Yea I don't care about that Tech Support |
- Yea I don't care about that
- My favorite call...
- This'll speed up my computer right?
- Rough Night Part 4......... the Finale
- A tale of coming out of "retirement", betrayal, servers and "What am I doing with my life".
- What you mean I can't log in with that password?
- The Devils Cable Box
- How could everyone not concerned by the issue know the problem is fixed?
- Enterprise printer support, a disappointing play in four acts.
| Posted: 30 Jan 2019 04:20 PM PST C = CEO of company M = myself Used to be the jack of all trades in a tech start up. Management was from real estate and didn't really understand technology. Get a call one morning from C. C: I need you to pull some files from one of our websites and transfer the content to a new one. Me: Sure no problem. From where to where and what to what? C: Site A to Site B, we need in particular these images and posts. M: Ok should take me 20 minutes. C: Ok let me know once you're done. I attempt to log in the back end to retrieve files but get redirected. M: Hmmm maybe I typed it wrong. Try again for about 5 minutes, then check with our hosting provider. Domain is no longer listed in our list of domains. Proceed to call C. M: I can't access the site and it appears it got migrated to another hosting provider it appears to be redirecting me as well. Did our marketing do that? C: Oh yeah I didn't renew it like 8 months ago since we didn't really use that one. M: That means someone else purchased the domain and is using it for a redirect then... C: Yea I don't care about that. Just pull the stuff we have in the site and put it on the new one. M: The root files and database no longer exist though... C: I don't need root whatever. I need the content. You've done this before. M: Yea when we owned both if the domains... C: Fine I'll check to see if one of the marketing guys knows how to do this. TL:DR CEO of company wanted me to transfer content from one domain to another. After months of not having paid for the primary domain he wanted content from and it had already been purchased by someone else. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2019 01:56 PM PST I was working for a huge mobile provider in their internal IT-Hotline. This is like 20+ years ago... My colleague gets a call and asks me if I can take over. I didn't see a problem with since I just joined the shift and took his call. The issue is that the user is unable to access any network resources basically. So I start the basic troubleshooting. Around "step 3" (we didn't use scripts) I have the user check the network cable on their PC and the if it is still connected to the port in the floor. The user tells me that the cant see the connection into the floor since it leads under the "floor cover"... So I tell the user to crawl below the desk and lift the goddamn cover to verify connectivity (Without the goddamn). While I say that I see that my colleague is virtually going WTF... I shrug and ask to user to verify... And of course the cable is not plugged in properly. I get the user to plug the cable back in with a little chit chat on how that could happen (cleaning staff etc...) and close the case within a few minutes. After I hang up my colleague asks me "WTF I was doing?!?!?!" I answer the I just solved the case, and why he was acting up like that? The reason was quite simple... I let the CEO of one of the biggest companies in Germany crawl under his desk ;) After I realized who I had on the phone I was quite happy that the troubleshooting was working like a charm and I located the issue that fast ;) [link] [comments]  |
| This'll speed up my computer right? Posted: 30 Jan 2019 05:26 AM PST Hello TFTS, on mobile so I'm sorry if the formatting sucks. On to today's tale: I came in to work today and immediately noticed how busy it was, almost all offices were completely full. I was expecting a day of being bombarded with "why is the system so slow?" but it got way better. I had a day of being a deskrabbit in front of me, we are expecting an ISO audit soon and one of the requirements is to have no cables lying on the floor. After hours of rerouting cables I'd breathed in about 3 cubic metres of dust and had gotten a partial collapsed lung (happens with some regularity) so the day was going absolutely fantastic. Then all of a sudden a member of osi layer 8 walked up to me and asked "what are you doing?". I explained I was rerouting cables and tidying up under desks. She then proceeded to ask me "so will this make my computer faster?". I mentally facepalmed about as hard as is humanly possible. This is by far the most ridiculous thing a user has ever said to me. [link] [comments]  |
| Rough Night Part 4......... the Finale Posted: 30 Jan 2019 10:38 AM PST I work for a Small MSP servicing around 100+ clients with 5-20 employees and our largest client being 50+ employees. I am generally regarded as the "printer admin" at the office. Mainly because I don't stop until the printer is working (minus hardware issues). I'm Level 1-2 HelpDesk/Onsite Tech. We just take care of our clients. This is a story about one of those clients. Note: There is no tech related items in this story it's a follow up $Me – self explanatory $Bossman – Owner/Boss of MSP I work for. Great guy and great boss all around. $Brains - Cubicle mate who can retain any all information somehow. I don't know how he does it, but he puts all of us other techs to shame. 2 of us have College Degrees (not that this means anything really) $Money – Client who does work with money (great client and great people who work there) $JankyUser $MSPLaw – Our Lawyer that we use for our MSP (Previously mentioned here as $LawyerBuddy $JankyLaw - $JankyUser's Lawyer This is the conclusion to the Rough Night saga. We left off with the court case for the criminal/civil Law case with $JankyUser and $Money's competition. This story takes place about a month after this trial. Its 2 trials total and I'm summarizing as I feel it doesn't need a part 5. 1 trial is because I shot a man. The second trial is a civil lawsuit against me from $JankyUser as his shoulder is not fully functional anymore. Trial 1: When I shot a man
This went on and on for about an hour between $JankyLaw and $MSPLaw until the security footage WITH AUDIO was played and the court case essentially ended there. Court ruled I did nothing malicious and was in fear for my life and that a few other laws were in my favor. Case is closed and our firearms are returned to our possession a few weeks later from police. Trial 2: Civil Lawsuit for medical issues for $JankyUser This case was a bit ridiculous.
