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Q Why don’t you list every technical support site that you know of here?
A This stuff changes every six months; the techniques that you’ve learned so far will not. (Computer geeks have a saying: “Go to lunch, fall behind.”) You’ll need to learn how to find particular sites in addition to how to search them once you get there. Just follow the aforementioned guidelines to find a manufacturer’s Web site, and you should be okay. There are not many technical support sites outside of the ones provided by manufacturers, but just for fun, you can search for them using standard Internet search engines such as Alta Vista. As an example, try typing “Linux free support”, making sure you enter the quotation marks, because each word on its own would result in a huge match.
Q I can’t reproduce an intermittent problem. I understand that it’s tough to get vendor support until the problem is reproducible, but try explaining that to my boss. Help! What can I do?
A You need to go back to the divide-and-conquer technique, take SOAP notes, and compare the problem area to other working areas. If other workstations or application installations are working fine, it might be time to burn down the barn and build it again. Other than that, disciplined note taking and follow up are your best friends when dealing with an intermittent problem. I feel your pain. Believe me. However, you will prevail if you keep at it. If the problem is important enough, feel free to go ahead and ask your vendor; tech support might be able to give you clues as to what you might have missed in your ruling-out process.
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