In Which a Sleepy PC Tears a Department Apart Tech Support |
- In Which a Sleepy PC Tears a Department Apart
- When I break it, it breaks.
- Anytime I touch my laptop it shuts off!!!
- Remember, it's important to save your work
- The Misleading Notification
- Database Support 12: The Developer Hokey Pokey
- I Need To Give More Clear Answers
- The web developers who just didn't know anything
- Of Emails, Citrix Bugs and The Most Efficient Meetings In The World
- Why do I even bother writing instructions?
- Need help plugging my new computer
- The Enemies Within: That's.. not for customers. Episode 120
- Computer wont turn on. Cause: USB orientation was not observed
- select command prompt
- We provide instructions for a reason
- Harry, The bridge is out!
- The SSD and me, in which is was the luser
- Somone did this to me on purpose
| In Which a Sleepy PC Tears a Department Apart Posted: 24 Apr 2018 05:30 PM PDT It has been less than two hours since this debacle resolved itself, and I feel I need to record this for posterity. It truly is an epic tale. About two weeks ago, it began. I walked into our little control center where I am primarily a Security Officer, but my job description includes tech support to the department for a minor pittance. You see, my boss got wind of my ability to build PC's like many of my generation. So, that qualified me for a whole host of duties in my boss's mind. Now I am, on occasion, expected to perform feats of network engineering that boggles the minds of our actual network engineers. This is not one of those stories. Basically, I am a security officer, paid less than a desktop support technician, to occasionally give direct support to the department that sometimes network engineers won't touch (i.e. our IP camera network). So, I walked into our control center and I was told that the Duty PC was going to sleep, but unable to wake. Interesting. I look at it, do the dance with the mouse, the keyboard, they don't respond. I push the power button and we are back in business. However, there was a slight graphical error on wake. A whole bunch of vertical and horizontal lines flickered, but then they were gone. I didn't put too much significance to it, but thought I should investigate more. I looked into the settings for the PC to wake from sleep from keyboard and mouse input. I hit an admin wall. It seems I am not qualified to tell the PC to wake from mouse or keyboard input (I was previously denied admin rights by the head of IT). I put in an ticket. In about an hour, I get a reply from my buddies in IT. They try to troubleshoot the issue remotely, but can't find the issue and are as perplexed as me. We let it go as unknown/workaround and close the ticket. The workaround, "just have your guys wake the PC with the power button. You said that works." The PC is still operational, after all. "Sure, no problem." I say. I go on to the problem of the monitor flickering and having trouble turning on after sleep. I look at the video output and find it hooked up to the VGA output. Thinking there might be an issue there, I swap out the VGA cord with an DVI from my own stash (what's a budget). I set the monitor to not search for input, but to just use DVI. Then I send out an email to all my wonderful users who listen every time, that if they need to wake the PC, just push the power button briefly once, and if the monitor doesn't come up, just push power on the button. I tested it and had no issues on wake up. So, I hear nothing. No emails, no complaints, until I come into work a week later. Then I am told by the Assistant Supervisor that the PC is still doing it and my "incompetence" is costing operations time. "Well, that's funny," I say. "I haven't been informed that the problem was still ongoing. I will look into it." Interestingly the boss had left for vacation that day. "We already did. We got Jason (fake name) on it. He says it's a video card and needs to be replaced right away because it could die at any moment. He's going to swap it with the new PC in the boss' office tomorrow for us." "I'm not sure it's the video card, I think it might be the monitor. I want to do more investigating (when I am not doing security stuff, or messing with cameras, or the million other duties I have). The PC is still working, after all." I say. "Jason says it's the video card, and we don't have the time to screw around. Do you know more than Jason?" You get the idea where this is going. I just say that I will bow to Jason's superior awesomeness. I am pretty sure the assistant supervisor is trying to make me look un-needed. "Now, who is this Jason?" you, dear reader, might be asking. He is no other than the best IT guy in the place. He is super nice and will take time out of any project just to help us out. Being the best, he is the phone network specialist. The phone network specialist is currently two weeks behind on a major site-wide phone install because, surprise, he is understaffed and not allocated enough time to do the job. He is currently building a new sub-net for our cameras. I take this up with my supervisor. "We can't let Jason do this when we are capable." "Why?" asks my supervisor. "Well, he is the phone network specialist, we can't be asking him to do the job of a level 1 desktop support technician just because he always cuts through the red tape for us. He is on a major project, high into over time, and killing himself from the stress. This is my job. I can plug a darn computer in." Surprisingly, the supervisor agrees. I also went on to explain that we can't replace the PC right away. It's not dead yet. (Monty Python anyone?). We need to get everyone, regardless of ability, to somehow save their passwords, bookmarks, etc. Most of our apps are web based, and the savvy of us helps the less savvy by saving passwords in the browser. They need a way to recover them. I then spend the next day writing the simplest tutorial I can muster on