User is a stalker who wants to know another user's calendar and email Tech Support |
- User is a stalker who wants to know another user's calendar and email
- HARRY POTTER. HARRY F****ING POTTER!
- Young Gamer call's Tech Support
- "Just get rid of the stuff I don't need."
- More From Aviation Maintenance: Cake Day Edition | Ford Ranger
- About your 12-hour-old request to activate your privileged user account...
- Our desktop backgrounds are blank... FIX OR ELSE
- Did you just...
- Be careful where you put that
- Friday the 13th = Dead Monitor
- Um, so the VPN is down.
- When your boss fails to account for Mr. Murphy...
- Another shared password story
- “This isn’t the time to learn!”
- Testing Analysis
- Saved for later
- New Issues AND a security hole!
- Legacy support of Clients computer... ongoing
- That's not how that works...
| User is a stalker who wants to know another user's calendar and email Posted: 13 Apr 2018 08:54 AM PDT Tech: Thank you for calling XYZ Help Desk. Can I have your employee ID number please? User: Hi, umm, I need to be able to make appointment's to John's calendar. Tech: Are you John's manager or assistant? User: No, but we work together, and he asked if I could help in making appointments for him. Tech: If you schedule an appointment, are you unable to invite him? User: That works fine, he just prefers if I can make his appointments for him. Tech: We'd need your mutual manager's approval to do this. Would you like me to submit this request now? User: I didn't know it would be so involved, another tech said this could be done... Tech: It can be done, however, it requires a manager's approval first. User: No, that's OK, don't do that. But can you give me access to his email? Tech: How do you mean, like a shared inbox? User: No, I mean, can you add his inbox to my account? I need to be able to collaborate with him through his email. Tech: We can add a shared mailbox you can both access. I can't grant you access to his email, once again, without a manager's approval. User: Look, the calendar wasn't as important. I really just need access to John's email. Tech: That can be accomplished with a manager's approval. We can submit this request to your manager if you'd like. User: I was able to do this before, and it didn't need a manager's approval. Tech: Are you John's assistant, or is there some business justification for needing access to John's email? User: Yes, I need to be able to collaborate with him - and it would be easier if I could see his email and calendar. Tech: Then we can submit that to your manager as a request. User: No, nevermind. I was able to do this before, I don't know why you're being so difficult. [link] [comments]  |
| HARRY POTTER. HARRY F****ING POTTER! Posted: 14 Apr 2018 12:38 AM PDT Sorry if this isn't the right space for my post - most of this is computer related. I work for a large brand-name phone company on the technical assistance/repair sides of things (we double as a retail store) where it's mostly just either booking in phones/tablets for repairs, troubleshooting software issues or just general advice because people don't know how to google things. We operate through both pre booked and walk in appointments according to how many people we have staffed on during the day. We're a very opened planned store, with service desks at the back. We do have a concierge at the front who is meant to try and catch every customer who comes in store so they don't just slither towards the back and stand there wondering why no one has helped them but sometimes due to it being ridiculously busy they just can't and customers will take it into their own hands to get served. I was with a customer already helping her try and find some photos she deleted from both her phone and cloud storage for whatever reason (ended up finding them, anyway) when this older, dishevelled looking man ignores all our floor staff who greet him and comes straight up to the side of my desk, where I'm clearly busy. My initial thought is oh, he must be her husband or dad or something, so I smile at him and say hi and continue what I'm doing for a second before he coughs/grunts and puts his hands on my desk and my customer looks at both of us really confused. Me: oh! Sorry, I thought you were together. Do you need help? Man: Well yeah, this IS technical assistance right??? I apologise to my customer and jump up from my seat to begin walking towards our concierge who is looking equally as confused - she thought he was my customer from before, or that he was also with my current customer - and explain to him that we are by appointment only but we can see if we have any free slots to fit him into. He's not happy and starts sighing and grunting and keeps repeating "this is the only time I've gotten off work" over and over when I say yes, I know, but we have other people who have been waiting who have made appointments online or have been waiting for ages in store. His phone isn't turning on, which means we can't extract data from it (privacy laws and we're not trained in it) and we're a 24hr turnaround time but can give him something to use in the meantime. We just need to book him in first. Our next appointment is in only twenty minutes so I'm glad, concierge is glad, but he's absolutely furious. He starts yelling and arguing with me about how "it's the only time I get off work!" and "I'm a busy man, just serve me now!" Me: I get that, really, but I'm obviously busy at my job too. As soon as I'm done I'll be able to grab your details and give you a phone to use in the meantime. Man: WHY CAN'T YOU JUST TAKE MY PHONE NOW? he pushes it into my hands SEE? YOU ALREADY HAVE IT??? Me: tries