I was about to leave work when Colin asked me if I knew how to set up a messaging system. I said I couldn’t remember the exact details but I’ll have a quick check because I was sure I had written a guide on how to do it.
Anyway, I emailed him some details. I attached a security certificate to the email but explained it was probably expired, but he could grab a current one from the test servers. I also added a SQL script to modify his database settings to match the certificate.
The next day he never told me he had problems, but I heard him talking to the Lead Developer about his issues around 11:30. The Lead Developer told him that he hadn’t updated his settings. When Colin showed him what he had changed on his database, the Lead Developer told him he had updated the wrong table.
How could he have updated the wrong table? I had sent him the script.
Anyway, 10 minutes later he got it working with the Lead Developer’s help. Another developer comes over and asks Colin what he did to fix it. Colin says “my certificate had expired, and I had updated the wrong table”.
So the two things I told Colin to do, he didn’t bother doing. If he had followed my instructions he could have saved around 2.5 hours.
Stranger Coding Tings 