This post is only for geeks - you know the guys that live to sit in front of two (or three or better yet, four!) monitors pouring over a stack trace to find out why "is null" and "= null" aren't the same. Or for you sysadmins spending 2 days checking 5,000 cable drops to find out who created a loopback with the $5 linksys hub that brought down your entire network. If you fit one of these categories then fizzbin to you!
Imagine this scenario: You spent the last 16 straight hours working on a 52 node Beowulf cluster and you decide to go home while the final node is coming up. "I'll check it at home," you think to yourself. You get home, down a bottle of bawls and fire up your Macbook to find out that your internet connection is down. You get an IP, ping to your router but nothing further. Dang it, sun spots are wreaking habit again so you pick up the phone and call your ISP. Level 1 support gets on and starts asking you if you turned on your computer and is there a light on your modem? There is no need to talk to level 1 but they won't transfer you until you pretend to disconnect your wireless router and plug your computer (that you lied and said was XP so they would help) directly in to the cable modem. Reboot, wait, unplug cables, wait, unplug modems, wait, etc...
It's time to put an end to this frustration. Yes, my Mom needs to go through each step but, we geeks don't.
Scott Hanselman has come up with an ingenious way for us to wink at the support tech on the other end of the phone and get us on to some real troubleshooting on their end.
Fizzbin! It's a secret codeword that we can use to get past the mundane troubleshooting. It's so simple to use, just say "fizzbin" and the level 1 techie will know that you've already done everything she is going to asking you. And everything her level 2 techie is going to ask you so you both stop wasting each other's time. It will only work if we all know it, so pass it on!
Fizzbin to you!
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