy accompany him on the roof. The tech told her to contact the IT director downtown with any questions, so fish does -- and the IT director has no idea who the man on the roof was or why he was there.

At this point, fish is getting worried about the school's children and whatever that man might have done on the roof. Then, on the way to the principal's office to discuss whether to notify the police and evacuate the buildings, fish gets another message from the IT director.

"Upon further investigation, she discovered a sales rep at the server management company had finally acted on a two-month-old request to determine if a wireless bridge could be established between our school and downtown to increase our bandwidth," says fish.

"The sales rep hadn't bothered to let anyone know he had dropped the ball and finally picked it back up.

"It's amazing how far just a little communication can go to avert high drama."

Sharky doesn't mind a little drama, as long as it's part of a true tale of IT life. Send your story to me at sharky@computerworld.com. You'll score a sharp Shark shirt if I use it. Add your comments below, and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.

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