"I...I... blew up my computer..." Tech Support |
- "I...I... blew up my computer..."
- Can you show me the computer?
- umbrella brought the wifi down
- Securely Unable to Access
- You updated my computer wrong!
- The snowball-effect applied to an Exchange-Server
- Professors complaint: "My mouse isnt working"
| "I...I... blew up my computer..." Posted: 02 Oct 2019 04:27 PM PDT Names have been changed to protect the innocent. But not the guilty. There was a young, motivated, and inexperienced computer engineer working at a small company that built inspection machines for a niche market. These inspection machines consisted of WinTel computers along with some specialized hardware for interfacing with the inspection sensors and general control, enclosed in a nice air-conditioned cabinet for all the electrically-bits. The software was developed in-house as well and ran on top of Windows. If you ever worked in manufacturing before, you've probably run across this kind of setup before. Now, this company built the computers in house from off-the-shelf parts. Intel CPUs, Samsung SSDs, Crucial RAM, Supermicro mobos, you get the drift. Each developer got an exact copy of the currently shipping hardware and machine components, so it would be easy to develop and test locally. The hardware was always on the mid-to-high end, so this worked out well for everyone. There was a sole IT professional that handled the company's IT needs (obviously) and did the purchasing and inventory for the WinTel components. The antagonist of our story (mentioned above) was a fresh college graduate with a degree in Computer Engineering with a focus on embedded systems. So when a small project came up for a small embedded peripheral to this peripheral, the CpE volunteered to take it, and management approved. On to the story. Characters: CpE: Smart, yet inexperienced engineer. Antagonist. IT: Information Technologist of the House Support, 30 Million of His Name, King of the Servers, the rightful Admin of all PCs and protector of the databases, King of Active Directory and Khal of the network. Scene: IT's office. <knock knock> IT looks up to see CpE standing meekishly in the doorway, looking as guilty as a young puppy who peed on the carpet after house training. CpE: "I...need to pull a new motherboard, keyboard, and USB hub from stock. I'm not sure if... I'm going to need more components." IT: "...Okay. We have the parts in stock, but what's this about? Usually stock pulls are for complete machines. Is there something wrong with a machine on the shop floor?" CpE: "Nothing wrong with production as far as I know. I...just...ummm....well....it's...." The CpE is staring at his shoes and moving in a clearly uncomfortable fashion. Something is clearly wrong and all evidence points to CpE as the guilty party. IT: "Sit down and tell me what happened." CpE: "I...I... blew up my computer..." <sniff> IT: " ... wat?" CpE: <tears welling up> "I blew up my computer. I didn't mean to. I was working on the new embedded peripheral prototype...and....and...." IT: "go on..." CpE: "I was rearranging the hardware on my desk when I heard this loud 'POP'. I looked up at my monitors and they were all black. I heard all the fans running at 100% and there was smoke pouring out of my keyboard and computer case." IT: "ummm..." CpE: "I cut power to everything. The embedded peripheral, PC, monitors, everything in my cubicle. I tried bringing my PC back up, but nothing happened when I pressed the power button. I opened up the side of the case and there was black charring around the USB ports on the motherboard." IT: "So what happened?" CpE: "I think I put 24V on the 5V USB rail by accident". IT: "..." CpE: "..." <sniff> IT: "How?" CpE: "I <siff> left some wires hanging loose off the prototype and must have bumped them. I had a USB adapter <sniff> that I was using to communicate with the prototype and the loose wires touched something they shouldn't have. <sniff> The main power supply on the prototype is 24V and one of the loose wires was on the 24V supply. It touched the 5V USB rail on the USB adapter" IT: "..." CpE: "..." IT: "..." CpE: "... am I going to get fired? ..." IT: "How much equipment, in dollars, do you think you destroyed?" CpE: "....ummm...." IT: "Answer honestly." CpE: "...$500...." <sniff. grabs a tissue from the box on IT's desk> IT: "$500. Mkay. Assuming everything company owned in your cubicle got fried, that's probably, what? 3 grand worth of equipment, right?" CpE: <gasp. starts sobbing> IT: "Wait. I haven't finished" CpE: <looks up in horror> IT: "Have you ever brought an embedded control system to market before?" CpE: <slowly shakes head no> IT: "This was a prototype you were working on?" CpE: <nods yes> IT: "Something went wrong and the magic white smoke came out?" CpE: <nods yes> IT: "Remind me again: What went wrong?" CpE: "I <sniff> left some <sniff> power wires loose <sniff> and they <sniff> touched the adapter!!!!" IT: "I see. You left some wires loose, they got bumped, and some electronics got destroyed." CpE: <sniff> "yes" <sniff> IT: "Grab another tissue. