My son told me ... Tech Support |
- My son told me ...
- That One Time I Screwed Up A Job Interview And Got The Job.
- "Our MedCarts Don't Work and we can't understand why!" Thank God Vaca starts today!
- The quest to find the Admin with the Power of Reboot!
- There are just some things that can't be done over the phone
- Never trust the user (nor the devs)
- How do I print.
- My Outlook is not working.. Help!
- How much milk do you need? Long
- Boss: They cannot log in! Me: Gee I wonder why..
- An Interactive Tale For You Guys
| Posted: 03 Jul 2019 02:04 PM PDT I work for a small IT shop that cater mostly to small/medium entreprise and also some individual here and there . I don't post often so i hope i don't screw up my story... One day, a middle age lady come to the shop with a laptop bag. Lady: My laptop is not working anywore and i don't understand why, can you guys help me. Me: Sure, you came at the right place ! So please tell me what is happening or not happening ? The lady proceed to take out the laptop form the bag in two pieces .... The screen and well the rest... Me: Wow it must have been quite the fall... (I then notice no scratch mark, the screen is smooth, no sign of it being dropped) Lady: I didn't drop it ! My son told me i could use my laptop without a screen. So i removed it ! Me: (dumbfounded) : Herm...what !?!?! You removed the screen... How ?!?! Lady: I pulled on it until it came out and cut the little wire, it's not booting anymore can you fix it. Me: (at lost for word, trying not the laugh): Miss you can't remove a screen like that, i don't think there's any chance i can make boot again ! Lady: But my son told me i could use without the screen and i could plug it on my tv. Me: Well that's true but you still don't have to remove the screen to make that happen. There's nothing i can do to fix it. But I can remove the hard drive and put in an external hard drive casing so you caould access your data. Lady: Oh thank you i didn't want to lose my work. Well at least i can use the screen as a tablet now. Me: Humm no the screen is useless now. Lady: But my son use his laptop screen like a tablet ! Me: Well i don't what hardware he have at home but there's hybrid tablet/laptop that exist and they can do that. But this not an option for your laptop. Lady: BUT what can i do with my laptop. Me: Hum... nothing ..... After that i removed her hard drive put in an external casing, she paid and left never to be seen again. [link] [comments]  |
| That One Time I Screwed Up A Job Interview And Got The Job. Posted: 03 Jul 2019 05:14 PM PDT This is an TFTS from me to all of you. This is the moral support that we don't see posted here too often. Right. So here's the deal. I've been a contractor for the DoD for 10+ years. I have bounced between so many different contracting companies, supported all four branches of the military at some point or another, and have worked on some incredible projects and programs during those years. I've had hard times here and there and I've had my fair share of good times. Throughout all of this, I'd tried repeatedly to become a federal employee. The reason for all of those attempts is due to the fact that I wasn't able to join the military due to my hearing impairment. Turns out that Uncle Sam doesn't like it when you try to join already deaf; he wants that joy all to himself. Well, this past January I'd put in an application for a position at my local Air Force base. As far as government job postings go, this was a rather mundane description. The gist of it was pretty much just maintain the file permissions of the various users and groups. Eh, simple enough. I just figured they'd be using Active Directory, something I've got a fair amount of experience with. Flash forward to February, and I get an email alerting me that I've been referred for the position. For those that are not aware, government actions on anything, even on hiring personnel to fill a role, takes forever. So, February I was referred to the role, and March is when I get scheduled for the interview. The way an interview process for a government position works is way different than you expect in the private sector. You show up, they give you a sheet of paper that lists the questions they want to ask you, and give you 5-15 minutes to write down your answers. Then, they'll collect you and guide you to a conference room where you'll be interviewed by 3 or so people, asking you the questions that you've already answered on your sheet of paper. It's this process where things almost went completely south, sideways, pear-shaped, or any other colorful euphemism (personally, I prefer Charlie-Foxtrot). They take me to a room to fill out my questionnaire. All told, there were five questions they wanted me to answer. The first four dealt with applications that I had never heard of; I didn't even have a clue as to their proper function because the questions related to those applications were so vague! The fifth question