Tales from Techsupport

Email from customer: I want weekend support for a specific weekend
Me: Unfortunately we don't offer weekend hours, but let me forward your request to your Sales Rep. (Also CC'ed my manager)

Email from Manager: several days laterWhy hasn't this customer's question been addressed yet?
Me: We sent her request to Sales and Support Management. We're not able to answer her question. We were waiting for managerial response.
Manager: Why hasn't this customer's question been addressed yet?

Sometimes I wish I could be sarcastically honest and say something like "Because you didn't respond to MY question, dumbass".

Quote:

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Sometimes I wish I could be sarcastically honest and say something like "Because you didn't respond to MY question, dumbass".

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I probably would... but then I'm an Ass.

[QUOTE=Mileron;1844117Sometimes I wish I could be sarcastically honest and say something like "Because you didn't respond to MY question, dumbass".[/QUOTE]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Melcar

I probably would... but then I'm an Ass.

---

I do quite often - luckily my manager is on the same page as me, but it might also explain why I am never going to get promoted :)

Managers do not always come from the most intelligent crop.

When I worked in retail the managers that did the best were the ones that came up through the ranks and not the ones who just had an MBA and never worked the trenches of retail.

I can reply with a snark to my current manager (also explains why she's been my manager for 10 years, she is awesome) - but I've had other managers where a reply like that would mean an instant closed door meeting. Probably why I left for greener pastures:grimeeting.

No edit in rants and tapatalk decides to spaz out :(

And this week my boss forwarded me a mail from "win-licenses-now-cheap.com" or similar, and all he added was "fyi".

I sometimes want to sell him a bridge.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dawlin

I can reply with a snark to my current manager (also explains why she's been my manager for 10 years, she is awesome) - but I've had other managers where a reply like that would mean an instant closed door meeting. Probably why I left for greener pastures:grimeeting.

---

One of the things I love about where I am now is the relationship I have with my direct report and my supervisor - We give each other shit constantly. But we also know that we have each others backs and that what needs to get done will get done.

Gah: hate people that need me to read for them:

So here's the situation, one of our users is getting support from an external vendor - needs admin rights to the local computer to do what they need to do. (I believe they're putting on a new program version) anyways, useless retiring tech (URT)comes to boss and asks if we can give this user temporary local admin rights to do this and why... -- sure no problem, if that's what it needs.

URT goes to Not-retiring Useless Tech (NUT) and asks NUT to remotely manage users computer and add user to local admin group. NUT pulls up Active directory tools - but grabs the wrong computer name. (Duplicate deprecated computer accounts).

NUT says "oh this one must not be remote manageable" instead of the obvious explanation of NUT can't fucking read.

I yell at NUT. Pull up the correct one. and manage the computer.


NUT says "well, Mine doesn't even show all those other names."

Yes it does NUT - you just can't read.

"Well, why are all those old names still in there, they should all be taken out".

Yes NUT, Yes they should; Think maybe that should be the job of the installer? The guy who's primary job it is to setup new computers and replace all the old computers with the new computers? what's his name again? I believe it was NUT. Think maybe HE'd be the appropriate one to take out the Old names?

Fuck I hate my coworkers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Melcar

Gah: hate people that need me to read for them:

So here's the situation, one of our users is getting support from an external vendor - needs admin rights to the local computer to do what they need to do. (I believe they're putting on a new program version) anyways, useless retiring tech (URT)comes to boss and asks if we can give this user temporary local admin rights to do this and why... -- sure no problem, if that's what it needs.

URT goes to Not-retiring Useless Tech (NUT) and asks NUT to remotely manage users computer and add user to local admin group. NUT pulls up Active directory tools - but grabs the wrong computer name. (Duplicate deprecated computer accounts).

NUT says "oh this one must not be remote manageable" instead of the obvious explanation of NUT can't fucking read.

I yell at NUT. Pull up the correct one. and manage the computer.


NUT says "well, Mine doesn't even show all those other names."

Yes it does NUT - you just can't read.

"Well, why are all those old names still in there, they should all be taken out".

Yes NUT, Yes they should; Think maybe that should be the job of the installer? The guy who's primary job it is to setup new computers and replace all the old computers with the new computers? what's his name again? I believe it was NUT. Think maybe HE'd be the appropriate one to take out the Old names?

Fuck I hate my coworkers.

---

7/10; Needs more profanity vs. coworkers. I know you are up to the task.

Quote:

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7/10; Needs more profanity vs. coworkers. I know you are up to the task.

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I dunno, my hearts just not in it anymore... You can only tell somebody they fucking suck so many times.

Shit there was one time over the summer, was just me and the NUT in the office. NUT says "I just don't think I'm cut out for IT work".

Yeah? And? - You expecting me to talk you down from the fucking ledge?
Don't like your job? Don't like what you do? Don't think you can handle it? THEN FUCKING QUIT ALREADY so we can replace your dumbfuck ass with somebody who actually does their fucking job.


Ok, most of that conversation happened in my head... I wasn't that mean - I did actually say the "what you expecting me to talk you down from the ledge? Quit..."

Yup, I truly am an asshole.

<Server outage>
<Call reporting supervisor to let him know it's back up, he calls me back>
Genius: Returning your call
Me: The <services you need> are back in service
Genius: We noticed. What happened?
Me: One of the servers went down.
Genius: Is it back up?
Me: ... Yeah

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Im always told in meeetings among my peers that we are to try every possibility in remedying a situation before calling for assistance.

I was snaking a drain starting from the problem and systematically moving down from point a to each section of pipe further down the line.

After four hours, and just before opening the last serviceable section of pipe, i called my supervisor.

"Why did you wait so long before calling? "

Wtf.

So he called in a sr tech who after two hours of doing exactly what i did said," we need to call a vendor. "

Fuck.

Now I'm sitting here waiting for a vendor.

What do you use for a snake?

We had to call a plumber once and he had a snake that was, like, 10 times anything I could get at Lowe's or Home Depot.

I'd been working with the biggest one I could find for hours.

He came in and had the clog un-done within less than 60 seconds and about 15 cranks of the snake.

I have 4, plus an auger. A 75foot 3/4" ridgid, a 35foot 1/2"general, a 25 foot 1/4" ridgid and a 25" ridgid auto clean with an auto feed (i never use it)

They all have power feed, but that's only to grab whatever it is that might be clogging, and typically just use my hands to feed.

So long story short never shake hands with you?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Schezar

So long story short never shake hands with you?

---

/chuckle

I'm literally the cleanest individual most people could imagine. Most people who aren't quite aware of the work that I do are shocked when they see what I am capable of.

I use a very fantastic brand of nitrile glove that is second to none. Raven SAS. They are the only brand of disposable glove that will hold up to the rigors of a powered-snake in operation, and the reason I choose disposable is because I don't want to deal with nastiness getting anywhere near my bare skin. As soon as I finish handling a snake and need to do something different (think sterile-necessity operating room), whether I am grabbing keys to open something or answer my cell phone, I take the gloves off, throw them on the ground and immediately begin another pair.

___

Last night was ridiculous. After the sr. tech came and went, and the vendor came and did EXACTLY THE SAME SHIT I DID BY MYSELF AND WITH THE SR TECH, he finally did a trick I've never seen done before, nor thought of myself, and took a 2 armed attachment, and wrapped it with duct-tape, and basically paddled the blob of fat that was causing this siphoning backup.

See, the clog wasn't operating like a normal one, where you just push the clog into the next largest pipe and let drain pressure carry it the rest of the way down. This was a cold, thick, congealing wad of fat. More than likely someone who started using Alli, but didn't change their diet. The snakes that we were using with all their swivel attachments just went through the wad which would close up after we were back out of it. The duct tape wad worked like a paddle and scooped it around until it got to the next open cap - an idea from someone who'd seen plenty more pipe than I and my peers had.

As soon as he had it going, he yelled down to me, "Here it comes!" And right where the pipe goes from 3" to 4", this gigantic wobbly bobbly egg gelatin like ball flops down onto the cement, and before, in my exhausted delerium, could even think of filming it, he grabbed the hose and washed it away into a million tiny pieces of flob glob.

It was amazing.

Have you seen "Meet the Applegates?" That 1990s movie where the insect people moved into suburbia posing as humans? No? Okay, well, then this is the scene I'm thinking of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og-9...=youtu.be&t=41


If I only had my phone up and ready, that very shocking moment would have been the very next viral video from youtube.

