Everyone is Human

Even the most brilliant people can overlook the simple things.

All day yesterday, I was copied on an email discussion at work regarding a well-seasoned programmer that was unable to connect to a SQL Server database he had been able to access in the past. Multiple factors were at play including our friend being in a different part of the country, recent Active Directory migrations within the organization, DNS changes, and different versions of ODBC drivers.

This morning he contacted me (because we had worked together previously) and we ran through everything again. He sent me screen shots, we walked through the entire process, and I made sure everything was the same. Yet the results remained consistent: I could connect to the database and he couldn’t. After close to an hour and me at the very end of my rope, I very respectfully posed the following question.

“Are you sure you’re using the right password?”

On the other end of the phone, a vacuum of silence was all I could hear. Then a few keyboard clicks. Finally a very sober voice said “That was it. Thank you.”

I don’t work at the Help Desk at my job, but I think a good lesson here would be to not bypass those good folks just because you think the problem is beyond their expertise. Even the simplest solution can get the most complex problem unstuck.