giving it back but he's got his arms folded Because I'm busy, and the rest of our technical staff are busy, so you're either going to have to wait for twenty minutes or we can make an appointment for another day. Man: WELL YOU MIGHT AS WELL THROW IT OUT THEN SINCE YOU'RE NOT GOING TO HELP ME NOW Me: I would rather not because it's got your sim and memory card, take it and make an appointment for another day He keeps his arms folded and nudges the phone in my hands towards me again with his elbow. Me: Okay, well I have a recycling bin for phones just down the back and if you're happy recycling your belongings that's fine with me. I take one step towards the back of the store and he snatches it out of my hands. Man: I HOPE YOU KNOW HOW BUSY I AM. I RUN ALL THE THEATRES IN CITY. WE'RE RUNNING HARRY POTTER. HARRY F---ING POTTER!!! so yeah he left with those parting words and I got to go back and find photos and have a laugh with my customer who had booked an appointment weeks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| Young Gamer call's Tech Support Posted: 13 Apr 2018 12:25 PM PDT I am an Engineer for a smaller MSP and this just happened about two minutes ago Tech = Help Desk Gamer = Young gamer Root = Me Tech: Hello this is ** with $MSP How may I assist you? Gamer: Hi, I am having issues with my account. I have some items missing? Tech: Okay, what is your name and who are you with? Gamer: My name is meep and I am just having some issues with my Fortnite account Tech: laughs a little Oh! You have contacted $MSP we support Business level environments throughout the greater Chicago area Gamer: Oh, well I googled Fortnite and this was the number it gave me to call Tech: You must have come across Fortinet and ended up on our support list, however we're all Gamers here maybe I can help you. Root: PUT HIM ON SPEAKER I WANT TO HEAR THIS Tech: Go ahead and tell me whats going on. Gamer: So I turned on my PlayStation and logged into Fortnite and I was missing my pickaxe and my items! I don't know what to do Tech: Oh, well in that case I can't really be of any help, you can contact Epic Games support number which is xxxxxx and they might be able to assist you. Gamer: Oh okay Gamer: I'm sorry for bothering you guys, it was the only number I was given. Tech: Not a problem at all, I know the server's have been having issues as of late maybe you were just unlucky and got caught up in that. Good on you for trying to resolve this. Best of Luck! This has to be my favorite conversation I've heard. The kid didn't sound like they were much older than 12 and after the slow Friday we've been having a laugh was needed. [link] [comments]  |
| "Just get rid of the stuff I don't need." Posted: 13 Apr 2018 05:10 PM PDT I work for a mom and pop shop, Apple oriented. Backing up data off of drives from computers that aren't worth fixing is a fairly common task. As is the customer being too cheap to buy an external to put it onto, so they bring in their old external. Just today, same sort of deal. 2011 15" Macbook Pro, decent machine with a 1TB SSD, graphics chip has died. Doesn't want to fix it, which is fine by me. Wants her stuff backed up off of the SSD. No problem. Plug in provided external 1TB drive, 450GB available. Plug in customer's 1TB SSD, 150GB available. Will. Not. Fit. Call the customer to inform them.
Needless to say, she'll be picking the computer up because we refuse to get rid of the files she doesn't need. [link] [comments]  |
| More From Aviation Maintenance: Cake Day Edition | Ford Ranger Posted: 13 Apr 2018 05:42 AM PDT February, 2007 Afghanistan The call had come in early, a DART (Downed Aircraft Recovery Team) mission was needed to visit a little FOB (Forward Operating Base) in the back end of nowhere, Afghanistan. I was happy to volunteer again, but after my previous trip I had actually included cold weather gear in my bag and was prepared for once. I and another fellow E4, we'll call him Lucha (short for Luchador…another story will reveal that at a later date…), were told to meet up with one of our aircrews and be ready to fly shortly. The flight was actually the best of my entire time in Afghanistan. I'd brought my camera this time as well as gloves, so I was able to actually enjoy myself and watch where we were flying and actually get to see some of this country I was in. The immediate locale of Kandahar was mostly brown steppe, pocked with impact craters and meagre fields. As we crossed over mountains, the terrain changed to green sheer hillsides covered in sheep and nomadic herder tent villages. Crossing more mountains, we were in a grey-brown desert which stretched towards a sudden demarcation of green and city—a river ran through the center of this valley and life had stubbornly clung to the edges of it, similar to the Nile in Egypt. Up over a mountain again, and this time we were back in desert barrens as far as the eye could see. The next mountain? Suddenly we were in a lush valley, a river winding through it and short waterfalls seemingly everywhere along its length. Then it was back over the mountains into a steppe…. The variations in terrain continued until we entered a somewhat greenish valley in the foothills of the local section of the Himalayas and our UH-60L Blackhawk landed, disgorging us and our toolboxes before a stricken CH-47 Chinook. As we were taking stock of the scene, we heard in very close proximity the FWISH FWISH FWISH BAM BAM BAM of rockets and 30mm cannon firing—we ducked and looked up to see our escort AH-64 Apache strafing something beyond the camp. One of the Special Forces soldiers stationed at the camp and had met us as we dismounted started laughing.
