Why is Salt Lake Trying to Make Me Look Bad?


slamjet
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So I'm with one of the ward's clerks to switch their computer from dial-up to broadband (just installed broadband). So now it's time to send/receive to show how much faster it is. 1.5 hours later, it's still trying to send/receive. I have the Ward Clerk, Elders Quorum President, High Priest Group Leader, Bishop and his counselors all looking at me as though I broke something. I'm trying to look cool and calm on the outside while on the inside, I'm in major panic mode. I switch them back to dial-up and still slower than molasses in winter.

We decide to leave it in send/receive mode overnight to see if it will be completed. Then just for grins, I pop my head into the other ward's clerks office and ask them if they're having issues with transmitting. They were worse than stuck, their screen was stuck in transmit mode, period.

Come to find out, the same issue happened with other wards just a couple of weeks ago. So I come home with a huge migraine and having to call the clerk and the Bishop to try to salvage what reputation I have left.

I swear, Salt Lake, their servers and MLS are all conspiring to make me look horrible-bad and incompetent. At least the church is true. Don't know what I can say about their computers.

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Yeah, the church is true, the church office building is not.

Here in CO, we spent half of 2010 and all of 2011 hearing about how wireless was coming. It was announced in our meetings often, and over the podium in sacrament meeting more than once.

Then there was a big silence. I took out my iGizmo, found the wireless signal, and it asked for a password. I asked our 2nd counselor (software professional who always dresses up as Ensign Redshirt for halloween) for the password. He looked sheepish and said "oh, yeah. We're not giving the password out. It's so abysmally slow, we're having trouble just sending normal reports."

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Hmmm, I have no problem accessing the wifi, and it's pretty fast. Sounds like the issue is on your end.

If you are in the same Stake that I'm in, then I'm banning myself from this forum.

Besides, it's not wireless, it's cabled broadband. And when the same issue is happening on multiple computers at the same time, speed-tests say that there is good throughout AND this issue has happened before in other wards and buildings, then I'll lay the blame on Salt Lake's doorstep every day of the week and twice on Sunday :mad: :mad: :mad:

The way it looks, MLS will send a packet to Salt Lake to let them know it's online and ready to transmit. Salt Lake will then transmit any updates and then tell MLS to transmit it's first file (there are multiple files, sometimes up to two dozen). When the file is transmitted, MLS seems to transmit an "end of file" packet and wait for Salt Lake to sent a "recieved ok" or "re-transmitt" packet. What seems like is happening is that Salt Lake is either not sending or taking it's sweet time sending packets back so that MLS can send the next file. I'm surmising that the servers are getting overwhelmed and start to choke with all the Wards hitting them all at once. It's a big issue because if there are any checks written, they need to get transmitted to Salt Lake otherwise the checks are no good. I hope it gets fixed very soon.

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Yeah, the church is true, the church office building is not.

Here in CO, we spent half of 2010 and all of 2011 hearing about how wireless was coming. It was announced in our meetings often, and over the podium in sacrament meeting more than once.

Then there was a big silence. I took out my iGizmo, found the wireless signal, and it asked for a password. I asked our 2nd counselor (software professional who always dresses up as Ensign Redshirt for halloween) for the password. He looked sheepish and said "oh, yeah. We're not giving the password out. It's so abysmally slow, we're having trouble just sending normal reports."

I was told the password is the same for most buildings. PM me if you want to see if mine works in yours.

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Welcome to the world of IT... again :)

End users have this horrible habit of forgetting this enormous infrastructure (whether it's the server room in their building or in the "cloud") that they can't see which provides services to their computer - if there is a problem, it must be what they can see in front of them. Unless of course it's their own equipment that they are responsible for, at which point, the issue must be somwhere else ;)

At a previous workplace, a lot of staff used a specific website for their work. This website wasn't run on the most reliable servers in the world, and would go offline from time to time. Every time this happened, we would somehow get the blame. Explanations of how the server it was hosted on was out of our control fell on deaf ears - it was somehow the IT departments fault.

As for wireless, I've not been involved in the setup in my ward/stake, but my understanding is that the Internet Service Provider is selected by the ward/stake - probably the clerk, with very little understanding of IT and very budget conscious. The WLAN setup itself is often done by the people in charge of building services, as it involves placement of cables and drilling - again, people that usually don't have a lot of understanding of IT. While the bulk of the complex setup is done by the IT department at church offices, there is still setup unique to the building which needs to be done by the ward itself, and this can have a drastic impact if done incorrectly.

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Just got a call from the clerk. Everything works quite nice. Now I get to go put them onto the broadband tomorrow evening and possibly watch it all fall apart again.

I swear if I see a cat-5e cable in the here-after, I'll know I've been relegated to outer darkness.

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As for wireless, I've not been involved in the setup in my ward/stake, but my understanding is that the Internet Service Provider is selected by the ward/stake - probably the clerk, with very little understanding of IT and very budget conscious. The WLAN setup itself is often done by the people in charge of building services, as it involves placement of cables and drilling - again, people that usually don't have a lot of understanding of IT. While the bulk of the complex setup is done by the IT department at church offices, there is still setup unique to the building which needs to be done by the ward itself, and this can have a drastic impact if done incorrectly.

I think Facilities Management is supposed to be doing that. They're a little more knowledgeable, but still just as budget conscious. However, I think cable internet is the minimum standard for the church's program.

Just got a call from the clerk. Everything works quite nice. Now I get to go put them onto the broadband tomorrow evening and possibly watch it all fall apart again.

I swear if I see a cat-5e cable in the here-after, I'll know I've been relegated to outer darkness.

My ward was experiencing some slow send/receives yesterday as well. I wouldn't be surprised if the Church was pushing down updates.

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So I'm with one of the ward's clerks to switch their computer from dial-up to broadband (just installed broadband). So now it's time to send/receive to show how much faster it is. 1.5 hours later, it's still trying to send/receive. I have the Ward Clerk, Elders Quorum President, High Priest Group Leader, Bishop and his counselors all looking at me as though I broke something. I'm trying to look cool and calm on the outside while on the inside, I'm in major panic mode. I switch them back to dial-up and still slower than molasses in winter.

We decide to leave it in send/receive mode overnight to see if it will be completed. Then just for grins, I pop my head into the other ward's clerks office and ask them if they're having issues with transmitting. They were worse than stuck, their screen was stuck in transmit mode, period.

Come to find out, the same issue happened with other wards just a couple of weeks ago. So I come home with a huge migraine and having to call the clerk and the Bishop to try to salvage what reputation I have left.

I swear, Salt Lake, their servers and MLS are all conspiring to make me look horrible-bad and incompetent. At least the church is true. Don't know what I can say about their computers.

2 words:

Murphy's Law

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I do IT work at an Army base and feel for ya. But if you want lots of reasons for digital scrambled eggs,... Army cyber security is for you.

My local stake center has wifi and it works great (not Utah). I'm an Elders Quarum Pres and got our code from someone in the know. At a PEC the Bishops counselor was lamenting the fact he needs, but doesn't have the code and quite fell off his chair when he found out I had it. "How did you get it?" I recall him saying. Rather smugly I said, "It's who you know!". I had a good time with that and was debating a bidding war before I gave in. :lol:

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