Dude, Where's My Server? Tech Support |
- Dude, Where's My Server?
- The time we lost a client because they used a printer as their router.
- Wait... We can do that?
- Short one but i almost screamed at my best friend
- HDM Why?
- Highest-Paying Job of My Career
- I'm in the hospital and the doctor is asking for help
- Passwords are hard
- Accidentally Locking Yourself Out From The BIOS
- Electricity and internet - cause and effect
- I still don't know what was wrong with that keyboard
- Are you sure you looked EVERYwhere?
- The network system MUST be changed!
- I am not able to open the file
- A funny story from my last job
- Madness incoming
- A small story from my last job
- Remote support
- Signal loss? What's that?
- Grab that printer port!
| Posted: 17 Feb 2022 01:10 PM PST I have never had the pleasure of working with Novell. The first server I managed was a 2003 SBS. However, the company I'm with now had managed a handful of Novell servers and there's an interesting story with one. We had managed a Novell 4 server for a small doctor's office for several years, and at some point stopped managing their network, handing "the keys" over to either a new company or to the office, I'm not sure which. In any case, we get a call about 2 years later asking if we could assist in locating their server as the office is in the process of migrating to an NT domain, but the new provider cannot locate their server. Technician who had handled that client previously goes onsite and notices that the building had been renovated. He states "the server used to live somewhere around here," and the unmistakable whir of server fans was just barely audible. Using his ears as a guide, the technician walks all around the area and cannot locate the server. After several minutes, he decides to look in the most obscure place possible and retrieves a ladder and a flashlight. Upon the removal of a ceiling tile, the fan whir becomes much more prevalent and a "hole" is discovered in the ceiling tiles, a small 4x4 foot opening on the other side of the wall which has no ceiling grid over top. A faint green glow can be seen emanating out of that hole. The server is located on a tile floor surrounded by 4 walls, still dutifully serving up the shared drive. Apparently, during the renovation, the office was still operating. There was originally a network closet to be placed in that location, but was moved to another location in the building. The server became enclosed with no door. As I understand it, the server could still be there, powered off. Following the migration, the server was shut down and never retrieved. [link] [comments] |
| The time we lost a client because they used a printer as their router. Posted: 17 Feb 2022 07:55 PM PST I still have no fucking idea how this worked because according to our scope we were not to touch the network because "other companies have messed up our network in the past." It was a retail shop and we were retrofitting it to work with a new POS vendor. They had all their own equipment but we just needed to wipe the machines load the software, configure RMM for the devices and ensure everything worked. When I got on-site everything seemed pretty simple besides a mess of unmanaged switches. All the computers were on dhcp and everything was wired. After I set everything up I realized the printers were on a different network. Didn't seem like a big deal just made sure the PCs had connections to both networks. Scanned the network to see the IP address of the printers and huh that's strange there's no gateway for the receipt printers network. After a few more tests yup the printers are statically assigned to a nonexistent network. I asked the owner if I could at least get the printers on the same network …denied. Ok then. Low and behold every time X amount of time the printers switched IPs the whole shop went down. No insight into the network so we had to jus to fix it everytime and eventually the customers dropped us for the guy who setup the network. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 17 Feb 2022 05:43 PM PST This started short, then became longer lol... If you want the short version, it's the last few paragraphs. Obligatory not officially IT, and obligatory not as impressive as some, just a fun story. I work in an (officially) non-technical role on a decidedly non-technical team, other than that we all work from home so have mastered turning it off and back on again. The tech portion for my peers is generally limited to pulling reports into Excel from our "business intelligence" system, and attempting to track issues (to keep it vague, our team processes dozens of "files" a day which were set up by another team, and often not set up properly) This is the "Excel pivot tables are miraculous!" level of tech knowledge. (If anyone happens to recognize this... I love you guys and totally get a kick out of your excitement about pivot tables.) I have been the unofficial go-to tech person since I came on the team, since machines make a heck of a lot more sense than people. That being said, I'm a baby at programming and data analysis. Well, maybe a toddler - I can write a mean Excel vba script (with the help of stack overflow of course!) ... Attempted to learn SQL a while back but never ended up needing it. And I have a half finished mod of Dink Smallwood from years ago (dating myself now! Lol) We had the basic reports to run in the BI system, but no one on the team knew how to change the queries or change what it generated, so any new reports were done by a different team w significant delays. But, surprisingly the user interface is semi-logical. Using my vague memories of trying to learn SQL and lots of trial and error, I started making my own reports, and some for my boss as needed. That was several months ago. Apparently my boss is still getting used to being able to have new data at their fingertips on the fly... Recently, they approached me and asked if I could make a list of all the files that we had a specific issue with, along with pulling a reference number from the file for another system. This is a significant amt of time to do manually. Knowing that this info is documented clearly in a queryable field - my response was... "How about I make you a report instead?" "Wait... we can do that?" Why yes. Yes we can. Edit: wording [link] [comments] |
