The gas powered CPU fan Tech Support |
- The gas powered CPU fan
- You know nothing, John Snow
- Customers know so much more about IT than me.
- You want earn money on poor people suffering with cancer!!
- Why do something yourself when IT can do it?
- Dr Tearjerker, or How I Learned to Hate Chemical Spills
- We have an outage!!!
- "I want a new laptop" *5 seconds later* "Is this a cheap laptop?"
- I can't preview my print (because i scroll too fast)
- User Knows Just Enough to be Dangerous
- No technical details, but I think you'll sympathise
- Why won't it print!! (a story about a printer)
| Posted: 28 Jun 2018 11:12 AM PDT LTL/FTP so please excuse any formatting issues. TLDR at the end. I am the one man band IT department for a small manufacturing company (~60 users) that primarily makes parts for the Aerospace industry. This happened just the other day and I found it funny enough that I figured it would make a good, if somewhat short, first post for me here. The Cast: $me = ZekTheTech, black belt in the art of Google-Fu. $EVP = Our company's executive vice president. Great guy and a financial wiz but technologically impaired. Five minutes before the "end" of my shift (do one man IT departments ever really go off the clock at a shop that runs 24 hours a day?) the intercom on my desk phone rings: $EVP: "ZekTheTech, there's something wrong with my computer. It sounds like it's about to explode!" $me: "What do you mean? Is the fan making noise or something?" $EVP: "Yeah, it just keeps getting louder and louder. Can you come take a look?" Expecting the heat sink is clogged (again), I interrupt my $EVP: "That was quick." $me: "Yup, the issue should resolve itself when the guy using the weed whacker outside your office window moves further down the building." TLDR: The guy in charge of the financial security of our company thought the landscaper outside his office was his PC in the process of melting down. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Jun 2018 07:54 PM PDT Back in high school in the year 2000, my parents got me a second hand 486. Only affordable pc for us at the time. I turned the thing on and learned day by day what windows was and how the hardware worked together. Around 11 years at the time. Years pass... Enter proud mom. At this point I have worked as cashier in a internet cafe (old store where you used to rent a pc with internet access) and learned how to format a pc, install some basic stuff and configure a tcp/ip network. One of my mom's friends got a brand new pc for his 13 year old son. He wants somebody to set it up for the first time. It's 5pm. I haven't arrived from high school yet. My mom's friend get anxious and hire a computer science graduate to do it. It's 8pm now, I arrive home and mom tell me about the matter. I go to the guy's house to set the pc up. unbeknownst to me that graduate has been working with it for a little bit more of 2 hours. When I show up, they explain the computer came broken and won't turn on. Gonna be back for warranty at the shop tomorrow. "May I check it?" "Well, you won't solve anything." "Just in case, may I?" "Whatever anon, don't take more than 5 minutes" (Check the power button, hear no PSU fan. Check PSU, voltage switch is set at 220, we have 110 in the country, switch the thing, it turns on) Never have seen a guy so ashamed as this graduate. Probably he was a good man, no reason to get so ashamed of a little mistake. His face was funny as hell anyway. [link] [comments]  |
| Customers know so much more about IT than me. Posted: 28 Jun 2018 09:04 AM PDT Customer: I cannot login to this website. Me, having seen this issue 50,000 times: are you using the right login credentials? C, very offended that I questioned her ability to remember the correct username/password: of course I am (a few emails later) but since you can't seem to find a different solution, can you please escalate this ticket to your boss. M: would you mind walking through your login with me so I can see where the issue is coming from? C: I don't need to do that, I know how to login. It's your issue, you need to figure out why the website isn't working. Me, frustrated, gives ticket to boss to make her happy My boss: you're using the wrong login credentials C: oh ok thanks [link] [comments]  |
| You want earn money on poor people suffering with cancer!! Posted: 28 Jun 2018 04:29 AM PDT Hello everyone, Been suggested to post this here as you guys would enjoy this story Just one thing on beginning: My English is poor, so please excuse my grammar, formatting, etc... This happened 3 years ago when I joined small IT company. I started as the IT Technician dedicated to offer support on site with servers, computers, emails, etc. However, in not that busy time I've been asked to do some "laptop" repairs in our workshop. At that time, I did not have much knowledge about hardware in cheap laptops like the one that this story would be about. Everything started at one day when I did not have nothing to do, so I've been asked to assist Workshop manager by helping with some of the jobs or with booking of the jobs to the workshop. Older couple walked in to our workshop with cheap laptop. Let's call the brand of that laptop HarryPotter. They complained about slow speed and some of the keys on laptop have not been working. So, I took their details and explained, that