They had a floor plan on a TV in the court room so I could show them where each person was.
They had a few other questions and tried to bring up my past (Nothing crazy just the fact I'm an American and I make use of my second amendment right). I also had a run in with the law (No charges) when I was 16. $JankyLaw tried to make a case that I had a history of bad judgement calls and criminal tendencies, so I wasn't thinking clearly during the events. Once again, the security footage was played from 4 different cameras, WITH AUDIO. Court ruled against $JankyUser. I did not try to counter sue as what would I get from him, he had no job and was incarcerated. Hope everyone enjoyed the series. I have plenty more stories that I plan on posting so keep an eye out. None as high risk as this one. This was my extreme story. Hope I never have another. [link] [comments]  |
| A tale of coming out of "retirement", betrayal, servers and "What am I doing with my life". Posted: 30 Jan 2019 02:39 PM PST Today, I come to you with a story about a legacy server, upset clients and software betraying me. Be me, a Network Administrator who has been out of a job for three years while still employed. Wait, what? Well, for the last three years or so my only responsibility was to make sure that the internet connection was working and that people could access Office365. So challenging. So demanding. Great career ahead of me. Other than when those things weren't true, people forgot that I existed. That was fun for a short while, but the boredom started to destroy my soul and mental health. But I stayed, because change is hard and scary. I stayed, until I couldn't take it any longer and handed in my resignation. I am supposed to be writing documentation and who-knows-what-else, when last Friday I get a call. There is a server which is down, and can I look at it? Since I had never touched that server (someone else got hired to setup and manage the server, but got fired) and nobody gave me any instructions about that server, it was just a machine in a remote data center in Western Europe. So I waltz over to the control panel for the hosting giant hosting the server. The server is a Windows 2012 server and it's used as the DC / DNS / File server of a company. A server. In the cloud. With no special measures taken. Being too close to resignation to care, I request a reset. About ten minutes later, the server is accessible again and all is well. --- Tuesday morning, I get another call. Two calls in seven days? That's crazy, for my standards. I'm told the same server is down again, so without thinking I just head to the control panel again and order another reset. But the server isn't budging. Then I get a third call. Another server in the data center is down as well. Woah, there, easy on the remembering that I exist! I take a closer look and see that both servers (which serve the same purpose) are in the same data center. Perhaps there's a problem with the infrastructure? I do some Googling, and can't find anything. Since the reboot doesn't work, I guess I should submit a ticket. When I try to do that, I see a warning about the server being locked. I franctically try to figure out why, but can't find the reason. I know they mailed one to someone, but I'm not the recipient of those mails. I call the guy who called me but he can't find the mails either. It took me an embarassingly long time to figure out that below the section of the warning, there was a button that revealed the error log that had been mailed. The server was being a bad machine-person; it had been acting as a mirror in a DNS based internet attack. The fog of my mind was starting to clear. This was a mystery, and I had to solve it. This is why I love working in IT. It took me about fifteen seconds to realise what the problem was. I visited the Firewall section, which was configured by my beloved former co-worker and noticed that he'd found that the best way to configure the server was by accepting all incoming traffic. That made the server vulnerable to playing man in the middle for the DNS attacks. I solved the problem with the only tool at my disposal. After all, my budget is a round 0 these days and any e-mails containing numbers sent to my boss are ignored. Using the same "web firewall" I disabled all inbound traffic except to a hand full of IP's. Much to the dismay of the client using that server. I told them that their setup was wack, but they didn't care. We want access. We want access. We want access. I granted access to as many of their WAN IP's as I could, and that was that. I did the same thing for the other server that got locked. Interestingly enough, THAT server was used for an LDAP attack instead of an DNS based attack. So I changed the firewall settings and that was that. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutttttt that is not the end of the story. Today, I got another call about the server. Records were broken and my mind was blown. I was told the server couldn't be accessed again. I head back to the control panel and I verify that the server isn't locked down. Nope, all good to go. And yet, the server simply refused to give a sign of life. No pings, no RDP connection, no DNS request... nothing. I requested a reset, a reboot and a manual reboot (the data center where the servers are hosted are pretty cool, just not meant to host your damn main server) but nothing helped. After sending a ticket, we were told they believed that there was a "serious problem with the server" since there was no output (they hooked it up to a screen, apparently). I had just requested a KVM for the server, which had been attached, when I could reach the server again through RDP. I checked the logs in Event Viewer, but I couldn't find anything. No errors, nothing weird, no obvious hardware problems. Then I clicked the "Security tab." The moment the server had rebooted, a desktop had started bombarding the server with (failed) login request. They all came from the same machine, which we were able to identify. We scanned the desktop for malware. Nothing came up. My colleague was getting frustrated and tried Trend Micro's housecall. Here's where the betrayal comes in. The moment Housecall found a piece of malware, the anti-virus software starting with a G suddenly also "found" the malware, although it had been scanning the machine daily. The piece of malware is apparently a trojan used for all sorts of remote evil-doing. Me and my colleague argued back and forth. Is this "it"? Did this cause it? I told him I am sceptible, and he agreed that it would be unlikely but the client somehow understood that as "Okay, we can use the server now" and insisted we restored access to the server. I hesitantly agreed, but they wanted us to add more WAN IP's than said Web firewall can handle. I didn't know what to do. I've been out of this game for a while and I know how to configure a hardware firewall but I didn't know how to handle this. Yet they insisted. Hesitatingly, I said "Well, I could try and let the Windows Firewall handle this, but it's really not designed to..." "Great, that solves it, change the settings of the Windows Firewall." Against my better judgement, I started editing the firewall. I made an inbound rule to grant access to the server from the WAN IP's they'd given me. So far so good. But how was I supposed to keep all other traffic out? I tried Googling the problem, but the client kept badgering me over text (Why did you give them my phone number, colleague? You, too, are a betrayer of men). Firewall logic had taught me that the "Deny all" rule would deny any traffic *not allowed*. That made sense, right? Right. But windows' piece of shit firewall doesn't make sense. As soon as I edited the "Deny all" rule to, you know, actually deny access to all IP's not whitelisted I got disconnected. SHIT. I immediately contacted my now close friends at the data center. Could they pretty please attach the KVM again? "Oh, it's still attached. But it's not being requested so we can extend the duration." I hopped onto the KVM - their sysadmins be praised, as they are sent from data heaven - and wanted to connnect, but the Java application didn't want to play along. You know those Java update popups? I usually ignore them. I figured that was the problem (ignoring the fact that the Java applet happily started without errors about Java versions) and tried to update Java. That's where the anti-virus from hell betrayed me again. You see, I once installed anti-virus from the same brand because it was cheap and "recommended to me". Java tried to update, and threw an error. Java, not wanting to update? What world is this, bizarro land? I was starting to get really suspicious, and temporarely disabled my anti-virus client. You can snooze it for 5, 10, 30 or 60 minutes. No, I am not kidding. That's an actual option they are offering end users. Java pretended to stretch it's legs, and managed to install again. Awesome. So I tried running the Java Applet again, and I got the same result. Wait a minute, what is going on here? I spotted another connection error. I was slightly panicking at that point. Had I messed up the Windows Firewall so had that not even the KVM could connect? Was that a thing? I didn't know how computers worked anymore at that point of the day. What is this keyboard and why doesn't it make any music? Of course I hadn't. It didn't make sense, the KVM is a piece of hardware that doesn't give a shit about what happens on the OS. Something else... Anti-virus, why are you snickering? I got suspicious, and dug up my laptop which doesn't have anti-virus of the G brand installed. Opened my mail, went to the KVM link, downloaded the Java applet, forgot to update... The Java applet creaked for a few seconds and in the abstence of the Great Betrayer Of Data, made connection to the KVM. I managed to connect to the server, remove the firewall from doom, and called my colleague. "Hey, colleague, I got the server working again." "I can't do the Firewall thing. It breaks everything. They'll need to deal with the current setup." Begrudginly, the client agreed because we told them tales of compromised data and about how their setup was a terrible idea. My colleague also pointed out that this wasn't the first time that one of their desktops tried to brutally murder their server and reminded them that he'd made them a proposal for a brand new server, that'll sit happily in their own network, behind a cozy firewall. With no Great Betrayer of Data in sight. And that, my friends, is how I got kicked back into the world of servers, data and weird things. I haven't felt this alive in three years, and at the same time I feel like I have no idea what I am doing. How did I become this hack, who glues together solutions with bubble gum because I haven't evolved beyond a dirty hack-of-all-trades? --- Sorry for the novel, I just wanted to vent. Please take your time to mock me, my lack of skills or the complete lack of budget that I have to work with. Or poor me a drink. Either way, thanks for reading this last paragraph. Commment "V" if you read at least one other paragraph. Kidding. Don't do that. [link] [comments]  |