| Short one but i almost screamed at my best friend Posted: 17 Feb 2022 06:52 AM PST Yesterday afternoon i get a Message from my best friend with a screenshot saying. You can´t run this Program because your graphics driver is old and you can download it here (link highlighted blue). He asks me what to do. I just answer that its literally giving the answer right there. 10 Minutes later GeForce Expierince brings an alert up with the notification that the drive has not enough space. As you guess right. I got a message with this alert too. Again just answering that its literally says in the notification what to do. How is it possible to don´t get this simple task when its presented for you. I also had to make an Facebook Account for the mom of a friend. She didn´t know how to do it. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 17 Feb 2022 09:32 PM PST On mobile so please bear with me. My company has a virtual range. We are upgrading to a slightly more robust system. For those unaware how a virtual range works is you either have a laser pistol, or a cartridge that loads in a regular pistol that when the trigger is pulled it just pulses a laser. They make them in both red lasers and infrared lasers. A special camera tracks where the laser lands. Our current system just used regular paper targets. So it only needed the camera the computer and some form of pistol. The newer system displays moving targets, sudden targets, and a few other scenarios to make it a little bit more engaging and to test other skills. In order to do this it needs a projector. Today one of our instructors brought over the projector she uses in class to test the system before our projector arrives next week. She had someone vent to her that it is to outdated to hook up to anything. Basically it just has VGA ports. The computer we are hooking up to is aDell inspiron all-in-one with a single HDMI port and several USB ports. There is no VGA on this thing. No problem, we get a VGA to HDMI adapter at the Walmart around the corner. But for some reason it refuses to recognize this. End up hooking the projector up to a different computer HDMI just to make sure it works and sure enough there's a connection. Next step is trying to hook the computer up to a TV we have there that we are going to display our training material on. Using a direct HDMI cord that we know works not able to transmit anything to the TV. Spent another few hours trying to troubleshoot this, to eventually find the information that the HDMI is input only.... Tomorrow I pick up the VGA to USB display adapter. I probably also need an HDMI to USB because the TV was meant to be hooked up to that same computer..... I have some choice words for Dell right now. [link] [comments] |
| Highest-Paying Job of My Career Posted: 16 Feb 2022 06:17 PM PST A buddy and I were reminiscing and I recalled this story I thought you might enjoy. Probably not unique in the slightest, but satisfying in its own way. Characters and dates have been changed for obvious reasons; names and flavors have been changed because I'm not sharing with anyone. If you travel the wrong way for about 22 miles from where I used to live you end up in a mostly-irredeemable, one-gas-station-town that sits on a fork in the road. This town has given itself the tagline of "Gateway to the [redacted]" and is full of about 12-too-many souvenir and kitch shops. The overloaded SUVs trying to park without lines or make u-turns on a two-lane blacktop make it one of the more dangerous stretches of state route and guarantee that just about no one has any reasonable need to stop there. However, if you head behind the abandoned auto shop, in just a few turns through some single-wide scenery you arrive at a ramshackle house-turned-restaurant that can only exist in areas of extreme zoning apathy. There are clear signs of at least two additions, yet the building still seems small with only a half-dozen four-tops and four barstools. This establishment serves typical greasy spoon diner food of above-average quality, but the item that keeps a radio cruiser and a small fleet of motorcycles in their parking lot is their taste-that-can-only-come-without-a-nutrition-label, snozzberry pie. On overcast evenings, sunny afternoons, after bad days that need redeeming, on great days that need celebrating, or weekdays ending in "y", I made a habit of making the drive for the questionable entree of my choice and a fresh slice of snozzberry pie a la mode. There are very few things I miss about many of the places I have lived, but this pie is definitely one of them. This particular late Sunday morning, there was a hastily written sign taped on the door that warned in bold sharpie "cash only". I was prepared, so I entered undeterred.
