That time I kicked someone in the crotch over TCP/IP Tech Support |
- That time I kicked someone in the crotch over TCP/IP
- A bit of a missile problem.
- Something something, turn it off and back on again?
- Can you show me where on the screen that is?
- Keyboard Warrior Princess (Badge Lady Part II)
- FNG fools them all Part 2
| That time I kicked someone in the crotch over TCP/IP Posted: 29 Sep 2021 08:32 AM PDT Been a while since I last posted, but I just remembered this story today. It's short and sweet, so here goes. I work as a Senior Software Engineer at a small software company. Being a small company, I wear multiple hats. I handle gathering requirements, developing software, project deployment and post-deployment support. The whole lifecycle. One of the software packages I am responsible for is our Point of Sale software, that integrates with our company's flagship software package. As it is my software, I handle new deployments and support cases for this product. Many of our clients prefer us to remote in to their PoS terminal to solve issues, rather than coming on-site. This saves them a callout fee, so they're happy enough to have someone on-hand to help with anything that can't be done remotely. Mostly this involves hardware testing. "Okay, scan a barcode. That scanned? Good. Did the receipt come out? Does it look right?" You know the drill. One of our clients was having issues with their receipt printer and cash drawer. This hardware was very old, and updates to the PoS software had caused a compatibility issue with their hardware drivers. Luckily, updating the hardware driver package for the receipt printer/cash drawer and setting the devices up again resolved the issue. I was on the phone with one of the store clerks for this particular client, testing out the hardware. We'd just tested the receipt printer, which printed perfectly. Final thing to test was the cash drawer. I'm sure you can see where this is going. Me: "Okay, that's working. Now we're going to test the cash drawer. I'm going to kick the drawer, and you tell me if it opens or not." Clerk: "Okay." Me: *clicks button* Random customer: "Excuse me..." Cash drawer: *ka-chunk* Clerk: "Oof!" As soon as I clicked the "No Sale" button, a customer tried to get the attention of the clerk at the terminal. The cash drawer popped, and the clerk turned towards the customer, and caught himself right on the edge of the drawer as it was springing out. Me: "Well... that sounds like it worked..." And that's how I literally kicked someone in the jimmy over the internet. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Sep 2021 07:36 AM PDT Way back when a friend worked in support for a large aircraft / missile manufacturer. Since gone and absorbed. One of their products was the Harpoon missile designed to attack ships. One Scandinavian country owned some. These things needed periodic maintenance. Among other things you ran a fake launch and it would "fly" to its target. You could see fins move and monitor the internals and such. Two guys were working on it. They turned the key and the thing fired off! One of them was even standing on it. So now you've got this unguided missile roaring through the harbor full of ships. Somehow it managed to miss everything and make it five miles inland before it hit a house. Nobody injured. What they wanted from my friend was "did it fly straight in or did it do the plunging top kill like it was designed for?" Wish i could get more clarifications from him but I've not talked to him in 30 years They ended up being fined $40,000 for "insufficient documentation" [link] [comments]  |
| Something something, turn it off and back on again? Posted: 29 Sep 2021 02:01 PM PDT Just had this call yesterday.
For context, our workplace sends their employees some of the lowest spec computers, so you pretty much need to restart it daily or things start to become unusable.
Fast forward getting their IP and getting connected.
First things first, I open up Task Manager and check the system up time. 3 Days without a restart.
I go ahead and click on Start and then click Restart. After a little bit later, the customer's computer comes back up and I remote back in.
Outlook opens with no issue.
-click- Fun times. [link] [comments]  |
| Can you show me where on the screen that is? Posted: 29 Sep 2021 06:33 PM PDT A short one, for context I work as phone tech support and was screensharing with the CX while walking him through the steps to fix his problem. (Also ignore the user name, I work in the US providing support to US CXs.) Me: okay we're almost done, I just need you to hold down these keys on your keyboard while we do this next step. CX: What's a keyboard? Me: Uh, it's the physical thing in front of you with letters so you can type? CX: I don't see anything like that on the screen, can you show me? (CX had already typed for me several times on the keyboard earlier in the call, wasn't their first time using a computer or anything) [link] [comments]  |
| Keyboard Warrior Princess (Badge Lady Part II) Posted: 29 Sep 2021 03:17 PM PDT So it started as a normal day. I was just going about business as usual when I got a message from a guy who works near "badge lady" from a previous post of mine. He tells me her spacebar is broken and asks if I can supply her with another keyboard. I said "sure no problem" as we have dozens of them. They wear out and get replaced from time to time. No biggie. I grab one that's in decent condition and head on over. They both greet me and he gives me a weird look and says, "Here's the old one..." and hands me a keyboard with a literally broken spacebar. As in a spacebar key actually broken in half. I say "Oh okay so it's actually broken." I ask her "How'd that happen?" She says, "I don't even know! It just broke somehow! I don't even know when it broke." Ok. Sure. The other guy cracks a few jokes about her typing too hard and we all have a few laughs about it. She obviously knows how it broke and while I generally don't care about these kind of things but I can't help but wonder what the hell she did to that keyboard. She's also broken a calculator, a mouse, the multiple badges in my previous post here, and a laminating machine. Now I recall another keyboard she spilled soda on when a first started. I've worked at the company for about 2yrs I forward the info up the chain when stuff breaks but no one seems to notice that most of the hardware that breaks around here can be traced back to one person or if they do they don't care. After actually listing everything that she's broken in the last 2 years (that I'm aware of) since I've been here, I'm starting to get really curious as to what actually goes on in that part of the office. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Sep 2021 02:11 PM PDT Previous part here So our FNG is out on a customer visit. Even after the previous fiasco of not knowing how to find his IP he has been sent out to upgrade the OS of a clients internet router that terminates multiple T1s. Shocker he screws it up. So it's now 3am and they have no internet. The customer and FNG are hanging out in front of a Starbucks trying to download this massive file because hotspots weren't quite a thing yet. FNG is wandering around the vendor's site trying to find the correct file talking to himself and getting frustrated. It's about this time that the customer notices some movement in his side mirror. He tells FNG not to make any sudden moves. A moment later two officers guns drawn kindly ask them to step out of the vehicle. Apparently this Starbucks had been robbed repeatedly. We send another engineer out to complete the work as the engineer decides he's done for the night the engineer managed to delete the OS file and replace it will a config for a switch we have never heard of. We don't know where he got the config file but he renamed it to os.txt. I would like to say that he stayed around for more adventures but right as the company was about to let him go he managed to break his arm falling in a network closet while getting tangled up in cat5 cable. They waited until workers comp paid to fix his arm and then let him go. He seemed relieved not to have to continue the charade. The only thing we can figure was that the guy who did the phone technical interviews was someone completely different. [link] [comments]  |
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