Encyclopædia Moronica: NYE is for New Year's Eve Tech Support |
- Encyclopædia Moronica: NYE is for New Year's Eve
- No, you can't add more storage space to your phone.
- Of course it's your fault, you're incompetent
- "That pesky brick wall is in the way"
- Her Router Couldn’t Record Movies...
- How to use a phone: the basics
- GIF Me a Break
- of ignorance
- My first encounter as a first-line agent (ancient history)
- Merry New Year.
| Encyclopædia Moronica: NYE is for New Year's Eve Posted: 30 Dec 2019 03:28 PM PST 'Twas the night before New Years, and out in the land Us techs, we were resting, feet up on our desks, When, from my phone, there arose such a clatter, The manager had found the one tech who'd know "This just needs to happen!" the manager did yelp "This equipment was once installed in old Noah's Ark, "I promised the customer, I tell you no lie, I snorted, I chortled, I enjoyed seasonal mirth I logged in remotely and checked in the system - True Christmas miracles are rarer than rare With records in hand, I then checked out the project; But all 'twas confusion; my hopes, they did fall I cursed aloud just the once, then went straight to my work. "It's working right now, so it would seem And as I hung up, I thought I heard him start to curse at my reason. From all of us working through this holiday season, to all of you enjoying time off: screw you; go to Hell you lucky SOBs. TL/DR: The productivity of people working through the Christmas/New Year's break cannot be underestimated. [link] [comments]  |
| No, you can't add more storage space to your phone. Posted: 30 Dec 2019 08:39 AM PST It's my first post here and I have no idea what formatting refers to. So all my family knows that I'm tech savvy (a little too much) and when someone has an issue I'm usually the one they call. One of my aunts, however thinks that I know EVERYTHING about computers, phones etc... Which is false. When I tell her "I don't know" she straight up doesn't believe me and doesn't take "There are things that I don't know" as an answer. So she started using Google (not brilliantly but alright) and taking the first result that she finds as cold hard facts. And when I tell her that what she read is not true/doesn't apply to one of her devices she just tells me that I don't know what I'm talking about or that I'm lying to her. So once she calls me and the following conversation ensues : Aunt : Hello Me, I'm having an issue with my phone and I want you to help me. Me : What is it? Aunt : It ran out of space but I need more space and I want to keep what I have on it. Me : Well you can put your pictures on Google Photos and delete them from your phone, that should solve the problem. Aunt : No, I don't want that. I want everything to stay on my phone. I found something on Google that adds more space to your phone but I didn't understand how to use it. Me : Yeah... No. That's doesn't work. You can't add more space to your phone like that. I know that certain devices can be upgraded to have more storage by changing the storage unit for another with more space. But here she was talking about an app that adds more storage (One of those fake ones) and not about a hardware modification. Aunt : No! I read that you can do it! Don't lie to me! Me : I'm not lying. You can't add more space to your phone like that. Aunt : I'll just ask Cousin (A cousin that knows enough about tech but not as much as me) to do it for me then. And I'll tell your mother about you lying to me like this! Me : Sure. Goodbye. She did tell my mother that I lied to her and refused to help her but after I explained her issue to my mom (Who's also quite knowledgeable about tech) she understood that I didn't. TL;DR Aunt reads that you can download an app to add more storage to your phone. I tell her that you can't. Calls me a liar. [link] [comments]  |
| Of course it's your fault, you're incompetent Posted: 30 Dec 2019 01:37 PM PST Oh boy. So I've been in the IT field for nearly a year now and I love it. But sometimes, it makes my brain hurt. Take this situation for example: For my line of work, we provide technical support to technicians dispatched to various job sites across the country, dealing with networking equipment my employers have placed on site for the customer. I don't want to get too far into details, as I know some of my colleagues are on here fairly regularly. One day, my boss gave me an escalation to handle which I was pretty excited for, because it was one of the first times I'd been trusted to handle a site escalation from beginning to end. We dispatch a tech who originally says he'll show up on site Saturday morning (boo), but turns up on site Friday afternoon instead (yay!). Before we get down to business, my tech tells me he called the customer's 3rd party IT support per his ticket to let him know he is on site. This is important to remember: we HAVE to check in, otherwise everyone flips out. So, I work with my tech and we can't figure out what the heck is going on. I can only reach half of the equipment on site, the rest of the site is offline to me. We check the other half of the site, and it turns out all the equipment is communicating locally across half the site...so it's like north Korea is communicating with itself and South Korea is doing the same, but north and south refuse to connect to each other for some reason. We've had issues on this site in the past, and when the client's 3rd party spoke to our tech he mentioned potential up conflicts. Crap. So we run out of time as the business is closing