...and I tucked into an oversized chicken-fried steak. In between indignant customer complaints--"what do you mean you can't take credit!"--and exasperated apologies--"our card machine is down, but there is an ATM at the gas station just down the street" I heard a statement we have all probably heard before with a cringe:
I initially kept my head down as normal, but the abuse the kind-hearted staff was getting started to nag at me, so I crept out on a limb while ordering my desert:
A few minutes later I was in a room we're all familiar with: boxes of tax receipts, an open electrical box, and a nameless modem and net-link combo router on a wire shelf. Somehow, nothing in the room is upright. It took 15 seconds to recognize the lack of lights on the router, and trace the plugged-in cable from the device to the unplugged wall-wart behind one of those banker boxes. A few minutes later the lights turn a happy green and a quick test of the card reader produces agreeable results. I humbly extracted myself before the jumping-up-and-down $Server got a bit too familiar for my liking, and returned to a warm slice of pie with a scoop of just-melted-enough ice cream dripping down the edges. I was equally happy to save some fellow support agents from some undeserved hostility and mute the complaining customers for the remainder of my stay, but mostly I was happy about my pie. I paid with cash and tried to slip out unnoticed, but I was stopped at the door by $Server--she thanked me and handed me two slices of snozzberry in a box with "Thank You!" penned in gold ink that was somehow dotted with a heart. It was the best payment I'd received in my career and remains so to this day. The drive to that diner takes about 2,500 additional miles today, round-trip, but I still catch myself considering turning North instead of heading home some days. I ate both slices before midnight that day. I regret nothing. [link] [comments] |
| I'm in the hospital and the doctor is asking for help Posted: 16 Feb 2022 09:04 AM PST So I was working at an ISP back in the 90's. Once morning, on my way to work, I got a pain in my side that was so bad that I had to pull over to the side of the road. I was out of my car rolling around on the ground due to the pain. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 16 Feb 2022 01:38 PM PST In my job role I need to assist employees logging into two separate apps. Generally I provide an email and text message to new users with links to access them, some light instructions, and the actual login information. Our younger tech savvy users have no problem. Logged in quickly without more instruction. The majority of our users need hand holding. Usually in person, but that isn't always possible. Recently I had a new issue that was just... it was just. Capital letter... upper case letter? BIG letter? I'm at a total loss in describing to him how to capitalize a letter. I struggle my way through that. As many passwords go ours requires a special character. Our default includes an [ ! ]. He doesn't know what an exclamation mark is. I send screenshots of how to access it. How to type it in. Nothing. That one totally stumped me. Had to send someone out on a special trip to help him input his credentials correctly. This happens ALL the time. [link] [comments] |
| Accidentally Locking Yourself Out From The BIOS Posted: 16 Feb 2022 02:23 PM PST I work at in the IT department for a government organization in Canada. Ever since COVID lockdowns started the department has had an IT Kiosk set up for employees to come back to the campus and receive support at a central location. I have helped a lot of people with a lot of things that ultimately don't deserve any kind of story here, but today I finally had a client to give me a good tale. The first client I saw this morning was an older guy who submitted a service request about not being able to login to his account. This is fairly common. With the way our secure networks operates sometimes clients who change their user password remotely over the VPN lock themselves out of their account until they come back in to the office and connect via ethernet. So I look at this ticket and think "oh ya this won't be a problem." The guy comes in and I turn on his laptop and before the laptop even posts to the Dell logo a screen comes up demanding the Administrator Password before we can access the OS. I had never seen this before and my gut reaction was it was a Bitlocker issue, but it looked entirely different. I ask the client if this was new and he said that it was the reason he came in. So not exactly what the ticket says, but no big deal yet. I ask him to sit tight and bring his laptop to the admin at the Kiosk and he has no idea what the problem is, so he tells me to ask our Team Lead. I ask the Team Lead and he also has no clue, so he tells me to ask the guy in the backroom since he handles all