We hooked up with the Chinook crew and found out they were getting some oil pressure indication issues from the #2 (right) engine, so after discussing it Lucha and I decided he would go up while they ran the engine and he'd check over the wiring connections for security and the engine for leaks. We explained our plan to the Flight Engineer and immediately that Sergeant dug his heels in.
So, after flying for a couple hours across Afghanistan to deliver the equivalent of "make sure the cables are tight" Lucha sat back and watched as the Sergeant fumbled through the simple task of checking cannon plugs on the wiring harnesses on a running engine. I, being easily distractible, had noticed something else at a distance.
And as if to confirm the Special Forces soldier's tale, the burro turned, revealing emblazoned on his side in white paint the stenciled words "OEF PROPERTY." The special forces guy just grinned as I faceplamed and shook my head. Coincidentally, one of the guys who flew back with us on the Chinook happened to be a police officer from the suburb next to the one in which I grew up and knew my dad. Also, on that flight Lucha took the only picture I have of myself in Afghanistan. My wife framed it and put it up among our family photos. Enjoy what you've read? There are More Tales from Aviation Maintenance! I've also started playing with Writing Prompts too, just to keep my pen sharp... [link] [comments]  |
| About your 12-hour-old request to activate your privileged user account... Posted: 13 Apr 2018 05:09 PM PDT So we have an upgrade starting up. Today we made a copy of our database; we'll convert one copy, and the other is read-only for a week. I noticed a few minutes ago that I had an e-mail from half-a-day ago, from one of our European superusers. He said his account was inactive and he couldn't log in. Now, I've been busy today. We had to coordinate some communications and other things related to setting up a new database space, getting production shut down, copying the database, setting up messages alerting people to the database being (about to go|currently) down, which had some other problems because of problems we've had for weeks with some internal hosting...you get the idea. Busy. So I just now saw this e-mail. I'm not even on the front-line for support, there's a layer between it and me. And I noticed it was hours old. Well, I really enjoyed my opening paragraph about how e-mailing me was not the right way to get support, especially for an account issue in production. I got to point out that we had another way to start support questions that he should have used. I also get sick, go on vacation, or get so busy I can't get to my messages for a long time. Then I checked and his account was...fine. That superuser account hadn't been inactive in any way. I speculated that a patching process the night before might have made some connections lag, so it looked like he couldn't log in to his superuser account. Then I got to tell him that we were read-only for the next week...and part of that involved shutting down the superuser login screen. That was just the cherry on top. "You won't be able to check if the account works for ten more days..." [link] [comments]  |
| Our desktop backgrounds are blank... FIX OR ELSE Posted: 13 Apr 2018 01:57 PM PDT Received reports of desktop backgrounds in some new windows 10 boxes being blank recently inside an office. But instead of filing a ticket, of course it was a direct email to a manager. And of course it said things like "Fix this NOW or else WORKMANS COMP!" I can understand claims being filed for things like carpal tunnel, but a blank desktop wallpaper background?! When you can just maximize an app to fill the background?! Initially this was puzzling, because the coworkers in this office had perfectly working backgrounds that were fine. So, researched Group Policies in AD and found out the windows 7 boxes worked since they had the background stored locally, but the new windows 10 ones didn't. Time to update everyone with a new GPO! Or at least once it gets approved. A hilarious side note, while researching this, came across 15 year old background that was 95% eye popping neon bright GREEN, except for the logo. And even that was poorly done like a MS Paint fill operation, with bits and pieces of white hanging out. Now if that was implemented instead of a blank wallpaper, I would believe reports of going blind and workers comp, after just a few seconds of checking it out my eyes were weird. :) TL;DR Briefly had a fantasy of pushing neon green wallpaper with GPO. Fortunately for them, I'm not a BOFH. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2018 10:08 AM PDT One of my responsibilities as the TV Headend guy at a telco was to scope out remote locations for Offair broadcast reception. Luckily, I only had to do this once. We found a good location and hired a bunch of pros to set up the hardware, they sent one of their "best guys". It was in a collocation facility and the distance between the antenna on the roof and the other equipment in our cage was too far for copper so we were using RF -> Fiber -> RF transceivers to get the signal to the other equipment. I'm helping the pro with the install and he's showing me how it all works as I'll be maintaining it later. He's about to hook up the fiber jumper (which we had to special order because who uses FC to LC connectors...) when he stops for a second and says "we should probably clean the connection first" so I start digging out my fiber cleaning pen when I see him RUB THE FIBER END ON HIS SHIRT and then plug it in.
