For instance, recently I was stopped in the hall by Dilbert's friend Wally. He wanted a detailed explanation of why the people in the temporary overseas office couldn't connect to Notes. Since Wally had set up the network for the temporary office, I suggested he check the network connectivity from there. But he insisted the problem was with Notes. When the Mad Hatter happened by, Wally immediately involved him in the discussion and I was late for lunch with the White Rabbit.

After lunch I was called into a meeting with Wally, the Mad Hatter, and the Pointy-Haired Boss to discuss the problem with Notes. My point, that if there was a problem with Notes I would have 3,000 people complaining, not just 3, was brushed aside.

The Mad Hatter, who handles the Cisco routers and switches, claimed there was nothing wrong with his systems. Asok, the intern, verified general network stability. Everything seemed to point to an issue at the overseas office. The Pointy-Haired Boss told me to do an audit of Notes and find the problem.

After some pointless argument just for practice, I gave in and checked the Domino logs. Then I checked Mail Attender for the last time the users had successfully connected to their Notes databases. I gave the information to the Pointy-Haired Boss on Friday afternoon before stopping at the bar for drinks with the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter. We had a good time but still managed to make it to work on Monday morning.

Dilbert greeted me in the hall with a simple salutation, "Duck". I wasn't quick enough.

The Pointy-Haired Boss and his boss, the Joker, spent the next hour telling me to fix the problem in Notes. I was told to call Lotus and escalate the problem. If I had problems getting action from Lotus, I was told to involve the Joker. I repeated, like a mantra, "There is no problem with Notes".

On the way to my desk, I ran into Alice. She's generally sympathetic to my grumblings, so I told her what was going on. She smiled knowingly and wondered out loud if the people overseas had recently changed their passwords. Alice even offered to run a BindView report while I rechecked Mail Attender.

Alice and I discovered that one of the people in the overseas office had changed his password recently. Another had never had a problem connecting to Notes. The third had been in transit at the time the complaints started. That meant one person was complaining about Notes. I called him, reminded him of his recent password change, and got him connected. Then I notified the Pointy-Haired Boss.

Wally got a bonus for fixing the problem with Notes. The Mad Hatter and I, who didn't get bonuses, are taking Alice to lunch. Dilbert may join us.

DominoPower Contributing Editor Nancy Hand is primary Notes admin at a remote site for a large corporation. She earned both Novell and Microsoft certifications in network engineering before being introduced to Lotus Notes. The 3,000 users she supports constantly challenge Nancy to keep up with their creative missteps. With a background in art, she brings a different perspective to working with computers and their users. In the past, Nancy has worked in the fields of accounting, criminal justice, and museum display. To balance the challenges of the job, she continues to draw and sculpt between stabs at writing novels and designing knitware.