we are limited with the things that we can do with keyboard to fix it and we might would need to replace the keyboard. Workshop manager told me that this job should be simple for me and to have a look at it straight away, so I did. I booted up the Laptop and realized that there was barely 1 letter that was working. Usually replacing keyboard is much cheaper then trying to fix faulty one. I took out the keyboard, connected external one then proceeded to look on performance issues. Taking away unneeded start-up entries and services rapidly increased performance of the laptop. After this initial work I called the customer that the performance issue was resolved, and the keyboard would require to be replaced. I quoted them our minimal bench fee (around 30£) and price of the new keyboard (around 12£). Keyboard arrived, and I did connect the new keyboard. After that laptop refused to boot up. Fast forward this was caused by keyboard, but because my poor knowledge in laptops hardware I told customer that the motherboard failed (Yeah, funny I know). They said that this is strange and mentioned that they will get their son to call us as he is working for brand HarryPotter. Next day I received call from "John" and said that he is from head office of HarryPotter (And indeed he was, as I found later through some searching on internet). He proceeded with questions like: Have you been using Genuine keyboard, have you been doing work on anti-statics matts, etc… After these questions has been answered mostly with word Yes, he then proceeded that he thinks that I want to scam his parents and earn easy money. He also said that this is extremely unacceptable as his father suffering with cancer and I can't imagine what he had to go through. I did say I did not quoted them more then our minimum bench fee and, I did not offer them any replacement of their laptop, so with all respect I don't know why he does have that feeling. Also, I said I know how people with cancer suffer as my Grand Mother died because of cancer. After my Workshop Manger found where I did the mistake I called him and apologised for my mistake and said that we will fix that. He replied that he is not interested, and his parents will collect the laptop and he will fix it for them. They collected laptop and I though this would be end of that. After two months they came back to our workshop with laptop which was completely stripped down and broken motherboard in half. They said his son couldn't fix the laptop and he damaged motherboard. We told them that the motherboard can't be fixed, and replacement would be beyond economical repair and we offered them new laptop. They agreed, and we transferred all their DATA to new machine. My Workshop manager decided to call customer's son after they visit us for second time, just for the fun. Workshop manager was asking something like we need to find what happened with this laptop as your parents could not explained it to us. He was trying to blame us for breaking M/B in half and lot of different BS. He newer really admitted that he broke the motherboard. In the end they been so impressed how we prepared new machine for them and with the performance of new machine, that they decide to sign maintenance contract with our workshop and mentioned that they would never ask their son to fix their laptop. [link] [comments]  |
| Why do something yourself when IT can do it? Posted: 28 Jun 2018 05:35 PM PDT This story takes place between three people. $E1: Employee 1, a 70+ year old woman who probably sucked at her job even before we asked her to use computers. If it was possible to break a computer by looking at it, she could do it. $E2: Employee 2, 28 year old customer service rep, filling in the order processing role as our normal employee who processes orders is out on maternity leave. $me: yours truly. Before we get going, let's talk about this maternity leave thing. We'll call this person $Mom. 9 months ago, when $Mom found out she was pregnant, she told management that she thought $E1 would be the best person to train to fill in while shes out, because $E2 is cross trained in Shipping and Engineering (our engineering department is not filled with engineers. They just put together samples that a customer requests before placing an order) $mom is right, with $E2 being the most flexible CS Rep, we shouldn't also rely on her to do processing because if Shipping or Engineering is short handed, she has to go there to fill in. So we train $E1. 6 months of training later, and management is basically giving $mom the "what the fuck is going on" look because E1 still doesn't have the hang of it. We make an executive decision. $E1 can't handle the job, we'll change tactics, have have $E2 fill in. She trained for 2 weeks, had it down, and no issues. $Mom had her baby last week. $E1 is micromanaging the shit out of $E2. And she's generally just a pain in the ass overall. Then I get this email. $E1: "Hey $Me, can you go in the $EXCELFILENAME.XLSX and delete the word "BUYOUT" from the notes column on item XYZ for $E2? She's processing a new order but we're going to make it here instead of buying it this time." $Me: "Thanks $E1. $E2, is this actually something you need help with?" $E2: "No. i just click the cell and press delete right?" $Me: "Yep. Thanks everyone." I think I earned my paycheck today just for not hurling insults. [link] [comments]  |
