Ricky Don't Lose That (Ticket) Number

So I was off by a week. It took three before Enrique, the lazy admin who didn't want to install $Balance -- despite it taking less time and effort than a beginner level round of Minesweeper -- submitted another ticket which boiled down to:

Help! Our production system is have many problems since we install new server last month! Downtime! Logs attached!

Dumbass.

I scanned the logs just to be sure and saw exactly the messages I'd expected -- DLL call failures.

Hi, Enrique.

Remember how I told you three weeks ago that you really ought to install $balance because without it being installed on only the one server, a number of DLLs would differ throughout Production? Remember how I also said that we've seen cases of odd and irreproducible problems in mixed systems? This is what I was referring to.

Your only recourse is to shut down this server, uninstall $OurBigApp completely, clean the Windows Registry according to FAQ #xxx, install $Balance, re-install $OurBigApp and reconfigure it manually. If you still have problems you'll have to do the same thing for all the other $OurBigApp servers.

There's no schadenfreude here, only consigned resignation. I tried to warn him. I wrote it again and again and again. And again and again. Five times I responded telling him he really ought to install $Balance but he didn't want to.

I wonder how much the downtime for 1300 users cost his company.

Root Cause: 17-Fuckwit.

x-posted to HuSi