In Which Our Hero Learns "Advice" Does Not Mean What He Thinks It Means Tech Support |
- In Which Our Hero Learns "Advice" Does Not Mean What He Thinks It Means
- Should I pull the black cord, the blue cord, or the yellow one?
- "I played with my pigtail last night"
- of sheets
- It's a series of tubes
- Computer triggering allergies
- On the subject of bad ideas
- I need permission to edit again
| In Which Our Hero Learns "Advice" Does Not Mean What He Thinks It Means Posted: 27 Feb 2020 08:55 PM PST As I was browsing the amazing stories this sub posts every single day, my mind wandered a bit and starting categorizing the tales. I was interested in the concept that, while the details of our experiences are all unique, the "plot", as it were, is commonly shared. Like Avatar and Fern Gully, there are common strands of tech support DNA woven through each of our lives, and it's definitely one of the stronger bonds that ties our cultural group together. That's a long way of saying: one of the common categories is when our hero is taught an important lesson--unintentionally--by a user, and that reminded me of a story: Day 0
Day 3
And that's the story of how I learned that "advice", in the tech world, usually actually means "provide justification for my previously-chosen decision". [link] [comments]  |
| Should I pull the black cord, the blue cord, or the yellow one? Posted: 27 Feb 2020 08:25 PM PST Dramatis Personae: Me: tier one helpdesk employee Luddite: a near-retiree that is apparently old enough to have lived in the pre-electricity USA. 15 seconds away from break time on a tier one tech support line the dreaded ding enters my ear. Me: Helpdesk, it's Sutarmekeg. Luddite: I can't log in to my desk phone after I changed my password. Me: checks Active Directory Well, your account's not locked and I don't see any bad password attempts on it. Are you already logged in to your computer? Luddite: Yes, but the problem's not my computer, it's my phone. Me: OK... let's start fresh. Please disconnect the power to the phone, wait 20 seconds, and then plug it back in. Luddite: Which cable? Me: The power cable. Luddite: Wrassles some cables. I don't know which one to pull out and they all look stuck! Me: Rather than mess with the cables at the outlet, it might be easier to just disconnect the power cord from the back of the phone. Luddite: I am looking at the back of the phone. Is it the black cord, the blue cord, or the yellow one? Me: Ma'am, the colour of the cable isn't an indication of the function. If you're not sure, just follow the cord from the phone to the wall, and if it ends in a standard two-prong or three-prong plug, then you know you've got the right one, please disconnect it. Luddite: Well, I'm really not sure which one, and they all seem hard to get out. Me. Hold on... you are logged in to your computer, I'll send you a message via Lync that has a diagram. Luddite: Should I unplug the yellow one? Me: No, you should unplug the one indicated in the diagram I sent you. Luddite: I didn't get your message, I'm not connected to the VPN yet. Me: Ok, sign in to the VPN, I'll send you the message again, and we'll get to the bottom of this. Luddite: I can't connect to the VPN! Me: Are you getting any sort of error message? Luddite: It says something about unsuccessful domain name resolution. Me: Can you get to any web page? Luddite: I don't know what you mean. Me: Hold on, I'll see if I can connect. remotes in with the shittiest remote support tool in the world Me: No wonder you can't log in, you've got your username there instead of the VPN server. I'll enter that for you, and it'll be remembered for next time. Please log in. Luddite: logs in Me: With the tool I used to connect, it's going to drop my connection, and I won't be able to connect for ten or so minutes until the relay updates, but that won't be a problem, I'm sending you the diagram again. Luddite: I can't get it. Me: What do you see? It might say 'open' or 'save'. Choose 'open' if you can. Luddite: It doesn't do anything. Me: scratches head Can you try again? Luddite: It still doesn't do anything. Me: I'll tell you what. I'll just email you the same thing. Luddite: That's great, I know how email works! Me: Ok, it should be there now. Luddite: How do I open it? Me: It should just appear on the right when you click on the email I sent. Luddite: It doesn't do anything. Me: glances at the clock, longing for the start of my now way too late in the day to take a break break. Let me try and connect again. Sure enough, sufficient time had passed and I was able to connect. clicks email. There it is. You can clearly see the cable you need to disconnect in the diagram. Does this match what you see on your phone? Luddite: Yes. Me: Ok, disconnect the power cable. Luddite: And then do I plug it back in again? Me: Luddite: It says 'bad username or password'. Me: checks active directory Your account's fine, and no incorrect passwords have hit. What is the username you're trying to log in with? Luddite: It's $u-s-e-r-a-m-e. Me: I see. Well that's why you can't log in. Try $u-s-e-r-n-a-m-e. Luddite Oh! That works! Me: This lady has been using a computer for work every day for at least ten years, and I would hope that she owns a lamp or other sort of device that plugs into a wall but she couldn't figure out what cord to yank from her phone. [link] [comments]  |