If there is any lesson I can pass onto someone else from this, if you choose to take a diet pill, change your fucking diet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tinthalas Tigris

/chuckle

I'm literally the cleanest individual most people could imagine. Most people who aren't quite aware of the work that I do are shocked when they see what I am capable of.

I use a very fantastic brand of nitrile glove that is second to none. Raven SAS. They are the only brand of disposable glove that will hold up to the rigors of a powered-snake in operation, and the reason I choose disposable is because I don't want to deal with nastiness getting anywhere near my bare skin. As soon as I finish handling a snake and need to do something different (think sterile-necessity operating room), whether I am grabbing keys to open something or answer my cell phone, I take the gloves off, throw them on the ground and immediately begin another pair.

---

HAHAHAHA That's funny, because that's exactly how I washed all of our now-4-year-old daughter's cloth diapers when she was still in them, only I was just using hospital quality gloves.

I'd even rinse them off and scrub them down before I took them off and tossed them in the trash, just to make sure nothing could be spread.

It's not because I'm grossed out by other people's poop, it's just a matter of safety from disease, same reason I don't roll around in mud puddles at Renaissance festival despite being a peasant. People have gotten pink eye from dog poop for doing that. Same reason I wear boots out there. Belly dancers walking barefoot across woodchips that were used to shore up the wet soil have gotten lockjaw from stepping on a piece of metal that slipped into the woodchipper.

A little precaution is WAY more sensible than fruit-flavored hand sanitizer and antibacterial soap, and it costs about the same.

I am *sooooo* glad I'm only a team lead and not a manger right now because it means I don't have to do the disciplining.

One of our techs just responded to a customer's trouble ticket with "Have you tried googling it?".

I would *NOT* be able to keep a straight face while having that talk.

I've been laughing for 15 minutes straight at this point.

That's awesome.

Good use of the whole "give a man a fish and feed him for a day, show him how to do your job and become obsolete" analogy.

So, I am building a desktop system for a co-worker.

• Intel® Core™ i7-4790k Processor 4.4GHz
• g.skills RipJaw 32GB DDR3 (4-DIMM) RAM
• ASUS Z97-Pro Wi-Fi ac USB 3.1 LGA 1150 Intel ATX Motherboard
• LG Internal Blu Ray RW-DVD Drive
• Samsung M.2 512GB PCI-Express 3.0 Internal SSD
• Western Digital Blue 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache Hard Drive
• Thermaltake Overseer Full Tower Case
• COOLER MASTER RR-212E-20PK-R2 120mm Sleeve CPU Cooler
• EVGA SuperNOVA 650W SLI/Crossfire Ready 80 Plus Platinum Full Modular Power Supply

So, we put it together and it posted when we turned it on, but it wasn't registering that it had a display. It turns out that there is an issue with the memory. We found one stick that would not work at all. We kept testing one by one each of the memory sticks remaining in each of the slots, and it appeared to all work okay. Until we tried to use 2 sticks in the paired memory slots, either set of paired slots would not work with 2 sticks. We tried it several times, and then called ASUS Tech Support (aka helpless desk).

I have never been more frustrated than dealing with a level 1 tech who asks me a question, then doesn't allow me to answer it; kept telling us to "be patient and give the memory time to work" (Srini asked him how long to be patient... a day?) etc. Then of course at one point of retesting all of this per the support person's instructions, it decides to work. So he says no problem.

Srini and I disagreed. I know the memory was seated correctly (heard the click when I pushed it in the socket as the locked closed it in). I know the memory was put in the correct paired (matching color sockets). And the memory is from the list of supported memory for the board. But the display issue doesn't appear to be consistent, so I am not ruling out that the motherboard has a bad memory socket.

So, I told Srini to RMA the bad memory, get replacements and try again. If he can get it to work consistently at least 5 tries in a row, then I would be satisfied that it's not the motherboard at issue and he can install the operating system. But seriously... tell us to be 'patient' for the memory to work and the display to show? :thwak:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cee

be 'patient' for the memory to work

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lolwut?

That sounds like someone who doesn't want to take a potentially more difficult or angry call.

Sometimes, I love my brain.

The on-call L2 tech called me while I was working on an escalation anyway (salary! yay! what are weekends, again?) and through my currently infected (thanks coworkers!) plugged-up nose voice, I uttered:

Cross-humping christ's fragrant corpse farts, what do you need now, (name of L2 tech redacted).

I managed to not use a single "swear word" as defined by HR.

I should add that I really like this coworker, but he can be awfully diva-ish sometimes. (Same guy who put the "Have you tried googling it?" into a ticket.)

its scary that HR can define what is a swear word. I mean what happened to just using the "If you would not get fined saying on the radio it cannot be that bad" angle.

One of my least problematic coworkers:

Coworker: I'm having phone problems
Me: Normally I don't handle phone issues, but I'm bored, so what's up?
Coworker: I'm working from home
Me: Right
Coworker: So I have the phone system directing my calls to my cell phone. But when I call my office number to test cell phone, it goes right to voicemail.
Me: Are you using your cell phone?
Coworker: Yes, so that the system sends my calls to my cell phone
Me: No, I mean, when you're calling your office number, are you using your cell phone to dial that call?
Coworker: Yes, how else would I test if my cell phone was working?
Me: You could ask me, because you're not going to get a call on your cell phone if you dial your office number that was forwarded to your cell phone if you're using your cell phone...
Coworker: I don't get it

...

In theory shouldn't they hear their call waiting tone on the cell?.

Sadly today you cannot even reliably say "have you tried using your home phone"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mileron

One of my least problematic coworkers:

Coworker: I'm having phone problems
Me: Normally I don't handle phone issues, but I'm bored, so what's up?
Coworker: I'm working from home
Me: Right
Coworker: So I have the phone system directing my calls to my cell phone. But when I call my office number to test cell phone, it goes right to voicemail.
Me: Are you using your cell phone?
Coworker: Yes, so that the system sends my calls to my cell phone
Me: No, I mean, when you're calling your office number, are you using your cell phone to dial that call?
Coworker: Yes, how else would I test if my cell phone was working?
Me: You could ask me, because you're not going to get a call on your cell phone if you dial your office number that was forwarded to your cell phone if you're using your cell phone...
Coworker: I don't get it

...

---

Should have told him to hang up with you and call his cell phone directly from his cell phone.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tinthalas Tigris

/chuckle

I'm literally the cleanest individual most people could imagine. Most people who aren't quite aware of the work that I do are shocked when they see what I am capable of.

I use a very fantastic brand of nitrile glove that is second to none. Raven SAS. They are the only brand of disposable glove that will hold up to the rigors of a powered-snake in operation, and the reason I choose disposable is because I don't want to deal with nastiness getting anywhere near my bare skin. As soon as I finish handling a snake and need to do something different (think sterile-necessity operating room), whether I am grabbing keys to open something or answer my cell phone, I take the gloves off, throw them on the ground and immediately begin another pair.

___

Last night was ridiculous. After the sr. tech came and went, and the vendor came and did EXACTLY THE SAME SHIT I DID BY MYSELF AND WITH THE SR TECH, he finally did a trick I've never seen done before, nor thought of myself, and took a 2 armed attachment, and wrapped it with duct-tape, and basically paddled the blob of fat that was causing this siphoning backup.

See, the clog wasn't operating like a normal one, where you just push the clog into the next largest pipe and let drain pressure carry it the rest of the way down. This was a cold, thick, congealing wad of fat. More than likely someone who started using Alli, but didn't change their diet. The snakes that we were using with all their swivel attachments just went through the wad which would close up after we were back out of it. The duct tape wad worked like a paddle and scooped it around until it got to the next open cap - an idea from someone who'd seen plenty more pipe than I and my peers had.

As soon as he had it going, he yelled down to me, "Here it comes!" And right where the pipe goes from 3" to 4", this gigantic wobbly bobbly egg gelatin like ball flops down onto the cement, and before, in my exhausted delerium, could even think of filming it, he grabbed the hose and washed it away into a million tiny pieces of flob glob.

It was amazing.

[....]

If I only had my phone up and ready, that very shocking moment would have been the very next viral video from youtube.

If there is any lesson I can pass onto someone else from this, if you choose to take a diet pill, change your fucking diet.

---

/respect

Best rant post that didn't involve mostly-naked boobs that this forum has seen in years.

