Tales from Techsupport

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:

---

Originally Posted by Cee

be 'patient' for the memory to work

---

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:

---

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:

---

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:

---

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.