After he left, I spent like half a day scoping and cleaning everything. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2018 12:33 PM PDT I used to be a TV Headend guy at a small telco. We received most of our channels via satellite by way of a giant dish (5m x 10m). It's cold here and it snows, so the dish had a de-icer system on the back to heat the dish so that the snow would melt off during the winter. Unfortunately, it died and the manufacturer decided to replace it, in the middle of the coldest month of the year. After two days of a lot of grunt work in the cold (that I thankfully didn't have to do personally) the new dish is in place and we're trying to get it working. Nothing works at all, interference everywhere. It's a disaster. There's talk of putting the old broken dish back because at least it kind of works (which would be two more days of grunt work in the cold). Me and the two guys from the dish company are standing outside the headend talking about possible issues and how we can fix the new dish. One of us just happens to notice this power cable running over to the dish. It's coming from the giant truck that the old dish is currently sitting on. Apparently it's an engine block heater because it's THAT cold out and the driver is anxious about not being able to start his truck again. I'm wondering at this point where exactly he's plugging it in because he's literally right next to a building on the other side of his truck with a power outlet right there. I trace the wire back to the dish area and find that he's plugged it into a power outlet directly under the fuse box and the power conduit to the dish's heater goes right through that power outlet. I ask the dish guys if that would have anything to do with our issues. They were really sure that there was no possible way our issues could be related to the block heater at all. But, you know what... I'm thinking that it can't hurt to try ANYTHING before rebuilding something we know is broken. As I yank out the power plug, all of a sudden we have crystal clear signal! The day is saved... and all that. Literally nobody but the three of us seem to care as it's just techies being excited about techie stuff. Post mortum was that
So when your cable tv isn't working right you can wonder: did someone plug something in an outlet that they shouldn't have. [link] [comments]  |
| Friday the 13th = Dead Monitor Posted: 13 Apr 2018 04:33 AM PDT This is a short one i decided to share as it made me shake my head. It was friday morning. Many people took the day off due to being at an exhibition representing our company for the past 3 days, so there wasn't many people around and somehow I had no open ticket left. I was $Nuts = Me $Krueger = Monitor Murderer $Nuts:> "$StandardGreeting"
Grabs a spare monitor and goes to $Kruegers office
[link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2018 08:16 AM PDT So before we get started, this is my first story here so go easy on me xD. I work in government IT for my state, and the majority of our clientele is around 40-50 years old. It is pretty typical for the non-IT clients to not know anything about what a computer is and when I did desk-side support they always said the computer wasn't working and just flat out pointed to the monitor while the tower was off, just for an idea. Now, this is typically not the case with our IT department because it is expected that everyone knows something about computers and the software they use on a daily basis. Anyway, just to give a little context... I work on a call center styled help-desk and I just started two weeks ago. For some reason my state hasn't moved away from using mainframes for mostly every application we have, so we have a fairly large production control and mainframe team to upkeep the nine mainframes we still use on a daily basis to run most of the vital applications for the state. So typically, we have at least one person on call continually for these mainframe systems in order to perform maintenance if necessary, and this is even more true since the weather hasn't been the best lately. $Me - Me ofc $User - The Mainframe Guy $RF - Request Fulfillment Service Desk Employee $C - Company I Work For User calls in on Monday $Me: "Hello thank you for calling the $C service desk, my name is $Me, how may I assist you today?" $User: "The VPN servers are down." $Me: "Hm, let me check on those, I haven't heard anything but it is always good to double check." $Me: Checks on the status of the VPN servers $Me: "There doesn't appear to be any issues with the servers and I have not had any other reports of this issue. Do you mind if I remote in to take a look?" $User: "No there is a problem with the servers, it keeps telling me that the 'server authentication failed.'" $Me: "Well, let's just take a look just in case to make sure there isn't something wrong with the client and we will go from there." $User: "Erm, fine... let me turn on the computer." $Me: "Sounds good, just let me know when you are up and running, I have just sent you a remote control link via email." Currently resting my head on my hand thinking that this is going to be another one of "those" users who knows nothing about computers $User: "Um, I can't login." $Me: "You can't log into the computer or the VPN?" $User: "The VPN." $Me: Thinking sarcastically like... "Well, you came to me saying that you have a problem with the VPN so, what's changed?" $Me: "Okay, well let's ignore that for now, you should still be able to receive emails from Outlook. Just open it up and follow the directions listed on the link in the email for (insert some web support client here)." $User: Opens up link and reads the directions out loud, more than loud enough that it bellows in my ear. "I can't find the run button." $Me: "It is at the bottom of the browser window." $User: "Oh okay, I didn't even notice that one." $Me: Hanging my head in shame as the site has a picture