asked me about what certifications I had, for those who were curious. I sat there for about five or so minutes, going over each and every question. I had no idea how to answer them. Finally, I decided to write across the top of the paper, "After reviewing the questions provided, I feel I may not be a good fit for this position. Thank you for your time and consideration." I poked my head out of the room I was in, and I didn't see anyone around, so I just left the building. I got in my truck, and started the drive back home. I felt dejected. I was honestly hopeful that this would have been my one solid chance to end my contractor career and become a government employee. When I was about 3 minutes from my home, my mobile rang. I answered the call, and it was the supervisor of the area I had put in for. In short order, he told me that this is my one chance to sell myself, that if I really want the position, they'll hold the interview spot open for me and give me a chance. I flipped a U-turn so fast and sped all the way back to the base and got to the building real quick! Upon entry to the building, I was greeted in the foyer by the supervisor who expressed his joy in seeing me return. We make our way to the conference room, where I meet the two others who are to interview me. Since I didn't fill out my questionnaire, they ask me to just go over my experience and what I've done over the years. They explain a bit about the program that they are looking to fill the position for. Without going in to too much information, it's a project that utilizes the skills I've picked up working on ODXC's and MSPP's with my soon-to-be former role. I relay that I've done everything from working as a tier 1 technician on help desk for the Air Force to a network engineer for the Army. I'd been to bases all across the country and a few outside of the country. I had spearheaded some big projects on previous contracts, and seen them come to fruition, on time and under budget. I state that all the certifications I've earned I earned on my own time, without attending any formal classes or seminars. Pretty much, I sold myself as best as I could, probably better than I ever have in all of the interviews I've ever had. I finish and answer a couple of probing questions (things along what I like to do in my downtime, and the like). They'd let it be known that out of all the candidates that they'd interviewed so far, I was the only one that had any experience with transport level technology. After that, they thank me for my time and I went on my way. The rest of the month of April passes, and then May starts on strong. The first two weeks of May, I hadn't heard anything one way or the other about the position. And then, midway through the month, I get an email offering the position to me. I was gobsmacked. I'd literally walked away from the interview after writing on their questionnaire that I didn't think I'd be good fit. I'd hoped, but wasn't certain, that I'd sold myself in a spectacular fashion when I did go back. But, there it was! Sure as I am an idiot at times, as an email saying that the position was mine! If I recall correctly, I think my wife was cheering loudly for a bit, I can't recall because I was so stunned. I'm finishing out my last week right now. I find it ironic that my last day is on the 4th of July. I'll be riding home at night on my motorcycle with fireworks going off all above me. The TL;DR of this post is this: Don't sell yourself short, especially as a tech. Take that chance to move up to something new. More importantly, make sure you have something to bring to the table, so tackle a new skill-set or pick up a new cert. Y'all are badasses in my eyes. Also, sorry if this doesn't fit 100% in the TFTS community. I've followed many of you through your postings and I've had a few of you follow me on some of mine. I felt that if anyone would appreciate this post, it'd be this community. [link] [comments]  |
| "Our MedCarts Don't Work and we can't understand why!" Thank God Vaca starts today! Posted: 03 Jul 2019 08:40 AM PDT One of my medical facilities called in an issue with one of their MedCarts last week. The issue as they described it, is that it would not turn on. The Helpdesk receives this exact call quite frequently. Our MedCarts consist of a large cart with mounted monitor, there is a micro computer mounted behind a locked compartment on the back of the cart. The Cart has its own system board which all components interface to and which controls all of the locked med drawers. The Medcarts also have a battery mounted underneath which keeps them powered when not plugged in and on the move down the hall. Typical troubleshooting was done, is the cart receiving power? Is the power switch in the on position? Is the computer itself actually turned on? HelpDesk is told that it is not receiving power even when plugged in and switch on, which usually indicates an issue with the battery itself needing replacement (poor design). We requested to have Plant Operations for the facility swap the battery. Today we get another call from the facility that the battery was replaced and still nothing, and now none of the 4 medcarts are receiving power! Weird?! How is this possible. Through some coaxing of the receptionist we learned that "Plant Operations changed the batteries out, after they power-washed all the carts this past week." All I cant say is, WOW! You guys thought it was a smart idea to powerwash a device with a bunch of electrical components built in? Silence...... SMH, FML! [link] [comments]  |
