In other news, I've been dumping all of our old broken PCs and CRT monitors back in our shipping area for the past month. Last time we cleared it out we paid some company $60 to come pick it up. This time I told my boss I'd get rid of them myself so I loaded them up yesterday and took them to the e-waste centre, they paid me $50 instead.
Because if you're going to attempt to squeeze that big black monster into your slot you will need to be able to take at least 12 inches or else you're going to have a bad time...
Ok, this is novel. I have a client who receives faxes that are saved as PDFs in a network share. One user will open that folder and not see an incoming fax for quite awhile. This is despite a new PC and a new network cable.
What the hell about her profile could be causing that?
I'm assuming that other users can see the file during the time that she cannot?
Yep.
You said you gave her a new PC. Did you transfer her settings over? If so, it'd be a local profile setting (like possibly an extra protocol that is enabled?). If not, it's either a global setting or something server-side. Either way, that's pretty damn odd.
Check if she's using offline files. There's a feature in offline files called slow-link detection. If windows has a cache for any shared drive on a server and detects lag of more than 5ms, it will revert to cache automatically (thinking you are on VPN) and only check again for slow-link 5 minutes later.
Just hopped on her machine and looked in Sync Center and there are no sync relationships; offline files is disabled.
offline files are the first thing I disable. What they did with roaming my docs folders is annoying. Yeah well if the files go offline I don't want it to work anymore. Because then there's the situation where the user doesn't reconnect for some weird reason and goes months and whoops computer died.
AMG WHERES MY IMPORTANT DOCUMENT. I don't know where it is, your computer died, tough luck bitches.
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
offline files are the first thing I disable. What they did with roaming my docs folders is annoying. Yeah well if the files go offline I don't want it to work anymore. Because then there's the situation where the user doesn't reconnect for some weird reason and goes months and whoops computer died.
AMG WHERES MY IMPORTANT DOCUMENT. I don't know where it is, your computer died, tough luck bitches.
It's good tech and it works fine, but no tech will solve users going awol and losing data. That's a business issue, not an IT one.
If you are going to use a ticket system, please don't base your entire service system around it. Leave some room for flexibility. Here's why:
At my work we use HP Service Manager. It has several things wrong with it. First, it's Trident based, which means no inline spell check (red underline squiggles), and it's text highlighting gets fuck-all confused when you are trying to cut/paste text in the description body when it has some other field auto-highlighted.
Secondly, It's search function is abysmal! It has no way to add "weight" the search terms so that the the most frequently used result float to the top. Actually, if you give it a term and it can't make head or tails of it, it gives you a bunch of random articles that has nothing to do with what you are looking for. I have to keep a separate spreadsheet of knowledge articles and their numbers so I can look up the articles in HPSM. It's really a true "Yo dawg! I hear you like looking up knowledge articles, so I gave you a list of articles to look up so you can go look up some articles" moment every time I go looking for documentation on something.
At my job, we all know that search sucks, and we bitch about it every time it comes up in our meetings about it. But we can't change it because HPSM is part of our entire escalation process, including incident priority. Everything from "Is the Ethernet cable plugged in?" to "OMG THE SERVER ROOM IS ON FIRE!"
I've never seen a knowledge base that's tied to a ticketing system actually work out. Like, I can kinda see how it might seem like a good idea, but the best KBs I've ever used have all just been goddamn wikis. Or even word docs on a share with a halfway logical folder structure works better.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I've never seen a knowledge base that's tied to a ticketing system actually work out. Like, I can kinda see how it might seem like a good idea, but the best KBs I've ever used have all just been goddamn wikis. Or even word docs on a share with a halfway logical folder structure works better.
Haha, tell me about it. We actually have a "most often used knowledge" list on our Sharepoint
Yeah, our knowledge base is all Office docs/PDFs in Sharepoint, with some commonly used stuff on our main department intranet site. Plus a spreadsheet I made for helping do account provisioning and stuff that lists basically all our applications, which sites use them, if we do PW resets or the app support does, if there's AD groups associated with it, and direct links to commonly used docs for it. Pretty handy. I was proud of it.
Users get so freaking spoiled. For the past several years we've had an application that lets users synchronize their passwords across AD and 5 or so of our most used clinical applications. It was basically a website they logged into, and selected what applications to change, then it ran macros to reset them on some devices over here. It worked okay, but now we've got a SSO application and support for the password portal app is ending in December (to which several of us replied "They supported it?" ).
Users do not want to see it go. We keep getting calls from people asking how to change all their passwords. I had one today.
"You don't have to change all your passwords. We have single sign on now. You just change your Windows password and it remembers the rest for you."
"So how do I change the others?"
"It'll ask you to change them when they expire. If you really want to change them before then, we can change them manually or there's a reset password checkbox on all the login screens."