of where to find it... $Me: "Alright I am going to connect to your computer to take a quick look here." $Me: Looks at the computer's VPN client and notices the user is trying to connect to a totally different domain then the one he is meant to be connecting to. $Me: "Alright, can you try logging into the VPN on $domain?" $User: "Um, sure I guess, I don't see how this will make any difference." $Me: "This is just a step to troubleshoot..." Before I even finish my statement I notice that the client immediately kicked him back. $Me: "Give me one moment, I am going to check on something." Mutes microphone $Me: Starts checking the RSA Security Token administration site to see the logs on the account. "Oh great... They are using the wrong pin." $Me: Unmutes phone. "So, from the logs it looks like you have a bad pin. I am going to reset it for you." $Me: Resets PIN and gives user instructions on how to get it setup again. $User: Sets up PIN and attempts to login." "It still doesn't work." $Me: *Checks RSA logs again and sees bad PIN Goes through reset process again with the user and instructed them on a PIN to use so I could at least test. $User: "It still doesn't work. So are we having fun yet?" $Me: Accidentally lets out a deep sigh of annoyance "Yep, we are having a ton of fun." $Me: Checks RSA logs again, user is now getting an authentication error which is typical of the user not being in the AD group for VPN. Because you know, gotta stop people from working at home. $Me: "Have you used the VPN before?" $User: "Yeah I use it all the time." $Me: "Okay it looks like you might not be added to the group for VPN users, I am going to send this over to request fulfillment." Closes up chatting with the user with the typical goodbye script. Now, the story continues two days later on Wednesday. $RF messaged me dumbfounded by the issue. $RF: "So I checked with everyone here and he is in all the groups now, but it still isn't working." $Me: "Um, that's odd because the client is just fine and I have double checked everything he was doing." $RF: "Are you able to take over? I am out of ideas." $Me: Begrudgingly "Alright, I will take another look." $Me: After finding out that the user got a new RSA token about a week ago when the problem started happening. I decided to check on the token linked to the user account. $Me: "Oh great, someone messed up big time." Staring at the screen blankly as I see the three hours of work put into this ticket so far just get washed away with such a simple fix... I found out that the domain that the key represents it's token code was set for $domain2 when $User was apart of the group for $domain. So I change the domain the token is assigned to and move on to call the user. $Me: "Hi $User, its $Me calling from the $C service desk. I had a chance to look at some more information on this and could you try logging in again?" $User: "Sure! I can give it a shot." $User seemed much more cheery than the last time I talked with him, I think this was because he figured out finally that it wasn't the server actually being down. $User: "Um, it still doesn't work, it says 'Bad PIN.'" $Me: "Okay, do you remember your PIN?" Remembering Monday with $User. $User: "Nope! Are we having fun yet?" Well at least he is honest. $Me: Disables the PIN for the RSA token and has user attempt to login. $User: "IT WORKS!" As my eardrum feels as if it ruptures. $Me: Bewildered "Sounds good, it looks like you are all good to go then." $User: "Thanks so much." Click Just after the call I start banging my head on my desk because I learned two things.
After this, I decide to antagonize $RF politely and start talking in the IM conversation with him again. $Me: "So, did you check the work done on the user's token when it was swapped?" $RF: "Um, no I had set it up and so it should have worked perfectly." $Me: "So you set it up with $domain2 rather than $domain?" $RF: "I don't think so? Was that what was wrong???" $Me: "Simply put yes, that and the user couldn't figure out how to use a PIN." $RF: "Oh. Well thanks for letting me know what fixed it!" Ends conversation. I went back to my normal duties and about 15 minutes later I got an email from $RF's supervisor exclaiming to my supervisor about how good of a job I have been doing since I have only been here two weeks. I literally slammed my head down on my desk because I was expecting an angry email for using a condescending tone toward $RF. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed! TLDR: Don't trust anyone's work and always assume people never do their homework with an issue. Lastly, users always take the cake at making you lose faith in humanity. [link] [comments]  |
| When your boss fails to account for Mr. Murphy... Posted: 13 Apr 2018 11:57 AM PDT The setting: I'm the IT Manager at a medical center, aka the one guy who knows anything about computers, managing an environment of 100+ workstations, 20 servers and many, many pieces of medical equipment. The players $majorisp - a major isp in our city, known for having terrible customer service, and provides our main internet connection. $otherisp - a second major isp in our city, known for having even worse customer service and provides us with a redundant internet connection for backup. $me - obviously $COO - one of the partners who own the place, my boss. Great guy, but likes getting things done very fast. Has known me since I was a very young kid, and has watched me progress in the IT world from kid doing grunt work for his software developer/sometimes IT guy dad to a certified IT who even dad calls upon to consult when he runs into things he doesn't understand. $OM - our lovely office manager, whose job is to make sure that our salaried doctors are working and not just sitting there with nothing to do. $Admin - our administrator, hired by COO and his partners to oversee the day to day operations of the place. The story: D-day - 1 $COO has decided