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to pull the components to another complete system for you from stock. You're going to go back to your cubicle and rebuild your PC. I know you can handle this since your built your PC on your 1st day here. You're going to return all of the old components to me for proper disposal. Keep the original SSD if it still works. No point in reinstalling the OS since the replacement hardware is identical and the SSD probably survived. You're probably going to be back up and running in an hour." CpE: <puzzled look> IT: "What did you learn?" CpE: <even more puzzled look> IT: "It's not a trick question. What did you learn?" CpE: "Never leave wires flying in the breeze?" IT: "Bingo. 5, 10, 20 years from now, you will never make this mistake again. This company just spent, at most, 3 grand training you. I don't know what you make salary wise, but my guess is the equipment you destroyed, worst case, is the equivalent of 5 days of what this company spends on you. It probably cost over $20,000 to hire you, considering the recruiter fees, HR time, interview time, and so on. You did something that cost the company a pittance compared to what it took to hire your, never mind your salary and benefit cost. You obviously know what you did wrong, and you'll never make this mistake again. If the company fired you over this, they'd be spending another $20 grand minimum to replace you. Shit happens. It's happened to me, it's happened to you, it happens to everyone. You're young. You're inexperienced. College should teach you how to learn, and you've learned from this. Now take these parts, rebuild your PC, and let me know if you need anything else." CpE: "Tha.... Thank you" IT: "This isn't the first time I've dealt with with destroyed parts and this won't be the last. Just don't leave wires loose again." CpE: "Absolutely" This happened about 5 years ago. I was the CpE, and I'll never forget these lessons. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Oct 2019 06:30 AM PDT In 1984 I was an enterprising young geek, all of 16. At the time I had been the first kid in my school to own their own computer - a Commodore VIC 20 - and I was well on the way to my current career in computing. One sunny day I got on my bicycle and peddled from Leiden where I lived, about 40 km up the road to Amsterdam where the action was. Being a geek, action consisted of a travelling high technology roadshow put together by IBM. It showcased the latest and greatest in information technology. Word spread quickly around the hall that I was the crazy kid who cycled 40 km to come and see the roadshow. Being so very excited and interested opened doors that otherwise might not have, had things been different. Two displays made a lifetime impression. One of the demonstrated technologies was a voice recognition system. The presenter had a cold and the software was having trouble, even though she had spent several hours retraining it. As a joke, I repeated the command and it recognised and then proceeded to respond to my instructions. Lots of fun to play with. The most memorable technology was a large high resolution display with a highly detailed wireframe model of the Space Shuttle. Picture a Shuttle, mounted to the external tank and two solid rocket boosters. It wasn't quite to the level of individual components, but it was the most detailed model I'd ever seen, then and since. Next to the display was a board with eight knobs that you could turn to make the wireframe turn in realtime. One knob for roll, one for yaw, one for pitch and one for zoom. The thing about these knobs was that they were very smooth to operate. So much so that you could flick them and like a top they'd keep spinning and the wireframe Space Shuttle would also keep spinning. The spinning knobs were so smooth that you had time to spin more than one simultaneously and the model would spin accordingly. After playing with that for a bit I sidled up to the person managing the display and said: "That's really cool, but that's not the computer. Can you show me the computer that's actually doing the work?" A grin appeared and in hushed tones I was shown to the back of the hall, following thick bundles of cable, through the back door outside. There were two semi-trailers parked next to the hall. Picture two purpose built eighteen wheelers, white, not unlike large refrigerated food trucks. The attendant pointed at one and said: "That's the power supply ...", then pointed at the other: "... and that's the computer that spins the Shuttle." [link] [comments]  |