| What you mean I can't log in with that password? Posted: 30 Jan 2019 02:04 PM PST Hi TFTS, first post in here so go easy on me with formatting. I'll fix it as I go if I make any mistakes. Now onto the call. I did not received the call but my coworker did. CW: Hi, IT Service Desk, yada yada yada USER: I can't log into the computer, I'm using my coworkers password and I can't log in. CW: I'm sorry you are using your co-worker's password. USER: Yes, and I can't log in to my account. At this point he was baffled as it couldn't be what he was thinking it was, so he asks CW: Are you putting in your user name and using your co-worker's password to log in to your account? USER: Yes and it is not working. CW: Holding in the laughter You cannot log in with your co-worker's password to your account, you need to set your own password to log in to your account. At this point he proceeded to instruct the user their first time temporary password as it was the first time they were going to log in to the computer. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2019 08:00 AM PST First off, one thing to note. This is my first post so no formatting corrections please. This happened around 3 years ago when I was an IPTV Technician. (Fancy way of saying I replaced cable boxes and routers for a living.) A lot of my time was spent sitting in a van waiting for work orders to appear on my phone. So that's what I was doing when this happened. I got a call from an old customer of mine, she must have been at least 60 years old. And she was always super nice to me and feeding me when I went to see her. So I had given her my personal number. Anyway, she called that morning and she seemed incredibly frightened. For this I will call her CX. CX: uhh... Hi there, something strange is happening to my TV. Me: What is it doing? CX: Every channel I go to it jumps to channel 666. Me: That's... Odd, have you tried unplugging it for a moment and plugging it back in? CX: Ok, I'll try. several minutes of me on the phone telling her how to reboot the box Me: Did that seem to fix it? CX: No, I've been trying different channels, no matter which numbers I type in, it goes to channel 666. Note: I had been working for this company a while, and I knew for a fact channel 666 didn't even exist. So I couldn't understand at all what was happening. Me: Ok, that's freaky. Give me a few minutes and I'll come over and take a look. A half hour later I showed up to check out what was going on. As soon as she handed me the remote I let out a loud "oooohhhhhhh". The number 6 on the remote had gotten stuck, and no matter which buttons you clicked, the remote would enter a 6. I know it's short, but believe it or not, that's the most memorable thing that happened to me the entire time I worked there. [link] [comments]  |
| How could everyone not concerned by the issue know the problem is fixed? Posted: 30 Jan 2019 09:26 AM PST Got a call last week from one of our small customers (100 users) we do IT support for. Because they got used to me the accounting lady asked specifically to leave a message. She had problem generating pdf files in her accounting software (permission required or something) I called her back in like 20mins and fixed the issue (admin accès req because software updated and needed to update pdf generating extension inbedded in accounting software). It took less than 5mins to fix. Being a stupid easy fix I didn't care about charging the customer. Unbeknown to me she went to see her boss (before calling me) to explain the issue and why reports will be late... Hell of a shitstorm issued. I got called into a phone meeting: me, my boss, her, her boss and their "inhouse wanna be it tech" to talk about the issue. Long story short: I'll have to notify everyone's concerned + their boss + wanna be it tech about any issues fixed. When meeting concluded my boss asked me: "how long it'll take you to follow this req?" Me: about 5mins I would say. Boss: well (with big green on his face) we have minimum 15mins charge per any request so you will add 15 additional minutes to all service request from them from now-on. Me: (with a smirk) sure thing. [link] [comments]  |
| Enterprise printer support, a disappointing play in four acts. Posted: 30 Jan 2019 11:41 AM PST Scene: An office in Seattle, with windows, surrounded by views of construction. Tickets begin to scroll across a screen. Act 1 Act 2 Intermission Act 3 Act 4 Exeunt stage right, in search of enough caffeine to make this all OK. [link] [comments]  |
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