and decide to reschedule for another day. Since 3rd party mentioned up conflicts, I reached out to them directly to try and coordinate a day I can have my tech go back out and I can also conference in 3rd party as well since it's their Network. I came back to work Monday to chaos. Somehow my request for a conference call got twisted into we need to have their 3rd party on site, and in return it caused the customer to be upset as their 3rd party kept pointing fingers at us, and called me incompetent. Lovely. Fast forward a few days later, and I'm told we're going to do a site survey, yay! /S. Tech gets back on site. We're doing our thing and I'm looking at old notes from the last time we worked this site, and realize one of the ports on our switch was empty when it shouldn't have been. "No..it couldn't be..could it?" I wondered aloud. The tech looks around and noticed a cat 5 cable just laying on the ground with a bunch of other cat 5 cables, but twist tied to another piece of our equipment. Plugged that sucker into our switch and the other end into the device we used to have it in, and right away I can see the entire site again. My tech checks in with the customer who has been hovering over his shoulder every 10min, and the conversation goes something nlike this: C: so did you fix it? T: yep. C: well what was the problem?! T: someone unplugged out equipment from your network which is why we only saw half the site. C: must have been the last tech you sent out there. T: actually it seems like it might have been your it guy. We havent been out here in months, and he mentioned to me last week on the phone there were up conflicts. Looks like his solution was to just unplug us from your network instead. C: ... Tldr; 3rd party it calls us incompetent because he unplugged our equipment from their Network. [link] [comments]  |
| "That pesky brick wall is in the way" Posted: 30 Dec 2019 06:23 PM PST I work with Jumbotrons doing live events and permanent installs. Most techs in the A/V industry have very limited networking knowledge, I'm sure some of you have run into these guys. A few months ago I installed a Jumbotron and video switcher at a local college. The video screen is in an outside courtyard and the switcher is in a control room right next to the courtyard. They wanted to be able to see the screen when switching so we asked if we could put the switcher on their existing network so it could be controlled by a laptop. They had no problem with that, we also supplied them with a Microsoft Surface to control it with. I personally did the install and all went well. The control room and wifi are on two different VLANs so their IT guy setup a VPN so the switcher software could connect to the device. I taught their A/V guy how to run the switcher and then attended their first show, it went flawlessly. A few weeks later I got a call from their A/V guy saying the software was having issues connecting. I arrived on site, tested the software and it would connect but hang while loading the config files from the switcher. I opened up a command prompt and did a ping test, latency was in the 700-800ms range, I figured software wasn't happy about it. I plugged my laptop directly into the ethernet port on the switcher, ran a ping test and it was well under 1ms. I fired up the software and it connected just fine. The whole time the A/V guy was watching me and I explained everything I was doing. He was perfectly satisfied with latency being the issue and said he'd talk to the IT department about it. I didn't hear back from them for awhile. Two months later I get a call from one of our techs telling me they had an issue and asking if I could help him put. I say yes so he beeps in the guy in for a three-way call. It's a new A/V guy who wasn't there for the initial install. A/V Guy: The software tries to connect but it stalls Me: Does it start loading, then hang? A/V Guy: Yeah, looks like it. Me: Can you ping the switcher for me? A/V Guy: I don't have the gear in front of me, but that shouldn't matter. So I explain real quick that the gear isn't on the same VLAN and the latency from the VPN might be an issue. A/V Guy: OK, I'll run the test today. But can't you guys just modify the software so latency doesn't matter? Me: No, it's not our software. But if you plug directly into the switcher in the rack and it works, the problem is most likely latency in your network. A/V Guy: What about this other software on the Surface? Can you teach me how to use it? Me: That software was for the initial setup and was left there just in case a future tech might need to use it on a service call. A/V Guy: So can you tell me how to use it? Me: I'm really hesitant to do that because you can easily break the screen with it A/V Guy: (cheerfully) Okay, I'll figure out if its a latency issue and get back to you. The A/V Guy seemed satisfied with my response and was beginning the end of call pleasantries, then my other tech jumped in. My Tech: Yeah, so just stop using wifi and run a wired connection and you'll be good. I muted my phone and just sighed. The call ended with the IT Guy more confused than he was 30 seconds ago. Did my guy not hear ANY of the conversation? After the call ended I immediately called my tech and told him that what he'd just said was wrong, wifi works just fine if latency is low. I quickly explained what a VLAN is and his response was "That's stupid" and then I explained why they are used and he seemed ok with that. I then explained what a VPN is and how it's being used, he seemed