Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-09-08 18:22:11 - Graham Ellis
"You can't bring that in here". My greeting this morning in Glasgow as I wheeled my trolley of laptops into the builing I'm training in. OK - so where should I take them? It's very rare to get turned away or have other difficulties getting to my customers, but when it does happen I just smile and think "well - they're paying for my time" and follow whatever instructions. This morning, that was a case of 100 yards up the road, down a side alley and round to the back of the building from where I *was* able to bring in my equipment. Ironically, I've ended up in a very nice room overlooking the lobby from where I was denied access. So - let me see - around 200 yards round to cover about 30 feet!
I'm doing an Apache httpd and Tomcat course. I bring all my own kit, which I network together with my own hubs and cables; I connect in only for power. "You can't network those". Hmmm ... they're a right negative lot here ;-) ... and how am I supposed to do a network / server training course without connecting my systems into a LAN? Compromised reached ... their "no networking of outside laptops" rule is designed to keep outside equipment off their LAN and I have been allowed to network the machines to each other which ... is actually all I wanted in the first place.
These things go in threes ... "You can't run that cable across the floor". We're getting used to finding solutions here by now, and I picked up a cable guard lying on one corner. "OK with this" I ask, and I can complete my setup.
Moral of story? We set up in sorts of different places and can cope with just about anything. The time I was in a US Army base in Germany and - because the right paperwork hadn't been filled in - took two hours to get onto base on the second morning, including having a young squaddie young enough to be my daughter waving her automatic rifle at me, and a visit to the Military Police's holding unit (but NOT into a cell) - is memorable. That was before I started writing "The Horse's Mouth" though and I've never found the need to trawl back to find things to say.