Trust me. I do this for a living....

We all have our moments, right? 

No matter what you do for a living, you have had an EPIC!Fail in your field. And it's always embarrassing, no matter who you are. 

I was reminded of one of the first rules of SysAdminning this week: ALWAYS check the physical first. But I forgot. Or rather, I only half-checked. 

See, I have UVerse for my cable provider. We have one of those "You kids got it so good now" wireless TV receivers, but we haven't really been using it.

I went to use it this weekend, and lo and behold, it has no signal. I checked the connection to the TV, unplugged it all, plugged it back in, and nothing. Zip. No signal.

It paired with their device just fine, but it never initialized the client (which means it acted like it was talking to the box just fine, but it got no TV shows from it). 

I tried to initialize it several times before I finally gave up and called Tech Support. I followed all their instructions, allowed them to remotely reset my connection (wiping out my phone, cable, and internet while it rebooted), and still nothing. 

One Service Call, coming up. Luckily, I was not at home when the service tech showed up to fix the problem. Spouse got to show him our set up and set him to work on the problem. 


He found it immediately: the network cable was unplugged to the receiver unit. He plugged that cable in, paired the receiver, and MAGIC! Reception!

It took him longer to fill out the paperwork than to actually resolve our issue.

Bottom line: ALWAYS check the physical first. And then laugh at yourself for having a momentary moment of moronicness. (what, it's a word. now.)

Yep, I am a professional IT person. *head. desk*

It happens to all of us at one point or another. Don't let it define your qualifications. Just laugh it off and move on. Because there's always another minor catastrophe just waiting around the corner to teach you a little humility again. 
~xxx~