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[SYSTEMS ADMINS & IT MONKEYS] TrackPoint is trademarked. Call it a clit mouse instead.

11415171920101

Posts

  • mrt144mrt144 King of the Numbernames Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Apothe0sis wrote: »
    This job is going to give me an awesome poker face with the number of times I've had to hide my "Do you realize what you just said you fucking idiot?" face. And I'm supposed to just have to deal with the dev team, not the entire half-assed IT support team.

    Every network is called "WORKGROUP".
    Every user is an admin and users can't change their passwords because IT just has a spreadsheet of everyone's password so they can log in and fix things.
    There is no domain controller.
    The file server is a collection of old desktop machines with shared folders.
    The have a system using SQL Express that hit the 4GB limit and stopped working. And they don't know the SA password.
    The production "network" has just one login, that everyone knows. "It's ok, because that's just the same user and password set up locally on each production machine."
    There are no backups. They regularly delete data that could be needed down the road if there was a compliance audit.
    Everyone leaves their machines unlocked, so anyone can start trading against a random account.
    Every single production backend server has the same login & password.
    They have no inventory, both with what is installed locally and what they have in their colo racks.
    They're getting ready to buy a system that runs entirely on Red Hat. None of them have any Linux experience. They don't even know the difference between bash and csh. Never mind what bashrc is for.
    They regularly assign the same IP to different machines and then play the "Find which two machines have the same address" game.

    God this is going to be a long year.

    What.

    How?

    What?

    What is your positon here? External contractor? Dev? This is making my neck feel strange.

    Technically, I'm the new head of software development. Though the two other developers quit or got pulled back to their parent company after I gave my verbal acceptance. So I get to hire new developers. They have an existing "IT" staff who apparently don't do a whole hell of a lot. It's a private trading firm, so there's no compliance issues we have to worry about right now with this pile of crap. I can see I'll be spending more time than I want on IT related issues and it's going to be incredibly fun figuring out how to tell someone their a dumbass and half-assing their job without actually saying that.

    And I thought I would just be able to do system development and system architecture.

    I'd fucking go public with this info cause jesus, that is fucking stupid and dangerous to the clients. In fact I'd say that this haphazard shit is gong ot be dangerous for you.

    mrt144 on
  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    mrt144 wrote: »
    Apothe0sis wrote: »
    This job is going to give me an awesome poker face with the number of times I've had to hide my "Do you realize what you just said you fucking idiot?" face. And I'm supposed to just have to deal with the dev team, not the entire half-assed IT support team.

    Every network is called "WORKGROUP".
    Every user is an admin and users can't change their passwords because IT just has a spreadsheet of everyone's password so they can log in and fix things.
    There is no domain controller.
    The file server is a collection of old desktop machines with shared folders.
    The have a system using SQL Express that hit the 4GB limit and stopped working. And they don't know the SA password.
    The production "network" has just one login, that everyone knows. "It's ok, because that's just the same user and password set up locally on each production machine."
    There are no backups. They regularly delete data that could be needed down the road if there was a compliance audit.
    Everyone leaves their machines unlocked, so anyone can start trading against a random account.
    Every single production backend server has the same login & password.
    They have no inventory, both with what is installed locally and what they have in their colo racks.
    They're getting ready to buy a system that runs entirely on Red Hat. None of them have any Linux experience. They don't even know the difference between bash and csh. Never mind what bashrc is for.
    They regularly assign the same IP to different machines and then play the "Find which two machines have the same address" game.

    God this is going to be a long year.

    What.

    How?

    What?

    What is your positon here? External contractor? Dev? This is making my neck feel strange.

    Technically, I'm the new head of software development. Though the two other developers quit or got pulled back to their parent company after I gave my verbal acceptance. So I get to hire new developers. They have an existing "IT" staff who apparently don't do a whole hell of a lot. It's a private trading firm, so there's no compliance issues we have to worry about right now with this pile of crap. I can see I'll be spending more time than I want on IT related issues and it's going to be incredibly fun figuring out how to tell someone their a dumbass and half-assing their job without actually saying that.

    And I thought I would just be able to do system development and system architecture.