| The quest to find the Admin with the Power of Reboot! Posted: 03 Jul 2019 03:36 PM PDT Gather close my friends for the tale I tell is one fraught with danger, intrigue, and suspense. We join our plucky SAN admin as she embarks on an epic quest to find the Admin with the power of reboot! It all started last week. The day dawned sunny and bright, full of promise, as our plucky adventures, Peach, brought her laptop online and took a good swig of the elixir of life known as Irish Black Tea (can't drink coffee, have to get the go juice from somewhere). It was looking to shape up to a good day. Tickets were down, uptime was stable, and she just might be able to work on those pesky complice requirements, but it was not to be, for sitting in her inbox was an email from her client boss, letting her know that the weekly reports were due and not in his inbox. She put on her diag cap, took another fortifying drink, and prepared to dive into the long and painful log in process to see what was going on. "It should not take 15 min and 3 vpns to log in!", She cried as another small piece of her soul died. She hoped it would be a quick reboot and back to Reddit, but she was not that lucky. The reporting web page attached to the app wouldn't load, and trying to RDP into the server timed out. She did what any user would do, opened a ticket in AsNow to, what she hoped was the correct Intel team, to have the server metaphorically whacked upside the bytes. She emailed client boss with the ticket number and hoped that was enough to appease the beast, and moved on to more important things, r/aww for instance. Every day the client boss would ask how it was going, and she dutifully answered the ticket was in queue and waiting. She did not have much hope of the ticket being processed anytime soon. The Intel team had around 10,000 tickets in queue. They'll get to it next month or so. The client boss was patient for a while, but, today, after 5 days without his precious repots, he had enough. He engaged the big guns, called the account team and put the fear in them. "Fix the reports today!", he cried. Hounds were loosed, sabers were rattled and horses stamped. We were hunting admins. The client boss had spoken and no one was going home until the reports appeared! Now, some of you might ask why she didn't push the issue in the first place and follow up with the Intel team to get it resolved. You see, Peach was new to the account. The people, that's right, people, she replaced left very few clues and no maps for her to follow in navigating the 7th circle of BigBlue server support, and the Intel team was on another continent 11 hours ahead. They didn't have names attached to their ticket queue and only a shared email address could be found. Without the Big Guns, there was no movement to be had. The ticket was lost in a mountain of red tape and paperwork. The Big Guns sallied forth, storming the bastion of the Intel team, demanding answers as to why the ticket has no movement. "Don't hurt us!" they cried! "It is not our server, and the ticket is in the wrong system. It must be opened in BMaximo to another continent 7 hours ahead. "Onward!", Peach cried. The first ticket closed, the second one opened and the Big Guns cried for blood. "The ticket must be escalated! Client boss must be appeased! The next Intel team did answer, "It's not our ticket, it's not our OS. The ticket belongs to the Linux group!" At this Peach was frustrated. Her other reporting server was on a Windows VM, why was this one Linux?? The lack of documentation was vexing! That did explain why RDP timed out as Linux resists the siren call of a GUI. Off to the Linux team they went, banners held high. "We will prevail! The client boss has spoken!" The Linux team met them with great force. "We do not manage that server! It is managed by the Storage team. We say good day sir!", they cried as they pushed the ticket back. The Big Guns answered, "The Storage team manages the application good sirs, not the OS" but to no avail. The Linux team had defeated the Big Guns and had logged off, even escalations and nashig of teeth would not bring them back. All looked dark, but Peach had an idea! Wasn't there a VMWare team, perhaps they had the magic of the reboot! Off they rode to the VMWare team, arriving work torn and weary. A kindly gentleman met them as they prepared to knock. "What do you seek?" Peach gathered her