Convalesco

When I was a fanatic GNU/Linux user, using a Gentoo desktop all day long for every single task, I was addicted at readings like BoF and affiliate journals or jokes. Talking to many people, who in the hearing of “Linux” reacted with admiration over me, I was confident that I’m way above the average computer user level.

The most stupid thing I can remember is, working via secure shell and shutting down the service. I can’t remember if I shut down the demon after a new configuration of the ssh server, locking myself and everyone else outside(!) of the server, or was it an iptables rule that I didn’t test? Can’t remember right now.

A couple of days ago a friend asked me to move his server to my office, because he needed a 24/7 static ip, stable internet connection. So I said okay. Once we began to install the HP server, running Win2K server, a VPN network and other applications, we connected everything, the USB UPS, the Ethernet cable and the server was accessible from the office LAN, but not the internet. I insisted to my friend that I can manage to make this thing work. I took a quick look to the hardware configuration, the ethernet cable was there, the USB UPS was connected, everything looked fine.

I lost like 5 hours to make the damn thing work with the current configuration. Switched 2 ADSL+2 routers, I spend 100 € and then I called my friend and told him to call the technician who configured the machine initially, Stelios. He is one of the leading members of DWN and one of the few people I know in my town that are far better than with UNIX machines. I know many tech people here, because the city is small and at the office I call support for hardware or software level (Windows) issues often. I know many pro technician that call me and ask me my help in the rare occasions that they need a UNIX server. Anyway, I called Stelios with the attitude of the knowledgeable guy, talking to him about the router’s problem with the PPTP protocol, the Firewall configuration and other fancy words. Deep inside I wanted to let him know that “Hey Dude, I’m capable! I can do UNIX and this Windows shit are easy for me!!!“. After yelling overconfident for 5 minutes straight, he asked me about the network configuration, because the computer had 2 NIC’s. I said, yes, the iLog and the regular NIC. He said “No there is another, PCI Ethernet which I installed”. I took a careful look at the computer and the following conversation took place:

Me: “No man, there’s just a USB PCI card that we plugged the USB UPS and nothing else, I’m sure, I’m looking at it”

Stelios: “No, I can’t be wrong. I configured that computer myself and there’s an ethernet NIC on the PCI interface, so it has to be there!”

Me: “No there’s just a USB plug nothing more, I’m telling you that the UPS is plugged on it!”

Stelios: “Excuse me, the UPS is plugged on a PCI USB card???”

Me: “Yes”

Stelios: “Who did the set up the computer, did you?”

Me (n an overconfident and self approving mood): “Yes, I did”

Stelios: “Can you please unplug the USB from the Ethernet port now?”

Me: “What are you talking about?”

Stelios: “I don’t know how you did it, but I’m 99% positive that you plugged the USB UPS on the Ethernet card, because that computer 2 USB ports in the front + the fact that I had plugged the UPS to the keyboard’s USB originally.”

Me (Feeling like a total idiot while accepting the truth, the port was a f*cking ETHERNET!!!): “Oh my God!!!”

Stelios: “You got the point, how the f*ck did you do that? It’s probably the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard by phone”

Me (With the ego crashed down and a will to continue the conversation converging exponentially to 0): “Hmm, yes, well probably I didn’t take a careful look at it, I just plugged the USB PCI and…”

Stelios: “Yeah yeah, okay. There you go, you should be all set now. The 2nd Ethernet has just a few ports open to offer services via Internet. The Firewall is specifically configured to do that on that NIC. So you should just plug an ethernet cable from that NIC to the router and you should be fine.”

Me: “Okay, thank you”

Stelios: “You’re welcome, see you.”

The phone call ended a bit brutally. I made so many changes to the WindowsNT server’s firewall that Stelios had to come to the office and fix the damn thing by himself. I was on a business trip so, I was not there to face him. This is by far the most stupid thing I’ve ever did with a computer related configuration. After using almost daily, 3 operating systems (MacOSX, Linux & Windows), after configuration the MS-DOS applications that most paid tech savvy people who passed from my office failed (DeFacto, Bar Code printer and now I’m dealing with a professional DataCorp bar code printer that – for now – doesn’t work as it should), after being an operator in Grnet’s #Linuxhelp and helping some (few probably) people with basic Gentoo / Linux configurations, after posting solutions in many, many forums, I did something unimaginably stupid just like that.

So, it’s better to hold our horses when why try to prove that we know, time will tell.

If you are really good at something and if you are not, hey it’s not a big deal, just think that you have enough to be happy with