| "I played with my pigtail last night" Posted: 27 Feb 2020 03:22 PM PST So this was back in 2001 when I worked for a holding company and was running desktop tech support along with one other person for 11 banks. I was at one branch troubleshooting a loan officer's laptop which had one of those PCMCIA Ethernet adapters with an attachable dongle for the actual RJ-45 port. The dongle had snapped (as they do) though if you put pressure on it, it worked. I told him if he had to, put pressure on it to get it to work but we were going to need to get him a new one. This was an exact transcription of a voicemail he sent to me that evening. I remember putting this in my Palm Pilot as I giggled: "I played with my pigtail last night. I jiggled the part that was bent and it seemed to work ok. When it does come (the new pigtail) I'll let you know." [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Feb 2020 01:18 AM PST TL;DR because cleaning sheets is taking too much time. $me obvious $FinEM Finance Employee $FinTL Finance Team Lead $OffS Office Suite software, $Sprs is part of that one $SprS Spreadsheet Software, we all know which one $FinS Financial Software $FinTL:"Hi $me, we seem to have an issue with overall slowness in our department. We already have been to the network team, the storage team, the server team, the software team but nobody seems to know what is going on." $me: "Ok, what has been tried so far? I mean they have done some troubleshooting, right?" $FinTL:"Yes, the problem is it comes and goes, it is not always at the same time of day and there's no specific files or programs that can be slow." $me:"When was the last time the network hardware was checked?" $FinTL:"About 2 months ago they changed out the department switch with a brand new one, it has not helped." $me:"When was the last time $OffS was updated?" $FinTL:"We are running the standard configuration so we have the latest updates." And so I go to work. I check and verify connectivity, patchlevel, errorlogs, hardware, whatever else. All check out fine basically. I do notice an overall bloatness of some of the spreadsheets however. $me:"Right now there is no problem it seems. Can you call me directly when things go wrong?" $FinTL:"I surely will." ********* 2 days later ***** RINGGGGG $FinEM:"Hello $me? I was told to call you when we have slowness?" $me:"Be right over" Sure enough, opening files or in general anything on the network has slowed to a crawl. $me:"Show me what you are working on right now." $FinEM:"I am working on this spreadsheet right here, it imports data from $FinS which we then process into reports." I notice something odd, but can't directly grasp what it is. Hang on, what the .... $me:"Ummm can you explain why you are working in 10-year-old version of $SprsS???" $FinEM:"That is what I need to use for my spreadsheets, otherwise I don't have the add-in for $FinS." Ah, the classic case of missing information. I walk over to $FinTL $me:"We have spoken about the hows and whys of this department. Is there anything else I should know?" $FinTL:"We are in a transition to a new version of $FinS because the current version does not want to run together with the latest version of $OffS. In particular, the add-in for $SprsS simply will not load and crash. Now this is not a real problem as we have a virtualized older version of $SprsS with the add-in in there. Other than that, you know better than I do, we are running out of ideas." $me:"I see. So that is running in a bubble, static, no updates are applied, whatever???" $FinTL:"Yes, that is how it's made." $me:"When was this built? Who has made this?" $FinTL:"About a year ago, by the then-hired-guns that were handling the software." I understand now why they were jettisoned a few months ago. I have a hunch of what is going on now. You see, the ten-year-old version had some serious bugs. One of which was, whenever you copy-pasted something, it would also try to copy the markup/layout but somehow fail and create new markup/layout profiles. This could go wrong quickly until the point a sheet would not open properly anymore because the limits on those profiles was reached. $me:"Can I have some of the spreadsheets that are truely problematic to test with?" $FinTL:"Well, most of them contain highly confidential info, we'll have to get you authorized in order to do so, that may take some time and effort." $me:"You want this solved?" $FinTL:"I see what you mean, on my way." I go and roll a package of some freeware cleanup tool, specially made for this kind of trouble. Additionally it will show and cleanup any non-existing/illegal references to external files/spreadsheets. $FinTL:"Sign here, here and here." $me: ***scribble, scribble, scribble***\* $FinTL:"You should be able to reach the financial reporting share now. Please do take care as not to break anything." I drag one of the smaller sheets through the tool. As expected, it is riddled with unnecessary markup/layout info. I click process and save. I am greeted with a new file size of several tens of kilobytes, whereas it