the imaging and may have seen this before. I go to the guy in the backroom and he also had never seen this before. There is a new guy working and he says he has seen this before and it is a BIOS password. I am dumbfounded thinking that the client had opened the BIOS to change his account password, which is just not the way to do it. So I go back to the client and before I can say anything he says there was something he did not tell me. The client explains that after he changed his user password there was a program he was trying to use that he was not able to login to. He thought it was because he changed his user password. Of course it doesn't work that way but sometimes clients just have limited knowledge of how these things work. I ask him to use his new password on this screen and it doesn't work. I ask him exactly how this happened and he says that he was just trying to follow an email he was sent to get his bitlocker code. We straight up do not give those codes out. They allow the unlocking of drives so it is pretty important for a government organization that we keep that stuff under lock and key. I ask him why he was looking for his bitlocker code and he said he wasn't sure. I was getting confused at this point and asked what the email was for. He said it was for getting the bitlocker code. I tried to clarify and asked what the purpose of the email was for, as in why did he need the bitlocker code? He said he didn't know why. I was getting even more confused. I asked where the email was from and he said he wasn't sure, it was something that was sent to him two years ago. I let him know that the bitlocker codes are pretty important and we don't have any way for clients to get their own, and he just shrugged his shoulders and said that he was just following the email. I asked him if he has the bitlocker code and he had it written down, I double checked with the code in the Active Directory and, not surprisingly, it was not correct. He said that it may be the code for his personal laptop. He said he followed the email until it asked him to go into the BIOS which at that point he said he "chickened out." He definitely did go into the BIOS and either did not know what he was doing or was lying to me. In hindsight I should've asked him to forward that email to me, but at the time I was just confused and swapped his laptop for a new one. He is costing the government a new motherboard because of some random two year old email that he followed without knowing why he was doing any of it. [link] [comments] |
| Electricity and internet - cause and effect Posted: 16 Feb 2022 04:54 PM PST Long time lurker, few-time commenter, first time poster. I have withheld some stories so long, that I'm afraid must start posting them before i forget them. Also regular mobile user warning. This tale is more about embedded IoT system rather than PCs. This story came from relative who works as freelance electrical engineer. Tale happened about month or two ago, but details are bit fuzzy. Few years ago he worked with a small power grid maintenance company to help them upgrade some control system you'd find in electrical substation. I don't know what that system did, but one feature added by upgrade was to enable easier remote control and monitoring by adding internet connectivity via 4G modem. Fast forward to January when he got rather distressed call from owner of maintenance company. Turned out all upgraded substations had gone offline, apparently causing blackout affecting hundreds of people and company's sole employee (owner) was on vacation at other side of country (I said it was small company). He needed relative to go and assist grid company with fixing the substations, because he was one who set up those comtrollers. Turned out end users weren't experiencing any issues at all, most of substation's systems worked fine as well. Only exception was the IoT module, which refused to connect to the server. Quick investigation showed that modems' SIMs had hit data cap, refusing to connect internet. Issue happened simultaneously with multiple cards, because they were all managed under same package and contributed to same limit. Root cause of the problem was misuse of one of those SIM-cards, which had ended up in owner's laptop's modem. Remember how he was on vacation in remote place? Well, he had habit of keeping eye on home's IP-cameras while away, but laptop on which he watched them was using SIM-card linked to IoT plan, eating up all data plan. PS. Bit context of company relations for clarification - electicity distribution network (grid) belongs to state-owned monopoly, which subcontracts infrastructure construction and maintenance to smaller firms. This particular maintenance company had just one full-time employee, but due to size of the upgrade project needed additional support. [link] [comments] |