how to use Google Sync and Google Drive and let everyone know the date of the change-over. Remember, the boss isn't back yet. My supervisor says he wants to proofread my work before it gets sent out. He then sends it out from his account. Well, this spawned a huge email fight between me and the assistant supervisor in which I was accused of being unable to perform my duties and costing operations. It was an obvious power grab, in my opinion. I tried to be professional in my response, but fell victim to taking the low road a bit, as I felt my ass was on the line. We both got lectured by the Supervisor for that one. The weekend comes and goes, the boss is busy playing catch-up all Monday while I am busy writing parking tickets all day. Monday, I get a "Sorry not sorry" email from the assistant supervisor that I am pretty sure he was forced to write by the Boss because he copied the boss. Today, Tuesday, my supervisor says "now would be a good time to take care of that PC." I go and talk to the boss. He loves my tutorials and I get lots of respect for it. (I seriously love my boss, he acts like a real human, respects me, and I do pretty much anything he asks because of it). I then explain everything about why we need to replace the PC. The Boss is not liking losing equipment. I tell him I can probably repair it with a new video card someday (HD 7570 is cheap and swapping video cards is what supposedly made me qualified for this position). I take the only new PC we have out of spares and install it. It boots. I see the graphical error. I want to tear my hair out. It's the damn monitor and not the PC. I go back to my boss and have to explain the reason everything I just told him was wrong. There is a problem, though. We don't have a 1080p monitor in spares, just old 720p ones. We do so much multitasking on that PC we need the extra pixels. I finally negotiate taking a monitor from another station that doesn't really have room for the big 24 inch monitor. I swap it with a 17" 720p monitor from spares. That works out well. I get it set up, return all the other equipment, but I know I have one last job to take care of. It still won't wake on keyboard/mouse input. This will be my coupe de gras. I get my IT buddies on the phone. "You guys busy?" "Yeah, can whatever you have wait?" "Sure, but I want to get this done by the end of the day." "Put in a ticket and one of us will be down when we can." So, my buddy arrives and I explain to him that even though I have written a tutorial on how to push a button to to wake the PC, its too complicated for my users. We laugh and he understands. I would rather just fix the problem. So, we go into the hardware settings. The options are still missing. We check the drivers, their fine. We re-download the drivers, no change, etc. Finally (lets call him Dude) Dude, decides to check the bios. Deep inside there are settings under USB devices. "Wake PC on USB device input." It's unchecked. He checks it. We hold our breath. We boot. We make it sleep. He hits the space bar. It wakes up! Success! Now, this is rather peculiar to us. He runs it up the ladder. IT boss says to run a malware check and send her the report. She suspects Malware might have somehow changed the BIOS settings. I don't know how it is in other departments, but any time Malware is found on our PC's heads roll. I can't wait. (note, I don't have the access to install Malware Bytes, But Dude does). The scan takes forever, I am literally down to five minutes left. It's done! I copy the report, send it off, and click quarantine. I look over the report. Just as if it were Christmas, every username on the report is a person who I know to be an inept and careless user. You know, the ones who don't know how to push a power button to turn on a PC from sleep. Edit: who confused the name DVI with IDE? This guy! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Apr 2018 11:50 PM PDT Our company developed and supplied an embedded system to customer's vehicles, that has a tablet-sized touchscreen for the driver to operate. One of the displays developed an issue, where the combo-connector (video+USB) broke and wiggling the connector made the display flicker. This was a clear case of repair or swap under warranty. Couple of weeks later the customer calls us. He's furious. Another display has broken. We're a bit puzzled by this, as this is a device we've used in a lot of projects and save the manufacturing defect in one, they've been very reliable in harsh conditions. I get sent out to investigate. I'm first met with the small company CEO himself, who gives me an earful and then tells me to go meet with one of his drivers, who reported the issue. I'm greeted by this mountain of a man. A stereotype of a guy who's lifting and carrying heavy items for a living. He says our system is broken and I follow him into his truck. While we walk, I question him about the issue. I learn that this one didn't start showing any signs of trouble on its own, but instead when the guy wiggles it. I ask him to demonstrate. The guy grabs the connector and forcefully bends it into 45 degree angle. I can hear the device's plastic case cracking and the screen goes blank as the female connector separates from the display's motherboard. I just stand there in complete silence and in total disbelief of what I just saw. 'See, it's broken!' says the guy cheerfully. I report back to my boss. It's not going to warranty. [link] [comments]  |
