The Right Mouse Button? Tech Support |
- The Right Mouse Button?
- My first day at new company, I made a good impression!
- In which the Obvious Matters (Two short tales)
- In Which the FNG Manufactures the Very Rope With Which to Hang Himself
- You may have a law degree but you're still an idiot. || Part 1
- That's not how this works. Bridges must be burned first.
- FNG fools them all PART 1
- Where is the laptop
- Yet another FNG story
- Why is the WiFi beeping?
- The case of the blank monitors...OR The wifi card that wasn't!
| Posted: 02 Sep 2021 10:38 PM PDT I work IT helpdesk at a university, and thought you guys might find this mildly entertaining, if not frustrating. This time of year we get many requests for account resets, unlocks, and just general access assistance as students shake of the rust of summer and prepare for the semester. This particular university has a high percentage of older students as well(older being over 30). Students, particularly the older students, tend to call in very stressed over what is normally a very simple issue. Most of my job around this time is usually more focused on calming the user down enough to walk them through what they have to do to gain account access. One call I received from an older gentleman went like this: Me: You've reached (University help desk), how can I assist you today? User: Your system isn't working. Me: What seems to be the issue sir? User: It won't go, it's not doing what its supposed to do! Me: Ok, well.. what system are your working with? User: I'm trying to access my account, but your system is sh*t! Me: Ok, please provide me with your ID number, and I can take a look at the account. I get the number, take a look at the account and nothing seems to be wrong. Me: Sir, are you getting any error messages when you try to log in? User: No it's just not going. You really need to come up with a better way of doing this. Me: I understand sir, but lets focus on making sure you can get into the account for now. What happens when you try to log in? User: You aren't listening to me, nothing happens, it just doesn't work. Me: Ok. Walk me through it, step by step. You get to the landing page. User: Yea. Me: You see the sign in button? User: Yea. Me: Ok what happens when you click the sign in button? User: Nothing! How many times do I have to say it?! Me: Alright sir, well can you describe to me what you see on the page right now? User: I just see 'Open link in new page, open link in new tab, save link as...' Me(mentally): Facepalm. This can't be happening, this has to be a goddam nightmare. Me(verbally): Sir, when you click on the sign in button, are you clicking the right mouse button or the left mouse button. User: What the f*ck do you think? I'm clicking the right mouse button. Me: Um... this is gonna sound weird, but do me a favor and try clicking the left mouse button. User: Oh wow that worked, I can enter my credentials. You know, you guys really need to fix your goddam system, its really not very obvious what you need to do. Terrible service. Me: You have a great day sir. [link] [comments]  |
| My first day at new company, I made a good impression! Posted: 02 Sep 2021 07:13 AM PDT A bit of background here. I have worked in support/maintenance roles my entire working life, I don't do management so have been happy not to get promoted. Hence I was probably a good ten years older than my work colleagues. But this has advantages. I fix rather than replace, I know how to use a soldering iron! Anyway, back to the story. It was my first day and my new boss was showing me round the building and introducing me. We went into the server room and three of my new colleagues are standing in front of a screen scratching their heads. There is an error message on the screen: KEYBOARD NOT FOUND PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE The keyboard is definitely plugged in. They tried a different keyboard, no change. They were talking about having to buy a new motherboard and this was an expensive piece of kit, board several hundred pounds at least. I immediately had an idea as to what might be wrong, so I asked if I could take it to their well equipped workshop and take a look. The guys were quite surprised but agreed anyway as they had nothing to lose. I took to to the workshop and got the lid off, had a look inside. Sure enough there was a tiny ceramic fuse right next to the keyboard socket. I had read in a computer magazine only a few days previously that these can blow if you hot plug or unplug the keyboard. I soldered a small wire bridge across the fuse and hey presto! Server working again. I took it back in triumph to gasps of amazement from everybody. I explained what I had done (without mentioning I had read it in a magazine of course) and told than not to hot plug keyboards. So, immediate God status from whole IT department (and more importantly my new manager, especially as I had saved him the cost of a new motherboard!) [link] [comments]  |