energy for one last plea. "We have traveled far and wide, searching high and low, through two ticket queues and 4 admin groups looking for the on with the power of reboot. Please, good Sir, can you help?" The good man logged in to vCenter, of which Peach was jealous. She wanted the power of vCenter! He said, "I do not manage the appliance, the storage team does." "But good Sir, I am the storage team, and I do not have the power of root or reboot to give cleint boss his reports. Can you please help?" The good Sir, seeing her distress, said, "I have the power of reboot, though I don't manage this server, I will assist." He then used his power and Saints be praised, the reboot brought the application up, and client boss received his reports and all was well in the kingdom once again! TL/DR Reports missing. Software unresponsive. Two ticketing systems, 4 different teams and 3 escalations later finally got someone to help me reboot a Linux server. Technically I support the appliance, but I don't have root access to the OS, and I don't have access to vCenter to manage the VM which means I'm out of luck if it locks up. Gotta love big business and silos. [link] [comments]  |
| There are just some things that can't be done over the phone Posted: 03 Jul 2019 08:39 PM PDT So I got like a ton of these but I think my first post here, which is also my favorite tech support story of all time, will be one that a friend of mine told me. I used to be in the Air Force, and the helpdesk function, if you can call it that, fell to the Comm Focal Point, or CFP. While working at a CFP at my last duty station before I got out, I was working with a young lady, a SSgt, who had previously worked at a shall we say very high profile military installation. While working there she got to deal with a lot of generals, civilians, and contractors, all way up the food chain. She gets a call one day with a guy freaking out on the other end. First, to explain what this thing is, an UPS is an uniterruptible power source and is, at least in this case, essentially a surge protector with a battery on it. It's really only meant to keep a computer running short term if there is a loss or fluctuation of power in the building. So he calls her freaking out "my UPS is on fire." My friend, probably confused, "Did you call the fire department?" Him, "no can't you put it out from there?" My friend, "no you need to call the fire department." I should also probably mention at this point that some of these UPS have an ethernet port so that you can manage them remotely but, you know, obviously putting out a fire isn't something that someone can command the UPS to do from another location. There is no "stop burning" button if you log into it. I guess the guy finally pulled out the fire extinguisher and took care of it himself, but that one still gets me that he wanted her to remote in and stop his UPS from burning. [link] [comments]  |
| Never trust the user (nor the devs) Posted: 03 Jul 2019 07:03 AM PDT I work for a pretty large tech company in my country. We're basically doing anything from dev to ops to test. I'm in the IT-Security department and we are constantly argueing with the customers about the impact, rating (and other related stuff) of vulnerabilities. However, we had a retest of an web application with several High and Critical vulns. (XSS, SQLI, reverse shells... you get the point) Customer is the teamlead of a small dev team (5-10 peoples) and had already management attention. Customer: "We fixed any critical and high finding" Me: " Alright, the test starts tomorrow. We will be finished at about the end of the week." [... to the end of the week and the debriefing and presentation of the test report..] Me: "Well, there are still a lot of vulnerabilities open in your application. I suggest to fix all of them, before going live." Customer: " But we are already live" Me (stunned for a few seconds): "But what's with all these high rated vulns?" Customer: "How did you find them?" Me: " It's all in the old report, most of them were not fixed." Customer: "You shouldn't even be able to acces the web app." Me (again stunned): " huh? Why? You said, you're already live. Everything worked fine." Customer: " No we blocked your departments IP from the last test. You cheated the report and never did a retest." Me (now nearly laughting): "wait a minute" [opens web browser, shares the screen, throwing the reverse shell] Customer hangs up the call.. To clarify this: we have several networks and IPs for testing, depending on our department, preferences and the load on each network... they thought they could trick penetration testers by blocking one specific IP. A few management calls later, the application is no longer avaiable. I really lost a bit my of my faith in humanity at this point. *edit: fixed some spelling mistakes [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Jul 2019 08:22 PM PDT So I've become unofficial tech support for my school, IE, getting