Frustrations

     Over the least couple of weeks, I have been beating my head against a wall over a couple of essentially penny-ante network configuration problems at work.

     There has long been a conflict of expectations at my work between my department of old-school geeks and the IS/IT department of new-style geeks.  Merging our departments didn't help.  IS/IT still has their own command structure and while they want (and generally get) access to everything my department works with, it is not a two-way street: everything they work with is deemed far too mysterious and arcane to be touched by those of us in the pocket-screwdriver crowd.  We think 99.9" uptime is risibly inadequate; they think it's a golden achievement.

     I can't get too specific -- even that last paragraph is pushing too much, but I'm so frustrated that I don't much care.

     We have a big job underway and one corner of it needs to be on the network.  That's a simple task, one we have done over and over, but this time, it's somehow -- and unexplainably -- Just Too Hard.  I've been just going along, doing what I am told, and I'm sick and tired of it; unless there has been some sudden huge flash of insight on the part of my opposite numbers, today I'm going to see how big a sword I can take to this Gordian knot to get the project moving forward.   I'm not spending another afternoon doing piddling tasks and staring anxiously at my e-mail every few minutes and sending an inquiry every hour, only to be told at the end of the day that "they forgot."