| Anytime I touch my laptop it shuts off!!! Posted: 24 Apr 2018 07:00 PM PDT Ltl ftp you know the deal. Setting the scene. I am a field tech at a telecom company as well as the resident IT department. Meaning in between dealing with the Myriad of systems we support, some being installed and discontinued while I was still in diapers...not too much of an exaggeration, mainting our hosted VoIP offering for hundreds of customers, and doing the things I actually get paid to do, I troubleshoot and setup new computers and technology for new employees. The day starts like any other with not enough coffee and much frustration from the management/sales about a major issue with $troubledcustomer's upgrade that luckily i am not apart of. I am working on setting up a new employees slightly used laptop and her phone. While trying to setup her bitten fruit Id I get a very descriptive error..."the bitten fruit if cannot be created" I tried the phone and 2 different browsers before picking up the phone. After 20 minutes of hold and 2 minutes of conversation my call is escalated because tier 1 is less than helpful. Tier two asks many repetitive questions before I'm place on a brief 30 minute hold. During my time listening to the latest pop hits $ales lady comes running in frantically mentioning every time she touches her laptop it shuts off. And she is in the middle of a very important conference call about $troubledcustomer. And off she runs before I can say a word. Picking up my handset I head to the conference room and watch as she turns on the computer it's up and she rests her hands to begin typing and like a baby the laptop is asleep again... I turn on her computer and try myself no issues... This is when I notice the large bracelet on her wrist. After telling her in hushed whispers to remove her jewelry and getting head turning looks from management and $ales lady she obliges and voila it works! I leave the room with no explanation to avoid further distraction. Oh and meanwhile bitten fruit tech support can't find the issue and case manager is off the next few days so he'll follow up on it when he gets back...lovely [link] [comments]  |
| Remember, it's important to save your work Posted: 25 Apr 2018 02:23 AM PDT Hi All, I work at a MSP as L2 tech and overheard the following conversation that my L1 colleague ($C) was having with difficult client ($DC), along with what he told me;
Cue the next 20 minutes of my colleague hoping for the best to try in anyway to retrieve this file.. Auto-save, Recuva, Server backups, any and all hope, nothing... My colleague then calls the client back and advises that there is nothing which can be done
Mind you, I had already looked at this with my L1, and as the file was never saved, that's it... We re-assigned it to another L2, he took a 10 second look at the ticket, called him an idiot, then called $DC and told him the exact same thing $C did. Simply said, that didn't go down either... Oh, and did I mention the reason for the reboot? Windows updates, which were scheduled in and they were advised of a possible reboot and to save all work before leaving. $DC was blaming us for the entire thing. TL;DR - Windows updates were booked in, user didn't save file, PC rebooted and user blames us for it going missing [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Apr 2018 04:06 AM PDT FTP, LTL. I do electronics maintenance in the US Army. Usually night vision and other not very interesting items. I know a bit about computers, but I'd have to study up to get even a Comptia A+. I've actually learned a bit just from reading the stories here. Which brings us to my story.... One of my colleagues/good friends brought his laptop into the shop to work on something during some downtime. As he was setting it up, he plugged in a wireless mouse, but it wasn't working. He asked me to take a look at it. I had no problem, as I was just killing time before some mandatory training I had to attend. I start poking around at menus, but I before I can accomplish anything, a window pops up telling me it's time to reboot in order to install updates. My colleague has stepped out, so I say to myself "Eh, what's the worst that could happen?" And click "OK" to begin the reboot process. At which point I have to leave to attend the aforementioned training. While sitting in this class, a notification appears on my phone. And I can read the first line from the lock screen, but I don't dare get caught picking up my phone until we are on break. "What did that first line say?", you ask. It said "Hey brother, I don't know what you did to my computer but" And it cuts off. Thus begins 45 minutes of me nervously wondering what happened. I like my friend, and I REALLY don't want to find out I screwed up something on his personal laptop. Finally, we go on break. I check the text and it says- "Hey brother I don't know what you did to my computer but it works 100% better now! Thanks." Whew. [link] [comments]  |
| Database Support 12: The Developer Hokey Pokey Posted: 24 Apr 2018 08:10 AM PDT Last time on Database Support: Fake it 'til you make it Hey folks, it's been a while. Partly because of the usual busyness and/or laziness, but mostly because while the "coming up next" portion of my last post mentioned a tale involving meeting a bunch of customers, after several attempts to write it up I realized that there was just too much sensitive customer information involved in the humorous and exasperating parts, and redacting all of that would leave me with basically no story. So instead we'll skip ahead a bit to explore another wonderful period in my team's history. Buckle up, it could get a bit dizzy in here. As I mentioned in my previous tale, my team was the catch-all team for our department. We "only" dealt with the utilities surrounding the database, not the more complex internals, so when something had to be done that didn't fit in the other teams' buckets we were the ones given the dubious honor of dealing with it. This also meant that our team was viewed as being the one with the shortest ramp-up time and least overhead to deal with; this wasn't exactly true, as we were responsible for over two dozen utilities written in three or four different languages, all 10+ years old and with enough legacy baggage to fill a 747's cargo hold, but that was the perception. Those two thngs together meant that we were the designated "new hire training" team: If someone was hired into or rotated through our department, they'd almost always be assigned to our team, get trained up for a while, and then rotated out to another team just as they were starting to really contribute, at which point someone else new would join the team and start the process over. And if other teams needed a more experienced person to join them for a while, management was happy to grab someone from our team--after all, we were merely the utilities team, surely our job was easy and we didn't need everyone on the team, right? While we'd had a long streak of annoying rotations, this really came to a head in one particular month about two years back. A certain manager, NewVP, was put in charge of allocations for our team and was the one who kept us apprised of any hires and rotations. However, as he was (at the time, at least) the only person of his rank who hadn't been promoted from within the department, he was still learning the ropes and wasn't great at keeping on top of schedules. It was always a miracle if we got 24 hours' notice of a new hire or 3 hours' notice of an interview from him, and for the past few months we'd been ambushed by interviews, surprised by rotations, and otherwise jerked around over and over again. We'd finished training a few new hires recently and had been promised we wouldn't be getting any more any time soon. So naturally, I got an email on a Sunday afternoon about an upcoming rotation. Verbatim:
Larry and Moe (fake names of course chosen entirely at random with no intended subtext whatsoever) were from a different department with whom we had, shall we say, noticeable ideological friction, as briefly mentioned in a previous musical number. Here's how rotations with this particular department usually went: Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
... Week 1 Again
And so forth. So when I found out we'd be getting not one but two temporary team members from that department on very short notice, I was of course positively ecstatic. On their first day, I sat them both down and gave them a basic overview of our main utilities, our current priorities, and our work already in flight. They nodded politely through the whole thing and immediately made a few suggestions for "improvements" we could make. I suggested we wait to discuss that until they'd actually seen the code and gotten a more in-depth introduction from the other team members who would be pairing with them. They agreed, but were obviously itching to change as much as they could as soon as they could. Larry and Moe's first week moved along at a crawl. They weren't subtle about their criticism of everything from our testing style to our variable naming conventions; you'd have thought my team had chosen everything specifically to spite them, instead of having inherited it all from previous teams and being as frustrated at some thing as they were. As soon as they saw our testing setup they latched on to one particular point: We were using integration tests for our backup and restore utility, not unit tests. In their department, this was simply Not Done, and simply had to be changed immediately, because actually hitting the database was slow and flaky and altogether terrible testing practice. (An aside for the non-coders: unit tests are tests for a small unit of code, like a single function, ensuring that it does the right thing on its own given various inputs and that the tests will break if the internal behavior of that unit changes; integration tests are tests at boundaries between two parts of code, like between a utility and the database that the utility accesses, ensuring that the two interoperate correctly and that the tests will break if either side changes its interface.) The rest of the team made it clear that addressing this wasn't a priority, but we had several meetings about it that day and the next anyway. I'll spare you the long and boring details, but suffice to say that the high point was when Larry suggested we simply mock out a copy of the entire database from scratch for testing purposes. As creating such a mock database with identical behavior to the real database without a good test mocking library available would be akin to making a 1-to-1 scale life-size map of the earth because anything smaller wouldn't be realistic enough, and even just tracking down every single query all the utilities ran and their expected outputs would have taken weeks on its own, this idea was politely rejected. Moe left the team that Thursday, citing his inability to get comfortable with Vim, the editor of choice for most of our team. This obviously had everything to do with Vim, despite him having been onboarding with the team's Vim expert--who was also one of the most patient and understanding team members and an excellent teacher--and nothing to do with the fact that he was upset over his suggestion being rejected. Right after Moe left, I received another email from NewVP: ding!
Cool, I thought, we'll finish onboarding Larry and he can help onboard NewGuy since everything will be fresh and we'll have just updated our new hire docs, it'll work out nicely for once. Larry finished out his first week with the team, and it went surprisingly well; he was ahead of the curve, having breezed through both the "everything is wrong" and "rewrite from scratch" stages in the first couple days and started in on the "I know better" and "maybe you have a point" stages toward the end of the week after that database testing discussion. Maybe by the end of NewGuy's first week he'd have hit the stage of Zen acceptance. That Friday, yet another email: ding!
Perfect! We could get Larry, Curly, and NewGuy together for a week and get all the onboarding out of the way at once. Amazing what coordinating schedules can do for a team. Monday rolled around. NewGuy arrived bright and early, met the team, and started getting settled in. Alas, no sign of Curly. ding!
