English Major Strikes Again

Having an English degree is fun. Having an English degree when you work in a technical field such as systems/storage/network administration can be even more fun.

Usually I just catch a lot of crap about being qualified to ask "Do you want fries with that?" or to collect garbage, or something along those lines. But it is particularly amusing in my field when people don't know my educational background, have worked with me sometimes for years before finding out, and have come to rely on me for quality technical work. The look on their faces is priceless.

Today was fun. Nearly everyone was in a meeting this morning, but a few stragglers and contract-workers weren't. I was in my cube working away when one of the network architects walked up and said he was looking for "...a computer-science person." I asked what he meant and he said "...someone to help with programming."

So I just smiled and said I'd be happy to help. And I did. Within a half hour or so, I went from knowing nothing about his situation or toolset, to having learned the rudimentary elements of a new scripting language, written a new more function-driven script, and returned it to him. It worked.

As I left today, I asked him if he knew I had a BA in English. He laughed and said "That explains why it doesn't work." After a few more minutes, I think I had pretty well shown it was not the script but the syntax of the request the script was sending externally over the network that was at issue. Basically, the old GIGO problem...the request sent over the network was defined by him...the script just sends it over the net.

So of course, since we left without a solution, my brain wouldn't let it go. Within five minutes of googling once I got home I found the correct syntax for the request. The script and the now corrected request should work just fine now. We should find out tomorrow for certain.

Score one for the English major.