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| Posted: 27 Mar 2022 06:58 AM PDT Waaaay back in the old days when I was a developer, I wrote a system to generate statistics and reports from a live data stream. When I was developing it, I had no access to the actual live data stream, just the specification for the format it was in, so to test my software, I wrote a small Noddy program to replicate the data stream with random data, just do I could check it was calculating and formatting correctly. The program was put into use and the whole department loved it. Fast forward a year or so and I got a request in To do some changes, so I called up the original program listing and Tomy horror discovered I had forgotten to switch off the random data generator. This means they had been receiving bogus stats for almost a year and nobody had even noticed. So I made the changes, switched off the random number generator, re compiled and said nothing! [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2022 10:28 PM PDT I had a gig supporting a company's mainframes when PCs first started becoming popular. The IT Director, Bob, whose technical expertise didn't extend much past punched cards and paper tape, decided that no one in his empire should ever have a PC that was better than his. We got a new shipment of PCs and of course the first one went on a table in Bob's office. We were pretty sure he never used it because every time we went into his office, it was buried under an every growing pile of manuals, magazines, memos and coffee cups. A month went by and someone needed a replacement keyboard. So after Bob went home, we snuck into his office, moved all the crap off his PC and swapped out his keyboard. Then another guy's monitor got little wonky so we took Bob's. Within a few months we had taken the memory, hard drive power supply, coax card and power cable. Pretty soon all he had left was the empty case. And when the company had the next round of upgrades, Bob was first in line because he was a "power user". [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 28 Mar 2022 06:57 AM PDT Got an old one here from back when I worked for a repair depot for a major electronics box store. So when I worked there in college we did a ton of repairs. Every repair had paperwork we had to due thru an app, entering in serial numbers, product ids, parts used, etc etc. This was all fine and good, except we had literally dozens of pallets and massive bins of this certain crappy tablet. These tablets were cheap, the companies flag shop tablet that was so revolutionary because it ran windows.... Well these tablets only had 3 or 4 product numbers usually depending on size, and they had only 1 replacable part (mother boards were all in one and cheap as the rest of the tablet) and that was the only thing you would replace. If the screen was damaged you failed it and moved on, battery damaged, you might salvage a damaged screens one but you wouldn't document it since it wasn't a new part... Anyways these things you could mass repair and or fail out, I could fully break down and rebuild one in 6 minutes at one point, but the paperwork, even with barcodes taped to my desk and a scanner would slow me down. Naturally we had quotas but between testing, getting parts doing the swap, testing again then doing paper work you'd get bogged down and usually at the end miss a few that won't count on that days quota due to missed paperwork. Paperwork mainly slowed you down due to all the screens you had to go to for each step, just endless navigation even to fail a unit. So I decided I was in college learning to code....I wrote a vb script to read a spreadsheet where I quickly scanned in the basics , sn, pass fail, product Id, part number part sn, etc. I'd do blocks of like 10 tablets, as many as could fit on my desk and shelves, scan them in while testing and such, and then at the end of the day I'd run the script, it would read the boxes, fill stuff in accordingly and close the ticket printing off the pass or fail labels for shipping. I'd match them up to the boxes and ship them on out. Management didn't like it because it wasn't company approved...mid submitted it to the company but never heard anything back...so I kept using it regardless because I was turning out the most repairs on those tablets of anyone... Towards the end I even spread it to a few people I liked and trusted, taught them how to use it, made sure my work wasn't just gone at the end and could continue saving others from the boring paper work. TLDR made vb script to read a spreadsheet and fill out my paper work for me, company didn't approve it even when submitted thru proper channels, passed it onto others when I left in secret so they could avoid paperwork. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2022 10:36 AM PDT Used to work for a hardware support department at an international investment bank. Most whitespace work is an ongoing refresh project to update most end-users' workstations on a rolling three year cycle. If the department doesn't want to spend the money, however, sometimes they opt for just ordering RAM from us or holding off on a hope and a prayer for an extra cycle. Come one department, we were swapping the boxes for some team that had been in limbo for a while, and when I came to a little waif of an analyst, she stopped me after I said I was taking the box. Usually it's some issue of "I'm still working, you can wait," - we did it during the day for back office folk because then we can watch them load their accounts/test their apps in front of us; the process takes ten minutes - but nah, she logged out and shut down, then crawled under her own desk, unplugged the PC, opened it up and took the RAM out. "This is mine." "Where's our RAM?" She opened up a desk drawer and, indeed, two sticks of the ancient unshielded RAM we used were there. "Well damn, you know I should probably report you for messing with your computer, but I ain't even mad. Color me impressed - you knew which kind to buy, too!" "This was easier than getting my boss to approve upgrades." "Well here's our number. New box uses the same type of RAM; call us if you end up Bitlockering it: You'll get better results than running it through the helldesk ticketing process." The best end users are the ones you never see. [link] [comments] |