Sigh. So much for onboarding two people at once instead of staggering things again. I went through an abbreviated version of the same spiel I gave Larry and Moe, and fortunately NewGuy didn't think he knew our codebase and team practices better than we did after the first five minutes, so it went much more smoothly. For his first few days, I was planning to pair him up with RightHand, a developer I'd worked with for quite a while (the second-most experienced person on the team after yours truly) and who effectively co-led the team with me when our manager went AWOL (but that's another story). RightHand had actually been one of NewGuy's interviewers and they'd gotten along famously, and I figured it would be a perfect fit. So, naturally.... ding!
I walked into the meeting room, plopped down into a chair, and gave him my best "Seriously, dude?" look.
I wasn't normally that flippant with any manager besides CoolBoss, but I was just a bit peeved about the constant changes and lack of forewarning.
Yeah, I actually just flat-out said "No." Not my most brilliant or tactful move ever, but NewVP was caught off balance enough for it to work.
NewVP pondered for a bit, while I tried to convey "Pretty pretty please with a cherry on top and also I'll hate you forever if you say no" via body language without actually doing or saying anything that might get me in trouble.
I walked out of the meeting room smiling for the first time in weeks and moseyed over to RightHand's desk.
That week, RightHand showed his worth as a leader and NewGuy proved his development chops. RightHand somehow managed to cram two weeks' worth of training into a week and NewGuy came out the other side with the necessary background and confidence to, if not replace RightHand, then at least let us mostly keep up our momentum in his absence. The next Monday, we bade RightHand farewell and moved people around to different tasks to compensate for the loss. Fortunately, there wasn't any sign of another-- ding! OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE NEWVP WHAT DO YOU WANT NOW!?
ಠ_à²
sigh Discard draft
It took several more emails and some pull from CoolBoss, but I managed to get them to leave Larry and Curly with us for several months, slow down the pace of rotations after that, and give us actual notice of any rotations we did get stuck with. It would be a while before management moved developers around for pointless reasons again. Coming up next: Management moves developers around for pointless reasons again. TL;DR: You put two new devs in, [link] [comments]  |
| I Need To Give More Clear Answers Posted: 24 Apr 2018 08:45 AM PDT We have a company facebook page with a post that is getting a lot of traction right now. One of our employees heard about it & wanted to comment on the post, but she recently deactivated her facebook account. User: Do I have to be on Facebook to comment on the post? Me: Yes, you deactivated your account so you won't be able to comment on the post. User: I deactivated my account. Can I still do it without reactivating it? Me: No. User: So I can't do it? Me: No, you can't do it. User: Can I just comment on it anyway? Me: No, you need an active account to access it. User: If I hadn't deactivated my account, could I do it then? Me: Yes. User: But I deactivated my account. Me: Right, so you can't do it. User: But I just want to leave a comment. I can do that right? Me: No. You have to have an active account to comment on that Facebook post. User: Oh OK. What if I just want to read the post & then leave a quick comment? Me: You can't do anything on Facebook unless you reactivate your account. User: I don't want to reactivate my account, I just want to leave a comment on this post. Me: You can't. They don't allow you to comment on posts if you don't have an active account. User: I don't want to reactivate my account. Me: You don't have to. You just can't leave a comment on that post or any other post. User: So are you saying I can't do it? Me: That is correct. You can't do it. User: But I just want to leave a comment. Me: YOU CAN'T DO IT. THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN DO IT WITHOUT REACTIVATING YOUR ACCOUNT. User: No reason to get huffy. You weren't being clear with your answers. It didn't have to be so complicated, you could have just said no. [link] [comments]  |
| The web developers who just didn't know anything Posted: 24 Apr 2018 12:25 PM PDT This post reminded me of a similar, but much older, situation I was in. This was probably early-to-mid 2000s, and I was consulting for a Big Company. They had just spent $$$$many on a new internal intranet system with a different Big Company whose nickname was related to a large color. But they were having problems of some sort. So they called me in. After some cajoling and prompting, I finally got the details of the problem they were having out of them. The users would log in, and start doing stuff, but often they would have to log back in in the middle of their work, which would have all disappeared. After some more cajoling and prompting, I got out of them the fact that they had two back-end servers fronted by a load balancer. I think most of you already know where this is going. I then had a conversation that went something like this: Me: (to the developers who were present) Does the app share sessions between different servers? Long and short of it is that their load balancer wasn't using sticky sessions (which they didn't think they needed to use for reasons insufficiently explained), allowing different requests from the same user to go to different servers. Those servers themselves had no idea they were in a cluster configuration, which caused sessions to "disappear" when a user got sent to a different one by the load balancer, and required the user to log in again. All this because the developers only knew about checking a checkbox on their developer tool. edit: apparently the post I was referring to got deleted. It was titled "The Web Developers who didn't know how to google," hence my cribbing of a good title. [link] [comments]  |