    I'd fucking go public with this info cause jesus, that is fucking stupid and dangerous to the clients.

    Yeah but he's told us it here, on an account that's probably traceable to a personal email address. Although I suppose Wikileaks might handle something like this.

    electricitylikesme on
  • mrt144mrt144 King of the Numbernames Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    mrt144 wrote: »
    Apothe0sis wrote: »
    This job is going to give me an awesome poker face with the number of times I've had to hide my "Do you realize what you just said you fucking idiot?" face. And I'm supposed to just have to deal with the dev team, not the entire half-assed IT support team.

    Every network is called "WORKGROUP".
    Every user is an admin and users can't change their passwords because IT just has a spreadsheet of everyone's password so they can log in and fix things.
    There is no domain controller.
    The file server is a collection of old desktop machines with shared folders.
    The have a system using SQL Express that hit the 4GB limit and stopped working. And they don't know the SA password.
    The production "network" has just one login, that everyone knows. "It's ok, because that's just the same user and password set up locally on each production machine."
    There are no backups. They regularly delete data that could be needed down the road if there was a compliance audit.
    Everyone leaves their machines unlocked, so anyone can start trading against a random account.
    Every single production backend server has the same login & password.
    They have no inventory, both with what is installed locally and what they have in their colo racks.
    They're getting ready to buy a system that runs entirely on Red Hat. None of them have any Linux experience. They don't even know the difference between bash and csh. Never mind what bashrc is for.
    They regularly assign the same IP to different machines and then play the "Find which two machines have the same address" game.

    God this is going to be a long year.

    What.

    How?

    What?

    What is your positon here? External contractor? Dev? This is making my neck feel strange.

    Technically, I'm the new head of software development. Though the two other developers quit or got pulled back to their parent company after I gave my verbal acceptance. So I get to hire new developers. They have an existing "IT" staff who apparently don't do a whole hell of a lot. It's a private trading firm, so there's no compliance issues we have to worry about right now with this pile of crap. I can see I'll be spending more time than I want on IT related issues and it's going to be incredibly fun figuring out how to tell someone their a dumbass and half-assing their job without actually saying that.

    And I thought I would just be able to do system development and system architecture.

    I'd fucking go public with this info cause jesus, that is fucking stupid and dangerous to the clients.

    Yeah but he's told us it here, on an account that's probably traceable to a personal email address. Although I suppose Wikileaks might handle something like this.

    I want to see an "Anatomy of a Disaster" style documentary here. This is fucking mind boggling.

    mrt144 on
  • KakodaimonosKakodaimonos Code fondler Helping the 1% get richerRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    mrt144 wrote: »
    mrt144 wrote: »
    Apothe0sis wrote: »
    This job is going to give me an awesome poker face with the number of times I've had to hide my "Do you realize what you just said you fucking idiot?" face. And I'm supposed to just have to deal with the dev team, not the entire half-assed IT support team.

    Every network is called "WORKGROUP".
    Every user is an admin and users can't change their passwords because IT just has a spreadsheet of everyone's password so they can log in and fix things.
    There is no domain controller.
    The file server is a collection of old desktop machines with shared folders.
    The have a system using SQL Express that hit the 4GB limit and stopped working. And they don't know the SA password.
    The production "network" has just one login, that everyone knows. "It's ok, because that's just the same user and password set up locally on each production machine."
    There are no backups. They regularly delete data that could be needed down the road if there was a compliance audit.
    Everyone leaves their machines unlocked, so anyone can start trading against a random account.
    Every single production backend server has the same login & password.
    They have no inventory, both with what is installed locally and what they have in their colo racks.
    They're getting ready to buy a system that runs entirely on Red Hat. None of them have any Linux experience. They don't even know the difference between bash and csh. Never mind what bashrc is for.
    They regularly assign the same IP to different machines and then play the "Find which two machines have the same address" game.

    God this is going to be a long year.

    What.

    How?

    What?

    What is your positon here? External contractor? Dev? This is making my neck feel strange.