| In which the Obvious Matters (Two short tales) Posted: 02 Sep 2021 07:15 PM PDT So, I work Tier 1.5 for a US Government agency. In the three years I have been doing my job, I have gone from line soldier to being the back-up lead in my team. We have over two thousand people at my location, so we have a pretty good sized IT team with a pretty good support network. Herein, I have two stories- one of which is me beating my head on a wall for hours, the other of which is me pointing out the obvious. Story 1- 'Why is this happening?' Story one begins when my manager is asked for support to look into an issue that two senior windows developers cannot solve. Whenever this user is trying to open VMware, it prompts for admin rights. Most of you TFTS guys are probably already saying "aaah I know what that is." My manager taps me and one of the other top guns on the team to look at it, and I get my user in at around 1000 to start hammering her laptop. And oh boy, do I hammer it. I look at everything I think could be an issue. The windows developers give me a whole new version of the program to install for her. I verify it's an issue with her laptop (She can access the program just fine from another machine) and that something is fucky with the UAC on the machine. Three hours of troubleshooting later, including turning down my user's offer to wait while I went to lunch, I bring in one of my support guys. He's a brilliant chap, a quite literal autist who is ridiculously overqualified for his current level of work and knows more about computers than 90% of the folks in my org. He loves interesting problems and sinking his teeth into them. I'm on the horn with the guy when I say "it's GOTTA be a compatibility issue on the laptop, we ran it just fine on something else." As I lit the spotlight to call down CAPTAIN OBVIOUS to the table, he right clicked the program, opened up compatibility, and said... "Oh you're right. It's set to ask for admin rights every time." ... All my whats. All my fucking whats. Three hours and it was a fucking checkbox that for some godawful reason ticked despite a standardized install. While the user was happy, I still want to bash my head into a wall for spending three hours for MISSING THE OBVIOUS. (Tale 2) On the off chance I'm wrong and this isn't normal for troubleshooting.... So we were working as normal when suddenly tickets for profiles started to come in. No access to personal profiles, no personal files, etc. Within a few minutes, I realized it was all coming from a specific server- If there is one thing I know I am good at it is troubleshooting and recognizing commonality of errors. So I rang the bell and yelled up the chain, and sure enough, everyone on this specific server was not able to get into their profile. Mind you, this server hosted the executives, the bigwigs of my agency- as in, the Agency Head, and all the Chief Top Brass Sons of Bitches who were yelling down the phone as to why they were not able to get into their files. An investigation by the top-line engineering team found some programs running on the server that were destroying the CPU usage and they rebooted it and fixed it... but profiles still were missing. After a half hour and god knows how much yelling, I decided to peek into the server. I'm still a line doggie, so I didn't know how much I could do. But when I logged in and looked at the server, I was greeted by none other than a server that had no user profiles on it. At all. So I cautiously emailed the Engineering team (I assume everyone knows more than I do, which is the case often enough where I phrase everything carefully- My background is electronics maintenance, not IT) and said "Hey, so... I assume this is part of troubleshooting work on your end, but the server is missing the user profiles folder- just wanted to say so in case that is not normal." Queue the Engineering Manager patting me on the head for seeing the obvious. He restored the folder, and the day was saved. Sometimes, you miss the obvious. Sometimes, you point it out. A day in the life of tech support. [link] [comments]  |