| I still don't know what was wrong with that keyboard Posted: 16 Feb 2022 04:17 PM PST I worked a summer position for a team of desktop techs at a university a couple years ago. I was there only for a few months and I can recall way more tales than I expected. So I cannot imagine the amount of stories some of you may have! Anyways, off to the story: I am sitting in my workspace deep in the underground lair and notice a ticket in my queue for a broken keyboard. Dr. Joe (not real name) is stating that certain keys are not responding and not clicking right. At the time, we have been deploying new machines that came with a different keyboard than the norm. Essentially, the standard keyboard at this university was changing and Desktop did not have extras of the new keyboard. I was informed by the team to not provide older model keyboards to users with newer machines. Fair enough, I get the reasoning behind it. So, I decide to drag myself over to Joe's office to take a look and possibly troubleshoot his keyboard. First step I did was open a new word document and just test the keyboard out by typing random sentences coming to my mind. Keyboard worked fine! But Joe refused to accept this "No way it was not working with me at all" he said. So I told him ,"Let me do some more troubleshooting" then proceeded to restart the device and re-plug the keyboard to another USB port. Once the machine was back up and running, I opened a word document and went off typing random sentences yet again. Well look at that, keyboard is still working perfectly fine. I tell Joe something along the lines of " you may have just been experiencing a one-off kind of issue, your keyboard seems ok to me". He somehow still refused that the keyboard was fine and asked me to type what he says. I proceed to type and I sat there for a good minute or two of dictation till he finally decides to take the hot seat himself. Joe types a few words himself and is now convinced the keyboard is fine but still seems iffy about it. Me being as "customer service oriented" as possible I tell Joe that I will check with the team if there is anything else that can be done. I ask a member of the team and they tell me to fix my headache by just giving Joe an older model keyboard from the stack we have in the back of the office. I sigh, take the keyboard, head over to Joe and give him a new keyboard. Joe is happy, I am happy I am finally done with this ticket and I guess everybody wins? TL;DR: Ticket for broken keyboard came in. Keyboard was perfectly fine but user refused to accept this. After proving to the user that the keyboard is ok multiple times, I still had to give him a replacement. [link] [comments] |
| Are you sure you looked EVERYwhere? Posted: 16 Feb 2022 11:28 AM PST I've been an IT support manager at a state agency for quite a few years, and I have accumulated a ton of IT horror stories. When you combine government workers and technology, the tales can border on legendary. On this occasion, however, technology was merely the setting. We were converting from our original "username/password" method of logging in to the network to a two factor authentication system. For those who don't know what this is, you still use a username and a password to log in, but now you also have a keyfob that gives you a six digit number that you also have to enter into the login screen. The number on the fob we were using at the time automatically changed every sixty seconds. Each user had their own fob: the number on your fob wouldn't work with anyone else's username and password but yours. It was a giant leap in network security. The weakness in this system was our users. Now, I work with many wonderful people who I respect and who are hard workers. Don't get me wrong, these people are very good at what they do and we're lucky to have them, but just as in any office there are a few... special... people. These are the ones that make you seriously wonder how they find their way to the office in the morning without getting hurt. These people can make a simple project rollout challenging, because we have to take them into consideration whenever we write instructions or documentation. These are the ones who may seriously ask you where the "Any" key is. In preparation for the two factor system rollout we had to not only issue the keyfobs to every user but we also had to provide them with foolproof instructions on how to use said fobs. We wrote and rewrote the documentation, got it worded as perfectly as possible in order to both be informative and appease anal rententive upper management. The final product was a thing of Frankenstein-like beauty: a single page of grade-school like instructions including a picture of the login screen with an arrow pointing to where the six digit code should be entered, a picture of the actual fob, a red arrow pointing to the window on the fob where the six digit number would be found (yes, really) and instructions to call our help desk with any problems or questions. Manila envelopes were prepared for everyone: the envelope had the name of the employee, an instruction sheet, and that employee's assigned fob. The envelopes were sealed and placed in each employee's chair, and each chair was placed facing the aisle. It was a foolproof masterpiece. Enter the fools. There were the usual questions... "Do I Have To Use This To Log In?'