to upgrade our internet speed, which involves $majorisp sending in a tech, who needs to replace a modem. $COO schedules the tech to come in...the next day, letting $me know around 2 hours after I'd left for the day. Tech came in, saw this was a big job and he didn't have the right tools, and wanted to reschedule. Unfortunately, $majorisp has an absolutely idiotic policy for business clients: they don't install on weekends, and they only install from 8-5. Also, they give you a window in which they may...or may not show up, with no way to guarantee them showing up at a given time. Essentially, they force you to have downtime during working hours in order to have a service change. Fortunately, we have a backup line provided by $otherisp, regularly checked by me. The last test had been about 4 months ago, and it had worked perfectly. That said, I ask to do a test of the backup before $majorisp's tech begins to work just to make sure we have internet, which I'm told I can't do now because we fear downtime, and that $COO wants this done the next day, as early as possible. $majorisp can show up from 8AM-11AM. Our center opens for business at 8:30, docs show up around 9 and by 9:45, all 3 main floors are packed with patients, and the billing and administration floors are packed with staff that need to work. I don't have a choice, so I agree to show up at 8, open the place, run the test, disconnect the old modem (so he can get to work faster) and wait for the tech. We explain to them that it is imperative that they show up at 8 as well, or this isn't getting done. D-Day I show up at 7:30, figuring I'll need the extra time to run the backup test. I open up, go to our server closet, and run the test: I turn off the main line, and see an immediate switch over to the backup, the way its supposed to. Great. I try to go online however, and...crap. It doesn't work. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. So I access the $otherisp modem to see what's going on, and lo and behold, it can't ping the $otherisp. Hook up a laptop directly to the modem, turn the modem off and turn it back on, etc. Nothing. Then I call $otherisp support. By now, it's getting close to 8 when $majorisp tech is supposed to show up, and I'm still on hold with $otherisp trying to get my backup to work. I've also called $mainisp and found out their tech is supposed to be in within an hour (before it gets crowded). Meanwhile my main line is off, in preparation for $majorisp to get there and do our upgrade. I finally get $otherisp's support on the line, and we start fixing the backup. It's at this time, around 8:20, when staff has begun to file in and ask questions. There had been a downtime warning. So I'm on the phone with $otherisp, fixing my backup, my main line is down and $majorisp still hasn't show up, plus my phone is being blown up by confused department managers. All this means is that my conversation with $otherisp is taking forever because I have to keep switching lines as they all try to figure out what's happening. Finally, as me and $otherisp tech close in on what's causing the problem (around 9 now because he's been on hold a few times, and has a lot of company policy to follow) I get a call from $OM. I put $otherisp tech on hold, again.
By this time, I've almost reconnected everything, $otherisp's tech is still on hold. Get call from $admin
Back to $otherisp. Fix backup line almost immediately, and go have a chat with $OM about what "let me do my job means. And as for $majorisp...well, take a wild guess. In fact, you don't have to. Their tech never showed up. tl;dr: isp's ridiculous service and a lack of planning up top becomes about 10 minutes of downtime during a rush, causing a panic and turning my morning into a Murphy's Law shitshow. edits: formatting [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 14 Apr 2018 01:08 AM PDT This tale has me looking into it from the outside as it had happened with a co-worker (CW) and our supervisor (S). S start his annual leave the next Monday. He requested for HR and IT to appoint CW to act in his capacity (ability to sign off on stuff and access certain data and and and). HR needs to first do his appointed before IT will do anything. So by end of day Friday, nothing has happened yet. S resorts to giving CW his password, so he can at least do some stuff (maybe not sign of on IRL documents but at least keep the flow sort of running). All is well and by Wednesday, CW has been fully appointed. Cue 6 months and all has fallen into the abyss of forgetfulness. That is.....until a security auditor deems it a good idea to compare login records with company time sheets. Off course this sets off a red flag Don't know what happened in the hearing but they both still work here so I suppose they have a "record" on their file now or something. It's never a good idea to share passwords, no matter how noble the cause. [link] [comments]  |
| “This isn’t the time to learn!” Posted: 13 Apr 2018 01:53 PM PDT Quick one from my days working at my college help desk. All of our professors used Outlook for Email, but we also had a simple and easy web app through gmail. When there were problems with outlook, we would get called, and it was always a pain in the ass to deal with. Then one day we officially stopped supporting outlook, which made me extremely happy... though some professors did not take that well being told we won't fix something. One day I got this call: Me: Thank you for calling the help desk, how can I help you? Prof: Outlook isn't working, I can't check my emails! I need to be able to access my emails immediately! Me: Unfortunately we don't support Outlook anymore, however you can access your emails in your web browser by going to mail.mycollege.edu! Prof: I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT AND THIS ISN'T THE TIME TO LEARN You don't have time to learn... how to type a url into a web browser? Then there was the professor who didn't know what a "browser" or "address bar" was. For a bunch of people so smart, professors sure are dumb sometimes. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2018 07:46 AM PDT At my company we have a system where, through a web UI, you define objects and then upload files associated with those objects. Yesterday I got a report saying it wasn't working. With no exaggeration, he wrote, "Cannot upload any files. Any time I try to upload a file, I get an error saying it failed." I try this several times myself and have no problems. I wrote back asking if he could tell me what specific objects and files he was working with. "I'm testing special characters in object names. They're TEST-01#, TEST-01', TEST-01~, AND TEST-01+." HOW DO YOU NOT MENTION THAT? I don't fault the guy for not knowing those characters would cause problems. And sure, it would be better if the error message explained that. But he was specifically checking for a problem, found EXACTLY the problem he was checking for, and yet somehow never suspects that one thing might just have something to do with the other. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2018 08:24 AM PDT School IT again. I spent a bit of time today going through every PC that needs fixed (roughly 15-20), none of which were labelled in any way except for the few and far between "use for parts." I'd been laughing off and on at PCs with silly problems like still being on Win XP, and a couple issues that I couldn't fix because of our PCs' security software that resets them on startup. One of the computers had <online game distributor> and <multiplayer fps made by game distributor> installed on it, but somehow it had gotten locked into our reset system, as well as another PC stuck in 800 x 600 for the same reason. Anyways, I'm working on the second to last PC in pile #1, and I need a couple of those plastic 3.5 inch expansion bay covers. I can't leave anything into the case open otherwise students will drop things into the computers. I head to the "use for parts" computers and locate one that had the bay covers still intact. Not a single one is missing from this PC yet, so I pop off the front cover to grab two, when suddenly I hear something hit the floor. I step back and look at the floor to find a still wrapped orange starburst. sigh [link] [comments]  |
| New Issues AND a security hole! Posted: 13 Apr 2018 04:35 PM PDT Yesterday I'm basking in the glow of finishing my big background task and eating lunch when a VP walks by on his way out (at 2PM, jealous) and says "You're it for the afternoon. Take a look at this ticket when you're finished" Well, I'm just heading back in and in my inbox there's a new email.
My inner Midwesterner immediately goes 'uff da'. My less-inner Californian just starts swearing. So I sigh. Wonderful. There's a second email chain from my boss and the VP suggesting the issue - they're all small things. I've a couple ideas myself too and suggest a WebEx before turning back to a cronjob script I'd been neglecting. A half hour later this urgent issue gets a response suggesting right then for a meeting. Sure, why not, let's get this done. Two minutes later I'm on the WebEx waiting to get going, and 15 minutes later we start. Since rule 1 is users lie, I figured I wanted to reproduce everything, so I check against the server for what's supposed to be there: Shit. That's less simple. The VP and my boss suggested somebody deleted the files or had them checked out exclusively. So much for that. Let's check out the client view ... aaaand it's huge. WebEx is stuck too. Why the hell is it so slow? Moving down one line every 10 seconds, I find the view line that says things should be working and double check it. It's right. Checklist time:
Just above the screen I see the issue - somebody mapped all the chip design data to a subdirectory. What happens when you try to map the same directory twice? The higher-priority one takes over, and the one on top is higher priority. Clearly somebody was manually editing their workspace, so let's force override this. Get permission from the user to (potentially) kill any changes they haven't submitted and do the override. Check the client spec again. It's still there. As a quick aside - this is not supposed to be possible, as far as I know. I'm a server maintainer primarily. We are out of my wheelhouse, so it's time to look at the server and the metadata there. Unfortunately for me, the saved client-spec looks good (it turned out WebEx caught up really fast and skipped a full page of lines with the bad one. i think). The individual client spec had the issue. Alright time to get expert help (i.e. my boss) ... and he says I should do exactly what I just did. After another hour of struggling to verify things are working correctly (spoiler, they are) and noticing there looks to be two lines with the exact same spec, we realize those two lines are slightly different and the bad one doesn't seem to exist the same way in metadata. Open the administrative GUI, what do we see? Two libraries (glorified spec lines) almost identical but different colors. Of course the bad one is a funny color, and I'm sitting here wondering why that is. I bring in my boss again, and he groans. He knows exactly what this is: it's a library to pull data in from another unrelated server. The problem? Some chucklenuts mapped to the local one and labeled it 'test'. He must have wanted to try this out (I think) and managed to break a team's workspaces and delete all their work from that day. From that point, it's a two minute edit to get things working and another three to send an email telling everybody to please re-sync and make sure the rest of all the design data gets deleted before it fills your hard drive. I need to see if there's a way to prevent that in future :/ [link] [comments]  |