| In Which the FNG Manufactures the Very Rope With Which to Hang Himself Posted: 02 Sep 2021 07:14 AM PDT Shameless as I am, I will be jumping on this FNG bandwagon. This is a story from way back in the day; as usual, everything has been changed to protect the innocent--the guilty get a free ride on their behalf. $Company is in the middle of an unexpected growth spurt and everyone is playing catch-up. In addition, we have closed a lease on a nearby property that will allow the corporate folks to move out of the retail space. In a rare case of forethought, the suits decide to bring on some of the new hire technical trainers early so that they can lend a hand with the expansion and move. One of these hires has rack-and-stack / structured cabling experience along with several IT certifications, and so is given the task of setting up a new training room. The details of these plans are made without my involvement, I'm just aware that people will be starting early to help with the build-out. So $FNG, along with a few other trainers, arrive on their first day and are introduced. $FNG and I hit it off especially well as we have some shared experience to bond over and he's generally an easy-going, personable guy. Over the next few days, we spend a few minutes bullshitting when we meet each other in the halls, generally doing that new-coworker-friend dance. In the middle of $FNG's second week, he stops by my desk and asks for some help:
Most of my important work is all waiting on other people at the moment, so I can actually spare a half-day or so without any real consequences. We're also still a pretty small company at that point and we're all used to doing the odd-job or banding together on projects. About an hour later, I walk over to see what's still left to do:
We get to work. Honestly, it's not really all that much work, even for one guy and half a day, but I know how these things can go wrong in a hurry. Sure enough, while someone ordered workstation patch cables, they were all 3'--not nearly long enough for 2/3 of the workstations to reach the ports on the walls. $CTO says he will take care of it and we'll have cables in the morning. Meanwhile, we knock out the rest of the work, chatting about certifications while we do. He went to a technical school that encouraged certification while I was self-taught at the time. We get the room finished up early the next morning and the trainers are happy despite the delay. At the time my desk was in a bullpen-style area at the end of a hall that contained a mini-bar we used for coffee and employee snacks. The way the hall and the room intersected caused two things:
So a few days later, $FNG stops by to thank me.
$FNG heads back with his $Era-Equivalent-Monster-Drink to whatever he was doing. Unbeknownst to him, $CTO had been sitting at exactly one of those hidden desks working with another employee and had heard the entire exchange. After $FNG leaves, $CTO wheels his chair over next to mine and starts an enlightening conversation:
I knew something was up but didn't get the whole story until a day or so later. Turns out, $FNG had that entire week to get the room set up. Or rather, his only two tasks were to review the training material he'd been teaching, and set up the room--and only the room had a hard deadline. So he had seemingly wasted the first three days and had to enlist help when only a few hours were left before the deadline. That was concerning, but the kicker was that $FNG had not only "CCNA" proudly listed on his resume, but "CCNP--active" as well (which, at the time, was a certification you could not get without having passed the CCNA). So $FNG had unknowingly, not only confessed to bad time management in front of his ultimate supervisor, but he had also confessed to not having a certification he claimed to possess in front of the very person who interviewed him. $CFO called $FNG into his office that afternoon and asked him to provide proof of his certifications. At that point, $FNG knew the jig was up and confessed everything. Turns out, most of his resume--all of the technical experience--was forged. He was let go immediately. Ironically, we were a pretty laid-back team at the time, and none of those certifications or experience were essential qualifications for the job. While he would have been a less attractive candidate with an honest resume, there would still have been a reasonable chance of landing the job. [link] [comments]  |
| You may have a law degree but you're still an idiot. || Part 1 Posted: 02 Sep 2021 07:08 AM PDT Before we start, some context. I work as a SysAdmin for a medium sized law firm. (Read: I'm the only IT person for a law firm of about 100~ people) As such I handle basically every issue for pretty much anything that plugs into a wall. I wear every hat from Tier 1 Help Desk to CTO most days. To set the stage for the type of environment this is, and the type of people I support. The law firm was founded by a single lawyer in the mid 80s, and eventually grew to be one of the largest (for our specific type of law) in our state. But the entire operation is still running in exceptionally legacy software (think like, it was written in 1992 and hasn't been updated since) the company that wrote it was acquired by another company in 1995 which was acquired by another, and another, and so on, I think we're 4 or 5 companies at the current point in time. Contacting their support and trying to get anything fixed other than surface level settings is an exercise in futility. Also the previous firm founder passed away and the firm was