I like how she spotted you obviously on a break and decided to ambush you instead of engaging in the terrifying dread horror that is calling IT and opening a ticket.
/cue scary music
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I like how she spotted you obviously on a break and decided to ambush you instead of engaging in the terrifying dread horror that is calling IT and opening a ticket.
/cue scary music
People always do this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alikat Astrae
When I worked on the sales floor in a supermarket I was on break once getting food from the hot bar and clearly scooping stuff into one of those foam containers and someone comes up to me and tells me to make them a sandwich... Its simple people hate to wait.
Or in the case of the fax, Too dumb to oh go check the other fax in the building.
You have earned the achievement "I'm glad I found you..."!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mileron
Attachment 3006
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, whats up?"
"My computer is giving me an error, how do I fix it?"
"What kind of error?"
"Well, its my home machine running XP, it's about 10 years old and I don't remember what the error said but I can't get on the internet anymore."
"It could be a bunch of things, its hard for me to say without knowing more."
"What else do you need to know?"
"What was the last thing you were doing before the error appeared?"
"It was working until I let my teenage son do his homework on it and now it doesn't work"
...
Attachment 3008Quote:
Originally Posted by valas
Let me stop you right there. Go away.Quote:
Originally Posted by valas
Thanks to contractual obligations as part of a Managed Services Provider and which company contracts we inherited after we bought them out, I deal with this crap often.Quote:
Originally Posted by Schezar
I <3 Bomgar as an appliance device and join.me doesn't suck too much.
Our ticketing system lets me bill for any time I spend if they're not on a directly managed applicance at whatever our rate is (I don't care) and they usually either turn into paying customers or go away completely, either of which makes my life better.
Stupidity either shrinks in the face of being responsible for creating a bill or gets irate.
The first is an opportunity for a contract and the second is a handshake and a "have fun with the other guys, this one is on us and you can't call us again".
I should add that neither Bomgar or join.me (or teamviewer or logmein unlimited) are our main tool, they're just the full arsenal of one-off weird calls where we don't already have a Kaseya managed customer.
Bomgar costs a boatload (concurrent use licensing, $15,000 for 6 or 8 or some multiple of 2 concurrent users per year plus the appliance purchase IIRC but it's worth it for pinning as long as you set the timeout for license use inactivity to a short time so people get auto-logged when they're not actively using it) and join.me blows goats if there's any UAC involvedbut worst case scenario, you can do the equivalent of a limited screenshare while on the phone without punching rdp or vnc holes in someone's firewall.
As technology goes, it's the low end of the scrotum pole (I prefer Kaseya because, while it fails a lot, it doesn't prompt the end user and runs vnc) but I'll be damned if there's a month that goes by that doesn't cause me to think about doing some inventive crap with remoting into someone's PC when they're not listed as a proper client and therefore don't have a contract that pays for any kind of normal remote control.
I just spent an hour and a half last week, fully billable at the hourly remote rate (which I hate doing to clients, but it's cheaper than the on-site rate) walking someone through getting me remoted in and re-sizing an esxi 5.0.0 set of host drive space to one particular guest vm (the company is probably going to get charged $1000 just for me finding the lay of the land about what versions they were running, what needed to be done, what servers were involved, were the disks already added to the host, etc, because noone types out tickets) and most of the time delay on getting it done had to do with two things:
1) lack of documented information about their environment
2) complete lack of ability to remote in with impunity to just fix it once I had the information
The whole fix took me less than 10 minutes of actual technical work, I just expanded the disk on the ESXi host with what had been installed, then hit disk management on the guest and expanded the drive, but I spent quite a bit of time on the issue gathering details and figuring out what needed to be done.
Having the right tools and the education for people to use them makes all of the difference.
I came home after an 11 hour day yesterday feeling like I'd failed at almost everything because I didn't have all of the tools I needed for the problems that had presented themselves.
At least I thrive slightly on the challenge.
Another managerial doozy (from #689's user) from late last week.
Me: (get an email at 8:05am, followed up 30 seconds later by IM chat)
Mgr: Did you send out that email to the customers?
Me: No
Mgr: Why not?
Me: I didn't get verification on the verbiage before I left for the day
Mgr: The verification was sent at 4:36pm yesterday. When did you leave for the day?
Me: 4:30pm, same as every day
Mgr: Wait, why do you leave at 4:30pm?
Me: Because that's when my shift ends
Mgr: Since when?
Me: Since your last official department-facing schedule change as my manager 8 years ago
Mgr: Really?
A subordinate of the manager from #689 came to my desk...
Tester: I'm getting lots of "you don't have permission" notifications when using (custom internal database app)
Me: Have you gotten any password change notifications?
Tester: I don't think so, if I have it's been a couple weeks
Me: The network starts sending out password reset notifications two weeks in advance. Are you sure you didn't get any notifications?
Tester: Yup, nada thing.
Me: (at his desk, I watch him open the app)
Tester: See, these errors pop up a lot (he space-bars through them so fast I can't even see them and I'm usually really good about that)
Me: (I make him get out of his chair, and when I try the app myself, it pops up a "Your account has been prevented access due to your network password expiring")
Tester: But it didn't expire, the notices stopped coming!
Me: When's the last one you got?
Tester: Yesterday
Me: What did it say?
Tester: I deleted it, but I think it said something about expiring tomorrow
Me: Well, yesterday's tomorrow is now today...
Tester: You lost me...
Me: (ctrl-alt-del) Change your password.
Quote:
Well, yesterday's tomorrow is now today...
But tomorrow never really gets here!
Besides if I delete the email that says my password expires won't that prevent it from expiring?
:)
If password expirations "become painful" for the admins, won't THAT prevent it from expiring?Quote:
Originally Posted by Melcar
:)
Expiring passwords after too short of a time also encourages bad password habits. Such as the old adding a number and cycling through numbers, Or if the system prevents that there is the writing it down and keeping it in a file drawer. I have to wonder if Admins have to just pick which evil is worse. long term PWDs or 30-60d expiration and deal with monitor back post its.Quote:
Originally Posted by Deabn
Actual security experts suggest expiring passwords and password requirements cause people to use weaker passwords. Which makes sense, when it rejects 8 passwords in a row, you start throwing the easy shit at it.Quote:
Originally Posted by FilanFyretracker
I firmly believe that companies should monitor their employees' use of IT resources far more than their online browsing habits, because some people are money sinks due to willful stubborn asshole behavior. Initiating a service ticket every three months because they refuse to change their password when required to is like stealing office supplies, and costs a damn sight more than talking home a few Post-It pads and a ream of printer paper ever could.
It encourages people to keep written notes containing their passwords in their desks, which is terrible security. I agree, expiring passwords are only indicated in situations where you are responding to an active threat involving user accounts with write access, and in such cases it's best policy to immediately expire all passwords, not to schedule a password change in for two weeks from now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nadiar
The worst requirement I have dealt with is a password of exactly 8 characters requiring at least a number, letter, and extra character and expired every 30 days. Literally everyone cycled passwords. I tried not to but I can only think of so many passwords with exactly 8 characters that I would be able to easily remember.
As Nadiar mentioned, it ends up being less secure overall when actual human behavior is accounted for. I loathe it and do incredibly insecure things as a result of it being such a pain in the ass.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gnizmo
You may or may not know that putting a number as the first character of your password nullifies the re-use limitation on most systems. Of course another way to weaken security but there you go.
Let me clarify to state that it nullifies the re-use requirement save the first character which will need to be changed.