quota time solved

Looks like the 'quota time' issue has been resolved. Here is how the story went down, told in detail cause, let's face it, I find it incredibly funny and still am shaking my head at how it went down.

It started by me asking the IT guy about the quota time message that I am receiving. He looked at me blankly and said "what is quota time?". This answer gets the response of "I don't know, you tell me" from me to him. He has no clue so he gives me 4 email addresses to contact telling them what I am doing, what sites I am going to and also to send a screen print to them. Of course I look at him with my confused face and go 'what is a screen print? I am computer unfriendly here. If it isn't an icon to click, I have no clue how to do it'. He then goes into detail about pressing this button, control G, pressing that button, doing the hocky pocky with my tongue stuck out slightly to the left and then pressing another button while turning myself around (hey, that is what all your computer jargon talk sounds like to a technology caveman like myself*G*) The only thing I could do was just write an email describing the message I kept getting and sending the links that I was trying to go to.

After 3 days I got a response from one of the guys suggesting that perhaps I was using a misconfigured machine since the quota time is something that they only use in their mining camps in Ghana for their internet access. He then directed the IT guy to take a look into the matter and see about issues with the proxy. The next response I got was from the IT guy asking me to bring him my laptop so that he could take a look at it.

I was not too thrilled at bringing him my laptop considering we find it no real coincidence that only 24 hours after he arrives in camp the whole internet system crashes on a regular basis. I went to three other public computers in camp and found that it had the same issue. So when he came to me later and told me to find him after my shift with laptop and he would look at it I told him that I had tried other computers and they all had the same issue. He said it didn't matter and he would have to take a look at my laptop sooner or later.

Now I am no computer genius or anything but something just doesn't seem right about that. I mean, if I turn on my tap and the water coming out of the tap is red and I go next door and the water is red and I go down the block and the water is red. When I call the plumber to have him look at the problem, why exactly would he need to go to every single tap to see if the plumbing is correct? Wouldn't it be a logical conclusion to go to the main water supply to check before going to fix every single persons tap and say "yep, looks like you all have the same problem"? But, like I said, I ain't no computer genius.

I took my laptop to work for two days and he finally came by (well, actually he was on his way to do something else, saw my laptop and stood around for 5 minutes to see what he could do). We turned on the laptop and found that there was no internet connection in the back kitchen, which he found odd considering we are only 20 feet away from a server hub or something. So he just walked off and said he would get back to it later.

Finally last night he was going through the food line and he said the problem was fixed and resolved. It seems that the main computer downloads patches and updates on a regular basis to fix problems on the system. Supposedly they get bombarded with these updates and patches so much that things sometimes aren't looked at but just loaded in. Apparently this update came in and was loaded into the system without them checking into it and it had listed blogs and personal sites as questionable stuff and was put on the quota time list. They found the problem and had it removed. End result is that I can now go to the blog sites for unlimited amounts of time AND it re-enforced my belief in the saying that 'if architects built houses the way programmers build computers, civilization would have crumbled at the first woodpecker'.