I'm thinking of serializing this, it's so comical.<br><br>The saga now involves the decision our IT director took to migrate from a static to a dynamic server. Given the number of computers on campus it's an absolutely sensible idea. No objections at all. But, as you might imagine, the migration has been taking place fairly slowly because the overwhelmingly large number of Wintel machines require a techie to come in to do the work. Most Windows users seem to be completely at the mercy of their machine, and have no notion at all of how to do something so simple as change the TCP/IP setting.<br><br>Anyway, I don't want to rag on Windows users, but on the IT person. Because the migration is taking place over a span of weeks, there are obviously some computers that are connected via their old static addresses and some that are connected via the new DHCP protocol. It would be reasonable, I think, to ensure that the dynamic addresses would not duplicate the static addresses while the changeover is taking place. But of course, we're talking about the IT director, who is as reasonable as overcooked broccoli. So all over campus computers are crashing, or in the case of Macs ethernet is being disabled on startup, because of conflicts between the static and the dynamic addresses.<br><br>What a hoot!<br><br>And that's true too.--Shakespeare, King Lear

So what you're saying is overcooked broccoli is unreasonable? <br><br>

It's what we had daily (or so it seems) in elementary school. I still have nightmares! And I remember that painting by Goya, the death of reason brings nightmares . . . .<br><br>And that's true too.--Shakespeare, King Lear<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by yoyo52 on 03/09/02 04:41 PM (server time).</EM></FONT></P>

The story continues (of course!).<br><br>The latest happened over last weekend, but I haven't had a chance to bring this up to date.<br><br>The IT folks finally decided that they would have to start all over again in the migration from static to dynamic servers in my building. So while no one was around, one of the guys went into all of the offices where I'd changed the Macs' settings, and changed them back to static addresses. He did this without asking permission, and without having anyone in the offices with him. Now that might not seem such a terrible thing--but we're talking the offices of faculty members. On those computers we all keep pretty confidential stuff, from grades for students (which are confidential by federal law) to letters of recommendations for colleagues and students, etc., etc. The IT Dept. had been warned before this that going into faculty offices and messing around with the computers was verboten. They ignored the warning. I think no one is going to complain, unfortunately, since it's one more opportunity to get the IT demon in trouble. For me, what it all adds up to is that I'll have to go around and redo the TCP-IP settings once the IT folks figure out what the heck they're doing.<br><br>One side note: the guy didn't come into my office. He didn't know how to make network changes on X. We should all have been so lucky!<br><br>And that's true too.--Shakespeare, King Lear

Well, damn it, someone ought to complain. That's your (their) stuff as Jobs might say. Here is something you might want to show those snooty IT minions if you haven't already...and you might add, just to have them on a bit, that you'll soon be running all these OS's concurrently and they had better block some additional time for your office to change each and every TCP/IP setting respectively. <br><br>http://www.osxfaq.com/Editorial/dull_dell/index.ws <br><br>This one has wowed more than a few of my window's friends. <br><br>-------------------------------------------<br>RWoelk <br>Generating 2048 bits of randomness...<br><br>Only the educated are free! -Epictetus

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p><br>This one has wowed more than a few of my window's friends. <br><p><hr></blockquote><p>You're friends must have been hitting the iBong<br><br>;)<br><br>

Now, where was that device when I was in college, anyway?! <br><br>And that's true too.--Shakespeare, King Lear