RE: A ticket came in: Did they take the printer into the shitters with them?

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > RE: A ticket came in: Did they take the printer into the shitters with them?

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Alliterate Addict: Jul 10, 2012; dreaming of that face again

it's bright and blue and shimmering

grinning wide and comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes

ShadowStalker posted:

No, the wife and I are moving 750 miles north to Northern Virginia in 2 years to be close to my family.

Oh. WELL IN THAT CASE.

I'd still put out feelers in the area, you can pay your house down better in 2 years with more money amirite? As my mechanic always says, "Is always good to look for job when have job."

Anyways.

enotnert posted:

if we're talking wife tickets...

I'm actually unreasonably pleased that my wife is learning how to Google more effectively. It's also pretty :3:

when she pops up on GTalk to tell me about a problem she had that she was going to bug me about, but spent half an hour Googling and figuring out the answer herself.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 22:15

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# ? May 15, 2024 22:15

Paladine_PSoT: Jan 2, 2010; If you have a problem Yo, I'll solve it

kensei posted:

Washington state is pretty nice, if it is ~~West of the Cascades.~~ within ~40m of Seattle or within ~20mi of Portland.

FTFY. We don't want people blaming this thread for their move to Centralia or Forks.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 22:35

Paladine_PSoT: Jan 2, 2010; If you have a problem Yo, I'll solve it

Apparently Facebook has a new Ticket Escalation Procedure.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 22:36

kensei: Dec 27, 2007; He has come home, where he belongs. The Ancient Mariner returns to lead his first team to glory, forever and ever. Amen!

Paladine_PSoT posted:

FTFY. We don't want people blaming this thread for their move to Centralia or Forks.

Like there are jobs there :lol:

# ? Aug 19, 2013 22:38

ShadowStalker: Apr 14, 2006

Ursine Asylum posted:

I'm actually unreasonably pleased that my wife is learning how to Google more effectively. It's also pretty when she pops up on GTalk to tell me about a problem she had that she was going to bug me about, but spent half an hour Googling and figuring out the answer herself.

My wife's doesn't submit tickets about technology in the house, she's decent with computers. So decent that she's pretty much the default non-IT IT person in the law firm she works in. They always contact her first and then she escalates to their 3rd party IT.

I get calls about the law firms IT stuff and recommendations because she knows she can contact me quicker and I will give better answers.

Laser printer on the fritz when we stopped by to drop something off last weekend, a quick google and internal reset and it's fixed.

One of the other locations are having issues with their VOIP lines sounding garbled and slow internet. The idiot 3rd party IT guys put both the VOIP and network traffic on a terrible T1 line and left the Comcast Business Class connection unplugged and unused. It's ok, the 3rd party IT guys will just charge you for the travel and a new firewall.

Laptop taken over by spyware and bots, jamming up network traffic; just shut it down and we'll re-image it. 3 weeks later and still no laptop for one of the lawyers. He's stuck using an old desktop.

The owner of the law firm approached my wife about having me come be there IT guy but balked at a 6 figure salary when he's only paying like $30k a year for his 3rd party IT.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 22:58

redstormpopcorn: Jun 10, 2007; Aurora Master

Paladine_PSoT posted:

Apparently Facebook has a new Ticket Escalation Procedure.

It looks like he didn't provide any replication or troubleshooting steps, just "i found bug look what it does, gibe moni pls."

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:00

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

ShadowStalker posted:

The owner of the law firm approached my wife about having me come be there IT guy but balked at a 6 figure salary when he's only paying like $30k a year for his 3rd party IT.

An abject lesson in "you get what you pay for." You might want to float the idea of charging consulting rates anyway.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:04

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

My wife has learned to check the wifi switch and to reboot. All is well in the world.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:15

rolleyes: Nov 16, 2006; Sometimes you have to roll the hard... two?

I'm going to combine "gently caress printers" and "gently caress users" into a "gently caress prusers".

Today I walked up to the printer and logged in (we have collection print queues so you can print from anywhere to any printer), and noticed a bright orange warning light was on. So like most people in this thread would probably do, I hit the button next to it. "Tray 1 empty". Ok, I put paper (which was in a stack next to the printer) in the tray.