... "Is This Fob Mine Or My Neighbor's?"... and the ever popular "What's This For?". The tech support calls were even better. Out of 150+ users, we only had two who complained that their fob's code wasn't working. One was asked to read out the code she was using and said "LOE115" at which point we had to tell her that she was holding the plainly printed fob upside down. One person, however, complained that she had gotten no fob at all. My techs scrambled - we were sure no one had been left out! A token was assigned to her account in the system but she said she didn't get one, so - we quickly assigned and synced up a new fob, grabbed an envelope and the instructions and quickly dispatched it to the user. When my tech got there, the user wheeled around, said "Oh, thank you!" and stood... revealing the envelope we had left the night before in her chair. She had been sitting on it. [link] [comments] |
| The network system MUST be changed! Posted: 16 Feb 2022 11:50 AM PST When I joined the shipping company they were running Novell Netware 3.12 on the two servers they had in two of the UK offices. A couple of years later HQ decided the system needed upgrading. They sent out CDs for Netware 4.11 and gave a short training session on how to upgrade/use it etc. It was great. I had the two offices running 4.11 and set up the other two offices with the 3.12 version. Things were ticking along nicely. An update here and there were easily accomplished with minimum fuss. Everyone was happy. Then HQ announced we were all going to get fax from the desktop software for all of us. Everything was going to be managed by this program. Our outgoing fax machine usage would drop as the program would automatically retransmit and let us know if there were any failures. Only caveat was that all the network servers had to be changed from Novell Netware and installed with Windows NT Server in order for this to work properly. I protested. Regional IT in Hamburg protested that there must be another way to implement this. HQ was adamant. The entire domain structure had to be moved to Windows NT immediately. After much despair, wailing and gnashing of teeth it was accomplished and we were all running on a Windows NT domain. The fax software arrived from HQ. Upon inspection I discovered the program just needed to be installed and running on an NT server. Any NT server that happened to be plugged into the local network, Netware or Windows, and made accessible to the users. Privately I think MS products were very easy to "acquire cheaply, nudge, nudge, wink, wink" that brought about this system change. Don't get me started on the package of 25 3.5" floppy disks of Microsoft Office (Korean version) that arrived riddled with malware and viruses when I scanned them. [link] [comments] |
| I am not able to open the file Posted: 16 Feb 2022 11:54 AM PST A little back story that I am working at a private BPO IT service desk voice account. The time this story happened I was a noob in the industry and was not very good at my job. On that account we have an app (not sure if unique to the client) where we can remote in to any computer and if the computer is company provided we have admin access but if personal or other company computer either view only or very limited access and at that time I was not familiar with RDP or MSRA. This is a short story about my struggle on a call when I was a noob. The caller was a nice old man using his personal computer for work and the issue was that the file from our citrix site was not opening in the workspace app, it was opening in Internet Explorer and keeps asking to redownload the file over and over again when opened. So I asked if he already installed the app citrix receiver(at the time) from the citrix site, he said yes but not sure if correct. I asked to check in the system tray if he can see the citrix logo there was little but surprised the app is installed and correct version but still not opening in receiver app. I tried for a long time trying to connect to the computer to manually assist in correcting the file association since for non-technical people is somewhat difficult to follow with just dictated instructions. We tried multiple times for me to remote in using the app and site but seem either their firewall or their ISP is blocking the app for me to remote in, so I proceeded with blindly troubleshooting and instructed user step by step in correcting the default app in opening the cirtix file. And his computer made it more difficult cause the receiver didn't appear in the list of apps in the small open with window, had to walk him through the manual process of file association by selecting the .exe file from the installation folder, thankfully after selecting the correct exe file was no other issue and we were able to resolve the issue and ticket. [link] [comments] |