ok with that too. But at the end of the call he said, "Yeah, but it'd be easier if they just ran a wire". Me: "Yeah, but that's not what they want, and that pesky brick wall is in the way" A couple days later I scheduled an appointment with the new A/V guy and went there to meet him. Turns out, the old A/V guy had left, and left no documentation. The new guy was stuck figuring everything out himself, he was very nice and was ready to learn as much as he could. I showed him how to do basic repairs, showed him how to do a ping test, and what the numbers mean, showed him the basics of the switcher, and downloaded the manual for him. I also explained to him what a VLAN is and told him that he might want to ask the IT department if they'd setup a rule to allow that Surface to talk to the switcher without a VPN. It's been a few months and I haven't heard from them. [link] [comments]  |
| Her Router Couldn’t Record Movies... Posted: 30 Dec 2019 04:09 PM PST On mobile. Please forgive my sins for formatting. Working for a major Cable/Internet Provider Call Center. Let's call it Digital Blue. $ : Me Client: Poor Lady Phone Rings! $: Hey! Thanks so much for calling into Digital Blue! My name is $. How can I make your day better? Client: H-hey! I...this is a weird situation (your situation is the same as the next 30 people I'm going to speak to today. No it's not). I got 3 cottages. I rent out 2. In all of the cottages, the Routers went out. $: (Uh oh. This sounds like an outage or someone maybe did an oopsie and reset their network key back to default). That's not good! I'm glad you called! Let's start with your location and work outward. We go through the troubleshooting as normal. All wireless devices affected. She's clearly getting anxious. Client: It takes forever to load! A-and...a-a-and...and one of my tenants hasn't been able to tape her shows! Her router is busted too! $: (Kindly) Madam that's not a router situation. That sounds like her cable box. Client : (Innocently) But she has a Router... She uses [competitor company] to record her shows and she has a router from Digital Blue. $ : Routers have nothing to do with recording shows or anything cable related. They handle wifi my love. Client: [Long Silent Pause...you could hear a pen drop from down the road]. Client: ... are you sure? (Easiest way to get under my skin. I work in the field. You don't know what a modem is. How are you going to ask if I'm sure about this?) $ : Positive ma'am. Your router is how you connect to wifi. If she can't do something relating her shows, she would need to contact her service provider for her cable. Client : Wait... so... she used her cable to use internet? $ : No ma'am. Router = Wifi. Cable Box = Cable. Even if she had something that can record shows using internet (like OnDemand), the cable would need to be provided by Digital Blue for us to troubleshoot. If our internet is working fine, the best thing would be to give [competitor] a call. We went at this for almost 5 minutes. I had to reassure her that internet is how you check email, go on YouTube, etc. Cable is for...cable. Tv shows y'know? Client : Now I'm getting confused. (NOW!?) I'll call her back and see what she's talking about. We ended up sending her a technician because she got so lost in troubleshooting I couldn't bring her back. TL:DR Routers record shows and Cable Boxes work for every company. - Lady couldn't be more than 45years old. This wasn't a case of old age. This was a case of bliss ignorance. I hope she gets it fixed for her tenants. [link] [comments]  |
| How to use a phone: the basics Posted: 30 Dec 2019 09:24 AM PST Happened just yesterday. On top of working on people's computers and general calls for troubleshooting, we also fix problems on a wide variety of tech. This should not have been a problem... Co-worker: $, customer: Cx $: Hello! What brings you in today? Cx: my phone isn't able to receive calls -She hands my co-worker a Google Pixel. Which, at first, seems to not power on $: give me one moment, I'm going to bring it to the back -not even halfway through walking back, he held the power button for a few seconds. The phone was off off.. $: general profanites: My co-worker loves the job but can be fed up with the... lack of knowledge.. of some of the stuff that comes in -$ walks back up, completely turning off his frustrated tone and goes to his sweet and kind customer voice Cx: Oh! I knew it was off, I was wondering why it wouldn't get calls though that would send to my watch? -$ explains that you need to have the phone on, cause the watch can't get calls on its own, it has to have the phone on Cx, abruptly: oh, huh, well okay, thank you Some time passes.. customer service will give us returns that, if in good enough condition, our IT group will check, verify if working, and resell. The same co-worker, after working with clients, is working on the returns. He holds a stub. Shows it to our boss. He starts cracking up. Shows it to the repair guy. He's laughing. Shows the stub to another co-worker, they start laughing. In my mind, I simply wonder what could possibly be on that stub that could be so funny that looking at it is making EVERYONE laugh??? Her watch was returned. With returns they give basic info for inventory, and on the same stub, there are also notes of why it was returned. With the notes of her own words saying "Won't receive calls when phone is off" TL;DR-: our entire department was laughing at a piece of paper due to the reason this sub is alive: human.. ignorance :) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Dec 2019 09:10 AM PST (Yes I know I am mispronouncing "GIF", it works better for my punny title) We are in the process of migrating to SharePoint. I turned our front page into a tutorial of sorts, using text and GIFs to show users how to click on the star to follow sites, among other things. One user calls me back and asks "What do I do here?" I go and look at their screen, blink, and say: "You just follow the instructions. Go click on the star to follow the Team Site". She proceeds to try to click ON THE GIF itself. "See, it's not working?" "That's the animation showing you what to click on. You're supposed to go click on the actual button" She tries clicking on the animation again, and again. In attempt to try to guide the user to figure this out for themselves... "That's still just the animation telling you what to do." She moves her cursor slowly around the page aimlessly, tries scrolling down some, then back up and just shrugs like she hasn't got a clue. Now, the GIF had things in it like, our Team Site logo and everything. All she had to do was look at the animation and look at where the button was in relation to everything else. You can see our logo, the SharePoint "Team Site" header, and everything in the GIF. Common sense would tell you - Oh, the button is RIGHT THERE, next to where it says TEAM SITE, and go click on the actual button. I tried explaining that - "This animation, it's a screen capture of our site. So, you should be able to look at this animation, and figure out where the button is on the page." She's still not getting it, and continues to wander her cursor around aimlessly. I sigh and shake my head, and point to it with my finger. "The button is right there" I just can't understand how people are this oblivious. You try to go the extra mile to train people how to do things for themselves and it's never good enough. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Dec 2019 06:43 AM PST TL;DR ignoring error messages can make you crash and burn 20 years ago $me: obvious $sysadmin: has had better days RINNGGGG $me: "Hello, this is $me, what can we do for you?" $sysadmin (full panic mode): "WE HAVE A PROBLEM CAN YOU PLEASE COME DIRECTLY EVERYTHING IS BROKEN!!!!" $me: "Whoa whoa whoa, what is going on there?" $sysadmin: "We get messages all over the place that the file cannot be read or written" This. is. bad. $me: "Ok, I'll tell the bossman, I just hope we have a replacement harddisk, this sounds like it is on its way out" $sysadmin:"Yes, that might be the case. We have seen a few messages before but now they are coming very fast" Ah, and you thought it would go away by itself. $me: "From what day is the last backup?" $sysadmin: "Oh you can't simply recover the files like we always do whenever one is deleted?" $me: "Nope, by the time it is giving this message you ran out of options." $sysadmin: "oh cr*p. Listen, when you come over can you bring a tape drive as well?" The perfect storm. I knew it $me: "You have a <smaller model connected to a workstation with <#$&\^&\^$# practically unusable backup software> isn't it?" $sysadmin: "Yes, you remembered?" $me: "No, I am taking notes on visits. I hope we still have one lying around in the storage somewhere." $me: "Make everyone save their work to the workstations, NOT on the network. The less data is flowing on that disk, the better. yes, I know half of them are diskless but they have a floppy drive. I am dead serious, NOT on the network." And off I went with disk and a slightly dented tapedrive of the right model. Pray, just pray it will read tapes... On arrival: $server: "I am not happy at all, if the disk is dying any further I will just crash and burn and make your life miserable!!! Also, cannot read files!!!" Righty, this looks like I cannot even bring it down safely. Now I know why I also brought another server of the same setup (mind you, this is white-box stuff, homebuild quality machines). $me: "It looks like we'll have to copy everything over the network. It is not safe to bring the server down. Send everybody home. Now." $sysadmin: "But..." $me: "Now" So, wake up the other server, connect, and start a copy action that promptly halts: "cannot copy file, skip, Y/N?" This is going to be a long day. After everything was copied over. Down the original server. Power off. Just to see if my gut feeling was right, power on. "ROM BASIC. SYSTEM HALTED". Yep, as dead as a doornail, that disk. Restore time. As not hoped, but expected, no backup of the boot area. Nice, install from scratch, do a basic setup so at least we have a filesystem that we can restore to. Power down, clone boot area. Save to CDROM, label it "Disaster Recovery disk, do NOT throw away!" Power on, connect the tapedrive to the workstation (fingers crossed). WHIRRRR, it works!!! Restore backup to a different area. After that copy the files back with NO OVERWRITE NEWER. Time to find a place to sleep, this will handle itself. Next day, after everything was said and done, it turns out the fallout is just 10 files corrupted, 4 of which can be recovered. $me: "Ok, you have really dodged the canonball this time. How about we sit down and get you a proper setup?" $sysadmin: "I think after this incident we might get a better budget from the directors than last time." $me: "You don't say" So a branded properly outfitted server with RAID5 storage, LTO tape drive and a suitable UPS were ordered. In the process we got rid of <#$&^&^$# practically unusable backup software> as well, replaced it with something decent. [link] [comments]  |
