This has been a very stressful week for me at work. The pressure to fix problems when all eyes are focussed on you is never fun. We have had a problem with the Firewall in Windows vista blocking a network connection program (VPN software). Yesterday I managed, after nearly 2 weeks of looking, to work out why. We have had Microsoft engineers working on this, all manner of others giving their tuppence worth and not generally helping. It turns out the problem we had and the solution I found may be a bug in the Vista Firewall (The second bug we have found in Vista so far). (Techy bit: Because we were restricting the destination IP addresses to a limited set of ranges it blocked the loopback address 127.0.0.1 and thus this piece of software failed when the rule was in place). Now MS think this is not the intended behaviour so are now looking into this.Whilst it was satisfying to find the solution when others had not I am so fed up with the flippin thing that I am past caring. Managers are impressed and singing my praises and all that but so what. Yes it will help my end of year review and all that but again, so what. I have spent two weeks with this stupid thing on my mind bugging me that I couldn't fix it. I am kicking myself because the solution I found I should have picked up a week ago as it is something I missed. I good case of not seeing the wood for the trees. This is the life of a perfectionist! You do a good job but kick yourself for not doing it sooner.
I am sure there is a spiritual lesson in there somewhere but I am too tired to see one right now. I am sure Nick will think of one!
(Should be banging his head but doesn't seem to be working, technology eh!!!)