| A funny story from my last job Posted: 15 Feb 2022 05:36 PM PST A few months ago, I was working at a client facing helpdesk for an ISP. It wasn't a very difficult job on the technical side, but it was a good first job for me to get my foot in the door in an internal IT department. Anyway, it was my last week at said helpdesk job. I was about to go home for the day and I get a call from a restaurant owner, annoying but sometimes it comes with the territory. He is not a happy camper. I answer the phone with the usual greeting "thank you for calling <ISP> my name is ___ how can I get the name and address of the site you're calling in reference to?" Guy starts screaming, yelling, and swearing that his internet isn't working. (you know the type) I respond saying I'm sorry the internet is not working and I understand how essential it is and ask if his modem has power. Restaurant owner responds with "are you kidding me?? How could my modem have power? My fucking electricity is out?" At this point I am facepalming at my desk as I explain to him that he needs to call his electric company and figure out how to get his power back on and that modems need electricity in order to provide internet service. He then hangs up the phone stating that what I had told him was one of the dumbest things he had ever heard. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 16 Feb 2022 08:24 AM PST LTL, FTP, Mobile, English as third language...You know the drill... Not exactly TS, but freelancing in IT. Sorry, if it gets long, but am cutting short as much as I can. I live in a country, where English isnt the first language, as well, as the client, although they speak another language there. Got contacted, as a huge part of their clients speak the language spoken here and the language spoken, where the client is located, is my second language. They want a mostly automated system, where their clients can input data directly, with which they need to work there. All good so long. The product then need to process these into files to import into a Software they need to use by local mandation. All good so long. After a long, difficult talk with that Software company, I finally, after several wrong ones, get the documentation for the import function. Bad part: the data, that can be imported, only covers 1/3 of the functions, the client needs. The rest is needed to create files to send to official entities. No documentation found for those. After analyzing these files, I get mostly around the structure, but got some questions. Next problem: client contacts today, that he forgot to mention, that the codes for the same thing differ from one entity to another (total of 3 entities). He also sends me the IDs of their clients, but without names or codes. All codes he sends related to the clients are with their names, but without ID. You get where this is going? Finished analyzing without questions the files, but now need to match all the codes and insert them into the DB. 200x2 codes client related and 10k+x3 entity related. Wish me fun. Ah, and deadline is in 2 weeks. Edit 1: Out of the 200 clients, 16 got submitted with codes as names. And not any of the already used codes. Edit 2: It gets worse: 1/3 of the clients hasnt names in one of the entities, but yet another code. [link] [comments] |
| A small story from my last job Posted: 15 Feb 2022 09:52 AM PST Prior to my current position, I worked at an MSP. One of the companies we supported used some credit card processing software that would occasionally experience an issue: It couldn't work due to a port not being available. Now, we had a documented fix that was fairly quick and simple to implement, so downtime for that issue was fairly low. It was frustrating for both our client and their customers while it was happening, though, and it was only a band-aid fix. We were fairly busy when I first started, so didn't really have time to try and solve the root problem. Then Covid hit. We lost some clients (but not the one in question), and most of our clients let some employees go, so we had less tickets. That also meant we had more time, so when this happened again and it was already a slow day, I got to investigating and called the company that made the CC processing software. Turns out, they had hard-coded a port number into their software. That port number was in the 49152 to 65535 range. When I realized this, I facepalmed a little. There was the root cause of the problem, and why it was as intermittent as it was. So, I found a way to prevent Windows Server from handing that port out, ran it by our resident Server Bro, and then implemented it. As far as I know, the company didn't experience that problem ever again. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 15 Feb 2022 12:19 PM PST One day I received a ticket from one of our users asking for some support. What is was for exactly I can't remember anymore, but it was something very simple. I called him and instead of trying to explain what he had to do and losing 30 minutes of valuable time, I decided to do the change myself (2 minutes of work). I asked for his Teamviewer ID and password so I could have a look. He asked where he could find this because he didn't seem to find it. I explained it as simple as I could where to find it. His reponse was that his screen was black because his computer actually was turned off. His next remark was: "So my computer has to be enabled in order for you to make the change?" After the call I was genuinely choking the life out of the earphone. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 15 Feb 2022 02:45 PM PST Way back in 2008 I was working in the warranty dept of a telecom OEM. We primarily made video on demand and cable internet equipment, that was used by a LOT of different companies on the head-end. I was the only tech worldwide for a wireless data network product. Outdoor units were 25 mile line of sight, 5 mile non-line of sight, 300 clients per base station... indoor units were about 100 yards line of sight. The non-line of sight range is the issue with this customer. I've got my usual flow of units coming through, and my boss comes out of the office to tell me we have a major problem with this customer. Apparently all his units were dropping signal strength and were "barely usable", had a shipment coming in a couple days and to make this my priority. Get in 3 pallet boxes... those big 4x4x3 things... stuffed with indoor units. Close to 300 units, so 1 base station. Was about 30 into the first box, all RMA'd as "low power", all NFF on my test equipment. Tested 10 out of the 2nd box... all NFF. Tested 10 more in the 3rd box... all NFF. So that's 50 of 300, "low power" that all test fine on the test rack and FTP setup 50' away (heavily attenuated). $68 a pop for NFF, so I've already done $3400 worth of testing by noon. Walked over to engineering, got a figure of "1.6-2dBm per wall, 6 for concrete"... my boss contacted the customer to give them an update, and asked if they wanted us to continue testing. Engineering said a 10dBm loss across a building was a reasonable expectation. We shipped the customer all 3 pallet boxes back that afternoon. Customer paid shipping both ways and the bill for my morning of testing. Company wouldn't have noticed the shipping cost, but it was a customer issue not a product issue. Saw 5 more RMA's from the customer over the next year, 3 base stations that needed refreshing and 2 indoor units that needed power amps replaced. Guess they learned their expensive lesson. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 15 Feb 2022 11:27 AM PST Back in the days I was a network supervisor for the UK offices a South Korean shipping company (now since gone bankrupt). The head office decided it was time to move the company onto a modern network capable version of the COBOL/mainframe batch system they used for shipping related documentation. It was to be a all singing dancing system that installed updates to the user PCs as they started up the software each day. As software loaded it would check a location to see if any new updates were available. It would then download/install these updates before starting. This system was meant to be fully network aware so you could sign into the program from any office and print invoices/reports/bills of lading/etc to your local office printers. Various printers were assigned to print queues dedicated to each print function with the correct paper installed. Imagine our surprise when we went to print one function, can't remember what it was after this long, and the system gave an error about the printer not being available. Print queue is there. Printer is ready and online. Why can't we print? After some investigation we find out the developer for that particular function back in South Korea tested their software output by printing to the printer plugged into his local printer port (think it was LPT1) on his PC. Everything worked so he HARD CODED the software to only print to that printer port ! Too much trouble to rewrite the software. So from now on we had to run a batch command on each PC starting up to capture LPT1 and assign it to the print queue for that function so the printer could receive the output as intended. So there we had fully network capable system that would only print to a printer connected to your PC! [link] [comments] |
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