pulled out of class to fix different machines and even some home laptops, this is due to my own interest in being tech support, especially expressed to my English teacher who helps with college stuff while in high school. So one day I get into English, and she gives me a note and says that I am to report to another teachers room and that he is having issues. This guy isn't the techiest, so I get there and get asked "how do I print this Spanish word search" mind you this is a PDF that opens in chrome, and it has a very clear print button. After pointing to it he goes "oh yeah, they told me about that." And went back to printing off worksheets for his class TL;DR Teacher knows how to print, and forgot and had student requested from another class to help him [link] [comments]  |
| My Outlook is not working.. Help! Posted: 03 Jul 2019 08:32 AM PDT Currently working at a mid-sized hosting company (Delivering Citrix/VDI's to customers) We have a lot of very friendly customers, although they're usually horrible at using any kind of technology. (also first post, be gentle :p) $Me = well.. Me $CR = Very nice lady (Lawyer) Customer who i've spoken to many times $CR calls me directly (they're usually supposed to call our helpdesk, but sometimes we make exceptions) I pick up,and she immediately says"Thanks god $Me, you need to save me! My Outlook is not working and i need to use it now!" "Sure thing" i say and ask her to open a Teamviewer session, so i can see what is happening. I connect to her virtual desktop and everything looks normal as usual, i change the view to her second monitor, and what do i see? Outlook is open and working without any problems. It then goes like this "$Me Sooo.. $CR do you happen to have a secondary monitor that currently is turned off?" "$CR Ohh..Yeah i do" she turns it on aaaand.. "$CR There's my Outlook!! Sorry, i forgot i had that monitor turned off thanks a bunch nervous laughter" "$Me No problem $CR it happens 🙃" [link] [comments]  |
| How much milk do you need? Long Posted: 03 Jul 2019 06:28 AM PDT I'm not sure if tech support stories where you make it to the end without questioning humanity are allowed. But if they are I do have a few stories. If not then I'm sorry and I'll delete this. Anyway this is roughly a few years ago so my memory isn't as great as it was. So a lot of it is paraphrased and names and such are changed for privacy. Also I'm on mobile. My neighbour was in her mid 60's and had decided to finally accept her late husband was right to get a IPad and join the wonderful world that is the online world. He started out with a basic laptop from a family member and gotten wifi and a printer. Me being somewhat tech savvy I became the unofficial tech support. And would be over there most nights walking him through what a cookie was and how to shop online. His wife wanted nothing to do with computers and didn't like the Internet (she was convinced terrorists would steal her bank details if she shopped online) but age and failing health force her to accept getting the shopping brought to the door was easier. After his passing she was stuck on her own with a laptop and a ipad and no clue which way was the right way to hold it. So I began teaching her and went over one day to check if she was alright as she just lost her husband and was on her 5th heart attack. She asked me to check the shopping app as she was having trouble with it. I sat down and went over everything and checked the basket. She had 12,4 pints of milk in the basket. Me: "Um quick question I'm looking at the shopping list and your basket and I don't see a number 12 next to the milk" Neighbour: "I don't want 12 milk" Me: "Then why did you add 12 to your basket" Neighbour: "It wouldn't add it so I kept clicking it" Me: "Right, I taken them out and you got 2 which was the original number, would it be easier if I did the shopping?" Neighbour: "Yes" Me: "Right then" She went off to make me a cup of tea, after a few minutes I called her back. Me: "Why is a large part of the list chocolate and cakes where you are diabetic?" Neighbour: "oh I like cakes" Me: "but won't they make you ill?" Neighbour: "I don't eat them all at once" Me trying not to laugh: "good answer" After that we had a system where either me or her sister would help with the shopping as this wasn't the first time she went crazy with the ordering. But I cannot complain before ill health she and her husband were gamers and had gotten me into Mario. And unlike some of the people in the stories on here they admitted they were new to computers and needed the help. [link] [comments]  |
