Do you know what's a bad idea? White wallpapers Tech Support |
- Do you know what's a bad idea? White wallpapers
- I Reverse-Carded A Lawyer
- The Plastic Sword
- In which Our Hero saves the day because he thought to take a backup
- No pressure...
| Do you know what's a bad idea? White wallpapers Posted: 02 Nov 2020 02:48 AM PST
Working in a 2 man IT dept for a $7 billion company Marketing Manager outsourced all the heavy lifting to a design firm, they didn't really do much but take credit. IT Manager believed in insourcing, and that's what we (IT) did. They just did not get along due to philosophical differences. Marketing told me what they needed to ask $Design Firm to make a wallpaper. I advised resolution, file format, etc. It was made clear to me by IT Manager my role was to do as little as possible (had bigger fish to fry than a wallpaper). So marketing sent me the image. I told them to put it in a Jira job and I'd deploy it next time I did server patching on a weekend (as I could force restart workstations on a weekend- I was told all devices must have the wallpaper at the same time for consistency). The fateful weekend came around, I opened my Jira queue and got to work. I deployed the wallpaper, knowing it would take a bit of time to get deployed around all the workstations. After it was deployed, I realized the wallpaper was predominantly white. Do you know what else is white on a desktop? All the text on desktop icons. Fuckity fuckity fuckity fuckity. Called marketing manager - no surprise she didn't answer (once again heavy lifting outsourced). Called IT manager, explained what happened. "So you deployed the wallpaper, that marketing manager said must be done at the same time. You called Marketing Manager and she didn't answer. Not much else you can do. Just email me and big boss to cover your ass and we will direct all tickets to marketing on Monday" - I could hear the glee in his voice. On Monday, marketing got a lot of tickets. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Nov 2020 08:33 AM PST I've just hit ten years in the industry and I was reminded of something that happened to me about a year into my first tech support job. I was working for a level one Help Desk for lawyers and had been assigned a law firm that had a lawyer who was frequently difficult. He had very little patience for us and whenever he called us, he expected unrealistic things from us and had zero respect for our jobs. The second thing to note about this job is that it was in our contracts that we were allowed to record phone calls for training and defense purposes. Finally, the lawyer sweared a lot, but I will be replacing the SH swears with "ship". Our players:Me - Myself (and I) Me: "Thank you for calling Help Desk, how may I assist? It took me about 2 minutes, but I convinced him that I could connect on. Nothing seems wrong. Me: "Sir, I'm not seeing anything on your computer screen. Are you seeing anything wrong on your end?" At this point, DL hangs up on me. M: "What the hell was that?" By the time I start calling through the high priority tree to get someone to help DL, the Head of IT for the Law Firm has called M. I didn't hear the conversation, but M informed me that DL had reported to the Head of IT that I had been rude and unhelpful during DL's phone call. DL was, for whatever reason, clearly trying to get me fired. M simply said that he had the recording to the phone call and emailed it to the Head of IT. DL was banned from calling the Help Desk for nearly a year and I got a personal apology from the Head of IT for how DL treated me. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Nov 2020 07:35 AM PST We got this printer about 3 years ago. Then I moved to a different city and my uncle took it, only to print merely 200 pages and to give it back in a non working condition. They said they got it checked and the person was charging them way too much for it to be worth it. They said it was better to just buy a new printer. And so this printer was just lying in my closet collecting dust for 2 years. I came back home a few days back to spend some time with the family. I took this printer out today because I wanted to scan some old photos. And I was like what the hell, I'll check it once again. I started digging through stuff online, and I could only find out that the error code meant there was some mechanical issue. Then I started tinkering. First I reinstalled the toner. No luck. Then I picked up a screwdriver, and unscrewed the first few shiny looking screws on the printer. They were holding a metal tray at the bottom. This plastic sword came out of the bottom metal tray. The printer is working now. So much for the repair being "not worth it". FFS P.S. I'm not an IT expert. I am a Software Engineer. I help out family and friends, and I just find this stuff very interesting. Image: https://postimg.cc/YGqbZKkJ [link] [comments]  |
