Mark Scoville wrote:

> So I guess the moral is "Don't overlook the easy stuff".

Hear hear!

I was Main Geek at a startup around fifteen years ago.  I was supposed 
to be programming but of course helped troubleshoot everything from 
Solaris workstations to the fax machine.  During that period I developed:

----------------------------------
The First Rules of Troubleshooting

1. Is it plugged in?

2. Is it turned on?
----------------------------------

I never found a third rule that applied so often as these.  What was 
most interesting was the variety of *ways* they can apply, especially 
with a creative enough definition of "plugged in" and "turned on," where 
you inspect each piece of the system (hardware or software) that can 
connect to others and/or be enabled or disabled.

Mark's story sounds very familiar, though - I guess the third rule might be:

3. Describe the problem to someone unfamiliar with it.

A lot of the time, the third party doesn't even have to say anything - 
just the act of describing the situation reveals some high-level error.
-- 
Timothy J. Weber
http://timothyweber.org
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