sold to a different set of lawyers that owned their own firm. As such these new owners are coming in, investing a ton of money to modernize all the IT systems (thank god), but as a result we're in the middle of 6, possibly 7 different migrations including our main ERP and CRMs, our phone system, fax system, and email. (Relevant later) I have dozens of stories like this (as well as more involved ones) to share after some time working here that is finally coming to an end later this year. And that I hope to be able to find time to share all of them in the coming weeks. What about the type of people I support that I mentioned above but didn't elaborate on? I'm glad you asked, that's where this story starts. You see, lawyers are second only to doctors in attitude and entitlement (most days, and to be fair, not all of them, most of them are incredibly nice people, but alas, those ones do not make for the good storytelling). Most of them have what I call a "learned helplessness." This story starts by one of our attorneys, lets call him Richard, commanding one of his paralegal assistants, to come find me. Now, it should be known that I work remotely more than I'm actually in office (I work a hybrid schedule right now, 3 out, 2 in, leaving for full remote at the end of the year bless up). As such, users do not typically just walk up to me/my office for issues. They will call my extension, email me, or call my cell phone. Anyways, she appears at my door, quietly knocks and informs me that Richard has told her to tell me that I "urgently need to fix his printer as his printer has disappeared entirely from Windows and he needs to print this demand for X client where our fee is going to be Y amount and this is costing us money." You guys know the self indulgent spiel that users with an inflated sense of self tend to give. So of course, I drop everything I'm currently doing (remember those migrations), and walk over to his office. First thing I do is open the Printers and Scanners panel in Windows, not only do all 3 of our managed MFPs show up, but his desk printer does too. And right next to the label that says "RICHARD'S DESK PRINTER" is another little label. This one however says something different, it says "Offline". I notice this and look to my right at the physical printer. I notice there's no LED lit up on the power button. I press the power button, the printer instantly whirrs to life and starts spitting out whatever he tried to print 2 minutes ago. I proceed to not say anything and walk out of his office. And that is why, just because you have a law degree, doesn't mean you're not an idiot. [link] [comments]  |
| That's not how this works. Bridges must be burned first. Posted: 02 Sep 2021 10:31 AM PDT Back in the early 2000's I had a client that I did IT work for. Network setup, cable runs, printers and lots of software troubleshooting. At first I was hesitant to take them on since the owner was an estranged relative and giant red flags were already flying. You see unfortunately Owner had a reputation of having Lawyer on retainer and Owner kept him busy. Owner thought that scare tactics like litigation was a great way to handle anything he wanted. Owner was even known to have gone after his own children. So yea, Owner was a real peach so keeping him at arms reach was a requirement. Me – Me Owner – Estranged family member and all around peach. New Guy – What ever IT person is in place Lawyer – His lawyer of many years So one day Owner tells me he wants a website for the company. Early on I did single page websites with just information so I could easily prepare a basic site. During this process I found out that a new salesman Owner hired dropped the idea in his ear and already had fliers and business cards printed up with the new website. One problem, Owner didn't own the domain name printed on the cards and fliers. This escalated when I found out that his Competitor actually purchased the domain name and created a website all about Competitors company. Lawyer is then invoked and using my imagination I hear legalese loudly shouted back and forth with Owner demanding that it belonged to him. I even consulted with Owner and Lawyer at this point informing them that Competitor bought the domain name first and Competitor can do what they want with it. Most of all there is a process of transferring domain names for security purposes and even if they win any lawsuit or Competitor gives it up, that transfer process still has to occur. In the end Owner didn't get the domain, but Competitor did take down the site. So I purchased a domain name that was very similar to the one Owner couldn't have and hosted his basic site. Over the years I did some updates to the site like staff changes (Including the fired sales person.), pictures and services. Things were quiet. I should mention that I purchased the domain name under my umbrella