So many jobs started pouring out that I walked off to find a different printer after 5 minutes. This is extra-special-stupid because you cannot send jobs to print unattended, you have to physically go to the printer, log in, select the documents you want to print from your personal collection queue, and hit print. This means every single one of those print jobs was started by someone too dumb to spot a bright orange warning LED or, if they did, too dumb to figure out what to do next.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:16

psydude: Apr 1, 2008

I have to question the wisdom of using only a third party IT services provider when you're running WAN links and VoIP to multiple branch offices.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:18

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

Sometimes my cat walks on my Brother printer and presses buttons in such a way that it reprints the last job. Not so fun when the last job was a 30 page article my PhD student wife printed.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:19

Sickening: Jul 16, 2007; Black summer was the best summer.

psydude posted:

I have to question the wisdom of using only a third party IT services provider when you're running WAN links and VoIP to multiple branch offices.

You don't get rich by giving your money away psydude. You talk one of your employees into asking their husband for free advice. Maybe you seem like you are getting ahead that way.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:20

pr0digal: Sep 12, 2008; Alan Rickman Overdrive

rolleyes posted:

I'm going to combine "gently caress printers" and "gently caress users" into a "gently caress prusers".

Today I walked up to the printer and logged in (we have collection print queues so you can print from anywhere to any printer), and noticed a bright orange warning light was on. So like most people in this thread would probably do, I hit the button next to it. "Tray 1 empty". Ok, I put paper (which was in a stack next to the printer) in the tray.

So many jobs started pouring out that I walked off to find a different printer after 5 minutes. This is extra-special-stupid because you cannot send jobs to print unattended, you have to physically go to the printer, log in, select the documents you want to print from your personal collection queue, and hit print. This means every single one of those print jobs was started by someone too dumb to spot a bright orange warning LED or, if they did, too dumb to figure out what to do next.

gently caress disc printers and the people who request 30 DVDs and leave them at their desk for the next 6 months

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:21

FlapYoJacks: Feb 12, 2009

Ursine Asylum posted:

I'm actually unreasonably pleased that my wife is learning how to Google more effectively. It's also pretty when she pops up on GTalk to tell me about a problem she had that she was going to bug me about, but spent half an hour Googling and figuring out the answer herself.

This is what I have learned over the years about google:

code:


if (Problem_Is_Not_Super_Complicated)
	google();
else
	Read_The_code();

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:35

Galler: Jan 28, 2008

skipdogg posted:

DameWare for local lan, TeamViewer for anything else. Works well for us.

This is my preferred solution as well.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:37

Dick Trauma: Nov 30, 2007; God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Things have gotten so busy for me the last few weeks that I've fallen behind on my web browsing! :argh:

One of the few XP machines in our organization freaked out and I wasted about a day trying to repair it. Had a boot error that I've only seen with Vista/7 that had me baffled. Also realized that I had no XP media or tools so I had to scramble for some. The PC is only two years old and came with 7 but the user has an app that requires XP. We're paying a ton of money to finally move to a version that works with 7 64 bit but the project's not done yet, so after I put a new hard drive in it's back to XP.

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:41

Kyrosiris: May 24, 2006; You try to be happy when everyone is summoning you everywhere to "be their friend".

Dick Trauma posted:

Things have gotten so busy for me the last few weeks that I've fallen behind on my web browsing!

One of the few XP machines in our organization freaked out and I wasted about a day trying to repair it. Had a boot error that I've only seen with Vista/7 that had me baffled. Also realized that I had no XP media or tools so I had to scramble for some. The PC is only two years old and came with 7 but the user has an app that requires XP. We're paying a ton of money to finally move to a version that works with 7 64 bit but the project's not done yet, so after I put a new hard drive in it's back to XP.

Would the Windows XP mode available in 7 Pro not work for it? Or is it a convenience issue?

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:49

user on probation: Nov 1, 2012; removed

Have you ever tried to explain how to use windows XP mode to a user?

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:51

Kyrosiris: May 24, 2006; You try to be happy when everyone is summoning you everywhere to "be their friend".

tehloki posted:

Have you ever tried to explain how to use windows XP mode to a user?

Wasn't sure how solidly Dick Trauma was plugged into his pod still. :v:

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:55

KweezNArt: Jul 30, 2007

tehloki posted:

Have you ever tried to explain how to use windows XP mode to a user?

Wait, so I have to start my computer, and then run a program to start another computer inside my computer, and then that computer starts Windows XP, so I can run this program from 2000 that my entire business is dependent on? :derp:

# ? Aug 19, 2013 23:57

Galler: Jan 28, 2008

More importantly Windows XP mode is poo poo and breaks horribly and randomly very often. Make an XP VM if you need xp for something. Alternatively give up and install XP because it's a lot easier in the long run.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 00:02

nexxai: Jul 17, 2002; quack quack bjork; Fun Shoe

Galler posted:

...
Windows XP mode is poo poo
...
Make an XP VM
...