| Dr Tearjerker, or How I Learned to Hate Chemical Spills Posted: 28 Jun 2018 08:31 AM PDT Hi there. It's your friendly neighbourhood medicinal chemist here, back with another story filled with carcinogens and (literal) tears. I'm also happy to report that I'm no longer a lowly PhD student - I've ascended to the heady realms of postdoctoral researcher. You can call me Dr Fitzarr. $Me: Your newly-minted postdoctoral researcher. $PhD: A PhD student from a neighbouring research group to mine. $Res: A researcher from Biology $Est: Our estates leader $MSc: A MSc student from the aforementioned group. $Boss: My boss, also Head of Section. $BigBoss: My boss's boss, our Head of School. Also the head of the neighbouring research group. Hi everyone! It's nice to be back. I've submitted a couple of other stories from my experience as the tehcnically-kind-of-not-really tech support person for my organic chemistry department at a research organisation in the UK. For background, see them here and here. I have a doozy of a story today. Technically, these events took place a couple of weeks ago - however, there has been a lot of drama and fallout that only really resolved itself in the last couple of days (and I didn't want this to be one of those multi-part epics). So, strap in, and come along with me for the ride. Unlike previous cases with my posts here, there isn't a lot of technical information to provide to help the non-chemist understand the background. Really, I just need to tell you what lachrymators are. Essentially, a lachrymator is any chemical that causes people to produce tears. As I stated in my intro, I'm no longer a PhD student! I've recently been promoted to postdoctoral researcher. As part of this (as well as being paid an actual wage), I'm now officially in charge of lab safety for our small section of the department. This includes both my research group and the neighbouring group. This group is technically supervised by $BigBoss. However, his role as Head of School leaves precious little time for actual supervision. I'm therefore the default go-to person for a lot of the day-to-day issues, as well as being the person who can now officially tell other people they're being idiots. I was therefore the person called by $PhD when the entire neighbouring research group started crying uncontrollably. After ruling out an impromptu viewing of Forrest Gump or Marley and Me, I evacuated the area and informed our estates team that something was potentially up. I then donned a face mask (which barely helped) and looked for the source of whatever was causing the problem. A pool of liquid on the floor by the chemical inventory seemed the obvious culprit, especially as it was giving off an acrid smell only suitable for Beelzebub's arsehole. I backed a healthy retreat, and waited for $Est to arrive with the proper health and safety equipment. Armed with much better masks, we cleaned up the spill, and I took a small sample to run through our LCMS to see what it was. Thinking the worst was over, I signed on $Est's accident report and went back to my lab to write an angry email about cleaning up spills. Even before the LCMS had finished running, $PhD was back in my office saying the problem wasn't resolved. They were still crying buckets of tears and unable to work safely. I called $Est again, and investigated the lab and office of $BigBoss's group more thoroughly. This time, I turned up something much more interesting. At the bottom of the bins in the office and the lab there were wads of tissue soaked with the same thing (by smell, at least) as had been on the floor of the lab. At this point, it should be noted that we have large bins with fluorescent orange bags in them for hazardous chemical waste (this covers everything from gloves and tissues to chemical reagents etc). These bins were not the ones used for the soaked tissues. The use of the office bin was particularly crazy even from a logistical stand-point, as you would have to walk past two chemical bins to even get to the office door. We have strict rules about what is allowed in the lab and what is allowed in the office. Tissues soaked in mystery chemicals is definitely not on the latter list. I therefore was left with only two options: 1) incredible incompetence, 2) deliberate foul play. At this point, I made an executive decision that no-one would be going into these offices for a while. Definitely until we found out whatever the hell the chemical was and had done a thorough deep-clean of the office space. $Est and his team started on a full search and clean mode, and I went to $Boss's office. I informed him of what I'd found, what I'd done, and that he would probably want to see $BigBoss as soon as possible. After discussing the details with him (and watching him get more and more incredulous), I went to check the results of the LCMS. They were decidedly inconclusive; whatever the compound was didn't ionise well, or was otherwise difficult to analyse this way. Method number two. Take the sample I'd scraped off the floor, run it through some filtration setup, then attempt to get an NMR spectrum. After a lot of faffing around, I managed to get a half-decent spectrum. This revealed the identity of our lachrymator: benzyl bromide. I'll let the Safety section of the wikipedia article speak for itself.
