That bruise you see on my forehead is from me banging my head against the wall repeatedly, trying in vain to silence the voices in my head.
Let's see, I was interrogated today about:
What value does the LISA conference (Large Installed Systems Administration) bring to the guy doing, say, System Administration
Have I run a portscan against my (linux iptables) firewall? (Answer: no, why bother, I can run iptables -L and know definitively what the kernel is passing)
Apparently there's something wrong with the mailserver, because he can't get IMAP to work with it (never mind that I'm using IMAP with it from home with no problems as are about two or three dozen other people, some even using the same Microsoft Outhouse client that he undoubtedly is). He's going to try some plug-in he says, although why Outhouse needs a plug-in to talk to a standard IMAP server boggles my mind.
Asks me "What do people in other offices do to get their mail?" .. guess he didn't realize all our offices are on the same Frame Relay WAN.
Meanwhile, HeWhoCannotSetUpIMAP wants me to send him a copy of the firewall rules. I mean, seriously, if he can't get IMAP working, how can anyone expect him to make heads or tails of the output of iptables -n -L -v?
If you see me, in public... shoot me. I promise you, there will be no wrongful death suit, I'll leave it in my will that my body may not be used as evidence in a trial in an effort to spare you prosecution. Please.
If you are a "Windows guy" and a CIO, then you have no excuse for not being able to setup IMAP in Outlook. It just isn't that complicated!
"HeWhoCannotSetUpIMAP"
Is that his new, official name? You were looking for one earlier; I assume it'll only grow longer and more derisive as time winds on.
Best of luck, and deepest sympathy, man.
I'm sure when you give him the output of iptables he'll ask for it in a powerpoint type presentation, with little green and red lights to indicate if traffic is allowed through or not. Oh, and animated, it's gotta have animations and swooshing text.
Wow. For giigles, I set up Outlook2K to IMAP form my Exchange server. It was effortless.
And I've been trusted by my manager for so long, I think my jaw would drop if an executive questioned the merits of my technical expertise.