How to save money

Client calls IT consultant pilot fish on a Sunday night. "We can't get to the server or the Internet," he tells fish. "Can you come in tomorrow and figure out what's going on?" 

When fish arrives on-site, the first thing he notices is the router/firewall that he set up a year and a half before. It's sitting off to the side -- disconnected.

Turns out the company wanted to add another hard drive to the server, and to save a little money, client called an ex-employee to install it.

"Somehow he thought he had to implode the network to install the new hard drive?" grumbles fish. "He started Friday at 5:30 p.m., was there for hours and didn't finish. Came back on Sunday and still couldn't get things working. That's when they called me."

Fish starts with the router/firewall, redoing all the network connections gummed up at the hands of a junior wanna-be tech. Eventually, he's able to get network, Internet and server access up, running and fully operational.

Then it takes 15 minutes to install the hard drive and have it accessible on the network.

And has the client learned a lesson about the value of spending a little to get it done right the first time?

Fat chance. Sighs fish, "While I'm redoing everything with the network and server, I hear them say they could hire some cabling company to come in and tell them how to run the new network cables."

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