A few years ago (read: ten) I took it upon myself to create and continuously update a document which held some information that customers of my product might find useful.
I made sure that any biannual updates I might enact would be sent to every single one of my coworkers, and would be sent at consistent times in the year.
In 2012 I was informed that any documentation that is sent to customers must be on what is nothing more than "company letterhead".
In 2013 I was informed that that has now changed and must be put in a marketing-approved company template.
In 2014 after a coworker sent a customer a copy of that document which had been dated 2008 management came down hard on me and took the responsibility that I had created for myself with regards to this one document away from me. They even had me run a search on every one of my coworkers' computers and remove any and all copies of the document.

That document sat unchanged for almost two years, no matter how many times I might say "we should update this document if we're still going to be making it available to customers."

So back in July I said "we should update the document since it's been eighteen full months".

Nada.

In December, I took it upon myself to start updating it anyway, and the week before Christmas made it available to the development manager and the testing manager to say "hey, this needed to be updated because the answers in it have changed" and they're all like "wow thanks for taking the initiative, it would have taken the developer who was assigned to this a week to finish."

Um... It took me maybe two hours between calls.

Anyway, it's signed off, the testing manager checked the new version into source control, and I ask her when it'll be available to be shared.
"OH, that's not my job anymore." she says. "I figured the developer in charge would publish it."
Well... let him publish it.
"He's out until the end of the month."
So I offer. "I -could- do it, but whether I -should- do it is a different story..."
"no no no no no" she panics, "I'll get to it this afternoon."

Don't understand why replacing what amounts to a Sharepoint document should be so hard...

Corporate bureaucracy at its best, Something that works great for making customers get helped better slammed down by management that would not know how to serve a customer if they had a step by step manual.

Customer: I'm getting (rather suspicious error that historically means there's a crypto virus rampant on the customer's network)
Me: May I talk to your tech person please?
Tech: What's going on?
Me: You have an encryption virus
Tech: Well we did see the "decrypt instruction" files in the program folder structures today, but we thought deleting them would prevent the infection
...
...
...
Me: No, creation of those files is usually the last thing that happens
Tech: Well the last time this program was used was over six months ago
Me: So restore it from last week's backup?
Tech: Oh, no, the virus hit us back in August (five months ago)
Me: Um...
Tech: I don't know if we keep data that long...

:wtf:

Why would you not restore the whole fucking network when you get hit by a virus!?

I'm on the phone with a tech guy.
He's remoted into his user's PC trying to fix a problem.
He keeps having to put me on hold in order to tell the user to just step away from her computer because she's apparently close enough to see an email come in and keeps responding to her emails while the tech is trying to troubleshoot.
What should have taken 6 minutes took 40.

But the kicker/funny is this:
We're at the end of the call and I hear another voice in the background.
Voice: Did you get my email?
Tech: Yeah, about (blahblah)
Voice: Yeah, when should I tell her you can take care of that?
Tech: You need to ask her what her timetable is
Voice: You know she doesn't respond when I ask her things like that
Tech: Then get your mom to do it

Apparently it's a family tech business! :grinno: :wtf:

Tech: My user is getting an error when they do (X) in program
Me: What's the error?
He gives me the error Me: We don't see that error very often. What program are you using?
He gives me the program B info Me: And what program was it created in?
He gives me that info too - program A Me: I can't imagine why that would be occurring in one program but not the other. Could you please send me a copy of the data set?
He sends me a copy. I have no trouble opening it and cannot duplicate the problem. Me: I'm not getting the error based on the steps you describe. What version is the secondary app?
Tech: Oh it's BlahBlah06-01
Me: Um, sir, that means the version of the program you're using is from January 2006. This is why you're getting the error... because the database engine in this version of the program B is 5 or more years older than in Program A
Tech: How can I update?
Me: According to my records, the customer you're working with hasn't licensed Program B since before 2007, which is probably why it was never updated
Tech: So is that what you do? Change the program so older installs cease working?
Me: No, actually, if the firm had kept up their license for both apps, they wouldn't be dealing with errors that occur in programs whose database engines and structures are 121 months apart in age!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mileron

Tech: So is that what you do? Change the program so older installs cease working?

---

Ugh. I just dealt with something like this.

Due to employee churn and noone documenting a DAMNED THING noone knew who was in charge of a license in a particular case.

I've started an initiative in the last few months to ACTUALLY TRACK FUCKING RENEWALS so no matter WHO is in the fucking role, SOMEONE WILL BE ALERTED THAT WE NEED TO SPEND MONEY FOR SOMETHING WE ACTIVELY USE AS A BUSINESS.

Thankfully, the new word for 2016 is "proactive" (2015 was "automation") so my boss's boss and the boss above, all the way to the C level are behind this idea.

Now it's just a matter of when it rolls back downhill into "so, how should we implement this great idea regarding license tracking that we've been talking about" six months later?

It'll filter down to either me or my boss, I'm sure, but I don't care about doing the legwork so long as it FUCKING STICKS AND DOESN'T SUFFER FROM A STARFISH TONGUE-POUNDING OF THE MANAGERIAL STAFF WHEN A RE-ORG HAPPENS ON THE HIGHER LEVELS AGAIN.

Speaking of inefficiency:

The company I work for has purchased many companies over the years and has purchased companies that purchased other companies.

Noting the inefficiency to organize in my above post, you can imagine how well the integrations worked.

So, we have disparate systems from a large number of acquisitions, or acquisitions of acquisitions rolling ALL OVER.

This is normal for my life (although I'd HATE to be in any job that involved security, especially for PCI compliance with this company, and the lawyers must be going NUTS with regards to e-discovery. ITIL is just an acronym that people use in meetings. Noone can actually gather all of the information to enforce it.)

This rant is about SILOS <-- link

Let's walk through a request I got yesterday:

1) person submits ticket asking for a report

2) person walks up to my cube asking about ticket. (for once useful because --) I can't see the ticket (keeping in mind I have phenomenal godlike powers in our ticketing system and can grant them to anyone else.)

3) I request that person in question gives me the ticket number.

4) person e-mails me the ticket.

5) person (in addition to e-mailing me the ticket number) also references a system I am not familiar with.

6) I notice that the reason I could not see the ticket is because it had been assigned to another group somehow, not through automated workflow.

7) I notice that there are no notes in the ticket. (It was assigned to a team without any reasoning or commentary)

8) I contact what *may* be a relevant colleague about the ticket. I am told by said colleague that this system for reporting does not exist and we have nothing in place to replace it, after a very long disclosure of completely irrelevant information to the ticket in question.

9) Realize corporate may not know what they're talking about.

10) Actively disbelieve canned response and after learning that the reporting system in question was housed locally 8 years ago, ask people who have been employed that long about it, on foot, around the office. Cue 40 minutes of Office Ping-Pong and some wear-and-tear on my shoes.

11) Discover from multiple people that it still exists.

12) Return to desk to update ticket and notice that the "no notes" ticket has been transferred to another group (the colleague I was speaking to in number 8) and notice that the colleague closed the ticket, also with no notes. (Yep, ticket closed, no actual technician data entered from anyone at this point despite multiple team transfers from general queue to specific queue to another specific queue.)

13) Use phenomenal god-like ticketing system powers to re-open the ticket and assign it to myself.

14) spend quite some time performing in-person and e-mail exchanges with various managers and techs to determine who administers this and whether or not it still exists.

15) Work with tech to determine when the report can be configured. Multiple phone calls and communication with dispatch to get it organized.

16) Provide all relevant information to tech in charge of reports on other side of house. Tech is scheduled.

17) person who put in the ticket gets the e-mail that his ticket has been closed and sends an e-mail to all and sundry bitching about it being closed without any info.

18) EVERYBODY PANIC!!!

19) Response to 17 goes out saying, from a management level that the ticket can be scheduled for whenever the nebulous monthly ticket happens for internal items and the person who writes that informal not-in-any-ticketing-system word document of a ticket is cc'd.

20) I keep my FUCKING MOUTH SHUT because it's scheduled for friday night, in the system, with the tech AND the dispatcher that I already spoke to on the phone back in number 15.

21) Resolve to set myself an appointment to tell the tech assigned that he can ignore the word document when it comes up because he already fixed it with what we talked about.

It's amazing to me that companies can tout "collaboration" and not address fundamental infrastructure problems like THIS.

Oh wow.