"So there's no way to change them all together?"
"No. You don't need it anymore. Single sign on keeps track of it all for you."
"Hmph. I bet you hear this all the time, but I can't wait till we get a system that works."
"Single sign on does work. With the old system you could change all your passwords at once, but you had to put in your password everytime you log in. With the new one you put in one password once a day"
"Whatever. *click*"
Metrics should almost never be used. You can get a pretty good idea if someone isn't doing their job just from observing them over a few days. Then you can confirm that with the metrics. Metrics alone are never a good idea.
You can see that in almost any system that displays metrics. For instance, raiding in World of Warcraft.
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
See, the sad thing is, it sounds like that whole "put in a ticket for your sick time" is a joke, but its not a fucking joke and I'm going to have to put a ticket in and then close said ticket if I'm sick.
Ostensibly they're using them for that whole "we're trying to document how busy you all are so we can justify more staff" thing, which is the most flimsy cover ever for "document all your time and you better be busy or else".
See, the sad thing is, it sounds like that whole "put in a ticket for your sick time" is a joke, but its not a fucking joke and I'm going to have to put a ticket in and then close said ticket if I'm sick.
Ostensibly they're using them for that whole "we're trying to document how busy you all are so we can justify more staff" thing, which is the most flimsy cover ever for "document all your time and you better be busy or else".
At my old workplace they briefly had the support engineering staff log their time on a spreadsheet with granularity down to 15 minute intervals.
That lasted, maybe, 2 weeks or so before the support engineering team leader basically just said "yeah, this is absolutely not working."
See, the sad thing is, it sounds like that whole "put in a ticket for your sick time" is a joke, but its not a fucking joke and I'm going to have to put a ticket in and then close said ticket if I'm sick.
Ostensibly they're using them for that whole "we're trying to document how busy you all are so we can justify more staff" thing, which is the most flimsy cover ever for "document all your time and you better be busy or else".
Man that's what like, timekeeping apps or whatever are for. Ticket systems are for IT shit.
We're considering a ticketing system, mostly for issue tracking purposes. No one cares what IT does here, so we won't have to worry about management wanting to see those type of "metrics." The bad part is that no one cares that you exist or what you are working so hard on. The good news is that they keep their dirty little noses out of your business.
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
Trying to completely wipe some display drivers off my system:
boot into safe mode
uninstall all the nvidia shit in programs & utilities
uninstall drivers in device manager (and checking 'remove driver files')
delete c:\NVIDIA
delete c:\program files (x86)\nvidia
delete from driver store with pnputil
Check windows\inf, yup the OEM*.inf are gone
Check registry setting for driver search folders (only win\inf, good)
gpedit.msc to disable searching for drivers with WU
reboot back to regular mode.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Trying to completely wipe some display drivers off my system:
boot into safe mode
uninstall all the nvidia shit in programs & utilities
uninstall drivers in device manager (and checking 'remove driver files')
delete c:\NVIDIA
delete c:\program files (x86)\nvidia
delete from driver store with pnputil
Check windows\inf, yup the OEM*.inf are gone
Check registry setting for driver search folders (only win\inf, good)
gpedit.msc to disable searching for drivers with WU
reboot back to regular mode.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Too many variables for them to spend the time on/be responsible for, would be my guess.
Sure, for scrubbing all the files. But they could totally add a "please, don't use this driver again unless I say so" button.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Too many variables for them to spend the time on/be responsible for, would be my guess.
Sure, for scrubbing all the files. But they could totally add a "please, don't use this driver again unless I say so" button.
Which would make it easy for you to fuck up your system in an unrecoverable fashion.
So does "del c: /f /s *.*" but you can do that, too.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Timekeepers should be the domain of either HR (basic hours worked/sick/vacation/holiday/$c.) or department management (hours spent on daily tasks/specific projects/&c.). And the second one just pisses off the workers.
One of my friends once and had to keep track of his time, across something like 12 different project codes, down to five minute increments. He was contracting, too, so then he'd also have to fill out another timesheet for his contracting company. He spent about an hour and a half each week filling out timesheets. (He knows this, too, because he had to log and bill that time )
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Metrics are a fantastic cover for firing that guy for that thing cause numbers. They also keep a lot of midlevel managers employed with fancy looking print outs.
jaziekBad at everythingAnd mad about it.Registered Userregular
This week was the first time that I've felt like I've been doing something thats not completely trivial, in terms of, just doing stuff that anybody with a basic amount of computer literacy could do. Pretty good confidence boost to plan out some network changes in advance, then get flown over to the actual data centre, and have everything you planned work out pretty much perfectly.
Posts
Body: !!!!
In other news, I've been dumping all of our old broken PCs and CRT monitors back in our shipping area for the past month. Last time we cleared it out we paid some company $60 to come pick it up. This time I told my boss I'd get rid of them myself so I loaded them up yesterday and took them to the e-waste centre, they paid me $50 instead.
