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Its because if you make it 911 people dial emergency by accident all the time. Think about it, people are dialing 9-1 constantly to dial out long distance. If they accidentally double hit the 1, now you have an emergency call.Quote:
Originally Posted by FilanFyretracker
I wonder how 9 was ever picked for the exit number from an internal phone system. I mean it has been 9 for as long as I have known of internal phone systems when wanting an outside line.(I know it could not be zero as that tends to be operator by default, even in many buildings 0 would call a front desk) but just instead of say 1-8 being one one of the choices.
For the last few employers I had and at several of our customer offices, 0 has been the number to use to get an outside line. But I live in Europe and for our country, the alarm number is 112, which in most cases is nowadays programmed on the phone system as a direct outside line and any other number containing 112 is removed from the adress list, front desk is usually 900.
When you pick up your company phone you're getting dial tone from your local PBX. When you press 9 to get the outside trunk dial tone drops from your local PBX; Then after a moment dial tone comes back on the line -- that 2nd dial tone, is coming from the remote switch (phone company's CO). Now, the Local PBX needs to continue to monitor that trunk if a 1 then a second 1 are pressed, your local PBX needs to grab that call back to internal processing, in order to shove it back to the outside for external processing.Quote:
(OT to tech support ranting, why do company phone systems require one to dial 9911 in an emergency? more of a question is why is the software that drives many PBX systems not smart enough to always know that 911 is emergency and not ask for the extra 9)
Modern switches of course can do it -- it's just a lot of extra programing.
Quite simply -- when they start programing local extensions they usually start at the lower end of the scale. so if they're doing two digi: 10, 11,12 etc. 3 digit, 100, 101, 102 etc... as you say 0 is the operator, what's a convenient single digit at the far end of the scale? #9.Quote:
I wonder how 9 was ever picked for the exit number from an internal phone system.
Me: Hi, thank you for calling System Support, this is Me, how may I help you?
Caller: Yeah, I have a question about my payments.
Me: Unfortunately as system support I'm not able to assist you with that, but I can get you in contact with Sales...
Caller: You mean you're not Sales?
Me: No ma'am, but I can transfer you
Caller: You mean you're not going to help me with my payment question?
Me: No ma'am, but I can transfer you to someone who can
Caller: All I want is this damn question answered about my payment!
Me: Please hold
Received an email
Apparently a user in my office called the Global help desk, who assigned the call to our "overseers" in NYC, who then forwarded the ticket down to me.
Ticket: User is having trouble with Team Explorer in Visual Studio 2010
Assigned tech: We can't support TE in VS, even though all development groups are using it for tickets and tracking, so you need to fix it.
Me: Buh?
So I go over to the guy's desk, see what's going on.
When he opens Visual Studio, then tries to open Team Explorer, it usually prompts him for his username and password.
Instead, it's telling him his password is expired.
User: Oh, yeah, I've been getting emails all day that my password is expired. Could that be the reason?
No.... not at all.
(This is the guy who eats microwave popcorn at his desk and totally gums up his keyboard with butter and popcorn crumbs.)
Have to share this one... It is a nice creative thought process on the part of my users - but I'm sure some of you here will appreciate it.
Scenario is: one department is trying to get a Letterhead into their specialized database program. So, they have word 2007 - the database supports RTF.
So there's the background now on to the creative part. We have word - we need RTF... hey, at home I have a subscription to a web service that can convert from PDF to RTF!
So, we make our letterhead in word - we print it, we go over to our Canon document center scan it in as a PDF, take it home, run it through the subscription service to convert from the PDF to RTF!
As I say, quite clever, ultimately a failed effort because the Canon copier doesn't do OCR.
For the analogy -- we have a Music CD that we want to turn into an MP3 -- so, we play the CD, with a mic in front of the speaker to record using Sound Recorder into a wave file, which then we can convert the WAV into MP3. YIIPPPEEE!!! Only 18 steps when of course we only needed three: Make letterhead - save as RTF. Upload to program.
Can't word just save the file as RTF? I know that Wordpad can and it comes with windows. Could always tell them to use Wordpad its usually found under Start > Programs > Accessories unless thats gone on Enterprise level systems
Yeah :) Ever since oh let me think, Word 6.0 :)Quote:
Can't word just save the file as RTF?
That's the fun part!
Caller: I haven't opened this data file in almost a year, and now when I try to print out the entries I made, I get blank pages.
Me: Did you check your selected date range for the months being printed?
Caller: Oh yeah it's fine.
Me: *tries a few other things, and am about to ask for a copy of the dataset*
Caller: Oh wait, let me doublecheck some settings... The date range for printing seems to be set to start in 9/2011, end in 1/2011! hahahaha (she laughs)
ps:
modern Word can also save straight to PDF...
PDF is a form of Hyper Mark-up language, making it fun to open the .PDF in a textfile editer and edit the textual Mark-up to change certain content when people think it was protected due to it being an PDF.
can you then turn off its protection just by editing its code? I once saw a PDF that did not allow printing... of course they did not disable copy so I just dumped the clip board to text and off to the printer it went.Quote:
Originally Posted by Branaman Starbinder
There are a lot of things one can do when making a PDF. Generally, the text is compressed (like a zip file for each line or paragraph) with only the most primitive PDF generators failing to compress the text stream. When there is a password to the file (there can be up to 2 passwords: one to open the document, and one to change things, if both are the same, you can't change things) it usually encrypts the file to prevent folks from opening the thing up and peeling the insides out. A lot of folks who make PDFs and restrict printing fail to restrict the settings by setting an editing password, so if you have the "for money" version of Acrobat, you can just eliminate the protections by clearing them and saving the file. Many 3rd party readers don't properly follow the document restrictions, so you might find one that does a bad job of handling protections and do what you will with the file. When you copy the text from a PDF to the clip board, many times the spaces at the end of words which are at the end of lines will get cut off, so you may have to add spaces back in manually. Finally, if you make the PDF able to work with reading software for blind (and visibly impaired) readers, you won't be able to protect the document from copying or printing.Quote:
Originally Posted by FilanFyretracker
This is after the majority of the troubleshooting has occurred, and all I need to do is rename a file so that I can replace it with a repaired copy:
Me: Well, I can't rename it because it says it's in use, could you call your tech guy?
Caller: No, if you can't rename it, then I need to call my tech guy
Me: ... ... Please
Tech Guy: Hello, what do you need?
Me: I need UNIQUE.DBF data file renamed
Tech Guy: Well I don't have access to do that
Me: Could you get me in contact with someone who can?
Tech Guy: Yes, but he's not going to be able to rename it for you either
Me: Then could you get me in contact with someone who can rename this file for me?
Tech Guy: I don't know anyone else in the office who can do it.
Me: Can you get me in contact with someone who has administrative rights on the server?
Tech Guy: Oh, that's me
Me: Can you rename this file for me?
Tech Guy: No, I don't have access to do that
I used to do this all the time. Just edit pdf2sec.ps in ghostscript and it completely ignores printing security.Quote:
Originally Posted by FilanFyretracker
This is me calling my global help desk, during the second of two 4-5 minute full office network outages in my location.
Me: "Hi, this is Mileron from (Southern NJ town), NJ. My entire office just lost external internet connectivity, including IP phones."
Agent: "Have you tried restarting your computer?"
...
So then later she says "So you're based in (Central Texas Town) Texas, right?"
Me: No, I'm in NJ...
Agent: "That's next to (Central Texas Town), right?"
Me: No, I'm in NEW JERSEY.
Maybe your cell phone came from (Central Texas Town)?
So not only cant they figure out this is not a reboot issue... but they do not even know that NJ=New Jersey.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mileron
Tell me Global Help Desk is not US based.
Some of them are in the US, yes.
Others are in India.
I called before the shift switchover, so there's no excuse for that.
Anyway, here's today's nugget:
This call was transferred to me by the other department.
Transfer: This guy keeps getting errors when accessing his client files. Says they're not present.
Me: I accept the transfer. Hello, thanks for holding, this is Me, how can I help you?
Caller: Your program won't let me into my clients, it keeps saying things like "problem accessing P:\(app)\blahblah could not be read or written, code error 540" and "Drive not accessible".
Me: Have you used the program today?
Caller: I used it a half hour ago to print and it worked just fine.
Me: Alright, well let's take a look and do a remote support session.
First thing I try to do is go to his network drive and find the client files. I discover that my company's programs are on a different network drive than the one he's complaining about (drive L:). So I try to right-click on the icon and go Properties - Find Target.
"Windows is searching for EXE."
Uhoh.
So then I go into My Computer and try to go into his L drive... only to have it say "Due to insufficient system resources the requested procedure could not be completed."
Uhoh.
So then the other error from the other app starts overflowing on screen. I try to use Task Manager to kill it but it won't kill.
Task Manager also shows 75%+ processor use and 90%+ memory use.
He then says to me "Yeah I also noticed that my wallpaper disappeared and this new icon on my desktop showed up, "Fix and Repair Windows Problems."
Me: Sir at this point it looks like one option would be for you to restart your computer. However based on what you described to me just now and the fact that your computer is not functioning as expected, I think you should contact your IT professional for a diagnosis. The issues you're experiencing could be evidence of a virus.
Caller: VIRUS? How in the f*ck could I have a virus? I just printed! Then I took a poo! (yes, he said poo!) Now I want to use it again but I can't! I pay for this software!
Me: Yes sir I realize that, however our program does not have any of these functions that you're describing. This is beyond my purview and I'm not able to support you with this issue until you have your computer examined.
Caller: Dammit all to hell, I just wanted to print! I have a client coming in! I can't have a shitty computer!
(it went on like this for 2-3 minutes before he realized I couldn't help him.)
Sigh.