"I think it's a Windows 10 phone?" Tech Support |
- "I think it's a Windows 10 phone?"
- Killing them not so softly, part 3
- All hail the backups
- The Inexperienced, Impulsive User
- I laughed in a customers face for the first time today
- "Set the audio output to have audio output"
| "I think it's a Windows 10 phone?" Posted: 29 Dec 2019 12:29 PM PST This happened today. I'm internal tier 1 tech support at a large telecom. I was on the phone with a user who got a new phone, and thus needed to re-register her token app to get on the VPN. With users who were technically competent, this a very easy process, taking maybe 5 minutes. This exchange takes place around minute 20, after I finally convinced her that she could log into her computer and get to her email without already being on the VPN. We eventually made it to the home stretch: the actual registration process. Our characters: Me - yours truly User - sweet old lady who knows nothing about technology Son - you'll find out later Me: "Now you need to select which type of phone you have. You'll need to choose 'iOS' for an iPhone, or Android or Windows Phone if you have one of those." User: "I think I have a Windows Phone, what's the difference between Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile?" Me: "..." Me: "If you have a Windows phone you would select the mobile one." User: calls out to who I'm guessing is her son "Hey what type of phone did I get? A Windows 10 phone?" Son: audibly sighs "An iPhone 10R." User: "It's an iPhone 10R. Which one should I choose again?" TL;DR: User mistakes a late-model iPhone for a Windows phone. [link] [comments]  |
| Killing them not so softly, part 3 Posted: 29 Dec 2019 08:49 PM PST This is a multi-part series about my life as a cybersecurity consultant. I've been doing third party vendor assessments for a client and we're going to have to fire some of them. So it goes. I've picked five vendors who pose Krebsworthy risks to the privacy of my client's millions of customers. I understand that I'm ruining a bunch of people's days with this news, so I'm keeping myself busy drafting and redrafting the "It's not you, it's me. No, it's really you. Get out" email. I'm also trying to work out all the angles here. I know the following:
I'm feeling like a bus mechanic here. Odds are, I'm going to see the underside of a bus soon. I take the coward's path, send the list to Client_Director with some proposed language around the emails. I have to travel for a week long engagement doing a forklift to the cloud, so I pack and prepare for an early flight to a non-descript suburb. Not enough hours later, I'm somewhere between the jetway and the rental car counter when I think to turn airplane mode off. My phone reconnects me and multiple communication channels tell me something's up. The firing emails went out, listing me as the point of contact. I've got emails, texts and voicemails from two vendors demanding explanations. I drive my new, bland rental car to a bland hotel. I find myself walking to a chain restaurant and ordering greasy food and a few too many drinks. Despite the restaurant's claim to have excellent cocktails, my Depression-Era cocktail merely brings more depression. Somehow they made an old-fashioned taste like Robitussin. I read a book while ignoring my phone. I've been accused of having resting bitch-face, so people tend to leave me alone. The chirpy waitron wants to have a conversation with me. I'd love to give them a drink order, but I don't want to risk another cocktail. All their beer is custom brewed for them, so I'm afraid they did to an IPA. They probably can't screw up whiskey. I order the simplest possible order, a bourbon, neat. That sends chirpy away. I don't feel like dealing with the rejected vendors, so I pull out my laptop and read over the 'push everything to the cloud' project. I'm there for security guidance, so I've been invited to a bunch of meetings, but no clear responsibilities or deliverables. Looks like the project's been going on for a few weeks, judging by the email chains with lots of status reports. I delve a bit deeper. It seems that someone has taken "Forklift our shit to the cloud" too literally. They're replicating everything. Instead of moving individual virtual machines, they're standing up virtual servers that host other virtual machines. There are other odd decisions- moving all authentication to a central source as a part of the rollout. This isn't a rollout. It's an orgy designed by multiple committees. My drink shows up. It's a brown liquid in crushed ice. I sigh and start rubbing my temples. me:"Please, no. I got up early this morning, schlepped myself to the airport, spent hours in a metal tube with the rest of humanity to be flung here. I'm in an untenable position at work and I can't even drink my sorrows away properly." me(pointing at the drink):"Neat. Glass, bourbon, air. That's it" My staring at Waitron has them apologizing profusely and backing off quickly. I'm in a foul mood, so I read my messages from two of the vendors we fired. First one just sent an email, followed by a meeting request. Fine. The second one sent me three emails, each with a different theme. First they started with a 'how could you do this to us' to an 'please explain, exactly what we did wrong' to 'if you don't retract, we're going to institute legal action'. Multiple texts demanding a response appear after the second email and continue until I landed. This is going to be a painful week. An almost overfilled glass of bourbon shows up. I'm thankful for the little things. I finish my drink, perhaps repeat a few times, overtip the waiter and make my way back to the hotel. For a decent hotel chain, they must make their comforters out of recycled plastic bottles- they're abrasive and static-y. I carefully fold up the offending material and put it in the closet. Tomorrow's going to suck. to be continued... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Dec 2019 02:10 AM PST This happened a while ago, but not that long ago. Let's say 6 years ago. I was chilling in my office, air conditioning in full blast, trying to fix the backup server that was acting up. I was working for a small city hall. The phone rings "well another one that forgot the password or someone got locked out of the account?" my mind wondered. Boy, oh boy I was wrong! It was the accountant: Acc - I was cleaning my Word files... Me - ok... Acc - And there was a bunch of folders that where empty. Me - Ok... (Connecting to the backup server) Acc - And then I tried to reorganise my Excel files, and some folders where empty, so I deleted them, and some other folders are missing! I need those files! They are very important files. Me - Ok, so which folders are missing. Acc - Can you please remote in and I show you! I open VNC, connect to the computer, tell him that he can really just tell me which folder, but alas! here I am connected to the PC trying to ask which folder were missing again. The accountant opens Word, befuddled I just watch. He presses File, Open... and, as soon as the dialog opens, goes: - See! Me - not really... Acc - so I was cleaning my Word files. And some of the folder are empty, see! NO YOU DIDN'T! Acc - so I deleted them! (Right click, delete, I press esc at the last available second!) Me - Stop. Wait so explain to me again what you did. In your own words. Acc - so I was cleaning old files out of Word, and some of the folders where empty... So i deleted them. Me - go on. Acc - Then I went in Excel (opens Excel, File, Open...) to do the same thing and I cannot find the right folders! See! The system is broken! Me thinking "your head is broken" and "hope the backup didn't act up on this server last night" - give me 10 minutes and I'll try and fish them from the backups, mind that you lost any work you did during the day. Backups run nightly. Don't do anything else please! Luckily backups were good. I called back to tell the file were back and to tell him that the "Open..." dialog is filtered so to not trust that when reordering his files trying to go on with my day. He stops me, opens Word again, File, Open... - See this folder is empty, I want to delete it. Me - NO!! Explain again that Word filter the results, he sees only Word files, but there might be other files there. Me - Just, next time call us before and we will do it together. Ok? Acc - Ok, thank you! Fast forward 2 months, I am not working there anymore but I get a message from a former colleague unrelated to this, but the itch is there so I just ask. Apparently it happened again. Twice. In a year. Then the accountant went into retirement. (If there are some errors please tell me, sorry for the English, not my first language, if formatting is wrong I'll check as soon as I get to a computer. Hope you liked it) [link] [comments]  |
| The Inexperienced, Impulsive User Posted: 29 Dec 2019 10:00 PM PST *On mobile, don't kill me for formatting First, some background: I'm a devops engineer. I have lunch with my dad and sister occasionally. My dad is a software engineer and has been a sysadmin, database admin, and a lot of other things in his 40+ year career. My sister didn't go into programming, she is in more of the media communications sector. Basically, she doesn't know a lot about computers. The company she works for has really started cracking down on their security and she hates that she can't do anything she wants anymore, so she has begun to take her security/privilege problems into her own hands. About a month ago, we were having lunch and she proceeds to tell a story about a computer problem she was having. This is her retelling of the conversation she had with tech support. Tech Support = TS Sister = S TS: "I've looked at your computer and I just can't figure out what is going on. Did you touch anything or download anything to your computer before this started happening?" S: "Oh, I just remembered, I did delete some things from a folder." TS: "uhh, okay, which folder?" S: "It was called local, and it was in a folder called appdata" I have no idea what tech support guy's response was, but I would love to know. Pretty sure they had to re-install windows or re-image her computer to fix the problem. After my dad and I stopped laughing, we tried to convey to her that you never delete things from your appdata folder unless you know what you're doing. Her response was that she had read an article that told her to do it to fix one