    Technically, I'm the new head of software development. Though the two other developers quit or got pulled back to their parent company after I gave my verbal acceptance. So I get to hire new developers. They have an existing "IT" staff who apparently don't do a whole hell of a lot. It's a private trading firm, so there's no compliance issues we have to worry about right now with this pile of crap. I can see I'll be spending more time than I want on IT related issues and it's going to be incredibly fun figuring out how to tell someone their a dumbass and half-assing their job without actually saying that.

    And I thought I would just be able to do system development and system architecture.

    I'd fucking go public with this info cause jesus, that is fucking stupid and dangerous to the clients.

    Yeah but he's told us it here, on an account that's probably traceable to a personal email address. Although I suppose Wikileaks might handle something like this.

    I want to see an "Anatomy of a Disaster" style documentary here. This is fucking mind boggling.

    There are no clients. This is a private prop trading shop. So if everything goes tits up and fails, it's just the partner's money at stake. The only real compliance issues are whatever limitations the Exchanges put on us as far a risk exposure.

    The big thing with this is I'm way, way too expensive to just spend all my time working on basic IT stuff. I'm at the senior architect/developer level and I design and write high frequency/high speed trading systems. So I'm probably coming in at least twice the bill rate of a good admin.

    You guys would be surprised at what the hell goes on in the financial industry on the tech side. And the desk side. I've seen traders key in the same order twice, leaving the company exposed to close to $500 million in downside risk overnight, automated systems that go sideways and send 5,000 orders in one second and crash the exchange order matching systems, entire rows in colo facilities going down because the electrician pulled the wrong circuit during trading hours.

    Just because we work with a lot of money doesn't mean that most developers know what's going on.

    Kakodaimonos on
  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Mr_Rose wrote: »
    Apothe0sis wrote: »
    They're definitely there - I can see them in computer management and connect to them locally.
    Check the machine account/relevant GPOs for remote log-on privileges?

    GUALASGHUAGAUH FFFFFFF

    I think I have located the issue.

    The bloody IBM network connection manager does its own secret squirrel things to prevent sharing. I am going to DESTROY that shit.

    Apothe0sis on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Anyone know where I could get Windows 2003 R2 TS CALs for open licensing?

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • DjeetDjeet Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Apothe0sis wrote: »
    The bloody IBM network connection manager does its own secret squirrel things to prevent sharing. I am going to DESTROY that shit.

    Do you mean IBM's (or ThinkVantage) "Access Connections"? Cause that thing is shit. I disable it everytime I have to deal with it, causes strange connectivity issues.

    Djeet on
  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    That is exactly what I mean Djeet.

    Apothe0sis on
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    bowen wrote: »
    What kind of stuff do you like to do? Managing servers? Improvising on the fly? Maybe sales/installation?

    Try Salary.com, add about 5-10%.

    I was hired on as the Windows break/fix guy, primarily to assist the owner and the senior tech, who was our Linux guru until he got fired for never showing up. Things were pretty hairy for a minute, mostly on the owner's end since he had to play Linux catchup to keep our bigger clients happy.

    As for my current duties, it depends on which client needs me at the time. Sometimes it's just setting up a remote session to configure Outlook or a VPN for a remote user, sometimes it will be installing and configuring a new antivirus or remote backup solution on a client's server. I coordinate with clients to schedule updates/reboots, answer trouble tickets, etc. Most of my value to the company is probably due to being able to work with all our clients, knowing how their networks are set up and how skilled their individual users are. I have a good deal of autonomy, and only really need to get with my boss to let him know when I've scheduled a service call or if there's something I need help with.

    I've learned a fair bit about Exchange (i.e. how not to break anything), participated in a few domain migrations, plenty of practice with virus removal, configuring printers to work over RDP. I'm comfortable with the SBS console or doing things manually, and I can basically keep a network going without help 95% of the time.

    I'm not confident with Group Policy (just haven't had much occasion to interact with it) and I know next to nothing about SQL. My Linux expertise is also roughly zero.

    TL DR on
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    I should be making like twice what I currently am, huh?