| umbrella brought the wifi down Posted: 02 Oct 2019 10:29 AM PDT First post, be gentle, common courtesy, yadda yadda yadda... Also, long - sorry. So, I'm a teacher at a secondary school which is fairly advanced in regard to IT-equipment: All classrooms are equipped with LAN, Smartboards (digital whiteboards with interactive projectors), a Windows-PC and an Apple-TV - it's a compromise to get each and every teacher the tools they (think they) need in the digital age. Additionally, there is campus wide wifi, which works well most days, and occasionally not at all. The whole system has a server at the center that runs a proprietary variant of Debian Linux including DHCP for the whole network. For reasons that have become hazy over the past couple of years I have become the go-to tech guy for most of the teachers - I'm sort of self taught, have always been interested in the stuff, and even though there should be some sort of professional IT-support, due to lack of funding... there isn't. So when the system has a hiccup, I'm the guy they call for help. I'm not IT, and my lack of knowledge especially in regard to networks should be apparent from this text. I'm the prototypical one-eyed king among the blind. Believe me, that's not a good feeling. This happened this morning. I'm about to start my lesson, but can't log in on the PC in my room. I should be able to log in with my Windows domain account, but after the login-prompt nothing really happens. I notice that the access point in the room has a red blinking light, which means it can't connect to the internet and do it's job. I try to reach the webfacing interface for our server on my iPad, which is connected to the school's wifi, but get a „you are not connected to the internet"-warning. My students - all equipped with iPads, report the same. A knock on the door, a student from another class enters the room: student: „Ahem, Mr. JoeDoe23, could you come to room so-and-so, Mrs. Teacher1 can't log in to the PC in order to use the smartboard...?" me: „with you in a minute, tell her I'll be down soon." OK, seems to affect more than just my room... I turn off the wifi on my iPad and try to reach the server via data - which to my surprise works. I can log in, everything's dandy. I tell my students to stay put and head to the server. Log in as root, run a chk - everything appears to be fine. I head over to another room, but am interrupted by another student that is looking for me: student2: „Mr. JoeDoe23, Mr. Teacher2 told me to get you, nothing's working..." me: „I'm on it, tell him to wait it out, it seems to be a bigger problem..." In the teachers lounge I try to log into another computer - no go. Back to the server, restart the whole thing. (I told you I'm no IT-guy, I'm just „the guy"... it's not like I really know what to do... but I can restart the thing - whatever the thing is - and know that 85% of the time that'll do the trick!) No change. Alright, time to do the dreadful thing and call the company that does the real support for the server. (It's dreadful because I am in the terrible situation that my colleagues perceive me as a IT-god because I'm always fixing their stuff, but „real" IT-folks look down on me, because I'm just an imposter that breaks their stuff... enter relevant xkcd or other webcomic in the comments!) me: „Yeah, uh, hi there, it's Mr. JoeDoe23, we're having some trouble with out network today, and since your server is doing the DHCP-thing I was wondering if you could remote in an have a look of sorts...?" very friendly support guy (they're not so friendly most of the time, so I felt the need to add this info here): „Let me see... the server is running fine... but I can see that the DHCP-queue is clogged up to the max (my words, not his!). It appears you have some sort of loop in the network." me: „what do you mean, loop? As in, someone has shorted a switch with a patch cable somewhere on the premises?" very friendly support guy: „yup, sounds about right." me: „so what do I do? check each and every room's sLAN-outlet (is that even the right term?) and switch for an incorrectly plugged-in cable?" very friendly support guy: „that's exactly the only thing you can do... good luck." [hangs up] (I dramatized here - of course he didn't hang up on me, he's a professional... we said our good byes and I hung up first.) Alright, back to my class, tell the students to keep chillin' - which they happily obliged... „no worries, Mr. JoeDoe23 - do your thing, we're good here!" And off to check each and every classroom, looking for the loop. In every room, the same situation: teachers improvising, because they can't access their stuff since they can't log in: Teachers3, 4, n: „Hey, good you're here - the system's down, what's going on?" me: „don't know, I'm on it, checking every room, loop somewhere..." After 24 rooms... no dice. Another teacher bumps into me in the hallway: Teacher25: „JoeDoe23, what's going on, wifi's out, I can't login...?!?" me: „server-support says there's a loop in the LAN somewhere, I'm checking every classroom... hope I can find it soon." Two rooms later, still no loop, Teacher25 comes in: Teacher25: „I think I found it! Come with me...!" Now I'm intrigued - so far, the whole ordeal has cost me about an hour, my lesson for this morning has gone to shit, but maybe we can salvage the rest of the day. Teacher25 takes me to his room, which until recently was a computer and still has the LAN-outlets (again, that word?) on the walls. He's pointing at a student, who is not looking very happy. Teacher25: „So I said to my students upon returning from our short conversation just minutes ago: It's still down, Mr. JoeDoe23 is looking for some sort of loop in the network, no idea really what that means... when young Mr. Student over here points to the LAN-outlet behind him and says: Like that?" Turns out: It was raining this morning, and Mr. Student had his umbrella with him... and upon entering the classroom, he was looking for a place to put it... and he noticed a short patch-cable dangling from a LAN-outlet (sorry!)