| Of Emails, Citrix Bugs and The Most Efficient Meetings In The World Posted: 24 Apr 2018 07:16 PM PDT Greetings, TFTS! It's been a while since I've posted. but I've got a few small tales from recent $MSP escapades that I thought you guys might like. For background - I work for a company that mainly provides cloud hosting services, ranging from Azure VMs and Office 365, to Citrix Environments and custom-built domains. Every day is a mixed bag when it comes to work responsibilities. $MSP is owned by $MegaCorp, which also owns various other sister companies, whose products we provide in our hosted environments ($ERP, $OtherERP, $CRM, etc). Head Office, for some reason, had grown tired of the notion that these businesses were separate companies in the eyes of their customers. Despite every company being happy with this arrangement - as it allowed for a clear definition of support scopes - management, in their intransigence, launched $OperationUnity, a bid to unite the companies under Head Office's banner. As part of $OperationUnity, $MSP has become the first point of contact for all internal IT tickets, for all aspects of the business. This has led to some... interesting issues and tickets, the best of which I will be sharing here. Enjoy! The Case of the Missing Email Ding! Ticket #xxxxx1 From: $ProjectManager Subject: Where is my email? Body: Where is my email from 2017 please? I respond, asking for more information. Is it a specific email he is missing? All of them? Can he see them through the Webmail client? Response: A reboot overnight seems to have fixed it?! I had a similar experience with $TotallyUnrelatedApplication. Resolution: Issue resolved, ticket closed. Still don't know what the hell he was talking about. Operation: Maximise Picture the scene - it's 2am, I'm on a lovely, quiet night shift, where I essentially get paid to watch Netflix and eat junk food for thirteen hours, all while working from home. Naturally, I'm quite peeved when the phone rings. Ring!
Note: $DrunknSweary is named for his penchant for calling night shift up while absolutely blind drunk, ranting about $OtherERP and their software, swearing profusely as he does so. So long as you stay on his good side, he's a pretty good laugh. I recognise him by voice, test launching a Citrix Desktop, which connects with ease.
A thought strikes me.
To his credit, he didn't argue with me, even though it's a very weird request.
Resolution: For once, enhancing the image wasn't just technobabble. Issue resolved, ticket closed. The Meeting Has Overrun This one was just plain weird, but thankfully simple to resolve. I take a phone call from $ERPTech, based in Europe.
At this point I'm wondering what the hell she's talking about. I check the ticket, which has finally loaded in our piece of shit ticketing system; see it's about booking meetings against an Exchange Calendar, for a room mailbox. Okay, that makes a bit more sense.
wat.jpg
I check the notes; sure enough, there it is in black and white, a note from my colleague:
I stare in awe at that note. Literally speechless. Then, after a moment:
Resolution: Coworker is a moron. Issue resolved, ticket closed. [link] [comments]  |
| Why do I even bother writing instructions? Posted: 24 Apr 2018 03:38 PM PDT So I'm a recent college grad with a degree in Network management. I'm still working for the same dept store where I've been for the past 12 years while I search for a job. I'm also the 'computer guy' in my family, mostly to my mother. About 2 weeks ago my mom wanted to know how to transfer pics from her phone to her laptop so I typed up an instructions sheet complete with screen shots and arrows showing her exactly where on the screen to click. We just got back from a weekend family event yesterday and today she calls to say she can't get the pics off her phone to print them. I said I didn't have time today because of work but I would try to come by tomorrow. While on a break at work I texted her to make sure she was using the instructions sheet....she wasn't (big shock). I told her that the sheet was there to try BEFORE she calls me. She said she would use it but I have a feeling I'll have to go over tomorrow anyway and walk her through step by step [link] [comments]  |
| Need help plugging my new computer Posted: 24 Apr 2018 01:44 PM PDT $Me Hello my name is XXXX how can I help you? $User I need help plugging in my new computer $Me Ok maybe I can assist you to do a hardware setup request in our system? $User no my colleagues called for same thing, the guy on the phone helped them on the phone. I want that too. $me ok hmm well what exactly do you need help with? Is the power plugged in? $User Yes, but nothing else is and I don't know what to plug. $Me Ok well plug in the network cable. $User is that the tiny yellow one? $Me Ok let me send you a picture of it.... $User Ok I plugged it in the wall, in the network plug. now what? $Me plug it in the computer $User there is no where to plug it in. I looked everywhere $Me that is like impossible. there has to be a network plug in the computer. Should be on the left side. $User I can't find it $me ok what is your laptop model $User XXXXX $Me ok let me send you pictures of where you need to plug it in $User ohhh that is where. Nice its plugged in. I will open the computer now $Me thanks. Call us back if you need further assistance. This lasted 15 minutes. omg. I actually cut out even more crap (like how to find where to plug it in the wall). Why can't these people have like, semi literate friends who can do these things for them? [link] [comments]  |