My story for today:

Someone's Windows update keeps rolling back at evvery boot. Boot process takes 20+ minutes. I turn on the computer and tell the person across her I'll be back later to check on it, no point in sitting around for 20 minutes twiddling thumbs.

I come back after lunch break.

"Oh yeah she left and shut it down".

...

Merrick's post sounds like it could have happened in my office, too.

---

A new one:

Customer: So when I attempt to activate my license, I'm getting "license not available"
Me: Well you only have two licenses, thus you're only entitled to installing the program on two computers.
Customer: Due to an error that occurred during the last update we tried, one of your coworkers had us install the program to a completely new path.
Me: I cannot find any record of this call at any point in the last three months. Oh. Do you remember the error?
Customer: Something about a DLL not being found.

Now, I know this error will ONLY occur if someone (a tech trying too hard, or a user who knows enough to be dangerous) copied the actual executable to the desktop instead of creating a shortcut. But according to what this woman is saying, my coworker supposedly had her reinstall to a new path instead of simply creating a shortcut. I am thinking bullshit.

Me: Oh. Well in that case I fully understand. I get her squared away.

Me (to Co-tech): So why did you reinstall to a new path?
Co-tech: She was getting a DLL error
Me: Right... so just give her a shortcut instead of having the executable on the desktop?
Co-tech: WE HAVE NEVER FIXED THAT PROBLEM WITH THAT RESOLUTION...

:wtf:

Merged companies never ever operate efficiently because they tend to have so many differing systems that nobody wants to spend the money to integrate. This is why billing can become a huge mess at cable companies, at one time they were all small regional operations and now they are all part of megas like Comcast. But much of the old billing back end still exists from the other company.

Customer's firewall is blocking transmission from a couple new executables. I'm on a remote session and have highlighted a few files for them to whitelist on their firewall.
Tech: Let me grab a Snipit of the files affected
She then spends no less than 3 minutes fucking around with Snipit. She can't seem to aim the crosshairs and drag it correctly.
Me: Why not just use Alt-PrintScreen?
Tech: Why in the fuck would I use printscreen when I only need part of the information on the window?

Classy lady there.

Remotely connected to a customer to download an update.
He uses Chrome.
I pop open a new tab (so as not to interfere with the remote session) and as I start to type, the address for a porn site comes up.
He gasped out loud but I guess didn't think I saw it.

In his defense, he probably has his browsers linked by the same account.

We had a brief given last year by one of the junior managers using her works laptop. Part of the brief was looking at the intranet, for which she used chrome - it pulled in her favourites bar which several of the audience noticed had a link to pornhub. Not sure if she realised, but has been amusing us ever since.

If you're gonna enjoy choose alternative entertainment, try the Opera and only the Opera. If anyone asks you about your Opera, you say, "what's Opera?"

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tinthalas Tigris

If you're gonna enjoy choose alternative entertainment, try the Opera and only the Opera. If anyone asks you about your Opera, you say, "what's Opera?"

---

With a preference for them to be a PHD so you can do "What's Opera Doc?"

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1a...doc_shortfilms

on January First
Me: I request Friday, Feb 26th and Monday, Feb 29th
Manager: For what?
Me: Personal reasons
(I want to take my wife on a weekend away, because we haven't since we got married, and in fact haven't since early 2014)
Manager: I'm sorry there's a blackout for tax-season PTO time from January 1st until April 18th

This morning:
Coworker sends an email: I'm OOO until Friday, March 18th, as I'll be in Paris

Attachment 4550

Power outtage Friday; when I happened to be out of the office.


NUT (Yeah, I haven't killed him yet). States: oh, and these to desktops here don't won't connect to a particular web application anymore. Must be either the switch or the firewall.


--- Do you even know what a switch or firewall do?

"well, it must be either cause we've had similar problems in the past and it was either the switch or the firewall."

No we haven't.

He opened a support ticket with our vendor. Vendor calls about noon - You guys get these fixed yet? NUT asks me. I reply to NUT: I have not looked, I've been busy on important things. Does the problem persist on these computers?

NUT: "I've been to busy, I dunno."

I call up there, no problem today. and then I discover by accident how to replicate the error message he was getting... Open 2 sessions on the same computer in different tabs... Hey do you think maybe the error means "server thinks you're already connected".


Proceeed to once again explain to NUT why this couldn't have been a firewall or a switch problem.

NUT responds with "Well, whatever, I don't even really care anyway."


--- Just for the record, my reply was audible. "Obviously".

Not really Tech Support as much, or maybe it is.

I'm the poor guy in charge of IT equipment, including printers.
We have roughly 30-35 printers currently, most b/w laser, two injets (I know...) and a handful of multipurpose fax/scan/copy/print things. Plus a colour multi machine and a big colour copier. Total volume of prints/copies per year is ~100k, as seen in our paper buying behaviour.

We spend a fuckload of money, and an even bigger load of time, buying toner for 15 different types of printer. Murphy's Law is in full force too, meaning that one day after ordering toner for backup I get one to three calls/mails telling me they're running out. Of course they need the type I didn't order.

And then there's the waste. I'm collecting empty toner boxes like a fucking hoarder. When I hit 50, I "sell" them. That means we get anywhere from 0.00 to 4.00 (rarely) € per piece. So I earn back €100 or so per year for spending hours collecting, sorting, counting that shit.

Obvious solution is obvious:
The big copier is a rental. We pay a monthly fee, have a number of prints free, colour gets charged additionaly. They also offer small b/w printers, multipurpose b/w or colour, everything. Best of all the machines are all on the network (no more usb printers that you have to "share", which only work when the sharing machine is on, of course). AND they call home when the toner hits 20%, next day the new toner arrives, all I have to do is swap them out and wait for the old toners to be picked up.

Everything comes with a price though. Of course it costs money to have this kind of service, but bottom line we'd even SAVE money, if you calculate it through.

So I did just that, showed the numbers to my boss and my boss's boss. They were intrigued at first (my boss sees the amount of time and hassle this shit causes), and then, when it was time to make a decision, my boss's boss made the wrong decision. "nah we're not doing that at this time, we're trying to reduce fixed cost so I'm not going in a five year contract for €8k per year".

Well GOOD.

This month alone I've bought €700 worth of toner, and I'll probably do the same next month. And just you fucking wait when a printer breaks.

Next year someone is going to say "wow we spent a lot on toner and printers, should've done the rental thing" and I will bask in the light and say "See, I told you so."

God damn dense motherfuckers.

Couldn't think of a good place to put this without making a rather obnoxious new thread so...

Several hour increasing onset of panic when despite being 100% sober and decently well rested I blanked on what my master password was to the database which contains close to 100% of my passwords. Super luckily I was able to recall what it was a few hours later. I have since written down a hash of it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MI Redeux

Couldn't think of a good place to put this without making a rather obnoxious new thread so...

Several hour increasing onset of panic when despite being 100% sober and decently well rested I blanked on what my master password was to the database which contains close to 100% of my passwords. Super luckily I was able to recall what it was a few hours later. I have since written down a hash of it.

---

That's happened to me before.

It's fucking SCARY.

After that happened the one time, I put a much more loosely passworded copy of the database on an invisible hidden partition on a truecrypted USB dongle that required a keyfile AND a password to make the partition visible, then shoved that key into the veritable PILE of 1 to 2gb keys I had, all different, none labelled. (This was 10 years ago, so larger keys were more expensive)

Shitty security through obscurity, but picking out whether a key should be 1gb when it was showing 1gb, or 2gb but only showing 1gb would have been fairly difficult for the average joe at the time, and then they would have needed to know which non-webfacing server had the keyfile on it and where and physically plug the thing in and unlock the partition, THEN know the "easier" password to unlock the db.

Only had to use it once, and that was because the dongle that had the more secure one died because it was a cheap usb dongle. I've since learned to make better backups.

Quote:

---

That's happened to me before.

It's fucking SCARY.

---

Oh god yes... Mind fart - OH SHIT!

I have the password written inside an envelope in my safe deposit box.

The last time it happened to me, i vowed to change at least one password a month, just so that I am forced to log into it, and update the file every couple of weeks. It has been quite a while, but that one instance was enough to make me sleepless for the weekend.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Merrick ap'Milandra

That's happened to me before.

It's fucking SCARY.