... so he took the loose end, plugged it in the second channel in order to have a place to hang his umbrella! And he brought down the whole network, and with it the whole school...! Unplugged the cable, and I could hear and feel a resounding breath of relief throughout the whole campus, as teachers and students were suddenly able to log in, warning-lights on access-points switched back to white... and we were back online. TL;DR: Student created a loop with a patch cable to hang his umbrella, brought down the whole network. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Oct 2019 05:22 PM PDT I've been wanting to share this story for a while now, but have been busy so I never got around to it. This happened at $OldFirm (guys who made $DocManager) last year, which makes this story all the more WTF-y. Also, main characters (outside of the client) are here. So, we got this statement of work in for this one client who is huge in the medical industry (like, almost only the players bigger are state and federal governments huge) and they seem to be having an issue with one of the plugins we wrote for them years ago. They have a Java servlet (important) that calls our plugin via SOAP (ASMX Web Service, we're a .NET shop) and ever since we upgraded them the plugin doesn't seem to work. Alas, as the developer on the team that is to handle this, I get it in my lap. Naturally, I did a diff on the ASMX they had running (they had the cloud version, not too difficult to obtain) and what we had in our application as we had integrated this plugin some odd years back into the main codebase. Of course, the diff doesn't tell me much other than there's nothing wrong with our code, but we "have to fix it" according to $ProjectManager. So, I do a code review of their servlet that is calling the ASMX Web service and don't see anything that could magically cause 0 results to be returned. I did see anti-patterns galore, but that's another story. Anyhow, this isn't /r/programminghorror, so back to the story. So, eventually I check their setup and lo behold, they were searching on the wrong field to get the data they want back. Might have gotten changed during the upgrade, but these are lazy developers from Kerbleckistan so of course they didn't bother checking if they were searching the right field or not. Let them know what to do and sent them on their merry way, thinking I would never have to deal with them again. Boy, was I wrong. So before this had happened, our server administration team had upgraded the SSL certificate on our servers before our current cert expired (like any decent admins would). Little did we know that $Client would have problems caused by this. So I do all sorts of roundabout things like having them import the SSL cert into the keystore that I had to prepare for them (instructions, the cert, the works) because for some odd reason (used to be a Java developer, am now again) I knew more about this than they did (actual Java developers at the time). Well, I have tried just about all I can think of to figure out what they need to do to fix the problem. Yeah, after a few private encounters with him I doubted that, but moving on. I actually get this idea to write a simple Java app and test it with several Java versions: So I ask the client what version of Java they're using, and they respond with (quelle grand suprise): Java 6. F$CK! Apparently Java 6 doesn't support the new SSL algorithm we use, because it's 12 YEARS OLD BY THIS POINT! Also, Oracle was one month out from dropping paid support for Java 6 too soooo.... Apparently, someone over there didn't like that response: So, relevant: $DocManager has resellers that package it with other software to automate workplace stuff, and normally they will throw us under the bus whenever possible. Not today: And with that, I never had to deal with that client again. Still owe $Reseller a beer for his response. Said what I wanted to, and I didn't have to deal with the repercussions for it. I think about the stories like that, and I'm glad I left. [link] [comments]  |
| You updated my computer wrong! Posted: 02 Oct 2019 08:05 AM PDT So just a small vent here about somthingthat got me riled up. So a few days ago my father was having computer issues with the picture on his screen. So i automatically assumed it was a out of date driver. So with his permission i downloaded Nvidia Geforce (the updater for all Nividia cards) ans ran a check. Sure enough it was extreamly out of date. Now as i ran the update it shows pictures of games ans the update ot called game ready driver because the brand is focused around gaming. I explainee this to him and he understood. So about a week later i wake up to my father yelling at me telling me i fucked up his computer by downloading a gamer driver. He told me i shouldnt use any programs and should update it directly though the computer (whatever that means). Oh ans to top it off he doesnt want me touching his (my brothers btw) computer anymore. Maybe i should let this get to me as much but its like i did one nice thing then get yelled at because apparently i messed up a computer because apparently he had 2 graphic drivers running at the same time (However that is possible i dont know) according to him. I just said okay and walked away but this is still frusterating as hell. Oh to top it off, he used to be a computer engineer so he thinks he still knows everything about computers. [link] [comments]  |