| My first encounter as a first-line agent (ancient history) Posted: 30 Dec 2019 01:01 PM PST First, the basics; English is not my native language, so apologies for any grammar or spelling-errors. *TLDR at the end* many years ago, specifically the year of 2003, i started as an apprentice "ICT worker" meaning i started as a first-line agent. Now, the apprenticeship was part of the official school system where i live, so it's more of a "2-year experience program". My apprenticeship was with a Municipality, so my expectations for the technical level of the users were what i now consider to be "beyond the limits of reality", but that is perhaps something we've all been through. ----- I arrived early on my first day, to have some time to look around the premise, "showing initiative" and all that stuff that managers seem to like. After a quick tour on my own for the available areas in the Town Hall, i walk towards the IT-department after a chat with the HR department who pointed me in the right direction. Now, i still had 15 minutes left before my "actual start-time" and i was meant to be met by the techie meant to be my supervisor by the "reception area" of the IT-department. As i enter the waiting-area, i see a man walking towards me with a determined look on his face. $Me = Me (swear-words altered...) $User; For EFFs sake, you miserable little schnit, what the effing frell did you do, and why can't you just get my effing mobile working right this effing instant ? $Me; wha? uh, come again? $User; you idiot, you shut off my phone, get it working right effing now!! --- Now at this point, i should mention that the user was getting red-faced and was waiving his arms around, showing his mobile and was "up in my face". $Me; uhm, i don't know anything abou... --- Now a few heads are popping out from doors down the hallway, trying to see what is going on. Enter $ITM $User; This moron disabled my mobile and is refusing to turn it on again!! --- $ITM takes a moment, looks at $User, then to me and back to the user before he tells me to go meet $Sup a few doors down the hallway, and for $User to come into his office. At this point i'm confused, i have never before spoken to any of the people so far and have no knowledge of what the user was talking about so i was worried i might be in for a major suprise as for my tasks in the IT-department from day 1. As i came to the office of $Sup, i knocked on the door while glancing towards the office of $ITM, still trying to figure out what the frell was going on. $Sup; so, i hear you've encountered $User allready, and on your first day nonetheless... $Me; Yeah.... did i do something wrong or, what was his deal ? $Sup; Well... Here's the thing, $User hadn't paid his portion of the bill for the subscription, so the vendor shut off his mobile. $Me; So, this is not something i should be dealing with ? $Sup; no, next time he comes by, send him straight to $ITM and let him deal with him. --- After this encounter, $User was banned from entering the IT-department and was given a formal warning by HR. When $ITM took $User into his office, it turned out it was not to sort out his issues with the mobile, but to give $user a reaming that would make even the most experienced sailors learn new words and blush. My later encounters with $User were more civil, but he also tried his very best to get help from anyone BUT the IT-department for a whole year afterwards. ---------------------------- TL:DR ---------------- On my very first day as an apprentice IT-worker, before i even had officially started, i got reamed by a user because his mobile-subscription was turned off because he hadn't paid his bill. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Dec 2019 05:48 AM PST Merry Christmas everyone and a happy new year. I just got back into the office after a week off. I had a great time of eating turkey and drinking scotch, but now it's back to the grind of fixing email problems and drinking scotch. So, as it happens, I'm sort of the unofficial email admin for my organization. We're a global operation with tens of thousands of users, my location has about five thousand and I'm the only one with admin access to the mail servers in my location. Recently the org had changed the structure of the IT and put into place a new mail admin team but didn't quite take away the rights of the old team. So that leaves me to take care of the local mail problems under the table. Apparently, the new mail team had decided to change the basic way that we manage the distribution groups. We had it in such a way that certain end users with elevated rights could add and remove users from the lists that they administer. This was both good and bad for reasons that I won't go into now. The gist of this is: new mail team decided to take away this tried and true system and migrate it to something else that nobody really knows, including me and everyone else in IT. In the process, the new mail team has succeeded in deleting every member from every single distribution group in use except if those members were external email addresses. Now, this is a big deal because our internal communications team uses distribution groups to send critical information around (like messages saying we can all go home early on New Year's Eve). Needless to say, it doesn't look like I'll be going home early tomorrow. At least I had the forethought to put the scotch in my desk drawer. [link] [comments]  |
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