A friend of my called me today looking for some help and ever since then, I have been in a quandary of what to do.
My friend owns a computer store where he builds computers and sells parts. The company I went to work for when I moved into town did business with him and that's how we me. I was pretty impressed with what he had done in the short time he had been in business. As time passed we eventually both talked about how he would like me to come work for him to help him expand his business into networking, since he didn't know much about it at the time.
Some time has passed now and he has taken classes for his NT 4.0 MSCE and some of his employees have taken some of the classes. He's wired his building up for the Internet and such. IMHO, he's still a beginner, but learning quickly.
The last time I saw him he told me about a number of deals he had in the works with servers and networks; I was happy for him.
Today he calls me up out of the blue inquiring about Netware. Finally, knowing that he doesn't know Netware, I asked him why. He said next weekend that he's got a job replacing a Netware server with a Windows 2000 server. I asked him what was wrong with the setup, etc. It finally came to be that he got this deal and nobody at the company knows how to administrate Netware and because they outsourced it, they don't have have administrative access to the server. So, on his recommendation they are switching to Windows 2000.
I started asking a number of questions, like does he know Active Directory, does he know what access the users accounts have, network printing, the programs installed, e-mail situation, Internet conductivity setup, etc. To make a long story short, he was only sure that the program they use would work on Windows 2000.
In the end, he asked if I would come down with him because he wanted to start and finish it in one day and he was going to take a number of other people with him.
The problem is, I don't know if I can tell him I don't want to go. As my friend, I want to do the honorable thing and help him. I have purchased a couple Windows 2000 books and probably could do some crash reading, but I probably don't know it anymore then the one person he as working for him that he said knows something about it. I'm sure I could be of some help, but I like to have a plan of what I'm goin to do.
On the other hand, I know it's going to be a long day and I will eventually get pissed because nobody did the necessary homework to make sure this would go smooth. Obviously when you migrate platforms you need to have a heads up on things. I'm just not sure if I want to be in that situation, especially around his customer and as someone who doesn't work for him. That, and there's no way come Monday would I be able to fix any problems that arise, because I have to go to work!
My friend owns a computer store where he builds computers and sells parts. The company I went to work for when I moved into town did business with him and that's how we me. I was pretty impressed with what he had done in the short time he had been in business. As time passed we eventually both talked about how he would like me to come work for him to help him expand his business into networking, since he didn't know much about it at the time.
Some time has passed now and he has taken classes for his NT 4.0 MSCE and some of his employees have taken some of the classes. He's wired his building up for the Internet and such. IMHO, he's still a beginner, but learning quickly.
The last time I saw him he told me about a number of deals he had in the works with servers and networks; I was happy for him.
Today he calls me up out of the blue inquiring about Netware. Finally, knowing that he doesn't know Netware, I asked him why. He said next weekend that he's got a job replacing a Netware server with a Windows 2000 server. I asked him what was wrong with the setup, etc. It finally came to be that he got this deal and nobody at the company knows how to administrate Netware and because they outsourced it, they don't have have administrative access to the server. So, on his recommendation they are switching to Windows 2000.
I started asking a number of questions, like does he know Active Directory, does he know what access the users accounts have, network printing, the programs installed, e-mail situation, Internet conductivity setup, etc. To make a long story short, he was only sure that the program they use would work on Windows 2000.
In the end, he asked if I would come down with him because he wanted to start and finish it in one day and he was going to take a number of other people with him.
The problem is, I don't know if I can tell him I don't want to go. As my friend, I want to do the honorable thing and help him. I have purchased a couple Windows 2000 books and probably could do some crash reading, but I probably don't know it anymore then the one person he as working for him that he said knows something about it. I'm sure I could be of some help, but I like to have a plan of what I'm goin to do.
On the other hand, I know it's going to be a long day and I will eventually get pissed because nobody did the necessary homework to make sure this would go smooth. Obviously when you migrate platforms you need to have a heads up on things. I'm just not sure if I want to be in that situation, especially around his customer and as someone who doesn't work for him. That, and there's no way come Monday would I be able to fix any problems that arise, because I have to go to work!
Facebook
Twitter