and hosted the site on my server. It was small and there was little to no traffic going to it, so my older web server could handle it. So IT work continues onsite for another year or two when suddenly my last two invoices are not paid. Inquiries made, but no word on what's going on. Then I get a letter in the mail from Owner and that my "services were no longer needed" and they wouldn't pay those invoices. I wasn't really upset about this result. It felt more of dodging a bullet. Plus him not paying for work came as no surprise either. After a week or two I get a phone call. New Guy – "Hey this is New Guy. I'm taking care of IT for Owner Company. They told me to call you and get the passwords to the network WiFi, File Server and Admin Accounts." Me - "Oh really? Did they also mention that they have two open invoices and have officially refused to pay both?" New Guy – "No" Me – "I see. No surprise. Anyway all settings, configurations and other stuff are in an Admin Folder on the File Server." New Guy – "What's the password?" Me – " Sorry, I can't help you. That bridge has been burned." Silence Me - "Oh there's a copy of their website on the File Server also. Once you start the transfer process with your domain provider you can request the domain name and I'll transfer it to you." New Guy – "What?" Me – "Their website domain needs to be transferred and site host changed from mine to yours. Check with your provider about transferring domain name BlahBlah.net to you so we can start the process." New Guy – "What website?" Me – "Oh boy. Well good luck and watch your back. C.Y.A. and document everything for the next guy." End call. Never heard from him, so after about month I shutdown the site. Later on I renewed the domain name since I had a gut feeling. On a side note I also noticed that the original domain name Owner wanted was available. I thought about grabbing it but left it alone. Not my monkey, not my circus. Fast forward about two years and the domain is up for renewal once again, which I cover, but decide to see if anyone was paying attention. So I created a simple page that said "This domain name is for sale" and to contact me via such and such email. Weeks later I get a message from a person via an unrelated work email. Unknown Person: "How much for the website? " Hmm, interesting. Me – "Selling it since it's costing me money and the client never requested a transfer. You may contact me at work number for more details." No price given. Next day I get a call from his lawyer. Lawyer- "My name is Lawyer representing Owner. You can't sell his website, he owns it. You need to give it to him." Me – "I know who you are. That's not how this works." Lawyer – "You can't sell something that doesn't belong to you." Me – "You didn't learn anything from the previous litigation you were involved with Owner and Competitor. I told you in great detail how this works." His tone suddenly changes. Lawyer – "You're the same person?" Me – "Yep and New Guy contacted me a long time ago but never started a transfer request for the domain name. I also had to explain the process to New Guy, just like with you and Owner years ago. Oh and by the way Owner has a full copy of the website on the server. Hopefully someone didn't delete it." Lawyer - "Okay well go ahead and transfer the website over to Owner then." Here we go. Invoke lawyer speak. Me - "This is a two party process. The first party: Owner Company. Must request the domain name to be transferred online via Owners domain name provider, like say GoDaddy. That request reaches me via my provider and the process begins. I'm the second party. It's a bit technical but required for domain names to change hands. It's for security purposes so folks don't grab up someones domain name and use it like Competitor did. Once the transfer is complete, the website files can be moved to a new host." Lawyer – "Okay so Owner just has to make the request and it goes to him?" Me – "It's a bit more complicated than that, but if current New Guy is available they can contact me and we can work out the details. The process just needs a starting point." Lawyer – "Okay I'll let them know." Me – "And just to let you know, a couple of years ago Owner decided not to pay for services rendered that I had to write off. While I'm not letting that factor into this situation you can let him know that is a bridge he burned." Lawyer – "What?" Pause Lawyer – "Okay I'll get in contact with them today." Nothing happened afterwards. No request, emails, phone calls, nothing. Once the renewal came up again, I just let it expire. The family member that talked me into taking him on years ago retired soon after due to Owners behavior. Company passed to new management after Owner passed away and still exists today. They now have a nice little WordPress site on a new domain name. Family...Am I right? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2021 12:55 PM PDT On mobile etc etc. FNG - New Guy ME - me Boss - Boss SME - Subject matter expert While in my noc days we supported not only clients but our internal staff. This included onboarding new staff and engineers. This was a small shop so engineers typically had admin rights to their machine so they were given a standard image and could customize it how they saw fit. In comes FNG. He's one of our new Network/VOIP Engineers and Boss has been bragging about the guy being great. He did technical interviews with SME and got solid passes on them. He comes in for the obligatory face to face just to confirm he's human but they already had an offer printed up. So first day in I hand him his shiny new laptop and ask him to get logged in so it will cache his creds and have him update his password. 2 minutes go by 5 minutes… 10 minutes.. Me: "Hey FNG we're you able to log in?" FNG: "Naw it's not workin." I told him I would be back in a minute and go see Boss who I've known for almost a decade and repeat this conversation with him. He truly doesn't believe me. End result was he didn't know which port to plug the network cable into on his laptop. And he made double my salary. FML In the next episode he tries to upgrade a voice router and all hell breaks loose. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2021 09:06 AM PDT Some background - I use to work help desk support remotely for a big pizza company when I was in college. Really it just required me to be on the phone all day and do basic trouble shooting. One day the phone rings and I pick up. A user was asking for the password to a laptop my company gives out to all their employees. I told the user the password should be their email password. They replied back that it wasn't their laptop it was one of their student's and they found the phone number under the computer. My follow up question was where the student in question was. In my mind I thought maybe the company recycles old laptops or sold them off. The teacher responded that the student was in a school district located 10 states away from the company. I asked them to read me off the serial number on the back of the laptop so I could report it to my supervisor and see if it was still active. There have been a few cases within the company of computers being stolen from company employees - and if this was the case, we needed to lock the computer ASAP. I kept the teacher on the phone and thanked them for their patience and I pinged my supervisor. My supervisor was able to pull a name that the laptop was assigned to and noted the laptop was still active. I wrote down the teacher's phone number and name and noted I would have to call them back. This was done because Teams and the phone software we use works horribly together. I hung up the phone and called the owner of the company laptop on Teams. I asked two basic questions: 'Do you know where your laptop is, and do you have a child who goes to xxx school' Their response was a mixture of laugher and relief, stating that the child's father mixed up the laptops and that they would have to call the teacher now. I told my supervisor the computer was not stolen and that ended there. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2021 10:00 AM PDT I've been inspired the recent posts featuring FNGs, so here's yet another one. Long ago I worked for a company that sold mini computers to various types of clients. One application was sold to financial institutions and we had a proof of concept system installed at on very large such institution in a different city from our office, basically an hour plane ride plus maybe 30 minutes to drive from the airport to the customer. We had been supporting this site remotely but we finally got some additional business in the area and were able to hire $FNG. I was not involved in hiring $FNG but I found him super personable and seemed pretty sharp. We sent him to our home office for a standard 2 week training course and then he was ready to go. One day the test system (the proof of concept system) went down and $FNG headed over. He worked on it most of the day with numerous calls to our lead support guy in our office. By the end of the day he was no further along so my boss told me to fly up the next morning. $FNG had a set of spare parts so I didn't have to bring anything. Next day I fly up, rent a car, and head to the site, $FNG meets me there. We check in with the customer and start troubleshooting. $FNG fills me in with great detail about all the things he did to troubleshoot, it sounds good but I'm a bit uneasy as it sounds like he really got a bit casual with swapping out parts. The layout on theses minicomputers was three separate chassis, each one with various PCBs plugged into a backplane. There were also some cables that connected some of the PCBs to each other and to outside devices. Some of the