    TL DR on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    I'd say that's a fair salary for being unschooled. That's a comfortable range even with school.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • Jubal77Jubal77 Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    I am having an issue with our current reporting tool that we use for a sql server based application. The reports seem to run fine but the process to start the reports running is a batch file. The processes that the batch file creates are under my domain logon which is a domain admin account. After starting the batch file I usually X out of the term service and it has run fine in the past. With this phase of the generation the file can take hours to complete and if I X out of the server it tends to stall the processes the batch file started. There is no error thrown from the app or in the event log so it leads me to believe that when the server puts my login to disconnected after a time out period it stalls the processes run by the batch file.

    I am not familliar with this side and I was wondering if there is an easy fix so that a process I start via a batch file will not stall. I will eventually add these batch files to the task scheduler but for now they need to be run manually. Thanks for any help.

    Jubal77 on
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    bowen wrote: »
    I'd say that's a fair salary for being unschooled. That's a comfortable range even with school.

    Meaning my current $22k or closer to $40ish?

    TL DR on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Judging from Salary.com, that's about where you should be as a Systems Analyst, intermediate level. There's no way in hell you're an entry level employee anymore.

    This obviously changes with your area. NYC you'd be seeing a lot more.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Bowen

    I was content.

    Now you've got me struttin' down the road, calling myself a 'systems analyst' and pricing new cars and shit

    TL DR on
  • KakodaimonosKakodaimonos Code fondler Helping the 1% get richerRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Jubal, can you run the batch job as a scheduled task?

    Kakodaimonos on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Bowen

    I was content.

    Now you've got me struttin' down the road, calling myself a 'systems analyst' and pricing new cars and shit

    :o

    I'd say you were being taking advantage of to say the least. I mean unless your benefits package is insane (full medical/dental) then you may reconsider, but I'm guessing you are getting reamed in those departments too, just like I was.

    You wouldn't happen to be in upstate NY would you?

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    bowen wrote: »
    Bowen

    I was content.

    Now you've got me struttin' down the road, calling myself a 'systems analyst' and pricing new cars and shit

    :o

    I'd say you were being taking advantage of to say the least. I mean unless your benefits package is insane (full medical/dental) then you may reconsider, but I'm guessing you are getting reamed in those departments too, just like I was.

    You wouldn't happen to be in upstate NY would you?

    Heh, no. I live in Cincinnati, where the cost of living is pretty low. Thanks again for all the feedback; it's definitely food for thought.

    TL DR on
  • Jubal77Jubal77 Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Jubal, can you run the batch job as a scheduled task?

    i could I guess. We are still in the testing phases so I like the control of stopping the processes and fixing any issues as they arise. I was hoping that there was a innate group or config that would not put my session to disconnect on the server (WinServ2003) so I dont have to keep vpn up and the term serv up while I run this.

    Jubal77 on
  • mrt144mrt144 King of the Numbernames Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    mrt144 wrote: »
    mrt144 wrote: »
    Apothe0sis wrote: »
    This job is going to give me an awesome poker face with the number of times I've had to hide my "Do you realize what you just said you fucking idiot?" face. And I'm supposed to just have to deal with the dev team, not the entire half-assed IT support team.

    Every network is called "WORKGROUP".
    Every user is an admin and users can't change their passwords because IT just has a spreadsheet of everyone's password so they can log in and fix things.
    There is no domain controller.
    The file server is a collection of old desktop machines with shared folders.
    The have a system using SQL Express that hit the 4GB limit and stopped working. And they don't know the SA password.
    The production "network" has just one login, that everyone knows. "It's ok, because that's just the same user and password set up locally on each production machine."
    There are no backups. They regularly delete data that could be needed down the road if there was a compliance audit.
    Everyone leaves their machines unlocked, so anyone can start trading against a random account.
    Every single production backend server has the same login & password.
    They have no inventory, both with what is installed locally and what they have in their colo racks.
    They're getting ready to buy a system that runs entirely on Red Hat. None of them have any Linux experience. They don't even know the difference between bash and csh. Never mind what bashrc is for.
    They regularly assign the same IP to different machines and then play the "Find which two machines have the same address" game.

    God this is going to be a long year.

    What.

    How?

    What?