| Boss: They cannot log in! Me: Gee I wonder why.. Posted: 03 Jul 2019 03:29 AM PDT Hello TFTS! I've started my first IT job this year (CS-student) at a small firm and have been acquiring some good stories from down the road. This one stars our ex-CEO let's call him $Boss. We've been digitizing educational books (med student books mainly) as e-books which can be read online. I recently finished creating 3 sites for accessing different e-books and they were ready to be sent to the customer. Usually we buy a separate domain for the sites, but one of these -- let's call it X -- was taken and we did not want to pay $2k for it (we're a very small company) so the workaround was that I created subdomain_for_x.mainsite.com instead of the usual www.domain\_for\_site.com. (We will be revamping the whole thing to be under 1 common domain in the end, thus the workaround) Now the $Boss tells me I've gotta add some university IP ranges to access the e-books. Alright, I add the appropriate IP ranges and send the links to all 3 sites for $Boss to forward them to the university so they can test everything works correctly. Couple of days go by and $Boss tells me the university cannot login to site X at all, but the other two are working fine. The direct quote was that "We cannot login to site X". I start to think I botched the IP ranges somehow so I check that they're all correct. I ask $Boss if they're using subdomain_for_x.main_site.com address for the problematic site and he confirms that. I go check the IP filtering code (written by my predecessor) but can't find any faulty logic there. At this point I ask for the customer's IP to see if they're trying to access it outside the university ranges, but the IP is in fact within the range. I'm baffled. The site is working 100% correctly for me, I've tried using various testing accounts with various permission settings and also tested and confirmed IP filtering to work with my IP so there should be nothing broken. Then $Boss tells me he can send the email convo to me if that helps. I receive the emails and immediately I see it. $Boss is not the most technical person (we're not an IT-firm) and in his eyes internet addresses are always of form www.site.com whereas I think that's really a thing of the past, especially with subdomains. So after I sent the address for site X (subdomain.mainsite.com) he decided the add the www prefix to it before sending it to the customer. I had not generated a (sub)domain for www.subdomain.mainsite.com so the address never resolved. I had asked 3 times if $Boss was using the correct address (without www) but he saw them as the same address and said yes each time. Now this would've also been easier to troubleshoot had $Boss not said to me "They cannot LOGIN to the site", even though the customer included a screenshot in the email convo where it clearly said "Site cannot be reached" with an offline icon (the chrome page for urls that don't resolve). I had to brew a strong coffee after that. And register www redirects for all subdomains as well.. You win this time www. [link] [comments]  |
| An Interactive Tale For You Guys Posted: 03 Jul 2019 12:56 PM PDT I want to see if /r/talesfromtechsupport can guess what happens when I teach my cousin how to get pictures from a DSLR onto his computer. Something fun to do whilst you're reading this. Cast:
Since I am the tech person of the family (there really should be a seperate sub about being the techie in your family), my cousin asked to borrow my DSLR and show him the basics. As he was eager to start learning I thought, "hey why not; hopefully this will kickstart the journey of using Google before wasting my damn time!" I went over to his house to teach him on how to properly take pictures and download the photos once he was done taking them. He was taking his family to the beach and wanted to capture some nice shots. He listened to me when I told him how to focus a picture and capture some really nice stills. Unfortunately, that's all he had listened to. I made sure that I gave an ELI5 walkthrough on how to download pictures from the camera onto his computer. These were the instructions I gave (almost verbatim):
I made sure he understood everything and had no questions. I then went home and watched public freakout videos (they're addicting; don't judge me). I know there are cameras where you can plug cables between the camera and the computer but his computer was ancient and did not have the necessities to do that. And I wasn't prepared to do extra to fix it. I wanted to lie in and binge watch YouTube. STOP. DON'T CONTINUE BEFORE COMMENTING YOUR PREDICTION!You can edit your comment afterwards.My cousin messaged me the following morning and we had this conversation:
My reaction at that moment. (SFW)
So I arrive a little while later and got everything ready.
And here's where you get to see if you were right.
headdesk It turns out he took like ~45 pics so it wasn't too long waiting for them to transfer. I made sure that he created a backup copy of the pictures on a seperate USB. Because I know my family and I know he would probably "accidentally" delete them. Sorry for the mundane tale but I hope you predicted correctly. EDIT: wanted to be a bit more politer and remembered the person. EDIT2: I clearly can't spell. [link] [comments]  |
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