title: when tinkering pays off link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2007/08/15/when-tinkering-pays-off/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 663 created: 2007/08/15 13:17:00 created_gmt: 2007/08/15 13:17:00 comment_status: open post_name: when-tinkering-pays-off status: publish post_type: post

when tinkering pays off

This actually isn’t primarily a story about me, but about a colleague.

Yesterday I got a call from the assistant to our General Counsel who conferenced me in with one of the members of the Board of Directors. Well, not just “one” of the board members. Around my company this guy is an icon, and for good reason. During a particularly rough period of our history he stepped up and provided the leadership needed to save the company.

Anyway, it seems he was having trouble logging into one of our web sites. I got the call because whenever a login is involved people immediately assume it’s a single sign-on issue, or a problem with the user’s entry in a directory.

So I tried logging in with his credentials from both my Windows laptop and my Linux desktop, using both IE and Firefox (Firefox only on Linux, of course). No problem.

Then he tells me he’s running MacOS X and Apple’s Safari browser.

Now I’m a former FreeBSD hacker. Specifically, a former FreeBSD desktop hacker. Although I’ve never run MacOS or Safari, I’m actually inclined to favor them over Windows, at least. I’ve also spent almost 20 years (and early mornings) studying and testing operating systems and applications on my own time that I’ll never be asked to support in my day job. My oldest friend is a Mac devotee who jumped for joy when Apple finally released the FreeBSD-based MacOS X.

Unfortunately this didn’t come though in our conversation. I sputtered something like “Oh, well, since we don’t support Mac … don’t have any Macs in house … the only way anyone would know anything is if they run it at home for their personal use …”

God, did I really say that? I’m sure I came off as a typical O/S snob and now feel terrible about it.

After our first conversation, the board member called me back to say he’d tried Firefox and was able to access the site. I promised to continue looking into the problem he was having with Safari, now WAY outside my area of responsibility, and, more importantly, expertise.

I blasted an e-mail call for help to a friend in the desktop engineering group and finally found out that our webmaster ran Macs at home and was willing to help. Now this particular webmaster is not only one of the nicest people you’d want to meet, but also an extremely talented web developer who knows enough about the web tier that he could easily be a sysadmin. He’s also one of those guys who has seemingly infinite curiosity about how stuff works. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have surprised me that he was also a Mac user.

This morning I contacted the GC’s assistant and asked her to get them together. I’m sure our webmaster is going to be able to nail the problem, using skills he’s developed on his own time and which he could never have gotten our company to pay for training on.

But isn’t that the way it almost always is?

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