After that happened the one time, I put a much more loosely passworded copy of the database on an invisible hidden partition on a truecrypted USB dongle that required a keyfile AND a password to make the partition visible, then shoved that key into the veritable PILE of 1 to 2gb keys I had, all different, none labelled. (This was 10 years ago, so larger keys were more expensive)

Shitty security through obscurity, but picking out whether a key should be 1gb when it was showing 1gb, or 2gb but only showing 1gb would have been fairly difficult for the average joe at the time, and then they would have needed to know which non-webfacing server had the keyfile on it and where and physically plug the thing in and unlock the partition, THEN know the "easier" password to unlock the db.

Only had to use it once, and that was because the dongle that had the more secure one died because it was a cheap usb dongle. I've since learned to make better backups.

---

Yeah, exactly. I was just glad I did not have some kind of low limit on password guesses on it as I most likely would have triggered deleting everything. I do have a general backup of the database in a few places in a secure manner but the master password was nowhere else. That is the closest to panick induced red brain that I have been since I can recall. I had typed it in tens of minutes earlier, then had to do so again and could not remember it at all.

We have been getting a historically bombastic amount of calls - we're averaging over 32 calls a person per day, many of which are over 30 minutes long.

I've been giving out our support number quite a bit.

When my wife asked me for my SSN for her taxes, I gave her the support number :(

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mileron

We have been getting a historically bombastic amount of calls - we're averaging over 32 calls a person per day, many of which are over 30 minutes long.

I've been giving out our support number quite a bit.

When my wife asked me for my SSN for her taxes, I gave her the support number :(

---

At least you've got business!

I get approached by one of the mid-level managers last week.

Coworker: So did you hear?
Me: I hear a lot, but if there's gossip you have, you need to be more specific, and I really don't pay much attention to that stuff anyway.
Coworker: I'm leaving
Me: Wow, really?
Coworker: Yup, I'm moving to a much smaller company that deals strictly in blah blah blahdee blah.
Me: That's awesome, congratulations!
Coworker: Yeah, and they're right around the corner from my house so I don't need to commute more than an hour from mid-Delaware to Philly. So you'll be hearing a lot more from me
...
Me: ... Pardon?
Coworker: Yeah
Me: How so?
Coworker: Because I have more technical training than anyone there, they've asked me to be the ad-hoc computer and network person. So I figure I can give you a call.
This is a woman that couldn't figure out that the reason her monitor stayed blank was that the power wasn't on
Me: While I certainly appreciate the vote of confidence, I'm a little swamped right now, let alone supporting the office of ... how many people?
Coworker: Seventeen or so
Me: But still... I mean, you could contract me out and I could do it at my usual rate
Coworker: What's that?
Me: 247 an hour plus lunch gas and tolls
Coworker: Isn't that a little steep?
Sadly she missed the Spaceballs reference
Me: Maybe, but my family's got thousands of hours banked for me that I figure I'll see at the end of never.
Coworker: she laughs
Coworker: So if I get you a good rate, you'll do it, right?
Me: I'd need to draw up a contract and put in writing the limitations of what I'll be able to handle...
At the mention of a contract, she starts to get skittish...
Coworker: Maybe I could read up on some stuff, too, get my feet wet
Me: That's an idea too. But I'd still highly recommend getting an actual tech contractor.
Coworker: Any books you could recommend for me to start reading?

It's like she wants me to train her. She couldn't troubleshoot her way out of a tetris block.
:hammer:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mileron

Coworker: Because I have more technical training than anyone there
This is a woman that couldn't figure out that the reason her monitor stayed blank was that the power wasn't on

---

This the the type of thing that makes me die a little inside.

I have a user who can't login because instead of forename.lastname she uses abbreviated_forename.lastname to login.

Thomas.Smith and Tom.Smith are not the same.

Maybe I could send her over to help your coworker though, they should get along just fine.

To be fair, i used to get pissed when people change my name on pay stubs, correspondance and shit in general from Nicholas to Nick.

I don't introduce myself as Nick, I don't sign documents as Nick, and i dont respond to Nick. I don't want to be paid as Nick.

From today's emails:

Is Microsoft Outlook down?

Quote:

---

From today's emails:

Is Microsoft Outlook down?

---

Reply -- Yes. We will notify you via email when it's back.

Manager sends an email indicating that 2 people out of a five person department (my group) are out of office.
I get an IM from someone on the other half of the Support department complaining, "oh sure, he sends an email when you've got two people out, but not when we have one person out."
Me: But you have 8 people in your department. We have five
Other: No, we have four
Me: lists the eight people I know take calls
Other: Unfortunately not. Three of the last four complained about receiving too many of our calls and were removed from our queue. The last, even though he trained and took a handful of calls, ended up being assigned to a completely separate support department.
Me: When was this!?
Other: November

Nice communication huh. Shame there's no way to instantaneously let people know about changes like this.

Got an email today from our controller asking about an invoice that made its way to him.

Apparently "Yellow Pages"
-faxed us a bill for services that included Facebook & Twitter
-wanted the payment mailed to Bulgaria

From reading the email chain the invoice had made its way through most of the on site c-levels.

Quote:

---

Apparently "Yellow Pages"
-faxed us a bill for services that included Facebook & Twitter
-wanted the payment mailed to Bulgaria

---

Sounds legit...

Background: My company has an outlet sale in the spring for two weekends every year. I use a wireless bridge to run the credit card scanner.

As the outlet store is done for this year, the controller places this ticket:

Quote:

---

Please remove the wireless bridge that was being used in the lunchroom at the cashier check out area.

Please keep for next year.

---

No shit, that's an awesome idea! I thought I would just replace it every year.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eremius

Background: My company has an outlet sale in the spring for two weekends every year. I use a wireless bridge to run the credit card scanner.

As the outlet store is done for this year, the controller places this ticket:


No shit, that's an awesome idea! I thought I would just replace it every year.

---

"Request Denied."

Quote:

---

"Request Denied."

---

Please resubmit request in 30 days for further denial.

I receive an e-mail:

Quote:

---

When are you going to get this software upgrade installed so I can do training?

(Machine name below in a previous e-mail)

---

I figure "heck, I'm already doing it on a dozen other computers right now, what's one more?"

So I hit up mstsc and open a terminal session.

Hrm. Someone else is already logged into this machine.

I reply to the e-mail:

Quote:

---

Someone is currently logged into that machine

---

I receive a reply:

Quote:

---

Can you try again? I just shut it down

---

Just in case the person didn't mean shut down, I try to log in.

Nope.

Ping.

Nope.

*sigh*

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Merrick ap'Milandra

I receive an e-mail:


I figure "heck, I'm already doing it on a dozen other computers right now, what's one more?"

So I hit up mstsc and open a terminal session.

Hrm. Someone else is already logged into this machine.

I reply to the e-mail:



I receive a reply:



Just in case the person didn't mean shut down, I try to log in.

Nope.

Ping.

Nope.

*sigh*

---

We get this so often - please log off so that I can remote on to do x/y/z . Um - did you just shut down? /headslap

I'm surprised there isn't a forehead shaped dent in my desk from the number of FFS moments caused either by the users or our first line team.

It literally says "Log Off", "Restart" and "Shut Down". What the holy fuck is the malfunction?


Why yes, I do have this issue with my users as well, why do you ask?

Apparently, keeping over 100 tickets open, when they share 5-6 common issues, and development has yet to fix them, is frowned upon.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mileron

Apparently, keeping over 100 tickets open, when they share 5-6 common issues, and development has yet to fix them, is frowned upon.

---

HAHAHAHA

So we have a citrix farm of several dozen citrix servers, but it's not being used for direct desktop access, it's only streamed apps.

Two of the apps freeze/hang ALL THE TIME and are absolutely, totally, and completely business critical. (over 1,000 people use them all day long)

When this happens, it freezes their entire citrix session and lose any work they had in all apps IF they kill the hung app.

We taught them to call the helpdesk when it happens and have their app session for the hung app reset in citrix. This causes them to lose all unsaved work from the one hung app, but not anything else.

Obviously, far and away our most important sets of tickets, and if the user selected the right options (by putting in their OWN ticket instead of phoning) or if the person who answered the phone selected the right options in the ticketing system, it'd immediately route the ticket to the teams for those two applications, even if the helpdesk resolved it by resetting the session.

So we realized, with a powershell script and some API functionality, we can allow a user to reset their own session for these apps from the ticketing system, thus cutting down MASSIVELY on the number of incoming phone calls and "help, I can't work" tickets.

The automated script still creates a ticket, but it sits in the general queue (helpdesk) and the script checks after 10 seconds to see if the user still has an active session in the app in question, then sets the ticket to "solved" if the session was cleared.

