It worked fine yesterday

That one statement is what I hear a zillion times – “Well, it worked fine yesterday so I don’t understand why it quit!”

Here is my reply: “Lightbulbs work great until they burn out.”

Most people don’t realize the complexity of the technology we take for granted today. For example, just try reading up on How DNS Works or about IP addresses. That will just get you started – it doesn’t included operating systems, software, hardware, and all the other fun stuff that we use.

My point of this post is to get you to realize that just because your computer (or whatever piece of technology) worked fine 2 minutes ago – it is complex and will likely fail at some point. As an example, I had to troubleshoot an issue yesterday that was just odd. A USB cable just “went bad” after working fine for 6 months – and was causing a Windows 2003 Server to actually crash – BSOD and all. I’m not kidding – I’ve never experienced this problem before, ever.  I spent a considerable amount of time troubleshooting this and that – in the end a $5 cable fixed the whole thing.

After all – if everything worked perfectly, then people like me wouldn’t have a job.