re: Great Tech-Ed Attendee Quotes from Internal Trip Report

Neilcar — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 21:41:00 GMT

I hear this again & again in support. PSS often has customers call us on issues that they know are most likely caused by a 3rd party because we'll give it to the old Harvard try & troubleshoot down as far as we can go.

re: Great Tech-Ed Attendee Quotes from Internal Trip Report

Brian Schkerke — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 22:22:00 GMT

Microsoft has fantastic support. I've used the ~$245 incident roughly.. six times? And I purchased a database support contract last year. The incidents were almost all my fault, I had spent several hours if not days attempting to debug them, and generally less than twenty minutes on the phone and PSS had me straightened out. Fast, friendly, and very complete.

As a joker (see my weblog title: Skerkles the Clown) they're a bit, ah, straight laced for me but those are the jakes. Although.. heh, I don't know if this is appropriate or not but..

We had just migrated our database from one server to a new server. I had recreated all the accounts. Everything seemed like it worked except one automated program. It kept insisting that the objects I was trying to use weren't valid. I went nuts trying to figure this out (factor in the 48 hour weekend of moving every server in our company, WINS database corruption, problems everywhere else -- we had moved our central processing center). This program is our lifeline to our finances so I was authorized to call Microsoft PSS to have them help me.

I'm on the phone and the gentlemen is gently explaining to me that if I can see the object in EM that it exists - because EM (er, Enterprise Manager for SQL Server) queries the database directly for its information. We didn't make headway - I was, frankly, too tired and dead - and finally he said, "Let me look at the code." I went, opened the code to send to him, and said "I'm a <bleeping> <bleeping> <bleep> of a <bleep>, <bleep> <bleep> it."

I hadn't issued a using statement in the code. The old account I was using had the default database set properly. The new account didn't. *sigh* That's not what is funny about the call though. What's funny is that, after my exclamation, the engineer said, "I didn't say that!"

I laughed and said, "You don't have to. I recognize my own problems." He was even kind enough to offer to refund the charge; I told him not to bother. It was an experience I needed.

So, long story short, yes, I agree.

re: Great Tech-Ed Attendee Quotes from Internal Trip Report

jledgard — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 23:17:00 GMT

Wow, thanks for sharing a good story. :-)

Conversations

Geeky Things by Neil Carpenter — Wed, 02 Jun 2004 21:23:00 GMT

re: Great Tech-Ed Attendee Quotes from Internal Trip Report

Chris Garty — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 13:31:00 GMT

Excellent news.

Btw... James does have a blog ;)

http://blogs.msdn.com/jameslau/

re: Great Tech-Ed Attendee Quotes from Internal Trip Report

jledgard — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 16:50:00 GMT

Doh, ok. Maybe I'll have to convince him to use it. :-)