| The snowball-effect applied to an Exchange-Server Posted: 02 Oct 2019 07:50 AM PDT Hey there. This Tale is rather short but hilarious. I was working at a big company with couple of 10.000 employees sitting in multiple countries. It was a normal day, but after lunch a strange mail flew into my inbox which simply stated "This is a test". Looking at the sender it simply stated "test@<Company>.com", where <Company> was the domain for the company I was working for. Before I could even think of what has happened, a second mail came in. Same sender, the contents this time in french and the subject did indicate, that this was an answer to the original mail. Shortly after - more answers. They kept going. "What the heck is going on?" was coming from behind me. Apparently, everyone in our office did receive those messages and my boss was kind of freaking out about it. About 15 minutes later everything stopped - Exchange-Server was not happy and decided to go on vacation, for 2 whole days. Later the week, we received a statement from the Mail-Team. Long Story short: "test@<company>.com" was configured to bounce every mail received to all existing mail-addresses with "@<company>.com". However the forwarded mail was having "test@<company>.com" in the sender-field. This meant replying to the mail would cause the same effect of sending a mail company wide. Some employees were acknowledging the test, others did not understand french and did wanted to know what is going on, basically DOS'ing the Exchange-Server with each reply they made. TL;DR: Never set up a mail-account to forward the message to everyone in the company as the original sender (Especially if there is no testing of privilege what-so-ever). [link] [comments]  |
| Professors complaint: "My mouse isnt working" Posted: 01 Oct 2019 06:45 PM PDT Background, I work in the AV department of a smaller college. AV, means audio visual, but people often mistake us and IT as the same, but it isn't. I work on the projectors, monitors, speakers and control box in each of the classrooms of the college. We get calls that should go to IT all the time, but since they leave at 5, and I work until 8, I sometimes go and see if I can help on IT calls, if i think i can help. So, i get a call from a professor asking if i can look at the mouse, as it wasnt working. I told them that it is really more of an IT thing, but i would come down and look at it and see if i can fix it, if not i would get a hold of IT to fix it in the morning. So, i walk all the way across the campus, and up a flight of stairs and into the class. The class is there, bored, waiting for class to start. Everything is quiet. The screen is showing the projector, they're logged into the computer, it looks good until I walk to the podium and immediately see the problem with the mouse. I kind of bite my tongue and ask the teacher what she thinks the problem is, she doesnt answer. Turns out, this is the sign language teacher, and she is completely deaf, and a student called me for her. So I ask the student to tell her what the problem was, and because this is an ADVANCED sign language class, most of the class had learned at the very least the basics of sign language. So I wanted to whisper to the professor what it was, because it would make her look stupid to her class, but because she is deaf, she needs it signed to her, and she believes in a "paperless classroom" according to the students, and there were no markers to be found for the white board. So after I whispered the problem to the student, and showed her the problem, she burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing she has ever heard. Once she recovered, she signed (I'm assuming, I dont know sign language) "YOU WERENT USING THE MOUSE, IT WAS THE ERASER FOR THE WHITE BOARD" after she was done signing, the professor turned a deep red, and most of the class erupted in a chorus of laughter. I pulled the rolling tray where the mouse and keyboard are, and hiding in the back was the real mouse. I asked if they had any questions and went back to the office. Still one of my favorite stories. Thanks for reading! Edit: for those curious, here is a picture of the "mouse." https://imgur.com/gallery/2pz0Mao Honestly, it does look a lot like a mouse. I also have a funny story about how a professor was trying to use the wrong remote to turn on a projector in an older room, and the remote was a desk decoration from another professor that shares the room with them. It was a prop from star trek next generation. [link] [comments]  |
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