was more than a megabyte before. Bingo. Then I realize I have not checked for external links yet. I check the same file for them. And I sit in awe. Not only does this have about 20 references to non-existing files, 2 or 3 of them reference another company name. That is when it sinks in. Because all links are checked, all those workstations are constantly trying to resolve server and domain names that simply do not exist on this network. Which causes a load of network traffic whenever one of these sheets is opened. $me:"$FinTL, can you come over please, I have something to show you" I demonstrate what I have found. $me:"And that is why things are slow. We have to do 3 things now: 1) update/patch the 10-year-old $SprsS inside the bubble, 2) add this tooling in that bubble so people can cleanup sheets by themself and 3) push the team that is responsible for the update of $FinS to get things done ASAP." $FinTL:"You are amazing!" $me:"I know, but thank you anyway." [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2020 08:09 AM PST Long time lurker, first time poster, but I had to get this story out here. I work for a MSP that provides IT services to clients. A majority of our clients are private practice medical clinics, but we have hands in quite a few other industries. Everyone needs a computer guy I guess. An employee of a client got authorization to work from home. The office manager supplied her with a laptop that had the practice management software preloaded and configured as it was used by a previous employee. I was called in to ensure that all of the installed software was configured properly and would work from her home.
With this being a medical clinic there are HIPAA regulations that have to be accounted for; thus I would need to encrypt the laptop and secure it with a unique password before tunneling it back to the office.
At this point I have a vague sense of what she wanted but the concept was so alien to me that I needed to further clarify. I start asking questions.
My though is confirmed. Somehow this person believes that a VPN tunnel lets her take the office network home with her. I can't even begin to think of where she heard that from because she has been around the proverbial block as it were. She has been employed in a few office environments and terminated from them all. I know because she has cropped up in two of our clients and did not last long in either. No matter though, these clients keep me employed so I need to appease her or face my boss's wrath. I obviously cannot do what she wants so I have to get her working somehow.
Well this just went south very fast. This person expects to work on the internet from her home with no internet service using a magical VPN thing that would bring the office wifi to her home without having to pay for anything. It was all I could do to keep from exploding in laughter. Granted, there are homes without internet access. Rural areas and what have you. Usually the people that inhabit these homes have no knowledge on how internet works either. What gets me is that this person was trying to use technical terms that she overhead and pieced together logic that she believes would make sense; then tries to get out of paying for essential services using that logic. I explain that the internet doesn't work like that and she would need to purchase service from a provider in her area. Before I could help her pick out a suitable provider, she interjects saying that she shouldn't have to pay for service just to work from home and that the company should pay for it. I now understand why this person can't keep employment. Regardless, I informed her that if she wanted the practice to pay for it that she would have to work that out with the office manager as we have no say on this issue. Once she had her internet though the laptop would work just fine. Turns out she didn't stick around much longer there either... Edit: grammar [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2020 12:54 PM PST I've been working IT for years and I thought I had seen/ heard it all but this one is a new one on me. So at my current job the user calls in saying "Hi IT my computer is having some problems, last night I was working from home and I started to smell perfume, I thought maybe it was my daughter but I quickly realized the smell was coming from my computer. I'm not sure where or how perfume got on my computer but that's all I could smell and it was triggering my allergies I started to have sinus pressure, headaches, and sneezing. I cannot work this way and on top of everything I cant get it to work" I say "ok no problem my office is open if you would like to bring it by." The user arrives a little while later and sets the computer on my desk. I look the computer over and cant smell anything so thinking maybe the smell will happen if its running and producing heat. so I plug the laptop in and push the power button and nothing happens. I try a different plug and still nothing. While trying to get the computer turned on the user casually tells me she did try to clean it to get the smell to stop. I keep trying but cant get it to work. So I make the decision to give the user a loaner computer while I got a new