PCBs were almost identical so it wasn't unknown to get some of the swapped with each other, but $FNG had assured our support guy that he had verified he had things correctly populated. I looked over the system and everything seemed correct at first glance. I decided I would have to troubleshoot from step one, even though $FNG assured me that he had already performed the basic steps. First thing I decided to do was simply re-seat all the PCBs since experience had shown that once in a while this was an easy fix. I started from the top left chassis and popped the first PCB out, slid it back in, and stopped. I did a double take and peered at the PCB. It was one of the similar types and belonged in a different slot. Quickly glanced thought all the PCBs, sure enough, several were in the wrong slot, clearly this was NOT the way the system had been configured before $FNG showed up. I quietly showed $FNG what was wrong and suggested we work through getting the PCBs back into their correct slots, which we did. At one point our customer contact came by to check in, $FNG went into a total blast of technobabble, but delivered it in a completely believable manner. I was crouched over the system listening in amazement, this guy could sell shoes to snakes. It took a short time to get the system back to the correct configuration and then we could actually diagnose the problem, which took another hour, I think. $FNG was very appreciative, thanked me repeatedly, all was good. The next day I was back in the office and my boss and tech support guy reviewed the problem and how things had gone. $FNG was a new guy so our expectation on his first system problem were not that great. I was concerned that he had clearly messed things up worse than the original problem, and he had not been able to recognize it even with someone on the phone walking him through step by step. My boss (who had hired him) was a bit shaken since he prided himself on doing great job interviews, but we decided to wait and see. $FNG was around for a while and we had a few other cases of overlooking simple items, but he limped along, using his great people skills (he really did have a great people skills) to get by. Eventually he left the company and went into sales, where I bet he was fantastic. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2021 10:15 AM PDT Wait what? For background radiation, this company has a nuclear materials lab for training, testing, evaluation, experiments, etc. Cast & Crew: It's a slow day in the office, I'm reading up on the latest security threats, being responsible with VMware resources, wondering what new madness will befall upon us, the usual, etc. Ding! A ticket! $RL - Why is the wifi beeping? Let's go have a look Steve! So we roll up in the fledermaus-mobile (oversized black golf-cart) and find out her lab is much harder to locate than previously thought. The important missing detail was going left past the snake pit and Steve nearly got bitten again Anyways, we found it and $RL meets us and opens up the lab and BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Being that my hearing is similar to that of a bat/dog, I am inundated with the high pitched screech of some instrument that is definitely not an AP. What's that thing? $RL - Oh, that's our other geiger counter and ope! it has a dead battery! Steve asks what samples they had on hand (I don't know why) After looking at him sideways after that question and then closing up the lab, we did see that the room acoustics of the lab + material storage & coat closet had the noise bouncing around which did sound like it was coming from above. So the concern for the newly minted NRRT (networking radioactive response team) was valid, but the AP was outside the closet and visibly not beeping. [link] [comments]  |
| The case of the blank monitors...OR The wifi card that wasn't! Posted: 02 Sep 2021 08:32 AM PDT So it's been a long time since I've posted on here. But I feel it's finally time to start my chronicles. Names have been changed to protect the identity of the stupid. Players: $caffeine - Me, fresh Ph.D. holder, working as an engineer for an MSP $Witch - Evil Office Manager for a Cardiologists' office $client - The Doctors Office $Witch works for. They're a cardiologists' office. Talking or enjoying your work is forbidden. $HDM - Help desk Manager / Triage / Sysadmin / Bad ass. Takes no shit from users. $CSM - Client Services Manager, husband of HDM, also takes no shit from users. Will be blunt with $Witch. It's a breezy day in the middle of autumn in a tropical paradise, perfect for jackets. I've made a great journey down to our HQ as I've been working remote for some time now for the most part but extra hands were needed at the time! I've settled into my old work area, various pieces of code and mathematics still scribbled on dry erase boards from years long past. The smell