Subject: THE PRINTER THERE SOUNDS LIKE A BIRD IS IN IT!!
Body: THE PRINTER THERE SOUNDS LIKE A BIRD IS IN IT!!
Just hopped on her machine and looked in Sync Center and there are no sync relationships; offline files is disabled.
AMG WHERES MY IMPORTANT DOCUMENT. I don't know where it is, your computer died, tough luck bitches.
Was there?
Maybe it was a protected species and it would be illegal to mess with its habitat. Wouldn't that be a great way to close that ticket?
It's good tech and it works fine, but no tech will solve users going awol and losing data. That's a business issue, not an IT one.
At my work we use HP Service Manager. It has several things wrong with it. First, it's Trident based, which means no inline spell check (red underline squiggles), and it's text highlighting gets fuck-all confused when you are trying to cut/paste text in the description body when it has some other field auto-highlighted.
Secondly, It's search function is abysmal! It has no way to add "weight" the search terms so that the the most frequently used result float to the top. Actually, if you give it a term and it can't make head or tails of it, it gives you a bunch of random articles that has nothing to do with what you are looking for. I have to keep a separate spreadsheet of knowledge articles and their numbers so I can look up the articles in HPSM. It's really a true "Yo dawg! I hear you like looking up knowledge articles, so I gave you a list of articles to look up so you can go look up some articles" moment every time I go looking for documentation on something.
At my job, we all know that search sucks, and we bitch about it every time it comes up in our meetings about it. But we can't change it because HPSM is part of our entire escalation process, including incident priority. Everything from "Is the Ethernet cable plugged in?" to "OMG THE SERVER ROOM IS ON FIRE!"
We can't ditch it. It's really sad.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I envy you.
Yesterday we had a self service ticket come in.
Summary:PRINTER
Details:
Users do not want to see it go. We keep getting calls from people asking how to change all their passwords. I had one today.
"You don't have to change all your passwords. We have single sign on now. You just change your Windows password and it remembers the rest for you."
"So how do I change the others?"
"It'll ask you to change them when they expire. If you really want to change them before then, we can change them manually or there's a reset password checkbox on all the login screens."
"So there's no way to change them all together?"
"No. You don't need it anymore. Single sign on keeps track of it all for you."
"Hmph. I bet you hear this all the time, but I can't wait till we get a system that works."
"Single sign on does work. With the old system you could change all your passwords at once, but you had to put in your password everytime you log in. With the new one you put in one password once a day"
"Whatever. *click*"
It's being discussed that I might have to start entering tickets assigned to myself for my sick time.
You can see that in almost any system that displays metrics. For instance, raiding in World of Warcraft.
Ostensibly they're using them for that whole "we're trying to document how busy you all are so we can justify more staff" thing, which is the most flimsy cover ever for "document all your time and you better be busy or else".
At my old workplace they briefly had the support engineering staff log their time on a spreadsheet with granularity down to 15 minute intervals.
That lasted, maybe, 2 weeks or so before the support engineering team leader basically just said "yeah, this is absolutely not working."
Man that's what like, timekeeping apps or whatever are for. Ticket systems are for IT shit.
"Come up with a better solution."
boot into safe mode
uninstall all the nvidia shit in programs & utilities
uninstall drivers in device manager (and checking 'remove driver files')
delete c:\NVIDIA
delete c:\program files (x86)\nvidia
delete from driver store with pnputil
Check windows\inf, yup the OEM*.inf are gone
Check registry setting for driver search folders (only win\inf, good)
gpedit.msc to disable searching for drivers with WU
reboot back to regular mode.
drivers automagically reinstall themselves. /killmenow
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Well, I amend that, depending on their definition of 'issue tracking'.
Does nvidia not make a driver scrubbing utility?
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Too many variables for them to spend the time on/be responsible for, would be my guess.
Sure, for scrubbing all the files. But they could totally add a "please, don't use this driver again unless I say so" button.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Which would make it easy for you to fuck up your system in an unrecoverable fashion.
Honestly a ("Please delete all inf files you have saved, everywhere, but aren't using") button would be plenty fine for fixing the issues.
So does "del c: /f /s *.*" but you can do that, too.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
They can only protect you from yourself so much.
Timekeepers should be the domain of either HR (basic hours worked/sick/vacation/holiday/$c.) or department management (hours spent on daily tasks/specific projects/&c.). And the second one just pisses off the workers.
One of my friends once and had to keep track of his time, across something like 12 different project codes, down to five minute increments. He was contracting, too, so then he'd also have to fill out another timesheet for his contracting company. He spent about an hour and a half each week filling out timesheets. (He knows this, too, because he had to log and bill that time
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies