Alan Hargreaves' Weblog

The ramblings of an Australian SaND TSC* Principal Field Technologist

* Solaris and Network Domain Technology Support Centre - The group I work for

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pageicon Wednesday Jul 23, 2008

What can you say?

I have been really slacking off with my blogging and really need to get back into it. What better way than with something amusing that happened today to a colleague.

He picked up an task today where the customer had the following issue and question. Unfortunately I don't recall the exact issue and patch number but they are perepheral to the humour.

We've noticed that this problem occurs on a system with patch XXXXXX-02, but not on those with XXXXXX-04. Can you tell us if there is a patch or workaround to the problem?

How do you answer a question like that? An overseas colleague came up with the suggestion of "Sir, you really need a holiday".

My suggestion was more prosaic, that he simply look in the patch README for the bugs that were fixed between the -02 and -04 revision and reply "Yes, that was bug YYYYYYY which was fixed in XXXXXX-04", and try to keep a straight face.

Of course the really worrying thing about this whole incident, is that the current revision of the patch in question was -57!