of her other problems. We laughed it off and figured she had learned from her mistake. A few days ago, we reconvened for lunch. My dad and I were ranting about One Drive pop ups on Windows 10 which somehow led to my sister bringing up her company's newest security change. S = Sister D = Dad S: "Ugh my company has made the company website the start up page in our browsers, so whenever I open my browser, the company webpage comes up instead of Google." Me and D: nod, because that's pretty standard for company practices S: "I fixed it though, I just went into my Registry Editor and changed it. " Me and D: look at each other in confusion Me: coming to understand what actually happened "wait... you went into regedit?" S: "yeah, I went in and deleted some things." Me and D: in unison "What?!" S: "yeah, I googled what to do to make it stop, and I found an article on what to delete. So now, whenever they put out a new update, I go in there and delete the registry things again." Me and D: in unison, again "What?!" Me: "You don't just go into regedit and change stuff when you don't know what you're doing." S: "uhh, the article told me exactly what to do, and everything is fine, nothing bad has happened." Me and D: in unison (we should start a singing group or something because we were perfectly in sync that day) "Yet!" S: "I mean, why would they do that anyway? It's so annoying. No one wants to go to the company website when they open their browser." Me: "Se-cur-i-ty" Dad: tries to explain why a company would want their employees to go directly to their hosted site (that's probably behind a firewall and includes all of their security practices) rather than MSN or Yahoo S: "yeah, well, it's still dumb and I already fixed it, so, problem solved." END OF STORY TIME At this time, I feel we should all bow our heads in a moment of silence for the poor guy who has to fix her mess when shit inevitably hits the fan. I feel like there should be some anonymous tip line for walking tech support nightmares. [link] [comments]  |
| I laughed in a customers face for the first time today Posted: 29 Dec 2019 01:57 PM PST I'll keep this short cause I'm on mobile and still at work lmaoo I work at a phone retail store and deal with phone/tv/internet/cellular service from a specific provider. A customer just walked in and asked us why his fathers internet was so slow considering we provide fiber optics options. I ask him where his father is located and he tells me a very rural area. I let him know that his father probably has the throttled internet package that's mainly used for farms/middle of nowhere because his area doesn't have the fiber optics installed in the area yet but I'll check anyways. Turns out his fathers internet was throttled to less than 1 mbps. It's a stupid service but it's available lol. Customer: "what do you mean throttled?!" Me: "when areas do not have the proper hardware installed we provide a throttled option for basic internet uses." Customer: "....uh that's not correct. Nowhere throttled speeds anymore" My manager chimes in: "What? everyone throttles speeds. That's how this business works" Customer: smirks " NO!? They don't throttle speeds in JAPAN!" We start laughing. Me: "........ sir this is Canada" Customer: "I KNOW that!! I'm saying japan don't throttle their internet so WHY is my fathers internet throttled!!" Me, still laughing: "sir japan has nothing to do with Canadian internet providers, I don't know what point you're trying to make here" Customer: "then why can they get ultra fast speeds in Japan while my FATHER is getting 0.92 mbps?????" My manager, also laughing: "because they're a completely different country with different companies and software????" At some point during the interaction he realized he was starting to look like a fool so he stopped arguing. We let him know he should probably check out other providers since our specific company couldn't give him the speeds he was looking for at the price he wanted and he thanked us and left. Gotta love retail tech support. [link] [comments]  |
| "Set the audio output to have audio output" Posted: 29 Dec 2019 02:38 PM PST LTLFTP and that stuff, but here goes I guess. I don't actually work in IT, but I feel like this belongs here, sorry if it doesn't Cast: $me: obvious, knows a lot about software stuff $friend: knows a lot about hardware stuff (he had to explain to me how a GPU clock works) $audiosoftware: cool virtual audio mixer that we use $pc: $friend's main gaming PC $otherpc: $friend's random Linux box that he uses to play music while he plays So one day $friend upgraded his $audiosoftware I get a message from $friend:
now I've read enough TFTS to know how to IT something
context: he had $audiosoftware set up so that his game audio and $otherpc audio would go to both his headphones and speakers.
repeat for a few minutes
friend sends an ultra-hd screenshot I scroll around it on my 1080p screen, then respond:
you see, $friend had enabled $otherpc's output to his headphones, but he forgot to do it to his headphones
TL;DR: friend updated audio mixer software, it reset his setup, and he forgot to output to speakers. [link] [comments]  |
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