    What is your positon here? External contractor? Dev? This is making my neck feel strange.

    Technically, I'm the new head of software development. Though the two other developers quit or got pulled back to their parent company after I gave my verbal acceptance. So I get to hire new developers. They have an existing "IT" staff who apparently don't do a whole hell of a lot. It's a private trading firm, so there's no compliance issues we have to worry about right now with this pile of crap. I can see I'll be spending more time than I want on IT related issues and it's going to be incredibly fun figuring out how to tell someone their a dumbass and half-assing their job without actually saying that.

    And I thought I would just be able to do system development and system architecture.

    I'd fucking go public with this info cause jesus, that is fucking stupid and dangerous to the clients.

    Yeah but he's told us it here, on an account that's probably traceable to a personal email address. Although I suppose Wikileaks might handle something like this.

    I want to see an "Anatomy of a Disaster" style documentary here. This is fucking mind boggling.

    There are no clients. This is a private prop trading shop. So if everything goes tits up and fails, it's just the partner's money at stake. The only real compliance issues are whatever limitations the Exchanges put on us as far a risk exposure.

    The big thing with this is I'm way, way too expensive to just spend all my time working on basic IT stuff. I'm at the senior architect/developer level and I design and write high frequency/high speed trading systems. So I'm probably coming in at least twice the bill rate of a good admin.

    You guys would be surprised at what the hell goes on in the financial industry on the tech side. And the desk side. I've seen traders key in the same order twice, leaving the company exposed to close to $500 million in downside risk overnight, automated systems that go sideways and send 5,000 orders in one second and crash the exchange order matching systems, entire rows in colo facilities going down because the electrician pulled the wrong circuit during trading hours.

    Just because we work with a lot of money doesn't mean that most developers know what's going on.

    LMAO, thank god this is the case. Sounds like there's money to be made in fixing their shit though. Wouldn't mind finding a new job soon. ;)

    mrt144 on
  • KakodaimonosKakodaimonos Code fondler Helping the 1% get richerRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Jubal77 wrote: »
    Jubal, can you run the batch job as a scheduled task?

    i could I guess. We are still in the testing phases so I like the control of stopping the processes and fixing any issues as they arise. I was hoping that there was a innate group or config that would not put my session to disconnect on the server (WinServ2003) so I dont have to keep vpn up and the term serv up while I run this.

    Yes, you need to modify the Terminal Services Group policy and change the timeout and keep active policies.

    http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Terminal-Services-Group-Policy.html

    Kakodaimonos on
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Guess what has two thumbs and gets to wrestle with uninstalling Symantec from a server, without having the password?

    :^: This guy :^:

    TL DR on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Try symantec, 99% of the time that's the password.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Oh hey that was stupid easy. It wouldn't uninstall, but I just disabled the primary service, rebooted, and tried again.

    8-)

    TL DR on
  • iTunesIsEviliTunesIsEvil Cornfield? Cornfield.Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Another installment of what grinds iTunes' gears:

    When an adult writes an email to me regarding a support issue it should be a semi-professional piece of correspondence. The following does not count as "semi-professional" in my world:
    "I tried to print my appropriations report. The printers (sic) displaying a message (not "ready"), and an icon poped (sic) up in my screen and said the document failed too (sic) print. PLEASE ADVISE??????"

    The mis-spellings don't bug me too much, but the multi-question-mark punctuation and all-caps make want to respond that my advice to her is to revisit 3rd grade grammar.

    Caps-lock will not make me respond more quickly. Neither will your expression of, what I assume to be, complete bewilderment in the form of multiple question-marks.

    <sigh> And I'm off work today. Ha!

    iTunesIsEvil on
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Ah, clients. Saw this gem from the VP of a manufacturing firm:
    I SENDING THIS TO YOU AND I’LL SEND ANOUTHER EMAIL BUT I SENT 4 INVOICES JUST TO BEV AND 1 WENT TO HER AND THE OTHERS WENT TO LUCY AND I TOOK HER NAME OUT OF THE EMAIL. PLEASE LOOK INTO THIS

    TL DR on
  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Ah, clients. Saw this gem from the VP of a manufacturing firm:
    I SENDING THIS TO YOU AND I’LL SEND ANOUTHER EMAIL BUT I SENT 4 INVOICES JUST TO BEV AND 1 WENT TO HER AND THE OTHERS WENT TO LUCY AND I TOOK HER NAME OUT OF THE EMAIL. PLEASE LOOK INTO THIS

    That is the kind of thing that deserves a reply similar to this:

    I'd love to help, but my job is 'network supervisor', not 'teach computing 101'.