| The Enemies Within: That's.. not for customers. Episode 120 Posted: 24 Apr 2018 10:56 AM PDT Oh man, it's two in a week! and it's only tuesday. Today's stunt was one of those requests that just.. hurts. My Network Admin asked me to add a new user to tacacs. Becuase a customer wanted access to their ASA. This, is something I don't do often. I had to tell him no. First, system wide changes to accommodate a single special case, I don't do those as a rule. Making major rule and configuration changes on our authentication system during the day, risking kicking everyone out of the authentication system. And for a customer with a limited lifetime with the company. It also would expose the TACACS server configuration to the customer. Getting the configuration to work on "just that one firewall" would require restructuring the whole TACACS database. And the alternative, would be allowing the customer access to every piece of that brand equipment on our network. This... is a bad idea. When the alternative, is just setting up two local users, documenting it, and pulling tacacs from the configuration on the end device. That's what I had him do in the end. ... I hate telling my coworkers no. But this wasn't something I was going to do without my boss screaming at me. [link] [comments]  |
| Computer wont turn on. Cause: USB orientation was not observed Posted: 24 Apr 2018 02:04 PM PDT Long time reader, sometime poster. Ok so this is a short and somewhat simple post. less tales of how I hate everyone on the phone and more of tales of WTF? why inst this working. Coworker asked me to fix his computer, for his GF. Get it home and see what i can do, he was trying to install Windows 7 but kept having issues with it crashing and BSODing on install. First thing I did before i did a wipe and install was try to upgrade RAM as it was an old P4 with 1GB of DDR1. Installed all 4gb of ram, ran the install and then the computer turned off all by itself while left alone. Trying to power on and I get a black screen although the power is running. Sounds like MOBO Welp decided to upgrade him. Installed an AMD Athlon II AM2 board, with 6GB of DDR2, had PCI-E instead of AGP, so a bit of an upgrade. Went to power on, and nothing. So maybe bad powersupply, replaced that with a spare, still wont boot. So I strip it down to nothing but the front header connectors plugged in, still no power, Im pissed. This was a working board not more then a few months ago. So I disconnect everything and let it sit, ask around for thoughts, Go to try it one more time and it turns on, What??? checked and i noticed the USB header was disconnected, reconnected it and it wont turn on again, Checked front of computer and wouldn't you know, the USB port was smashed and the pins where shorted. Welp theres your problem Got it together sans front USB and everything worked fine. Goes to show that even though you think an issue is some major failure, it might just be something simple and un-needed TL:DR USB orientation was not observed, port was broken, Tried replacing a lot of hardware before realizing it was a bad port [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Apr 2018 06:47 AM PDT First post, sorry if the format is off! I'm currently on work placement for my comp sci degree in a support role, but this was actually from my best friend who is also studying comp sci. You know that scene in the simpsons "Where's the any key?", well I had my own version. Windows had crashed on his laptop and wouldn't reboot. After a day of watching him struggle i decided to try help. Now i'm no genius, I googled the error message and followed the steps (apparently most people don't know how to google). So I'm reading out the steps after we've booted it in safe mode, I tell him to select advanced settings and he does. I then tell him to select command prompt and he turns back around to me and says "there's no select command prompt, only command prompt" Part of me felt bad for him but I spent the next 15 minutes on the floor laughing at him before we finally fixed the problem. He says it was a slip of the tongue but can't say I believe him and that was my first TFTS and the future is bright for many more idiots. [link] [comments]  |
| We provide instructions for a reason Posted: 24 Apr 2018 07:13 AM PDT I work for a banking software vendor, some of the calls we get are just astounding, which only magnifies the fact that these idiots that call us are also handling your money. For this post, I will be me or m and stupid user will be su. m: Client services, this is ferociousrickjames. su: Rick, I'm trying to run the new upgrade and I'm getting an error. m: Ok, can you remote me in and show me the error please? su: Sure! proceeds to fumble around for 10 minutes m: Ok sir, do you have the upgrade guide? su: Yes. m: Ok, if you're looking at the guide, that specific error is listed in the troubleshooting section of the guide. su: Oh, well I don't have it on this machine. m: I've just emailed it to you, did you follow the instructions and backup the database? su: No, I have it setup to where I backup the entire pc every night. m: Ok, errors like this can happen when you don't follow the instructions. I understand that you have your own setup, but you really need to follow the guide. su: laughs for 5 minutes I don't think that