By the time I'd confirmed the identity of the compound, the investigation of what the hell had happened was in full swing. $Est had sealed off the office and lab space with hazard tape, and $Boss and $BigBoss were busy interrogating the members of $BigBoss's research team. The whole thing was a bit surreal. General suspicion in the department fell (fairly or not) upon $MSc - the most junior member of the team. $MSc was also rather typical of the course intake over the past few years; a foreign student without a strong chemistry background who had to be taught a lot of basic principles about lab safety. In any case, no-one was talking or accepting blame. Over the following week, $Est and our security team reviewed CCTV (we don't have it in the labs/offices, but on the entrances to the department) and office fob records. These didn't appear to reveal anything suspicious. A number of emails were sent to members of the department informing them of the incident and asking them to come forward with any information, and keep an eye out for suspicious behaviour. There was inevitably a lot of gossip flying around as well. Cut to the events of Monday. Another member of the department was working particularly late (around 9pm), and happened to spot someone going into the office space of $BigBoss's group. They called security, and $Res (a researcher I didn't previously know from Biology) was caught going through the chemical inventory of $BigBoss without a good explanation as to why. $BigBoss was called in from home, and $Res apparently confessed to planting the previous spill to get back at $BigBoss for not endorsing a research grant that would have enabled him to stay at the university. All in all, easily the most dramatic event of my time here. Even beating out the discovery of some WWII hand-grenades in the basement. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Jun 2018 08:38 PM PDT So I work for an IAM platform and our platform accepts certification requests for all systems in the firm. I'm getting ready to leave for the day at 4 pm when a Priority 1, severity 3 ticket comes in saying that access for FIDs has been removed. As I'm the only one for our team on duty (the low man on the totem pole), I accept the page and join the bridge. $me: Me $PAC: The priority 1 incident manager $EU: End user $Me: So what's the issue here? $PAC: Well it looks like someone didn't certify access for a bunch of FIDs and now we can't print new credit cards. $Me: So put in new requests to have the access re-added. We can't fix this. $EU: BUT YOUR TOOL REMOVED ACCESS $Me: No, no we didn't, because our system fails out to manual for any system/functional IDs. But at the end of the day, it's not our fault that the Executive director didn't respond to the 12 emails he received before the access was removed. $EU: Well we're down and you need to fix it. If you don't it'll hurt our reputation. $Me: We can't restore your access: we just provide the platform through which access requests are placed. Please engage $otherteam for assistance $PAC: Wait, you didn't certify the access? This isn't a P1 period, this is your fault and you have to fix it on your own. Don't engage us again for this issue. $EU: But we're down! $Me And $PAC: That sucks, fix your own problems. $Edit: I know that the PAC guy seems inconsistent in his responses, but he's just doing his job and responding in a stressful position. [link] [comments]  |
| "I want a new laptop" *5 seconds later* "Is this a cheap laptop?" Posted: 28 Jun 2018 08:21 PM PDT So, one of my coworkers $GWDL (guy who doesn't listen) had what was the worst laptop (it's about four years old) at our company. I had told my boss $BWDL that I was most concerned about $GWDL's laptop repeatedly. Naturally, another coworker $DSTL (don't slam the laptop!) has an issue where his screen is messed up. These guys are out in the field a lot, so I don't necessarily have access to their laptops regularly. So $BWDL orders another laptop for $DSTL, because he can't have $DSTL without one. When I finally get $DSTL's laptop back, I am unable to duplicate the issue he was experiencing. I do open it up and make sure all the connections are connected. At this point $DSTL has a new laptop that he's quite happy with -- for once, $BWDL listened to me about the amount of RAM he should get for it. So I tell $BWDL that I am still concerned about $GWDL's laptop, and it would be cheaper to purchase additional RAM for $DSTL's old laptop and give that to $GWDL. He agrees to that. When I inquire about the shipping to choose, $BWDL tells me to just give $DSTL's old laptop to $GWDL. That's not great because we use some syncing software for a much larger amount of data than is recommended, and that software scans its entire directory for changes. I have been over this with $BWDL. I've fought to get about half of what is needed for all of the laptops and that's solved a good portion of the issues. Another thing that solved one of the issues was when I figured out $GWDL had a folder recursion and wasn't able to sync because of it. (There are multiple syncing directories at this point, which I am hesitant to delete in case something we may need is in the wrong one, and of course the syncing software isn't designed to resolve this.) Anyway, I know that $DSTL's old laptop is still better than the one $GWDL is using. So I diligently start setting it up, anticipating reactions I am likely to get like "Why is this folder called $DSTL?" and resolving them, as well as spending the requisite 72 hours syncing too many files with not enough RAM and doing it on a weekend when it won't be as much of a nuisance. I get it ready, $GWDL is having issues with his laptop, I let him know I have $DSTL's old laptop. $GWDL is at the office the next day and I let him know I am ready for the switch at which point $GWDL's laptop is suspiciously working fine. I sigh, and resign myself to the fact that I will be ready when it's. . . not. We also get a new hire during the period where I'm setting that up, so $BWDL orders $NHNL (new hire, new laptop) a new laptop. (It wasn't in the office one morning, so I panicked a little because it was there when I left, but it turned out $NHNL, who wasn't out in the field at that point, picked it up after.) She actually has a pretty decent laptop that she ends up bringing in and pretty much uses that. The new laptop ends up just sitting around for a while. Eventually, $BWDL asks me about getting a much more powerful laptop for something $NHNL will be doing. I make a recommendation with a little help from Reddit. $BWDL orders it, I set it up and it's for the most part not used on my desk. Eventually, $NHNL wants to use it for the thing she's doing. She tries doing from the file off her flash drive, so I move that file off the drive and run it off the powerful laptop's SSD. Instead of days, it takes less than an hour. Not too long after that, $NHNL starts using that laptop more, moves it to her desk. The office manager who cleans helps $NHNL with her desk set up, and encourages her to switch to using the powerful laptop, which makes sense. Then $OMWC suggests that I give the first laptop we bought for $NHNL to $GWDL. So I talk to $GWDL and let him know that we're going to do that and that it's faster than $GWDL's current laptop. So I set it up for him instead of for $NHNL, spend another 72 hours syncing to his account. While I'm doing that, I compare the CPUs of all the laptops we have and saved the results. I notice that $GWGA (guy who gets angry) has the second worst laptop, and again. . . $DSTL's old laptop is significantly better than the one he's using. I mention to $GWGA that I would like to switch out the one he's using because $DSTL's old one is better. He responds that his is working, so why would we do that? I ask $NHNL why I keep getting this reaction, and she's not really sure, maybe they're just used to their laptops. She does remind me how $GWDL is resistant, having asked me about the new laptop and if it will fit in his bag. I apparently put it next to his current one to demonstrate they are the same size. So, today $GWDL comes in and it's on his desk and ready (minus some maintenance I had not had time to do). Then he mentions having some stuff on the old laptop that he would like to transfer, which is fine by me. But I do tell him that I would like him to start using the new one. As I am doing some setup stuff for him, he asks me if it's a cheap laptop. I pull up my comparison of the CPUs of our laptops and read off the benchmarks, something like 1900 on the old one, compared to 4016 on the new one. $GWDL then states that's four hundred times as fast, and I repeat the numbers and state the benchmark's a little over twice as much. $NHNL gets in a little later today (she's been out in the field). Then:
$NHNL and I were both laughing really hard after that. Set it to defragment as I was leaving. TL;DR: Trust your IT guy when he says a laptop is better than your current one. (Edit: Formatting dialogue) [link] [comments]  |