of dust, coffee and a breakfast burrito are flooding my senses as I log in to the help desk board. Just as I'm about to take the first bite of my food, I hear it, that dreaded sound. The phone rings. $HDM: Help desk, this is [HDM]. How can I- oh...uh-huh... $HDM: ... $HDM: O-... Ok. Let me put you on hold for a sec. My heart slows to a crawl as does the world around me. I close my eyes, waiting as a feeling of dread flows down my spine. $HDM: Hey caffeine? Can you head over onsite to [Client]? $Witch can't get her monitors to turn on. And while you're there, the doctors' can't get one of the exam room workstations online. $Caffeine: Yea. I'll head over now. I gave a longing look at my quickly chilling breakfast. One day, my love. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I've arrived onsite, but no one is happy to see me. Normally people are happy, excited or even upset when I arrive, knowing that I'll fix whatever issue they're having but the first thing that I see when I walked past the check in area was the dead, lifeless eyes, multiplied many times over as I make the treck into $Witch's office. An eerie quiet is ever present in this cursed building. Except for the squawking of $Witch. $Witch: Why isn't my monitors working caffeine? This is just unacceptable! Why wasn't this fixed already, I've told you guys about it several times already. $caffeine: Oh, I'm not sure, $Witch. But I'll take a look right now. Do you by chance know the ticket number we gave you about the monitors? $Witch: I don't have one. But I told $CSM about it last time he was out here. $caffeine: Then you should have a ticket about it. We can't keep track of things if those arn't created. That's why you need to followup with a help desk ticket. I chuckle internally. $Witch only checks her ancient, decrypted POP3 AOL-era email once a day as it is. Hell freezes over each time she uses her email to send tickets. Snippy remarks aside, I've finally managed to move around her tiny desk and around all the papers to get to her monitors, both of which are lit up with a blue power button, signaling the monitors are getting signal from the workstation. I can hear the fan running at ludicrous speed under her desk as well, no doubt from all the papers and lack of airflow down there. Hmm.... I made my way over to her mouse and keyboard and wiggle the mouse, which suddenly appears on screen, but the with the black screen. Huh. My first thoughts drifting to user profile corruption or an ancient curse has finally been placed on $Witch. Either wouldn't surprise me. I tried pulling up the task manager with keyboard shortcuts and found I was able to do with no issue, but what did surprise me was that I saw "Windows Photo Viewer" in the task manager. No. It couldn't be that simple. But sure enough, her desktop sprung to life, icons and all when I ended that task. Neato. $Caffeine: $Witch, you had two empty pictures on full screen mode. Any idea why? $Witch: Oh well I thought if I did that, I could save some money since you said not to turn anything off while backups are running. Ah. So, in an effort to save money on utilities, $Witch has all workstations turned off at the end of the day, making updates a PITA. I told her not to turn hers off every other wens day for backup purposes. I explained that she could turn her monitors off and then asked about the exam room workstations not working. I get pointed to the right one and seeing as no one's in there I poke in and take a look. All the workstations in the exam rooms are using old wireless G adapters and frequently forget the SSID so, I'm hoping this is the issue. However, it becomes very apparent that something is very, very wrong. The internet icon has a red x on it. At a glance I could tell the adapter is missing! Dear god the horror! $Caffeine, poking head out of exam room: Hey does anyone know what happened to the little usb device that was plugged into the workstation. Random Employee: Oh I think one of the doctors took it with him. He's in his office right now. A brisk walk down the hall and a knock later, I'm face to face with the physician-thief! $Caffeine: Hey Doc, did you take a usb device out of the workstation in the exam room? $Doctor: Yea. Sorry, I needed to store some files on it. Do you need it back? Also did you fix the internet on that workstation? $Caffeine: Please. And it'll be fixed as soon as I plug the wifi adapter back in. $Doctor: Oh I just thought it was a regular flash drive. $Caffeine: Well it has a small bit of storage on it for grabbing the drivers off of it if you need it but it's really not meant for that. $Doctor: .... Oh...well thanks for looking at it! As I felt my brain leaking out of my ear, I could only think of one thing, and one thing only, the now ice-cold burrito waiting for me at my desk. [link] [comments]  |
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