| No, creating a user on my client’s exchange server won’t solve your problem Posted: 26 Mar 2022 11:57 AM PDT Background: The company I work for provides IT support for a smaller company (with the domain you_should_figure_out_spf.com); said smaller company is using a third party application. That third party application is being configured on the vendors end to send email as someone@you_should_figure_out_spf.com This ticket got escalated to our SVP and made its way down to me. I hopped on a call with the vendor to try and help out. First issue: the vendors config settings were trying to use my inbound mail server hostname to send from. it was at this point I realized, this would not be a quick call I told him he probably needs to input his sending mail server in that box. He used a "testing" mail server, and mail finally sent! Great! But I told him SPF will fail, which it did on my end. I told him all I'd need to know is his production sending mail server IP and I'll edit our mutual client's SPF record. He seemed to understand and went back to his team. Fast forward a few hours and I get an email saying his admin thinks it'd be easier if I created a new email address on my clients exchange server. That way, he can use that email address to send from. Huh? Now I'm more confused. We get back on a call, and he explains that if I make a user on the clients exchange server he can, on his end, use that email address to send email from. Okay. How? I ask him. Silence. He was somehow under the impression by creating a user, he would be able to send email from the clients exchange server itself. that's not how any of this works I had to explain that my creating a user doesn't mean he has magical access to a clients exchange server to send email from. He seemed confused still. And I proceeded to explain to him again how this needs to be set up on his end and what information I need to edit an SPF record and this will be resolved. It's not resolved yet because they can't tell me what server they will be using to send email from. confused, wondering how some people actually keep their jobs, look [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 25 Mar 2022 06:47 PM PDT Short and sweet story that I was reminded of from another post. This was very early in my first few months at my current MSP, and since I was still pretty green, I was put on the chat team instead of the phone answering team. One morning, a chat comes in from a user at one of the bigger companies we support $Me = Me, nwojdak $U = User Bing Chat comes in $Me: "Hello, thank you for contacting [MSP NAME], this is nwojdak, how can I help you? $U: "I need a new keyboard, I can't do my work efficiently with the old one." For context, this company offers their users two different keyboards based on the work they do. Users can either get a keyboard with a number-pad... Or one without. Same brand, same model line, the only difference is if there is a number-pad or not. Since it's an engineering company, some engineers like the smaller keyboard to give more desk space. However, accountants would like the num-pad, etc. $Me: "Sure thing, we can look at that. What keyboard do you have now? Does it have a number pad?" $U: "Yes." $Me: "Okay, so just to confirm, you'd like the keyboard without a number pad, is that correct?" $U: "Actually, I'd like this: [URL to an Amazon link for a $320 gaming Keyboard]" $Me: "Unfortunately, we don't provide those, so the only two options are the keyboard you have, and one without a number-pad." $U: "But I really need it to work! I need the extra keys for Macros." $Me: "In that case you will need to talk to your manager for anything above what we usually provide, as we are not authorized to order anything that is not agreed upon by us and the management of [COMPANY NAME]. Then, we will need a proper expense request from you, approved by your manager, and then we can order the keyboard." $U: Disconnects abruptly I think nothing of it aside from chuckling about it with my work colleagues, and then move on. Until 2 weeks later, when a message comes over our "All-Tech's" teams chatboard from my Team Lead that reads "To whoever spoke with a user at [COMPANY NAME] in the last two weeks about upgrading a keyboard, please let us know." Well, that certainly sounds like me. I reach out to the team lead who wants to know what happened. I provide the chat log and stress that was the only interaction I had on the matter. Turns out, the employee took it upon themselves to go to the store, purchase the keyboard they wanted, then expense it to the company. When the employee was caught and asked why they thought it was okay to expense a $320 gaming keyboard to the company, their response was "IT told me to do it this way as they wouldn't order it for me." Well, that argument fell apart once I provided the chat log. I was off the hook, the user got in trouble and was not reimbursed, and everything was wrapped up nicely... Except the keyboard was stolen a week later. But that's none of my concern. TL;DR: User wants us as the MSP to order a $320 gaming keyboard to replace the working keyboard they have to be "more efficient" at their work. When we say we won't do that without approval from their manager, they decide to buy it themselves and expense it to their company. When questioned on it, they say "IT told me to do it." [link] [comments] |
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