I do not think you are clear on what "XP Mode" is. It's a specially bundled VM that MS put together using their Virtual PC/HyperV technology.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 00:06

Khisanth Magus: Mar 31, 2011; Vae Victus

nexxai posted:

I do not think you are clear on what "XP Mode" is. It's a specially bundled VM that MS put together using their Virtual PC/HyperV technology.

I believe he means a VM that isn't made with Microsoft's Virtual PC software.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 00:28

nexxai: Jul 17, 2002; quack quack bjork; Fun Shoe

Khisanth Magus posted:

I believe he means a VM that isn't made with Microsoft's Virtual PC software.

I know what he's saying - what I'm saying is that they would be identical. If "XP Mode" won't work for you, creating your own has a high probability of producing identical results.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 00:29

Inspector_666: Oct 7, 2003; _{benny with the good hair}

So a (unmanaged) switch took a poo poo at a customer's office sometime overnight and as a result, my computer and only my computer cannot complete an RDP connection to any of the servers. VPN authentication works fine, and I can connect to the servers from my laptop, but as soon as the connection goes through I get some error about encryption differences and the always helpful "Try again later or contact your server administrator." Any other computer with all of the same credentials works fine.

Actually, does anybody have any idea what could be causing this? It's kind of a problem.

Inspector_666 fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Aug 20, 2013

# ? Aug 20, 2013 00:31

Galler: Jan 28, 2008

nexxai posted:

I know what he's saying - what I'm saying is that they would be identical. If "XP Mode" won't work for you, creating your own has a high probability of producing identical results.

No, creating a XP VM with any other virtualization technology is worlds better than that half-assed piece of poo poo Microsoft Virtual PC.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 00:34

Internet Explorer: Jun 1, 2005

The users actually using XP mode is the hard part. If you spin up a VM and just give them an RDP shortcut, that's about as easy as it gets.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 00:35

Internet Explorer: Jun 1, 2005

Inspector_71 posted:

So a (unmanaged) switch took a poo poo at a customer's office sometime overnight and as a result, my computer and only my computer cannot complete an RDP connection to any of the servers. VPN authentication works fine, and I can connect to the servers from my laptop, but as soon as the connection goes through I get some error about encryption differences and the always helpful "Try again later or contact your server administrator." Any other computer with all of the same credentials works fine.

Actually, does anybody have any idea what could be causing this? It's kind of a problem.

What's the actual error message and is there anything in the logs on your laptop or the server when you try to connect?

# ? Aug 20, 2013 00:37

Dick Trauma: Nov 30, 2007; God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Galler posted:

More importantly Windows XP mode is poo poo and breaks horribly and randomly very often. Make an XP VM if you need xp for something. Alternatively give up and install XP because it's a lot easier in the long run.

The PC has a mysterious parallel port dongle on it that might be for the app. I need to get answers out of the worthless vendor that supports the app before I do anything interesting. I'd love to use XP mode for this since by the end of the year the app will be able to work in 7 and this would save me some trouble.

The PC has been sitting there for two years out in the open at the location and I expected it to be seething with malware but it scanned completely clean in both my antivirus and antimalware software.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 00:55

Alliterate Addict: Jul 10, 2012; dreaming of that face again

it's bright and blue and shimmering

grinning wide and comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes

That's unsafe code!

ratbert90 posted:

code:


try:
	if (Problem_Is_Not_Super_Complicated):
		google()
	else:
		Read_The_code()
exception:
	google( try_harder=true )

# ? Aug 20, 2013 01:33

GreenNight: Feb 19, 2006; Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

Dick Trauma posted:

The PC has a mysterious parallel port dongle on it that might be for the app. I need to get answers out of the worthless vendor that supports the app before I do anything interesting. I'd love to use XP mode for this since by the end of the year the app will be able to work in 7 and this would save me some trouble.

The PC has been sitting there for two years out in the open at the location and I expected it to be seething with malware but it scanned completely clean in both my antivirus and antimalware software.

Sounds like Labelview. gently caress parallel port dongles.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 01:42

Galler: Jan 28, 2008

Dick Trauma posted:

The PC has a mysterious parallel port dongle on it that might be for the app. I need to get answers out of the worthless vendor that supports the app before I do anything interesting. I'd love to use XP mode for this since by the end of the year the app will be able to work in 7 and this would save me some trouble.

The PC has been sitting there for two years out in the open at the location and I expected it to be seething with malware but it scanned completely clean in both my antivirus and antimalware software.

