Idiot!

I do a very technical job in IT (Unix Systems Programmer and Oracle DBA). You can't be an idiot to do the job successfully....or so you would think!

There has been a major problem over the past 10 days that has involved me spending many hours in conference calls with many very technical people. (The stress has been the equivalent of having the critical in-laws to stay over, whilst having the builders in, whilst potty training 3 toddlers) Finally, today it all came to a head and moved to a conference room.

Picture already waiting: 2 Websphere Techies, 2 Network Engineers, 2 Senior Windows Support guys, 1 Senior DBA, 1 Unix admin, 2 Developers. (I have known most of these guys for many years - and I at least arrived before the managers!)

I walk into room (and damn I looked good today!), went to turn newish iphone to silent and realised it wasn't working....

"OMG, it's dead - my life is in this phone"
"If you hold down the home and the top button, it will reset the OS" says Windows man 1
"Eek I don't want to reset....hang on...what top button?" I start examining phone, and press a button "Oh, it has an on/off button!"

DOH! Honestly I had switched it on on day 1 and never tried to turned it off since and forgot it was even there!

After they stopped laughing at me, I faced a 3 hour meeting where I had to explain in great technical detail why the issue is not my server or database's fault with them knowing I couldn't work a damn phone!!!

Afterwards, I went back to my desk and immediately received an e-mail from a person not in the meeting : "I have a problem with my phone, should I press this button thingy on the top?"

Grrrrrrrrrrreat, they didn't even get back to their desks before sharing !