error is because I didn't follow instructions. m: Did you set the security rights before trying to run the upgrade? su: No. m: Then yes, this error came up because you did not follow the instructions. We advise you to follow the guide for a reason, in order to prevent these issues, you really need to be following the guide to the letter. su: Well I just thought with years of experience I would be fine. m: So go ahead and start over and follow the guide, go step by step and you should be fine. If not, then you can always call us. su: Ok Rick, thanks! I'm sorry, there's no excuse for that kind of arrogance and stupidity. You guys couldn't hear the tone he was using, but he was very condescending. The instructions we provided would take him maybe 10 minutes to complete everything and move on, but he genuinely thought he could just do whatever. This call made me roll my eyes so hard that I'm surprised they didn't get stuck. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Apr 2018 09:58 AM PDT Disclaimer This post may be a bit more rant than usual due to the issue at hand, the fact this occurred no less than an hour ago, and a lack of proper sleep and proper coffee do not make for a fully pleasant attitude. The scene is set. Monday approaches and the sun has yet to begin to shine. The underdog of this tale rises to greet the morning much like a rock trying to rise from the bottom of the ocean. After injecting of caffeine he makes his way to work where a small cubicle, a well used coffeepot, and a bright board of green and red are waiting to greet him and indicate how his day will be. Unfortunately, the board was upset at the weekend ending, and showed red. Our underdog 'hurries' to his desk and gets his systems up. quickly he takes calls one after another, hoping to stem the massive tide with his teaspoon of hope. It goes as well as expected but slowly he starts to get little hints. Sites not loading. Emails not showing up in a timely manner. Slow logins. And a current test of bandwidth going on causing many thousands of people to crowd a poor VPN server all at the same time. It strikes him. The network is malfunctioning. He tests with the calls, sending them to other sites and reloading pages until they work. 404's vanish for a while if but a short moment. Leading the stray flock of accounting sheep to other VPN stables provides more stability. More and more he builds the case, he has the proof. He finally reaches out, waving a flag and crying out in triumph and hope. "The network is not working, there is an issue to be fixed" He his told with a voice, indifferent and ignoring "No, I don't see an issue. There's no issue" He tries to keep raising warning, and is ignored time and again. The underdog sits back in his cube, all he can do is warn his colleagues and try to keep things strung together. Bitter and tired he ends the day. He comes in the next day, and again the board shines red. Our underdog drinks of coffee to keep together, working the calls once more stringing people together and keeping them fixed as issues pour in. Emails keep coming. Application not working. Site not showing. 404's and access denied everywhere you see. Almost in weird sadness, 24 hours later a voice cries out from the 'Incident' team "The network is malfunctioning, the system is down" Our underdog feels naught but sadness and anger. Ignored by all as he sits in his cube, warning of the issue and being ignored only to have his warning vindicated a day later, but no acknowledgement. A reminder of his sad place at the bottom of the tech totem pole. In his mirth, he remembers a scene from True Lies. "This bridge is out! The bridge is out!" "What. what are you saying... Oh! The Bridge is out! Harry, the Bridge is out!" tl;dr: Call center tech warns of outage, watches as it burns and keeps trying to keep bodies alive [link] [comments]  |
| The SSD and me, in which is was the luser Posted: 25 Apr 2018 02:46 AM PDT Hello TFTS, i'm not really TechSupport (i'm a dev), even though sometimes i have to help the lusers understand why they can't convert meters to tons, or whatever, because i'm backup for the maintenance team. Also please forgive my writing, not a english speaker. But yesterday i was the luser. I recently bought a bigger SSD to host my games, and tried to install it in my PC. Plugged it to motherboard, and restart the PC, Windows couldn't see the drive. Restart to BIOS, drive not detected. I tried to change ports, switch cable, exchange it with cable of a know working drive, still no dice. Went to google, searching for obscure BIOS settings, still no drive detected. Then i looked better at the drive, and in a pulse of inspiration, wondered why there was TWO ports in the drive. Guess what? SSD work better when they are connected to motherboard AND alim block... Hi head, i am floor (no desk, since my PC is directly on the floor). So remember, even if you did something dozens of time ,sometimes you can forget a very easy step... [link] [comments]  |
| Somone did this to me on purpose Posted: 24 Apr 2018 03:47 AM PDT Received a help desk ticket: keyboard broken I go out to the users desk to find grape jelly on their keyboard roughly in a toast sized square. Me: ok, I can get you A new keyboard no problem. User: I didn't do this! Someone maliciously did this to my keyboard. Me: either way, I'll replace it. User: why would someone do this to me? This was definitely a malicious act. I can't believe someone would do this to me. I just nodded and left to replace the keyboard. User just dropped his breakfast on there and wouldn't admit it. [link] [comments]  |
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