| In which Our Hero saves the day because he thought to take a backup Posted: 01 Nov 2020 09:50 PM PST Newish user, first post. Enjoy! Cast $departingOwner Situation 1) Company takeover. $departingOwner leaving to spend more time with his What could possibly go wrong? It starts with a call one sunny late-November Tuesday to $myBoss from prospective $newOwner. He's in the process of taking over $company that runs on a $desktopDB database system. The system was built and developed by $departingOwner, and $newOwner knows his limitations (especially in that he knows diddly-squat about $desktopDB software). $myBoss sends me to $company and I give the system a brief once-over in the presence of $departingOwner. Meanwhile, $myBoss discusses future plans with $newOwner, including migration from dodgy on-site out-of-support server to a cloud-hosted arrangement. Over the ensuing week-and-a-bit, the deal is gradually finalised. After much to-ing and fro-ing, I get word that the Friday afternoon is it. SO I rock up, get the master passwords from $departingOwner and change them all. This takes a while, since this is a $desktopDB system that started life many years before when it had a one-table-per-file architecture. That means that this system has 25+ separate files, each requiring a password change. Tedious and time-consuming, but straightforward enough. Finally, I'm done with the $desktopDB security changes. I double-check that all other system-related credentials supplied by $departingOwner are valid, trigger a backup of $desktopDB system, and copy completed backup to the office NAS. After a relaxing weekend, I'm about to leave for the office when I get a panicked call from $newOwner. Sometime over the weekend, the very old, very unsupported server has dropped its bundle. It will not start up. It has power, and fans whirr, but it cannot boot. If you're thinking to yourself, "Aren't you glad you copied that backup to the NAS on Friday?", go straight to the top of the class. So I jump in my car and head for the $company offices. While on the way, $myBoss calls to get a situation update. The gist of the discussion is that it's time to fast-forward the migration to the cloud-hosted environment. He heads off to dig through his archives to see if he can find an old license key for the correct version of $desktopDB Server. Turns out he can - we used to provide commercial hosting for that version until about 5 years before, so we have a valid and now-unused license available. On arrival, I have a bit of a fiddle with the server, but it's definitely beyond my skill set to deal with. After a brief discussion with $newOwner, he agrees on the cloud migration plan, so I set to work. After about an hour, I have a new cloud VM running and updated, with the correct version of $desktopDB Server installed and happy, and we're ready to load up the data. This is where it gets ugly. The office of $company has an extremely crap ADSL internet connection that gets 1Mbps uploads if you ask really nicely. The total database volume is 20+GB. This is going to take a while… There was a happy ending. We worked out that $newOwner had a good 4G cellular data signal, so I hot-spotted onto his phone to upload the data. Some time later, all is ready, and the users log on. Everything works, and lo, there is much rejoicing. Well, some rejoicing. Performance sucks because (a) see above re. crap ADSL and (b) various inefficient aspects of system design that go unnoticed on a LAN but become *very* noticed when there's a more latency and a slower connection. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Nov 2020 09:03 PM PST Here's another story from my time in Cash Register Service. It's not anything extraordinary, just something that caused me an inordinate amount of stress compared to the actual level and nature of the problem. We sold some cash registers to a canteen that sold various items to their clientele. One day we get a call. One of the machines is down. They only have two so its a big deal for them. I go out there and check out the machine. It has a slot in the printer that is usually used for check validation but they are using it for account validation. If any of their clients buy anything, the clients chit gets validated. So, what happened was the clerks were stapling the chits to the receipts and then sticking them in the slot to validate. After a few months enough of the staples had been torn off by the dot matrix print head to start interfering with the mechanism. Fortunately this printer used a single side trace circuit board or else the staples would have fried the machine. I clean out the staples and return the machine to service. Did I mention who the client was? This was a federal prison. I had to sign a waiver saying the guards could shoot me if I became a hostage. If I had worn blue pants that day they would have sent me home because I could be mistaken for a prisoner. I could see a door with a sign on it saying "Death Row" from where I was working. If I couldn't get this machine running and the other machine went down the prisoners cannot buy their ramen and cigarettes. No Pressure. We made a deal with them after that so when it failed the next time they would bring the machine to the minimum security area so I wouldn't have to sign the waiver. I don't miss that job at all.... [link] [comments]  |
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