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Frantic message today from one of my customers, who has had a friend helping her redesign her site:
"Denise screwed up my site! I can't get any email, and Adelphia says its on the server end. I think Denise shorted the server. I hope I don't lose my email."
I check my phone to see if I have a text mail waiting from the monitoring service, and I don't.
"I don't think the server is down; my monitoring service says its still up. What was Denise doing?"
The customer replies: "I don't know, it was really looking good over the weekend, and now I can't find her and her cell phone doesn't even have voice mail, and the computer keeps telling me that because of Denise, the server is lost or something."
"The computer is telling you that Denise is the problem? How does the computer know? What exactly is the error message?" I ask.
"Its all screwed up," she replies, "maybe I have a virus or something. Could your server have given me and Denise a virus?"
"I don't think so ... listen, I'm not in front of a computer right now, but will be in about 20 minutes. Try to surf to your site and tell me exactly what the error message is. Exactly."
"OK," she says, "but it won't help. It has a whole bunch of gobbeldy-gook and then the thing about Denise."
"Well," I say, trying to be patient, "read the entire screen to me ..."
I hear a complete page of one of Internet Explorer's lengthy error messages starting with "The Page cannot be found" and going through hitting refresh, etc. After a few minutes, I ask "Where does it talk about Denise?"
"At the bottom," she says, "it has 'Cannot find server or Denise error.'"
Pause.
"Do you mean it says 'DNS error?'"
Pause.
"Yes, 'Denise' error, 'DNS', that has to be short for 'Denise'. It couldn't be me because my name is Kathy."
Seems the domain name expired today. I didn't ask if Denise was supposed to have paid the bill.
"Denise screwed up my site! I can't get any email, and Adelphia says its on the server end. I think Denise shorted the server. I hope I don't lose my email."
I check my phone to see if I have a text mail waiting from the monitoring service, and I don't.
"I don't think the server is down; my monitoring service says its still up. What was Denise doing?"
The customer replies: "I don't know, it was really looking good over the weekend, and now I can't find her and her cell phone doesn't even have voice mail, and the computer keeps telling me that because of Denise, the server is lost or something."
"The computer is telling you that Denise is the problem? How does the computer know? What exactly is the error message?" I ask.
"Its all screwed up," she replies, "maybe I have a virus or something. Could your server have given me and Denise a virus?"
"I don't think so ... listen, I'm not in front of a computer right now, but will be in about 20 minutes. Try to surf to your site and tell me exactly what the error message is. Exactly."
"OK," she says, "but it won't help. It has a whole bunch of gobbeldy-gook and then the thing about Denise."
"Well," I say, trying to be patient, "read the entire screen to me ..."
I hear a complete page of one of Internet Explorer's lengthy error messages starting with "The Page cannot be found" and going through hitting refresh, etc. After a few minutes, I ask "Where does it talk about Denise?"
"At the bottom," she says, "it has 'Cannot find server or Denise error.'"
Pause.
"Do you mean it says 'DNS error?'"
Pause.
"Yes, 'Denise' error, 'DNS', that has to be short for 'Denise'. It couldn't be me because my name is Kathy."
Seems the domain name expired today. I didn't ask if Denise was supposed to have paid the bill.
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