permanent one to use so they can get back to work while I did some more troubleshooting and get their new computer ready. While I got the loaner set up I asked the user how they "Cleaned" the computer. Before going any further I need to explain that if a user damages the computer intentionally we will give them a new one but their department covers the cost of the replacement. If its an accident we chalk it up to life happens and IT covers the cost and each employee signs an agreement when we give them the computer explaining that. Back to the story, The user says "well I started off just trying to wipe it off with a paper towel but when I realized that wasn't working and the smell was inside I opened the back of the laptop and used a spray cleaner and scour pad to get the "Dried on perfume" off." I open the case and to give you a small list of the broken things the motherboard is scratched all to hell, parts of the motherboard were bent, the SSD was only half seated but the screw holding it in place had been put back but because it was put in incorrectly when I took the SSD out it was visibly bent, the internal battery was there but was all unplugged from the motherboard and the connectors were gone. I really wish I was making this up because now I have to sit through a long meeting with my boss, HR, and their department head about how we will billing the department for a 700 dollar laptop. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2020 10:52 AM PST I was reading another post here and the line "He thanked me in the way people do when they think you're trying to take advantage of them" instantly brought to mind this story from my past. Years ago, one of my last acts as a sys admin for a company was entertaining a directive from the VP of sales. The VP of sales was also a member of the family who owned the company. We used a local MSP to develop and host the various company websites and they charged us appropriately. During my last 30 days of employment ( I quit with ample notice) VP decided that his nephew who was going to school for web design could design and host our websites for far less money than what MSP was charging. Reason wasn't going to work with a sales guy so I didn't even try. I was instructed to ask MSP for all of the current images, content, files etc for the host of websites for the companies under our umbrella. After my eyes got done rolling back in my head hard enough to spin all the way around I sent off an email to my contact at MSP. 10 minutes later my phone rings. Caller ID says it's the MSP. Shocker. Contact wasted no time telling me what I already knew. They were priced well inside the market for the area, that they've seen and heard this song and dance before and it never ends well, etc. I was not arguing. I've been there before. I agreed with MSP but I was told to do a thing and I was going it. Then MSP hit me with it.
With that, I went back to VP to tell him he would not be getting what he wanted out of MSP. For the remainder of my employment VP constantly hounded me to get MSP to give him what he wanted despite me turning over the info for my contact. I don't know how much more arguing they did back and forth after I left or if nephew ever did redesign the website. I didn't much care BUT after thinking about this story I did an ICANN lookup and the website isn't hosted with the same MSP so at least one thing changed. [link] [comments]  |
| I need permission to edit again Posted: 27 Feb 2020 11:23 AM PST Happened just now with a user that can be an ass at times and gets super needy over basic things... $me = me $goof = her $director1 = more tenured director $director2 = new director Part of this users job is managing some higher ups calender's, a new one came on recently so I gave her full permissions and added his calendar on her outlook. No biggie and shouldn't hear back for a while right? Wrong :( She sends in another ticket requesting permission to edit $director2's calendar again, perhaps she forgot I already did so earlier this week? $me: I recently gave you permission to edit on $director2's calendar, are you still able to do so?" $goof: Well I try to edit on his calendar and nothing happens so it seems I can't hmmmm did I mess up? I remote in and give her a call asking her to show me what meeting she is trying to edit, turns out it was one created by someone else! $me: This meeting has a different organizer, I set you up to have access to editing $director2 not $director1. $goof: But I should have access to his as well? Proceed to let her prove she can delete meetings off $director1's calendar and BOOM it works.... $me: Can you try and edit the meetings for me as well? Then the gears click in her head....it's a re-occurring meeting and she has to click on the highlighted recurrence button! $goof: ahh ohh ummm seems I'm dumb.....thank you for helping me solve this.... $me:.............Yeah no problem have a lovely day :))))) If you check my post history she's the same one that put her coffee cup on her laptops disk tray, then emailed the picture to us saying, "Who knew it came with a coffee warmer, so when do I get a new laptop?" [link] [comments]  |
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