Tickets sit in "solved" for 48 business hours, so basically 6 business days. (someone MEANT 48 hours, but won't change it back) before they automatically flip to closed via the ticketing system.

This means hundreds upon hundreds of tickets (because the apps hang several times a day for everyone) just sitting in the helpdesk queue.

So what does the helpdesk start doing?

They fill out the rest of the information on the solved tickets.

This auto-routes them to the application team's queue.

HO.
LEE.
SHIT.

The fucking RAGE from these people when the tickets suddenly clog up THEIR queue instead of clogging up the helpdesk queue.

They went ALL THE FUCKING WAY UP TO THE CTO to bitch (because it was fucking with THEIR numbers, even though it's THEIR APPS that are busted) and the helpdesk is ordered to NOT ASSIGN THE TICKETS TO THE PROPER TEAM WHEN THEY"RE ALREADY SOLVED. (Because who the FUCK wants accurate stats on their own applications, right? Someone might wonder why this has been going on for half a decade and they haven't fixed it yet! CAN'T FUCKING HAVE THAT!)

Okay, fine, it came down from the top, so the helpdesk stops filling in the information that automatically assigns via the ticketing system.

They just start manually closing the tickets, then they don't show up in the "everything that's not closed" queue.

Now the MIS starts bitching because the helpdesk ticket numbers are fucked, showing massive numbers of tickets MANUALLY closed, each one generating an e-mail. (whereas the automated process does not do that)

So now the order is "FUCKING SUCK IT UP AND DON'T TOUCH THE AUTOMATED TICKETS".

Not "adjust the automated system so that it doesn't impact numbers", not "turn off e-mail notifications for manually closed tickets with the subject line of the automated tickets (which is the same EVERY TIME), NOT EVEN "Fix the metrics for the application team to only count human-handled tickets in the reporting."

Nope.

SUFFER, HELPDESK.

AND DON'T YOU DARE MISS ANY PEOPLE TICKETS IN THE FLOOD OF HUNDREDS OF SPAMMED AUTOMATED TICKETS.

STUPID BUREAUCRACY IS STUPID.

Customer has two installs of the program.
One is used firm-wide.
One is installed only for a single user who uses it to perform the tax returns for the firm partners.

The former goes missing.
I help the tech go through the restoration and reactivation process.
He calls me up hours later.

The second one went missing too.

Attachment 4614

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mileron

Attachment 4614

---

LOL!

Seriously though, did they just lose their documentation? Do they uninstall the software when it's not in use?

What is that licensing scheme? Can the firm-wide one be used by only one user at a time?

There is some special brand of idiocy at work with that client of yours.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Merrick ap'Milandra

Seriously though, did they just lose their documentation? Do they uninstall the software when it's not in use?

---

My best guess is too many hands in the cookie jar. Someone somewhere else f'ed up.

Quote:

---

What is that licensing scheme? Can the firm-wide one be used by only one user at a time?

---

Concurrent user; 1 license = 1 user but can put 100 shortcuts on peoples' desktops.

Quote:

---

There is some special brand of idiocy at work with that client of yours.

---

True true.
I don't know if it was moved (but a search for some unique files in the program folder structure turned up nothing) but you would think that, if someone at a user-level were to move or delete the whole folder, they'd wonder where 9GB of files and programs were going...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mileron

you would think that, if someone at a user-level were to move or delete the whole folder, they'd wonder where 9GB of files and programs were going...

---

Nah.
We have an old application running which needs a specific, hard-coded, directory for dumping parsed files after the parse is done.
Business critical and whatnot. Should have been replaced years ago, got caught between systems upgrades because "It still works, and will be implemented in phase BFG instead!".

Few weeks back, I get a call:

Manager (awesome person, really has her shit together. If you get one of these, HANG ON TO THEM!): "Application XYZ stopped working!".
Me: "Screenshot the error message, send it to me".

Message is something akin to "Missing file/directory bla bla bla help me I can't run argh splat goodbye cruel world".

I go to her desk, proceed to the working directory...
... which is missing.

Me: "Erm, the application needs that directory to run, and it's not there."
Manager: "No-one is supposed to mess with ANYTHING in this directory, it's been stated time and time again!".

We search for a specific log-file entry that's pretty unique to the application - and BINGO - there's the entire working directory. In pristine condition.
But it's in a completely different sub-directory that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the application. One person is responsible for the folder that we found it in, since it's for some very specific tasks.

One. Person.

That person: "Me?!? I didn't move any directory!".
Me: "But I can see N files right here with the same move time, all related to the tasks in this directory".
That person: "That is correct, but I'm telling you that I didn't move that directory".

Said directory contains a MASSIVE amount of files. Moving it back to the correct position took 20+ minutes.
The proper files, combined, were under 3 MB.

So, no, some people do not get puzzled when a simple CTRL-X CTRL-V (probably Right-click, move files in this scenario) that should have taken a few seconds suddenly goes on for 20+ minutes.
You give some users far, far too much benefit of the doubt :grinyes:

So a coworker got a new unused Kindle off her neighbour who received it as a birthday present a while ago. She got two so she sold one to my coworker.

Problem: the thing won't register. User id / pw unknown. Pkease try again.

Her or my login, same problem.

After an hour I gave up. She ordered one off amazon right then because she's going on a trip this weekend and wants it with her.

Not ready to give up I contact customer support. The person asks me for the serial number which I give her.

The next question: "where did you get that kindle, mr. Ronaan?"

Uh oh.

Thus device has been flagged as lost/stolen and only the original account can ask for it to be unlocked.

The guy who bought it for the neighbour "got it off the internet" ...

I did not expect that but now it's sort of funny. Except my amazon account is probably flagged now for trying to register a stolen kindle and everything will be 20% more expensive and take twice as long to arrive.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ronaan

So a coworker got a new unused Kindle off her neighbour who received it as a birthday present a while ago. She got two so she sold one to my coworker.

Problem: the thing won't register. User id / pw unknown. Pkease try again.

Her or my login, same problem.

After an hour I gave up. She ordered one off amazon right then because she's going on a trip this weekend and wants it with her.

Not ready to give up I contact customer support. The person asks me for the serial number which I give her.

The next question: "where did you get that kindle, mr. Ronaan?"

Uh oh.

Thus device has been flagged as lost/stolen and only the original account can ask for it to be unlocked.

The guy who bought it for the neighbour "got it off the internet" ...

I did not expect that but now it's sort of funny. Except my amazon account is probably flagged now for trying to register a stolen kindle and everything will be 20% more expensive and take twice as long to arrive.

---

I had the same issue with my original Kindle Fire (before the HD).

A coworker of mine bought it to read textbooks with for school and decided he HATED it.

He had a few minor scratches on the screen and the case was a bit bent, so we negotiated what HE thought was a fair price of $120 instead of the $199 he originally paid.

He reset it (so it wouldn't have his gmail on it, or whatever), but forgot to disassociate it with his account on the WEBSITE side.

It turns out that this is a pretty common scam when done on purpose, if search results say anything.

Amazon support should be able to reach out to the original owner and figure out the circumstances of how it was reported stolen/lost.

Amazon support is also REALLY SUPER GREAT (in the US at least) when you have an issue.

They'd rather lose a few dollars than lose your business permanently, so if you order from them regularly? You're probably going to be fine, it just might take a while to get it resolved. (And I can't speak to German (You're in germany, right?) amazon support.

Also, if you ARE in germany, you're in a country that has some of the BEST laws for consumer protection on the planet, if my german friends are to be believed.

Yeah germany here, and I've had nothing but great experiences with amazon customer support.

I didn't think of asking them to contact the original owner, at that point I just wanted to get rid of the thing.

Good to know for future reference though.
Although in my coworker's case it was said to have never been used before. I'll ask her if the box was sealed when she got it (they still had it in that little plastic bag too, looked pretty fresh.

Oh and consumer protection laws don't go very far if it's a sale between two consumers, which I assume it was. Probably ebay. I'll try and dig a bit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dawlin

Nah.
We have an old application running which needs a specific, hard-coded, directory for dumping parsed files after the parse is done.

---

Hard-coded directories in compiled windows software on windows machines make me cry.

At LEAST have your installer set an environment variable so it can be pathed dynamically?

