It's just a couple years back, and this IT pilot fish is working with a customer to set up a secure FTP connection for file transfers.
"They were struggling a bit," fish says. "After a week, they brought an 'IT consultant' on board to help get this done.
"In my discussion with the new consultant, I let him know about a few settings he needed to adjust on their FTP client, like the max sessions and setting up the certificates for authentication."
Consultant tells fish he hasn't worked with this particular client software before and so he's having a hard time. Fish suggests that he reach out to the software vendor for help with the setup.
But after a few days of calls and emails that seem to be getting nowhere, fish asks the consultant what the FTP client software vendor was. In short order he finds the vendor's website, downloads the manual for the specific version and sends the consultant the specific pages he should look at.
When the consultant gets fish's call to walk him through the setup steps, he's amazed that fish knew exactly what was needed for the system setup. He asked fish where he got the information the consultant had been looking for.
Fish: I Googled it.
Consultant: "Googled it, what do you mean by that?"
Fish: Well, you know the web search engine Google, right?
Consultant: "Yeah, I think I've heard of that, but how did you get that information from there?"
Fish: I typed your FTP software vendor into Google search, navigated to their site and downloaded the manual.
Consultant: "Cool, I'll have to try that sometime."
Reports fish, "A week later when I called to check on things with him, I couldn't get in touch with him, so I reached out to the boss.
"He informed me that his IT consultant wasn't really wasn't working out and they had to let him go."
Right now, Sharky could really use your help -- and true tale of IT life. Send me your story at sharky@computerworld.com. You'll snag a snazzy Shark shirt if I use it. Comment on today's tale at Sharky's Google+ community, and read thousands of great old tales in the Sharkives.
Get Sharky's outtakes from the IT Theater of the Absurd delivered directly to your Inbox. Subscribe now to the Daily Shark Newsletter.