Sometimes I wonder if I chose the right career path

I went to my boss, lets call him Paul,'s Nantucket house to configure his VPN, and set up his home network. Of course, nothing went as planned.
I was supposed to have free access to the house, without anyone else in it, but Paul decided to make a surprise trip out there and put me on edge all day. I configured the network fine, but had a little trouble with the VPN. Of course nothing major, but it was way too much for him. I got a hotel for the night and came back in the morning.

I had researched everything I could about vpns that night, so the next morning it was up in five minutes. After that I got to work on the rest of the network, and gettin it to run off the VPN's subnet, when he told me to set up his wife to print from his printer. >:^(

It turns out she's running a Mac OS X, v. 10.2. I spent 5 hours trying to get that thing working, when it turned out that I wasn't doing anything wrong to begin with. It was the combination of the wireless print server I was running, and the printer it was connected to. That specific combination would't print wirelessly to a mac directly. This I heard from HP support, from whom I bought both the printer and print server, without them warning of such a thing.

I then tried something wacky. I tried connecting the Mac to the printer via shared connection with a PC. But, the program (SAMBA) that would allow for the cross connect to the printer's postscript driver doesn't come with OS 10.2, only 10.3 and 10.4.

On top of that I had 3 and 4 year old kids running around me screaming. Not to mention that one of the computers was in the babies room, who of course was sleeping 3 out of the 8 hours I was there, so I couldn't work in that room.

I left at 5 to check out of my hotel room, and catch the ferry home at 6. I left the printer issue unresolved, and a low connectivity issue in the baby's room, which left Paul not too happy.

Maybe I should go back to flipping burgers.

I hear ya!

Nothing worse than a normal dilemma, made worse by "oh by the way, while you;re here"
Then followed by "whats taking so long?".

We have a few remote sites that I visit about once a month, I really hate those trips..
You go there for ONE major reason..And you're pounced on by everyone there.

Can you take a look at this, can you take a look at that? It's like they save up all their problems..Which, most of them can be fixed any time, from any internet connection.

I have, more than once, threatened to become a Turnip farmer..And I don't really like turnips that much!

If you question it then it must not really be what you want to do.
Haveing a job is not all about money. If you dont like it dont do it.

Did you ever have a dream of becomeing something else.
Find something you truley enjoy and just run with it dont listen to anyone trying to hold you back.

If you do something you really love and become the best at it then the money will come. It is never to late to start, never.

THe thing is I really enjoy the computer thing. I'm a natural problem solver and love these puzzles. What ticks me off is when people just don't get that sometimes things won't work right away, and the last minute things that they pile on can't necessarily be done in one trip, especially when that trip involves a 2 hour car ride, a one hour ferry ride, and a 30 minute cab ride. I just didn't have the means to go to the corner store and pick up a USB wireless adapter.

Not to mention that the only place I had to stay was a $350 a night hotel. The accomidations were great, but my company is only reimbursing me for the cost, not paying it flat out, or on a company card or anything. That means one night is all I can afford.

It's a good thing I brought my girlfriend or I would have been completely insane by the end of the trip.