The New Guy (Part I)

After working mind-numbing warehouse jobs for several years, Jesse was ready for a fresh start in Information Technology. The year 2015 brought him a newly-minted Computer and Networking Systems degree from Totally Legit Technical Institute. It would surely help him find gainful employment, all he had to do was find the right opportunity.

Seeking the right opportunity soon turned in to any opportunity. Jesse came across a posting for an IT Systems Administrator that piqued his interest but the requirements and responsibilities left a lot to be desired. They sought someone with C++ and Microsoft Office experience who would perform "General IT Admin Work" and "Other Duties as assigned". None of those things seemed to fit together, but he applied anyway.

During the interview, it became clear that Jesse and this small company were essentially in the same boat. While he was seeking any IT employment, they were seeking any IT Systems admin. Their lone admin recently departed unexpectedly and barely left any documentation of what he actually did. Despite several red flags about the position, he decided to accept anyway. Jesse was assured of little oversight and freedom to do things his way - an extreme rarity for a young IT professional.

Jesse got to work on his first day determined to map out the minefield he was walking in to. The notepad with all the admin passwords his predecessor left behind was useful for logging in to things. Over the next few days, he prodded through the network topology to uncover all the horrors that lie within. Among them:

• The front-end of their most-used internal application was using Access 97 that interfaced with a SQL Server 2008 machine
• The desktop computers were all using Windows XP (Half of them upgraded from NT 4.0)
• The main file server and domain controller were still running on NT 4.0
• There were two other mystery servers that didn't seem to perform any discernible function. Jesse confirmed this by unplugging them and leaving them off

While sorting through the tangled mess he inherited, Jesse got a high priority email from Ralph, the ancient contracted Networking Admin whom he hadn't yet had the pleasure of meeting. "U need to fix the website. FTP not working." While Ralph wasn't one for details, Jesse did learn something from him - they had a website, it used FTP for something, and it was on him to fix it.

Jesse scanned the magic password notepad and came across something called "Website admin console". He decided to give that a shot, only to be told the password was expired and needed to be reset. Unfortunately the reset email was sent to his predecessor's deactivated account. He replied to Ralph telling him he wasn't able to get to the admin console to fix anything.

All that he got in return was a ticket submitted by a customer explaining the problem and the IP address of the FTP server. It seemed they were expecting to be able to fetch PDF reports from an FTP location and were no longer able to. He went to the FTP server and didn't find anything out of the ordinary, other than the fact that is should really be using SFTP. Despite the lack of security, something was still blocking the client from accessing it.

Jesse suddenly had an idea born of inexperience for how to fix the problem. When he was having connectivity issues on his home WiFi network, all he had to do was reboot the router and it would work! That same logic could surely apply here. After tracking down the router, he found the outlet wasn't easily accessible. So he decided to hit the (factory) Reset button on the back.

Upon returning to his desk, he was greeted by nearly every user in their small office. Nobody's computer worked any more. After turning a deep shade of red, Jesse assured everyone he would fix it. He remembered something from TL Tech Institute called DNS that was supposed to let computers talk to each other. He went around and set everyone's DNS server to 192.168.1.0, the address they always used in school. It didn't help.

Jesse put in a call to Ralph and explained the situation. All he got was a lecture from the gravelly-voiced elder on the other end, "You darn kids! Why don't ye just leave things alone! I've been working networks since before there were networks! Give me a bit, I'll clean up yer dang mess!" Within minutes, Ralph managed to restore connectivity to the office. Jesse checked his DNS settings out of curiosity to find that the proper setting was 2.2.2.0.

The whole router mishap made him completely forget about the original issue - the client's FTP. Before he could start looking at it again, Ralph forwarded him an email from the customer thanking them for getting their reports back. Jesse had no idea how or why that was working now, but he was willing to accept the praise. He solved his first problem, but the fun was just beginning...

To be continued...

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