    Donovan Puppyfucker on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    We have a software where people join scanned PDF documents. And every like 4-5 months there's a document that's been grouped together with 3-4 other documents that shouldn't be. I've had to look through the code about 18 times to "make sure it's not the program"

    Look, if it was the program it'd happen every single time. No, that's such an outlier in the amount of times they do it that it's user error.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    I am so mad/upset right now.

    I just finished moving everything to a new domain and it is so squeeky clean. The Exchange Organisation is a thing of wonderment in its efficiently and configuration.

    AND THE FUCKING PUBLIC FOLDERS SEARCH THING STILL DOESN'T RETURN.

    AGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

    Apothe0sis on
  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Another installment of what grinds iTunes' gears:

    When an adult writes an email to me regarding a support issue it should be a semi-professional piece of correspondence. The following does not count as "semi-professional" in my world:
    "I tried to print my appropriations report. The printers (sic) displaying a message (not "ready"), and an icon poped (sic) up in my screen and said the document failed too (sic) print. PLEASE ADVISE??????"

    The mis-spellings don't bug me too much, but the multi-question-mark punctuation and all-caps make want to respond that my advice to her is to revisit 3rd grade grammar.

    Caps-lock will not make me respond more quickly. Neither will your expression of, what I assume to be, complete bewilderment in the form of multiple question-marks.

    <sigh> And I'm off work today. Ha!

    but what if they also request a read receipt and mark it as high priority
    urghhhhhjh

    Dehumanized on
  • iTunesIsEviliTunesIsEvil Cornfield? Cornfield.Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Another installment of what grinds iTunes' gears:

    When an adult writes an email to me regarding a support issue it should be a semi-professional piece of correspondence. The following does not count as "semi-professional" in my world:
    "I tried to print my appropriations report. The printers (sic) displaying a message (not "ready"), and an icon poped (sic) up in my screen and said the document failed too (sic) print. PLEASE ADVISE??????"

    The mis-spellings don't bug me too much, but the multi-question-mark punctuation and all-caps make want to respond that my advice to her is to revisit 3rd grade grammar.

    Caps-lock will not make me respond more quickly. Neither will your expression of, what I assume to be, complete bewilderment in the form of multiple question-marks.

    <sigh> And I'm off work today. Ha!

    but what if they also request a read receipt and mark it as high priority
    urghhhhhjh
    :?

    I'm pretty sure that'd result in a paddlin'. I also love "URGENT" and "HELP!" as the subject of these types of emails.

    iTunesIsEvil on
  • TofystedethTofystedeth Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Ah, clients. Saw this gem from the VP of a manufacturing firm:
    I SENDING THIS TO YOU AND I’LL SEND ANOUTHER EMAIL BUT I SENT 4 INVOICES JUST TO BEV AND 1 WENT TO HER AND THE OTHERS WENT TO LUCY AND I TOOK HER NAME OUT OF THE EMAIL. PLEASE LOOK INTO THIS

    That is the kind of thing that deserves a reply similar to this:

    I'd love to help, but my job is 'network supervisor', not 'teach computing 101'.
    I got a call from one of our sales reps the other day. He was having trouble with our parts software. I tell him to just reinstall the program from CD (a process which involves putting the disc in and just mashing next until it's done) and he tells me he doesn't have one. (He does, I sent a copy out to all our reps when the new version came out. Whatever.) So I'm like, "Well how'd you get it on there in the first place?" Turns out, he'd paid one of his dealers $100 to buy an extra license for the software from us and install it on his computer because he didn't want anyone in the office to know he had a computer. Cause you see, then he'd have to learn about email and how to keep track of his inventory in spreadsheets. Yeah, I facepalmed pretty hard.

