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Ugh. The night before last just plain sucked. Wait. Did I say the night before last? I meant yesterday, or maybe I not. Doesn't matter. After then time had little meaning for me.
What started off as a basic hardware replacement in a store turned into a mess. To start with, We started at 11:00pm which wasn't fun to begin with. We got the systems set up and started packing the old ones up. Then we noticed the database downloads were running very slowly on the cashier systems while most of the otulier registers were going fairly fast. In what took 2 1/2 hours to find out what happened the answer from the command desk floored us. To start off with, the system's database cross referenced transaction histories so the more transactions occur, the slower the download is. to add to matters, the server the systems were contacting was for another store. We find this out along with a notice that the store needs four open registers for opening.
Did I forget to mention this was 30 minutes before the store opens and we had none ready? Cue us unpacking 4 old systems and setting them up as interim solution.
So we needed to move the old systems for store operations which meant loading them back up on the skids. Got that done then we get to work on the new systems. We get in, change the IP address reference files as necessary and start the updater. Downloads on the first systems go smoothly. Yay! Then we start getting errors. Crap. Stop the updaters. Not as bad as it seems, a number of systems were up and running and we had about half of them up and running. So we swap out the old ones that we had set up and pack up the old systems. Then the updaters start freezing. Perfect. This was occurring at roughly 8AM.
After a few talks with the command center and them remote accessing a few systems (which was taking forever) a couple more systems are up and running. At roughly noon we find out we have to transfer the info manually to the new systems.
One slight problem. The info we needed was only on the old systems and is unique to the systems IP address. The count? 14 systems with problems out of 26. *sigh*
For the next 3 hours we are unpacking an old system, hooking it up, starting it up, signing into the admin account, download the database to a USB stick. Then while one tech is uploading it into the new system we pack up the old one and repeat the process. Now a few systems did finish automatically so that helped though one old system started to freeze on startup prompting us to hook it up in another system and grab that. So the process went smoothly though slowly. At roughly 3pm we had one last system so we wrap up all the old systems and take them to receiving.
Of course the last system would fight us.
Everything we did was met with a freeze up. So we had to grab the old system to be ready to put it back. After it gets out of the wrap the new system finally unfreezes and finishes up. after a couple of tests it checked out. So we repack the old system, fill out the paperwork (I was wanting to fill it out in the blood of the command desk staff as a lot of the issues we had were due to their mistakes and the time due to their sloth).
Total time? 17 hours with no breaks. A new record, beating out the old one of 14 hours. AT THE SAME DAMN STORE!!!!! I swear, Murphy saw us go in and went "today they are MINE!"
I got home and slept for 13 hours after.
What started off as a basic hardware replacement in a store turned into a mess. To start with, We started at 11:00pm which wasn't fun to begin with. We got the systems set up and started packing the old ones up. Then we noticed the database downloads were running very slowly on the cashier systems while most of the otulier registers were going fairly fast. In what took 2 1/2 hours to find out what happened the answer from the command desk floored us. To start off with, the system's database cross referenced transaction histories so the more transactions occur, the slower the download is. to add to matters, the server the systems were contacting was for another store. We find this out along with a notice that the store needs four open registers for opening.
Did I forget to mention this was 30 minutes before the store opens and we had none ready? Cue us unpacking 4 old systems and setting them up as interim solution.
So we needed to move the old systems for store operations which meant loading them back up on the skids. Got that done then we get to work on the new systems. We get in, change the IP address reference files as necessary and start the updater. Downloads on the first systems go smoothly. Yay! Then we start getting errors. Crap. Stop the updaters. Not as bad as it seems, a number of systems were up and running and we had about half of them up and running. So we swap out the old ones that we had set up and pack up the old systems. Then the updaters start freezing. Perfect. This was occurring at roughly 8AM.
After a few talks with the command center and them remote accessing a few systems (which was taking forever) a couple more systems are up and running. At roughly noon we find out we have to transfer the info manually to the new systems.
One slight problem. The info we needed was only on the old systems and is unique to the systems IP address. The count? 14 systems with problems out of 26. *sigh*
For the next 3 hours we are unpacking an old system, hooking it up, starting it up, signing into the admin account, download the database to a USB stick. Then while one tech is uploading it into the new system we pack up the old one and repeat the process. Now a few systems did finish automatically so that helped though one old system started to freeze on startup prompting us to hook it up in another system and grab that. So the process went smoothly though slowly. At roughly 3pm we had one last system so we wrap up all the old systems and take them to receiving.
Of course the last system would fight us.
Everything we did was met with a freeze up. So we had to grab the old system to be ready to put it back. After it gets out of the wrap the new system finally unfreezes and finishes up. after a couple of tests it checked out. So we repack the old system, fill out the paperwork (I was wanting to fill it out in the blood of the command desk staff as a lot of the issues we had were due to their mistakes and the time due to their sloth).
Total time? 17 hours with no breaks. A new record, beating out the old one of 14 hours. AT THE SAME DAMN STORE!!!!! I swear, Murphy saw us go in and went "today they are MINE!"
I got home and slept for 13 hours after.
I AM the evil bastard!
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