| I can't preview my print (because i scroll too fast) Posted: 28 Jun 2018 07:50 PM PDT LTL;FTP yada yada. Background: Jack of all techs for a very small office, primarily doing think tanks and specialized training. This just happened like, minutes ago. Was summoned by a user claiming that she's print previewing blanks for a receipt email she filed a claim for. Walked to her desk, asked to preview the print from the Outlook, then i can see the Uber receipt screenshot from her phone in the email. Then she told there's nothing in the print preview (thank god she was not printing straightaway or else forests in Brazil would weep), first page was her email header, subject then a blank body, after that next page also blank with her email signature. It took me less than a second to realize that she scrolls to the next page by dragging the scroll bar thus skipping to the last page which also blank body and her email signature. Then i asked her just to click on the page selector then there it is, Uber receipt in the second page. Then we had a good laugh together before I peaced out back to my dungeon. [link] [comments]  |
| User Knows Just Enough to be Dangerous Posted: 28 Jun 2018 11:10 AM PDT I'm still working part time at an IT helpdesk within my university alongside my studies. Typically I'm helping people with little to no knowledge of tech. Usually issues are simple, like not knowing how to add a printer on a Mac. A few weeks ago I dealt with an Office install so broken it had to be manually removed, since the automated repair tools and uninstaller all failed.
Today we had a user that was having trouble figuring out our printing station. Today our printing station has been marked "out of order" until a replacement is ready.
This user managed to get around the fact that there is no mouse or keyboard attached to the machine. This user got around the fact that they don't have access to an admin account. This user got around Deep Freeze. This user factory reset the machine. Normally, we'd be able to obtain the necessary software again through the university. However the university is currently in the process of replacing this software with a newer system, so our print station is now out of order until our replacement is ready.
Thanks random user. Teaching non-tech-savvy students how to use that printer was like half of my job. He never did get his printing done. [link] [comments]  |
| No technical details, but I think you'll sympathise Posted: 29 Jun 2018 02:29 AM PDT A colleague and I were recently talking about how a certain thing was being done in our company. I had only just found out about this thing and it was a terrible idea, with terrible implications, and I had to let him know. The conversation went something like this: HIM: They're doing what? Are you sure? ME: Yup. HIM: But that's a terrible idea. ME: Yup. HIM: I mean, if they do that, then <terrible thing might happen>. ME: Totally. HIM: And it will use up twice as much <thing we don't have enough of>. ME: It really will, I know. HIM: I'm not even sure it's legal, because of <thing which is very important>. ME: I told them that. HIM: The IDs of <things we need to keep track of> won't match up! ME: I know! Look, maybe we should just skip the parts of this conversation where you tell me it's a terrible idea. I know that. It's really terrible. HIM: Yeah. [long pause] HIM: The database won't even— ME: Dude. HIM: Yeah OK. [link] [comments]  |
| Why won't it print!! (a story about a printer) Posted: 28 Jun 2018 07:43 AM PDT Ok so this happened about 2 minutes ago and I have been having a laugh with my colleagues for the last couple of minutes ago. I'm no expert on printers or networking at all, I am an audio engineer. It's a short story about a client that fixed her own problem. I work in audio visual in a 5 star hotel but often we deal with printers (why IT in our hotel doesn't deal with this as we often have to set them up on networks etc we don't know). Set up a printer this morning that was having a nightmare trying to set up double side printing until my colleague did the old turn it off and on trick (after changing printing settings on the computer etc). Got a call about 5 mins ago from the client saying that the printer won't print her document. (She wasn't agitated or anything, quite calm). Head up there and go see what's the issue. She said they have tried printing, unplugging the printer from the computer and going away coming back, plugging it back in and turning the printer off and on again. Still not printing. That's when I said try printing the document and lets check the settings. That's when she saw she was trying to print page 3 of a 1 page document. She said I don't know why it tried to do that, but we deleted the page number, pressed print and about 4 copies of that printed out. I walked out of the room and walked down the stairs and couldn't help but to just laugh. This isn't one of the silliest times we have had to help, but it's up there lately lol. [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