That amount of shit that still sits in C:\%username%\AppData\Local\Temp\stuffgoeshere drives me NUTS, because they could just say %temp% and you could remap THAT to anywhere, but NoOoOOoOoOoOoooOoO...we're juniper and we have to HARD CODE OUR VPN SOFTWARE TO THE TEMP PATH BY NAME, NOT BY FUCKING VARIABLE.

OR WE'RE THE FIREFOX WEB INSTALLER INSTEAD OF THE FULL DOWNLOAD AND WE HAVE TO....repeat ad nauseum.

Because in the age of cryptoviruses EVERYONE is just letting their group policy go STRAIGHT TO FUCKING TEMP AND EXECUTE.

And it would be SOOO IMPOSSIBLE to add %TastyDanish% as an environment variable and path it to some commonly writable but not executable directory. OR BETTER YET, HAVE THE INSTALLING USER PICK A LOCATION UNTIL ONE DOESN'T FAIL, THEN INCLUDE A BUTTON THAT SAYS "READ YOUR PARSE FILES WHERE YOU PUT THEM BEFORE CALLING SUPPORT, PLEASE" (Not yelling at you, just software developers who have ZERO understanding of GPO).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dawlin

Business critical and whatnot. Should have been replaced years ago, got caught between systems upgrades because "It still works, and will be implemented in phase BFG instead!".

---

Story of my life.

The company I work for is still using a PuTTY application that LOOKS to be remoting into an AS/400, but requires both UNIX access, windows server print access, and some level of interoperability on the Citrix farm that I don't even understand because it reminds me of Dos 3.2, but it's business critical and it's been due for an upgrade for well over a decade.

User has a problem? We're hitting CUPS on UNIX on one team, Some kind of Larry Ellison database, creating special windows printers that can ONLY be used for this because they require as much babysitting as manually flipping dip switches to select an IRQ, and then setting permissions so that ONLY the users who use this app can even SEE the printers, lest someone print something to one and jam up the spooler service.

Supremely antiquated shit is for the birds, but "business critical, it'd take longer to upgrade and port than it would to....WHAT, SPEND A DECADE AND A HALF ON SOMETHING THAT BARELY WORKS?!?!?!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dawlin

Few weeks back, I get a call:

Manager (awesome person, really has her shit together. If you get one of these, HANG ON TO THEM!): "Application XYZ stopped working!".
Me: "Screenshot the error message, send it to me".

Message is something akin to "Missing file/directory bla bla bla help me I can't run argh splat goodbye cruel world".

I go to her desk, proceed to the working directory...
... which is missing.

Me: "Erm, the application needs that directory to run, and it's not there."
Manager: "No-one is supposed to mess with ANYTHING in this directory, it's been stated time and time again!".

We search for a specific log-file entry that's pretty unique to the application - and BINGO - there's the entire working directory. In pristine condition.
But it's in a completely different sub-directory that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the application. One person is responsible for the folder that we found it in, since it's for some very specific tasks.

One. Person.

---

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The old accidental left-click and drag with move as a default option instead of copy.

That happened to an entire accounting/billing directory for a company I worked at once.

The sheer number of calls that came in because it was end-of-month was UNHOLY.

EVERYONE was processing invoices, and suddenly...EXCEL AND APPLICATION ERRORS EVERYWHERE!!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dawlin

That person: "Me?!? I didn't move any directory!".
Me: "But I can see N files right here with the same move time, all related to the tasks in this directory".
That person: "That is correct, but I'm telling you that I didn't move that directory".

Said directory contains a MASSIVE amount of files. Moving it back to the correct position took 20+ minutes.
The proper files, combined, were under 3 MB.

So, no, some people do not get puzzled when a simple CTRL-X CTRL-V (probably Right-click, move files in this scenario) that should have taken a few seconds suddenly goes on for 20+ minutes.
You give some users far, far too much benefit of the doubt :grinyes:

---

Yeah, I finally got our Active Directory team at another job to re-evaluate who had folder permissions and ensure noone could "Apply to all subfolders and files" unless they were a domain admin on a separate domain admin account from their user account for JUST that reason.

Anyone could just drag files off and break applications.

And did, regularly.

Nice find and fix.

Congratulations, you have earned an achievement.

Attachment 4626

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Merrick ap'Milandra

The old accidental left-click and drag with move as a default option instead of copy.

---

AKA Drag & Lose

One of my problematic coworkers is going to be retiring at the end of the month.
She's going through the process of uploading her not-inconsiderable data and PST files to the server, over VPN, even though I told her that she doesn't need to, and that I'd do it when she surrendered her computer.

In the emails going back and forth she says "I"m trying to get to X important website but keep getting page not found errors."

I ask for the link; she sends it to me.
I have no problem getting to it.
I obfuscate the link in my reply by typing "click here" then retroactively adding the URL.

"It worked that time!"

I think this one applies:

Attachment 4627

Tinth: "hey, i need labels made for [these new expensive devices] that say, '$50 Charge for removal or manipulation of this device. Do not alter or remove.'"

Dude: "Okay. Do you need them to scroll horizontal or vertical?"

Tinth: "let' s do horizontal."

Dude: "hmmm.. Well, it is in vertical labeling mode right now, and it is really difficult to change its layout settings. Im going to make it in vertical.

NUT: Problem X occurred on User Y!

It happens so frequently here!

Me: Oh? how frequently?

NUT: Maybe 15 times (on different users each time) in the past 2 years I've been here.

Me: We have a different definition of Frequent.

NUT: Well, it just never happened last place I worked.

Me: Yeah, didn't happen here when we ran WinXP computers either. :p

I came in early enough to grab the label maker myself. Not only did I change the label to horizontal orientation, but I made it print double lined.

This took me all of 3 seconds to configure after taking 2 minutes to READ THE FUCKING MANUAL (which was mostly pictures).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tinthalas Tigris

I came in early enough to grab the label maker myself. Not only did I change the label to horizontal orientation, but I made it print double lined.

This took me all of 3 seconds to configure after taking 2 minutes to READ THE FUCKING MANUAL (which was mostly pictures).

---

Ah. I found your problem.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tinthalas Tigris

READ THE FUCKING MANUAL.

---

If everyone did this, we'd have double digit unemployment again.

Coworker: Customer's getting errors about duplicate something something, can you fix his problem?
Me: When's the error occurring?
Coworker: When he's exporting the data. Can you fix his problem?
Me: If he's getting it when exporting his data, that means he has duplicate information, and you're the one that has to tell him how to remove the duplicates.
Coworker: But it's happening during the export process
Me: Exactly. He's got duplicate information in there. I don't know how to tell him to remove it.
Coworker: But it's an error during the export process! Errors are your area of expertise!
Me: tired of fighting Fine, send him over

Me: Hello sir, please tell me the error you're getting?
Customer: When exporting it says "you cannot export (foo) to (bar) when (blarg) are identical."
Me: That means that you have multiple duplicate (blarg) entries, and you need to fix them. I don't know how to do that, as that's a data entry question.
Customer: I'd do it myself, but I don't know where to look
Me: I can lead you a little but again, I'm systems-based... I provided some instructions to get to the window where he can view (blarg) entries
Customer: Why didn't the other girl ask me that?

I wish I knew. *headdesk* :hammer:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tinthalas Tigris

I came in early enough to grab the label maker myself. Not only did I change the label to horizontal orientation, but I made it print double lined.

This took me all of 3 seconds to configure after taking 2 minutes to READ THE FUCKING MANUAL (which was mostly pictures).

---

Some of these devices do not even need RTFM... Sadly we have a society that is scared to push buttons even on things they cannot really fuck up by pushing buttons.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FilanFyretracker

Some of these devices do not even need RTFM... Sadly we have a society that is scared to push buttons even on things they cannot really fuck up by pushing buttons.

---

I'm one of those people who starts by pushing buttons and etc. Being an 8 for 10 quick start insistent individual the manual is the second to last resort. Last being tech support.

I am fact finder resistant (a 4) and follow through challenged (a 3, but barely, out of 10)

It's a bit of an adventure for me that I'm still stumbling into ways to customize this 8.1 Win machine I've now had three years.

Attachment 4658

Apparabtly, drainpipe makes good backing for drywall.

How the fuck long did it take you to find THAT doozy?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Merrick ap'Milandra

How the fuck long did it take you to find THAT doozy?

---

Long story short, there was water coming out of a place it shouldnt. I opened up a wall and a ceiling and found two leaks. I called for one of the construction guys to come out and help me find it, and it turned into 3 then 4 then 5 leaks.

That nail wasnt even one of the leaks. The leak we opened it up for was up above it, so we cut out that full length of pipe to include the portion with the nail.

It happens. Probably had been in there for the last 40 years since the place had been built.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tinthalas Tigris

Long story short, there was water coming out of a place it shouldnt. I opened up a wall and a ceiling and found two leaks. I called for one of the construction guys to come out and help me find it, and it turned into 3 then 4 then 5 leaks.

That nail wasnt even one of the leaks. The leak we opened it up for was up above it, so we cut out that full length of pipe to include the portion with the nail.

It happens. Probably had been in there for the last 40 years since the place had been built.

---

yea looking where that nail is I bet the water never came at the spot hard enough to push out. But I can see why you cut that section too, See a potential future problem kick it in the balls now before closing the wall up.

The real fun is when someone finds a freon line with a nail and kills the AC for the second floor of a house.

Got this yesterday.

Customer: So tell me about whether or not your programs work under Windows 10
Me: Absolutely. You still need to right-click the program icon and choose "Run As Administrator" to activate licensing, or for updating, but yes, we fully function under Windows 10.
Customer: Oh, because, well, here in my office, we have people running 2007, 10, and 2013.
Me: after a moment Oh, you mean Office 2007, 2010, and 2013?
Customer: No, I said what I meant. One of my paralegals has Windows 2007. I'm looking to run Windows 10. And the other partner is running Windows 2013.

It had been a long day, and my brain was fried, so my response was:
Me: Well, you're in luck. Windows 10 is essentially Windows 2015, so you're good to go with that.
Customer: Fantastic!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FilanFyretracker

yea looking where that nail is I bet the water never came at the spot hard enough to push out. But I can see why you cut that section too, See a potential future problem kick it in the balls now before closing the wall up.

The real fun is when someone finds a freon line with a nail and kills the AC for the second floor of a house.

---

I can do all kinds of seemingly miraculous things with computers, and not just by the definition of the end user, by people with more technical experience and certification than I.

It's not a constant, but after so many years of being burned in via shit environments with so many disparate technologies, I'd like to think I'm pretty decent at diagnosing things based on a symptom or two.

I could never do what you two are talking about, and I helped my father-in-law re-do all of the black pvc, showerhead, tub valve, drywall, and tile replacement because we're trying to sell our house.

I've assisted in silver soldering hot water lines and I would be at a COMPLETE loss with something like this, so I probably can't grasp the gravity of the situation, but I know for damned sure it'd cost me a lot of money if it happened to me.

Even the most maddening of multiple-week-long software issues does not annoy me as much as trying to figure out where to find an oblong toilet plunger that completely covers the bottom opening when someone has clogged the thing.

Merrick for oblong you just need to know the right cuss words to make a round one pucker up for you. Well, that's my experience anywho ... YMMV

I laugh at most plungers people keep in their home. They tend to buy them because they either "look cute" or they got them at the 99 cent store.

In both cases, they don't do shit.

If it doesnt look like this :

http://hdsupplysolutions.com/shop/p/...y-duty-p151762

It isn't a plunger.

The programs I support have a customizable user login name.
This login does not tie at all into the Windows user login; rather it simply globally affects what a user can do inside the program.
The Administrator-level login can do everything.
Sub-levels can do less and less, to the point where the "viewer" user can only look at tax returns. They can't even print.

Over the years, this process has evolved only a tiny bit.
Login names are stored in three different places, for different reasons.

Originally (in 2004) all the program lines used the same set of files (Database version Old).
In the 2005 to 2006 development year, one of the program lines was updated to use a different database version (version B) due to functionality requirements, and thus required the implementation of a second set of files.
In the 2007 to 2008 development year, two of the remaining three program lines were also updated to Database version C. This required implementation of a third set of files.
2008 to 2009 saw the last program line also migrate over to DvC.
A handful of minor utilities were still using DvOld.

So now, we have:
Program Line 1 using DvB
Program Lines 2-4 (including Sub programs) using DvC
Utility 1-5 using DvOld

Up until 2014, we didn't have to worry about it until one of the sub-programs got a major revamp. Originally as mentioned, Utility5 was still accessing the DvOld, but due to its (lack of) penetration and usage, no one cared whether you could configure that app's particular login. But with this revision in early 2014, it was updated so that it started to recognize the user login information in DvC.

This started a whole shitstorm of other problems when it tried to merge its DvOld information with DvC (overwriting more current information, for example) and when we escalated the problem our examples were ignored. So I underwent over a dozen hours of testing trying to figure out which of the programs were explicitly accessing which login files. I ended up with a pretty concise list.
Thankfully, they recognized the problem and updated the method by which Utility5 tried to consolidate login information.

Earlier this year, Utility5 was updated again, in conjunction with Program4, this time to try to use DvB.
This resulted in the login files of DvC getting wiped out and the login files of DvB getting corrupted.
When the issue was escalated to development, they stated "there's no way this release could cause the problem."
I used my previously-mentioned list as examples as to why they were wrong.
30 minutes after the update hit the web, it was retracted, the original login process restored to use DvC, and all was well. (Except for the half dozen firms that had to restore a couple 100KB data files from backup.)

Last week, an update to Program4-Sub-Print was released.
Because the print process looks at the login files (to determine whether or not the user's login is permitted to actually print), the activation of the print was getting errors in certain environments where customers had wildly disparate data between DvOld and DvC.

One of my coworkers submitted the first escalation and was told by the developer of Program4-Sub-Print to "remove the login files for DvB."
She fought it but he claimed he'd tested it extensively. She relented.
Naturally, it didn't fix their problem.

Yesterday, I got a call from a different customer with a different error using the same Program4-Sub-Print.
I requested and received copies of all of their login files. I was able to duplicate the problem, using their login files, on my brand new installation on my computer.
I started an escalation and was told by the developer, "Remove the login files for DvB."

You'll remember that DvB wasn't related in any way to the program for which I was performing troubleshooting.
I told the customer I'd get back to her after more testing.

I asked the developer "Why is Program4-Sub-Print using these files? It never has before" and got a vague "it touches them for comparison blah blah" response.

Then, because my coworker was out sick today, I ended up speaking to the customer for which she'd reported her original escalation.
Upon remotely connecting to their computer, I found that the old DvOld files were of a zero size (as in, 0KB).
So I removed them, knowing they weren't used by any of their current-year programs or any of the utilities they might access.
And, when printing from Program4-Sub-Print, ended up getting a completely different error message indicating "DvOld Login files not found."

Light bulb.

I provided Coworker's customer with a "blank" copy of the DvOld login files (with just the basic administrator login) and there were no errors whatsoever from Program4-Sub-Print.

I asked the developer "Why is Program4-Sub-Print using the DvOld login files? It hasn't in over 8 years" and got a vague "it isn't" response. :banghead:

Bool sheet

So I started methodically testing.
I even grabbed a couple of the prior released versions of Program4-Sub-Print and tested them against the customer's user logins.
No error.

I documented every step I took to duplicate the problem.
I documented every step I took to show prior versions of Program4-Sub-Print didn't have the problem.

I played "musical chairs" with the files to figure out when the error was occurring and found:

1 - When Login DvB were in place, there were no errors from Program4-Sub-Print.
1b - When Login DvB were NOT in place, there were no errors from Program4-Sub-Print.
2 - When Login DvOld files were NOT in place there was a "missing file" error from Program4-Sub-Print.
2b - When Login DvOld files were broken, there was a "broken file" error from Program4-Sub-Print.
3 - When Login DvOld files were NOT in place, and using the prior version of Program4-Sub-Print, there was no error.
3b - When Login DvOld files were broken, and using the prior version of Program4-Sub-Print, there was no error.

So I an email to the developer, his manager, my manager, the sales reps of both affected customers, and my cohorts, detailing all the steps I took (with screenshots), as well as an estimate of the amount of downtime that each customer had experienced, the amount of time my Coworker and I had spent on the phone, the amount of time I'd spent doing all this testing, and the fact that immediate prior versions of Program4-Sub-Print didn't experience the problem.

My last question was:

Given the testing shown above and the results depicted, I ask again, why is the Program4-Sub-Print accessing 8+ year deprecated login files from DvOld?



BOOM. Mic drop. :hammer:

That's the kind of shit live for. Fuck yeah.

Mad.
Fucking.
Props.

Well goddamned played.