Tales from Techsupport

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Originally Posted by Mileron

And here's an unrelated kicker:

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I had no less than a dozen different lawyers and MBA's doing that for WEEKS after they got new laptops.

My favorite, though, was the guy who stored EVERYTHING on his desktop and always unplugged the LAN cable before logging on or off his machine because "logging in with the cable takes too long".

Me: YES. THAT'S BECAUSE YOU HAVE A ROAMING PROFILE. PUT STUFF ON YOUR NETWORK DRIVE OR IN THE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM WHEN YOU'RE DONE WITH IT SO YOU DON'T HAVE AN 8GB ROAMING PROFILE!

Him: I can't do that. All of these Excel spreadsheets are linked.

Me: *shudders*

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Originally Posted by Bonlainy

Ah, they go right along with the PEBCAKs. Problem Exists Between chair And Keyboard.

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My favorite is Layer 8

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Originally Posted by Eremius

My favorite is Layer 8

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Nepotism?

I've seen lots of network failures due to "my {relative} is out of school for the summer. He's geeky so I'm giving him a seasonal internship in your department." :P

Layer 8 is the User layer :-)

Yes, nepotism sucks that way.

Ok, the heatwave has brought out the Stupid:


This morning received the "Help."

with what?
"I'm trying to get to this web address and it won't go there, and we tried it on somebody eles's and it looks different, and it just doesn't work help!!!!"

OK, let's start with the difference between the text box for the Yahoo search - and the address bar.
yahoo search doesn't like "https://" try the address bar instead...
wow - that works so much better.

"yeah, I'm so bad with computers - I've never learned this stuff, I'm never going to?"

Then perhaps you should chose a profession other then Fucking secretary. Maybe try street sweeper or burger fucking flipper. Either way, quit using my oxygen.

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Now this afternoon's:

From a better user, not completely incompetent - just mostly... she usually finds a way to do things... may not always be the most efficient, but she gets the job done.

So, She has a word document that she wants in PDF format, but she wants to spit the one word doc into Multiple PDF's - her solution is to print it out; go out to the Canon Document center and scan it in a couple pages at a time... She's asking me for a better way to do it.

(thankfully she asked)...
She knew about the word Publish as PDF -- she had just never clicked on the "Options" button to find the - "page range" option

Sales rep: Customer emailed me and told me she's getting an error
Me: In what program?
SR: What do you mean what program?
Me: Which program did they get the error in?
SR: Oh, the one from 1999
Me: There were four
SR: Oh, X Tax Form
Me: *knowing it takes special instructions to install it now, due to the newer programs running off a different database engine than the old ones* Was it error 456?
SR: How would I know?
Me: Did she include the error in the email?
SR: No, but she wants development to rebuild the program because she swears it won't take her data.
Me: First off, that program hasn't been updated since 2001. It's ten years old. Second, we don't even develop using the same environment to make that program anymore.
SR: Well what if we find a CD for development to fix the old program?
Me: Just have the customer call us with her tech on the phone.

Customer: I'm getting an error that indicates a permissions problem when I use your software.
Me: *remote troubleshooting* Well yeah you don't have full control permissions to the app folder
Customer: Call my tech about that.

Me: Yeah, Hi, Contracted Tech? I need this user to have FC permissions to the app folder.
Tech: Oh, they aren't in any groups, they use a guest login to get onto their server.
Me: ...

Who DOES that!?

Lazy or stupid people

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Originally Posted by Mileron

Who DOES that!?

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The same kind of people that design the data access layer of a web application to use web services for all of the database operations, said web services' only purpose being to pass the SQL queries, with credentials and in plain text, between two servers.

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Originally Posted by Axxin

The same kind of people that design the data access layer of a web application to use web services for all of the database operations, said web services' only purpose being to pass the SQL queries, with credentials and in plain text, between two servers.

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I've seen that!
The same app stored the sa password in plain text in the registry too!

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Originally Posted by Merrick ap'Milandra

I've seen that!
The same app stored the sa password in plain text in the registry too!

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Wow. I thought that level of stupid had to be fairly unique.

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Originally Posted by Axxin

Wow. I thought that level of stupid had to be fairly unique.

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It gets better.

Since I *had* the sa password, I figured "why not just load up SQL Enterprise Manager and have a look-see?".

Insert cartoon sound of jaw dropping like a sack full of metal tools and tin cans.

Only a few tables had primary keys. Despite being chock full of data that was SUPPOSED to be relational data, there were only a few (3? 4?) actual relationships out of the 40 - 60 tables (It's been years so I don't remember exact numbers) and the rest were just flat, separate, unconnected globs of crap. Nevermind that tableCostModel.CostIDName should have been related to tableCostCompanyData.CostIDName, there was absolutely NOTHING tying them together.

I still have a backup somewhere on a VM so I plan to, someday, obfuscate it sufficiently to avoid getting my ass sued and submit the schema to DailyWTF.

Maybe they were doing field comparisons on the fly during queries by using nested IIF statements. Sloppy as hell.

Er, I mean CASE WHEN statements.

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Originally Posted by Alikat Astrae

Er, I mean CASE WHEN statements.

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The developer told me that since all of the queries were hard-coded into the executable, with the exception of the user-created variables, for the application (at which point I wanted to ask "why the fuck didn't you hard-code the sa pw too instead of leaving it for all to see in the registry?") that nothing could possibly go wrong, at which point I blinked, shuddered, and tried not to think about it when dealing with that software.

I later found out (upon having the lead dev webex into my machine and nearly pass out due to asphyxiation from talking so fast he didn't have time to breathe when he saw SQL Enterprise Manager) that they were using SQL Express and doing all of the db programming via DOS prompt because*noone* on the development team had a full copy of SQL Server with the Development Tools.

"What is that?" "How did you get that?" "That would be very helpful!"

Yup. He'd never even SEEN the client-side tools for MS T-SQL db's.

/facepalm

Hooray for outsourcing.

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Originally Posted by Axxin

Wow. I thought that level of stupid had to be fairly unique.

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Humanity has an infinite supply of stupid.

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Originally Posted by Merrick ap'Milandra

The developer told me that since all of the queries were hard-coded into the executable, with the exception of the user-created variables, for the application (at which point I wanted to ask "why the fuck didn't you hard-code the sa pw too instead of leaving it for all to see in the registry?") that nothing could possibly go wrong, at which point I blinked, shuddered, and tried not to think about it when dealing with that software.

I later found out (upon having the lead dev webex into my machine and nearly pass out due to asphyxiation from talking so fast he didn't have time to breathe when he saw SQL Enterprise Manager) that they were using SQL Express and doing all of the db programming via DOS prompt because*noone* on the development team had a full copy of SQL Server with the Development Tools.

"What is that?" "How did you get that?" "That would be very helpful!"

Yup. He'd never even SEEN the client-side tools for MS T-SQL db's.

/facepalm

Hooray for outsourcing.

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Just in case you are not aware, SQL 2008 Express can be installed with the Studio Manager. You either have to find the correct install package or jump through hoops installing it after the SQL 2008 Express install.

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Originally Posted by Schezar

Humanity has an infinite supply of stupid.

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Infinite stupidity in infinite combinations.

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Originally Posted by Mitebe

Just in case you are not aware, SQL 2008 Express can be installed with the Studio Manager. You either have to find the correct install package or jump through hoops installing it after the SQL 2008 Express install.

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Yeah, that was actually one of the better added features in the express line of late.

They were still using 2000 because that's what they started developing on.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. why would they continue to use that old tired pos. Unless they were developing since before 2008 came out and didn't want to upgrade/port to the new platform.