    Bonus: He's like 70 and has a quavery old man voice so when he calls me up and is like "Daaavid heeelp meee" it sounds like he's afraid his computer will blow up if touches it. Which he may very well be.

    Tofystedeth on
    steam_sig.png
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Another installment of what grinds iTunes' gears:

    When an adult writes an email to me regarding a support issue it should be a semi-professional piece of correspondence. The following does not count as "semi-professional" in my world:
    "I tried to print my appropriations report. The printers (sic) displaying a message (not "ready"), and an icon poped (sic) up in my screen and said the document failed too (sic) print. PLEASE ADVISE??????"

    The mis-spellings don't bug me too much, but the multi-question-mark punctuation and all-caps make want to respond that my advice to her is to revisit 3rd grade grammar.

    Caps-lock will not make me respond more quickly. Neither will your expression of, what I assume to be, complete bewilderment in the form of multiple question-marks.

    <sigh> And I'm off work today. Ha!

    but what if they also request a read receipt and mark it as high priority
    urghhhhhjh
    :?

    I'm pretty sure that'd result in a paddlin'. I also love "URGENT" and "HELP!" as the subject of these types of emails.

    I actually turned off receipts because there is no reason for you to see when I read your email. I don't want you to become reliant on email as a form of telling me a problem because I may not check it enough to be "urgent."

    I actually only open my email 3 times a day. Once in the morning, once at lunch, and once in the evening. If you want to talk to me, or discuss a problem, call me or come to my office. That way I know it's more than "this annoys me, fix it." Otherwise it just goes on the backburner until I have the time to fix things like you not being able to figure out how to sort your folder by date or name, or cascading icons because you have narcolepsy and a twitch and dragged an icon way outside the visible range of the folder somehow. Or because the fax lines are busy with consecutive faxes your urgent document has to wait its turn in the queue.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    I will never understand why people pay us more to keep old dinosaur PCs working than it would cost to buy new.

    TL DR on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    They're green... or something.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • WeretacoWeretaco Cubicle Gangster Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    I will never understand why people pay us more to keep old dinosaur PCs working than it would cost to buy new.

    The one nice benefit of this company. If a computer is 1 day out of warranty and anything goes wrong it gets replaced right then. We also never do virus/spyware removal. You get a virus, send it in for a re-image cause it's your own damn fault and you get to survive without a computer for a few days :)

    Weretaco on
    Unofficial PA IRC chat: #paforums at irc.slashnet.org
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    You know what I love? Windows 7's system logs.

    Oh shit my pc turned off randomly, why? Oh hey there log way to fill it full of "Your graphics card has overheated, windows is powering down your PC to protect it."

    Pretty much everything that goes wrong gets logged now. Before it was usually something like "Windows has detected 0x001038102 (0x0301333333 0x90301201111 0x030102222)"

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Oh those system codes are bullshit. Unless you're a programmer, who the fuck knows what they mean?

    Donovan Puppyfucker on
  • KakodaimonosKakodaimonos Code fondler Helping the 1% get richerRegistered User regular
    edited February 2011
    I will never understand why people pay us more to keep old dinosaur PCs working than it would cost to buy new.

    Christ, I get that as a developer. "So we can have 3 programmers all spend six weeks trying to make the program run faster. Or we can buy another server for about 1/3 of that cost."

    And they almost always go for the extra dev time.

    Kakodaimonos on
  • mrt144mrt144 King of the Numbernames Registered User regular
    edited February 2011
    Weretaco wrote: »
    I will never understand why people pay us more to keep old dinosaur PCs working than it would cost to buy new.

    The one nice benefit of this company. If a computer is 1 day out of warranty and anything goes wrong it gets replaced right then. We also never do virus/spyware removal. You get a virus, send it in for a re-image cause it's your own damn fault and you get to survive without a computer for a few days :)

    I have a re-image rule of 15 minutes. If I can't get rid of it in 15 minutes, I'm taking the 45 minutes to reimage it.

    mrt144 on
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