| Legacy support of Clients computer... ongoing Posted: 13 Apr 2018 12:10 PM PDT I figured I would post part one of this story since it happened yesterday and is currently ongoing. Got a call from a new, potential customer. They wanted to bring us an ancient industrial pc to repair. The story is as follows: The customer came in with the ancient dos computer (80486 processor inside) and it has a bad 84 mb hdd. I tried using a 20gb hdd and dos installed fine it seemed, but the computer just won't boot. We have another identical hard drive ordered, but it's gonna take a while. It's a company that needs this computer up and running. Single point of failure, no backups or spare parts. Assuming the ide controller only can recognize up to a cettain drive size, we trieda compact flash card and adapter with a 64 mb compact flash card. Again, Dos installed fine, but when it comes time to boot, the system just hangs at a bios info splash screen. In another failed attempt to get it to boot DOS, I had a coworker resize a hard drive using seatools to something like 82 mb. This got a hard drive controller error instead of letting us install DOS. Also, I tried having the customer use a junk Dell clams hell P.O.S. pentium 4 desktop (note: pos isn't point of sale in this case). Turned out, what I thought was a serial port was just a breakout from what I thought was a parrelel port. Curse companies that co-opt a standard plug and rewire it. The plug is located on a proprietary ISA slot card for communicating with machinery. The card has its own processor on it and everything. And as a small computer store, we definitely wouldn't save anything close to a ISA slot error computer. The only place we could find a replacement computer with an ISA slot is online. A huge shipping charge later and we have to wait till that comes in Monday. That's where I'm at so far. It's a little nerve racking because I'm used to the largest repair bills being around $500. The labor for all this will be in the thousands and the downtime for the company could be costing them big time. Overall, for my first huge, absolutely massive client, it's going pretty well. The people from the company are receptive and understand the issues and hangups. They want their production line up and running again, but aren't taking the slowdown out on me (for once). This will only be part one of I don't know how many parts. To wrap up, I'm in over my head, up s**ts creek without a paddle, and everyone is depending on me to support hardware that was made the same year I was and that I didn't know existed 24 hours ago. That's my ramble. Surprisingly coherent for being on my phone and writing this all on one go without stopping. In about a half hour. As always, editing/formatting/spelling mistakes, let me know. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2018 11:05 AM PDT Just had a repeat in the middle of work of an on-and-off occurrence with my $Manager, and felt it would be a good one to share on a Friday. We work in medical billing, and our EMR $Software is... Well... Garbage? Garbage. 2.0 of it was amazing, the backbone of the software is a SQL DB and the developers actually did some pretty good work. Then they got bought out by a bigger company. They eventually rolled out 3.0 which was more or less built from the ground up with their own front end. To help reinforce that to an extent, 2.0 shows up in Task Manager as $original.exe and 3.0 shows up as $different.exe. What 3.0 did was take the SQL database and populated their own interface with it. Most of the components we can't edit (i.e. patient statements outside of what we put in for our name, address, phone, payment options, and whether we want the statement in detail or simple which makes for more headaches), even though it's basically a rehash of $WordProcessor in basically everything, but worse somehow. That last bit of info ties into the "fun" issues I have with my $Manager. She has been around using UNIX-based systems that were straight forward. Since our $Software was basically the re-invention of the wheel in a Windows-based environment, things just aren't fluid. $Manager is mostly in charge of pulling the surgical notes from the facilities we use and putting them into our system, however they all use different systems because being standardized isn't fun /s Normally, her work is easier said than done because our doctors sometimes electronically sign their notes at the hospitals. Most of our issues come from a surgical center that somehow makes it "hard" for our doctors to log in with their credentials off-site and in our office to edit or sign them. When the notes aren't signed, $Manager tries to copy and paste the original notes into our $Software and have the doctors electronically sign them on our end. That leads us to today's "short": The cast:
Got up and made my way over to $Manger's desk and was watching over her shoulder for the n-th time that day thanks to other questions earlier in the day.
She proceeds to right-click and Copy the .docx file from her desktop and goes back to $Software in RDP to right-click and looks for Paste.
$Manager proceeds to demonstrate her methods and attempts while we're talking, and I'm busy internally /facepalming each time she sits there for a solid minute looking or figuring out why Paste is still grayed out after copying. Finally she lets go of our mouse while pointing at her screens and I just casually take over her mouse.
TL;DR: Copying the actual .docx or .pdf (she has tried this multiple times, too) does not equal copying the text to paste into our $Software. Note: I do know and $Manager has shown me what she does that "works" is her copying the .docx file from File Explorer and pasting it into Word which basically opens it unformatted in her examples. Seen her try this with a few other files that just put a short cut to open it from Word. [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Tales From Tech Support. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment