If there's anything even REMOTELY odd about a mail, I disable the preview pane in Outlook, and delete it. I'm guessing that's the safest way.Originally Posted by Eremius
Sanitized to protect the terminally stupid
Yes, please open an email you are not sure about to see if it is something you should be opening...
Or is the mail parsed regardless of disabling the preview pane ?
"Silver bullet solutions are rare, silver bullet sales commonplace"
Outlook doesn't execute code without opening the email if you are not running the preview pane, so good call there.
I have to use Outlook at work (stupid exchange server) but I use Thunderbird everywhere else. It doesn't execute code even in the preview pane.
When I set up systems in my office, I automatically disable the preview pane.
Ironically, my two dumbest users always figure out how to turn it back on, and oh look, get viruses the most often.
It's quite amazing how they always figure out how to do JUST the thing that wrecks the system.
Would be so much easier if the energy was spent on something else...
"Silver bullet solutions are rare, silver bullet sales commonplace"
I bet those users have the preview pane on at home too and are likely the person who calls Comcast claiming the modem gave their computer a virus. Yes the typical user is so dumb they think that the cable modem is where a virus comes from so they also automatically think its up to the cable company to help them clean up their PC.
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
Why not just use something like MXLogic or Postini so the virus-infected spam never hits the inbox?
For copyright purposes, all of my posts are covered under the "Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License"
http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
Noone should sue or be sued ambiguously.
I don't know what Corporate Netops uses, but it's usually pretty good about blocking that sort of stuff. It's the users, not the system.
I've been off since 11/16.
I get back into the office today, catch up on my email (which was surprisingly light), and then it starts.
I get an email from my dumbest coworker.
Keep in mind, she's been here almost as long as I have - 7 years - and the process for this HAS NEVER CHANGED
Coworker: My program is saying expired. I need to reinstall it. What is the code?
Me: Here is the serial number. Make sure you SAVE the file from the website before installing it.
Coworker: I don't understand what you mean by Save the file from the website before installing it.
Me: When you go to our website to download the software, and click Download, make sure you hit SAVE. Do NOT use Run, as it will not work. Once it downloads to your computer, then install it.
Coworker: Silly question - - - - - install how????
Me: Find the ProgramSetup file in your Downloads folder and double-click it
I haven't gotten a response back yet - that was over an hour ago - so either her computer melted down or she figured it out. I'm 99.99_% sure it's not the latter.
Phone call from our engineering manager:
Him: "I can't log in to our support system, I keep getting an error. Can you see what my password is?"
Me: "I can't view your password but I can reset it for you if you would like."
Him: "Ok, let's do that!"
*reset password and give it to him*
Him: "I still can't get in"
*remote access to his machine*
*watch user click on .html file which he apparently saved to his desktop instead of creating a shortcut*
HR specialist this morning: "Can you give me access to HR director's email?"
I've got beer to drink and You guys are wasting my time.
"Can you give me a 20k/yr pay increase?"
One of our products uses Excel with a custom function library. There are a specific set of steps to troubleshoot certain calculation problems.
Coworker: I've been trying to troubleshoot this function calculation problem I'm working on, but I don't remember the steps.
Me: What's going on?
Coworker: It's giving THE calculation error, you know. That one. I just don't remember how to fix it.
Me: *I go to her desk and see that she's not even using that product, let alone the functions related to it. She has just a SUM function with bad arguments. I tell her this.* Your function references SUM(H24H6:H22) and that's not a valid range of cells.
Coworker: No, that's not true! I'm using functions and I'm getting that error!
Me: You're not using (product) functions
Coworker: No
Me: You're using Excel's default functions
Coworker: Yes
Me: You have bad arguments in your function
Coworker: No!
Due to a power outage, which outlasted the UPS units in my server room, our Friday full backup didn't occur.
I email my Backup contact. "Can I force the backup job to run, and how do I do it?"
BackupGuy: Why would you want to do that?
Me: Power outage prevented it from occurring.
BG: Don't you have UPS?
Me: Yes, but the outage outlasted the runtime.
BG: You need new UPS.
Me: Yes, I know, but fiscal tech doesn't refresh til January. So how do I run the job?
BG: Oh, you can't. It runs on a 24 hour cycle, and the only way to run an off-schedule job, is to create a job.
Me: So I can't just click on the job and hit "Run"
BG: No, the program prevents that. They don't expect the power to be lost before a job runs.
Me: So that's both a program deficiency, as well as a company technology deficiency.
BG: How do you mean?
Me: The program has no method by which you can arbitrarily run a backup.
BG: Right.
Me: Seems like a pretty big feature hole.
BG: How do you mean?
Me: Let's say I get a system in the office that I'll only have for 2 hours. I know it'll take 1 hour to backup. But the backup schedule won't run for 24 hours once the job is created. I have no way to create an ad-hoc backup job to run immediately.
BG: Okay...
Me: So that seems like a pretty big functionality deficiency.
BG: But why? It runs every 24 hours.
...
.........
If this guy where to go back in time and meet Otis would ask him "Why does an elevator need an emergency brake? it has a cable."
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
Support lines open at 8:00 Eastern
Sales lines open at 9:00 Eastern
It has been this way for all 8 years I've been here, and from what I understand, for 10+ years before that
8:01, Customer: Hi, I need to talk to Sales
Me: Unfortunately, no one in Sales is in the building, their lines don't open til 9AM. I can have someone give you a call back when they're in the office.
Customer: No, I need to talk to Sales.
Me: I can have a Sales Rep call you back in an hour.
Customer: You mean you can't help me with a Sales question?
Me: Unfortunately I cannot, as Systems Support. I can have someone from Sales call you after 9AM, or you can call back after that.
Customer: But I really just want to talk to Sales.
Me: They're not available. You will need to call back.
Customer: But I just have a Sales question. You mean there's no one there who can help me?
Me: Not til 9am.
Customer: Are you sure you're not in Sales?
You can't make this stuff up.
I'm sitting at my desk desperately trying to stave off somnolence and hear a repeated banging and bashing and slamming.
So I follow the sound to the printer at the end of the row, where one of my trouble users is kicking and slamming the printer, muttering "f-ing thing won't print" etc.
Me: Dude. Calm down. Beating it up won't help.
Coworker: But it won't print, I need this report to be submitted today (neither manager is in office, btw) but this f-ing thing won't print!
Me: (without looking at it) Does the display say PC Load Letter?
Coworker: Yeah. But what the fuck does that mean?
Me: (doing my absolute damnedest to not laugh, and to keep a straight face) What does the next line say?
Coworker: Tray 4
Me: Uh huh...
Coworker: Where's tray 4?
Me: It's the big door at the bottom.
Coworker: I didn't put paper there.
Me: That's where the printer wants it. Give it what it wants.
Coworker: (mumbles as I go back to my desk) Are you sure this is a printer, and not my girlfriend?
I hate it when girls ask me to put paper in tray 4.
So, one of our techs goes out to a client site today.
This tech is new to this site because they decided they didn't want the old tech out there anymore. The old tech managed to not check drive space on their domain controller once so for about 30 minutes, users who were not logged in were unable to log in. (Some moron was storing SQL Transaction logs on the C drive of the DC. WTF?)
So the "new to this site" tech gets out there for a once-a-month visit with a laundry list of stuff to do, including check on the backups. (Which as it turned out, were not working due to a lack of disk space on the SAN. Someone forgot to configure alerting. At all. For disk space. For backups. For anything. Absolutely no SNMP alerting anywhere. I nearly shat brax when I found out about that. Figures that the tech who originally configured them before the previous tech they didn't want out there anymore is no longer with the company...)
Tech messages me because we chat on occasion and because I was doing some other remote maintenance on their Exchange server, which the tech needed to work on.
I let the tech know when I'm at a place where I can pause and the tech sends out the obligatory "Rebooting Exchange at {Client Site}, Ignore offline alerts" e-mail.
I message the tech:
Me: "Umm...did anyone let you know before you went out that there's a Virtual Machine running Document Management software on that Exchange Server?" (Don't ask me who the fuck thought using a mail server to host a VM of a severely database-intensive application that's got 2 Terabytes of records in the database was a good idea but if you find them, let me know. I've been looking to revive crucifixion as an art form.)
Tech: "Umm..NO! WTF! That's kind of important! HELLOOOO DATA CORRUPTION!"
Me: "It's probably fine. I caught a level 1 tech doing it earlier this week too. I'm lobbying management to get a note put in the ticketing system that pops up every time someone opens or starts a ticket for {Client Name} so people will stop doing that instead of restarting the Exchange services."
Tech: "Oh, because THAT'LL work. People *always* read notes..."
Me: "What do they have you doing out there anyway?"
Tech: "Replacing the Battery Backup Write Cache on the RAID Controller."
Me: "Please tell me it's not another RAID 5 with 3 drives..."
Tech: "No, 8 drives."
Me: "Well, that's a little better, but I still would have preferred 5+0 or something."
Tech: "You and me both"
Tech: "SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT FUCK SHIT OMG FUCK SHIT"
Me: "??"
Tech: "It's bluescreening."
Me: "What'd you do, plug the BBWC in upside down and backwards"
Tech: "LOL. No, that'd be a neat trick, though."
Turns out the RAID controller lost *all* of it's configuration and it can't just be reloaded. No idea how or WHY it lost it, but it's GONE.
And like I previously mentioned, for some unknown period of time, the backups were failing due to a lack of disk space.
Some unlucky tech(s) will be spending the weekend and possibly the Holidays rebuilding an array, then building and configuring an Exchange server.
For copyright purposes, all of my posts are covered under the "Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License"
http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
Noone should sue or be sued ambiguously.
Okay I do not really know about setting up domain controllers, exchange servers, etc. But I would think it does not take a CS degree to know alerts are a good thing, Especially at a remote site.
But it seems to me someone storing database logs and running VMs on one to both of the site's absolutely mission critical servers is a really dumb idea.
I wonder if those SQL logs can just be deleted. After all they do not sound like they belong on the DC.
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
Damn dude. That's painful.
Here's todays:
Customer tech: I'm trying to run your program from a hidden mapped drive, but I can't find any data.
Me: The program requires explicit access to the mapped drive. We neither test nor support hidden mapped drives.
Tech: So how do I get the program to see the data?
Me: You don't, the program doesn't support hidden or mapped drives.
Tech: But I just want to be able to get to my data.
Me: Unhide the drive mapping.
Tech: Due to a new security policy we're hiding all non-essential mapped drives.
Me: This program is located on, say, drive letter X, correct?
Tech: Yes
Me: This is an essential program, correct?
Tech: Yes
Me: Then why is this program on a non-essential mapped drive status?
Tech: We just want to get to the data, can't you make the program find the hidden mapped drive?
Me: The users cannot see the drive, correct?
Tech: No, they cannot
Me: That is gpol or permissions based, correct?
Tech: Correct
Me: The program runs with user permissions. If the users cannot see the drive mapping, the program will not be able to either. This will not work.
Tech: But I just want to get the program to see my hidden mapped drive!
...
Is it bad that I do almost wish the world had ended today?
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