The big issues I found with using XP Mode in production were, as described above, getting users to be able to actually start it up, XP Mode being shutdown improperly, and the integration features being unreliable at best. We ended up banning the use of it because it was wasting too much of IT's time and instead either made proper VMs or just used a physical XP machine. Indecently if you start digging through the XP Mode settings it looks suspiciously like a really early stripped down version of VMware workstation/player.

Before it was banned we had it working perfectly on a couple dozen computers until it failed one by one on all of them. It would do this in a variety of ways and seemingly at random. Part of the issue was that XP Mode will, by default, attempt to hibernate the XP VM when XP Mode is exited. If the user gets impatient (it can take a while) or something happens to the host machine that causes this process to be unsuccessful bad poo poo happens. It also breaks for other unknown reasons.

Often the user would start up XP Mode and find that they could not connect to any of the host drives/printers/network/whatever. They just suddenly had an isolated XP VM. I occasionally had success turning off as much of the integration stuff as I could and treating the VM like a proper VM (joining it to the domain and such) but this tended to either break other things or horribly confuse the user. If it did break there was generally no fixing it. Even uninstalling and reinstalling rarely changed anything. I've seen two computers being setup side by side completely identically with XP Mode working on one and being broken from the start on another.

Considering you only need it to work for a short time I would just stick with a physical XP box. Failing that VirtualBox (free), VMware Workstation ($250 retail) work much, much better and both support parallel port pass-through with a bit of effort.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 01:45

Caconym: Feb 12, 2013

We resolved a ticket! :toot:

And all we had to do was go online to get the 80 patches our magnificent desktop group hadn't put in wsus.
Oh, and boot everything 4 times...

# ? Aug 20, 2013 01:54

FlapYoJacks: Feb 12, 2009

Ursine Asylum posted:

That's unsafe code!

C# is for scrubs, and try statements take way more system resources than I like.

code:


if (Problem_Is_Not_Super_Complicated)
	Try_harder = google();
		if (Try_Harder != 0)
		{
			printf("%i! The community is full of stupid shits!\n", errno};
			Try_Hardest();
		}
else
	Read_The_Code();

FlapYoJacks fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Aug 20, 2013

# ? Aug 20, 2013 01:57

mysteryberto: Apr 25, 2006; IIAM

XP mode is a trap. It looks great initially but ends up failing or disjoining itself from the domain. Typically it works for a few weeks OK until you develop ways to deploy it large scale. Half way through deployment it begins to show major problems.

Microsoft did everyone a favor not including it in W8.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 02:15

Xae: Jan 19, 2005

The Macaroni posted:

My boss got back from vacation and said, "You did a great job handling the chaos last week. Heard a lot of compliments about your patience and customer service. Good work." Wasn't expecting that.

In the same vein my boss starts every conversation over IM like this:

Hello Xae, we need to talk
(5 minutes of silence)
Just wanted to say Bob in Accounting said you did a good job with the request last week. Keep up the good work.

I am pretty sure he just enjoys trolling me at this point. Because in that 5 minutes I'm busy trying to think of who I pissed off.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 02:20

FlapYoJacks: Feb 12, 2009

Xae posted:

In the same vein my boss starts every conversation over IM like this:

Hello Xae, we need to talk
(5 minutes of silence)
Just wanted to say Bob in Accounting said you did a good job with the request last week. Keep up the good work.

I am pretty sure he just enjoys trolling me at this point. Because in that 5 minutes I'm busy trying to think of who I pissed off.

My boss started a conversation with "We need to talk, you are too new to programming to keep you on the current project." Now that's a troll. :v:

# ? Aug 20, 2013 02:22

Dick Trauma: Nov 30, 2007; God damn it, you've got to be kind.

mysteryberto posted:

XP mode is a trap. It looks great initially but ends up failing or disjoining itself from the domain. Typically it works for a few weeks OK until you develop ways to deploy it large scale. Half way through deployment it begins to show major problems.

Microsoft did everyone a favor not including it in W8.

Why must you all crush my dreams of putting Win 7 on this box?

It's just one machine and it's not on a domain so I'm still tempted if only because it's 2013 and I hate having to install XP.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 02:25

GreenNight: Feb 19, 2006; Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

Dick Trauma posted:

Why must you all crush my dreams of putting Win 7 on this box?

It's just one machine and it's not on a domain so I'm still tempted if only because it's 2013 and I hate having to install XP.

At my job I started the whole "Windows XP is being discontinued come April 2014, which means it's a huge security issue". That lit a fire under my bosses rear end and now it's all upgrade everything to be Windows 7 compliant.

# ? Aug 20, 2013 02:27

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# ? May 15, 2024 22:15

KennyG: Oct 22, 2002; Here to blow my own horn.

Our StyleCop would reject you :colbert:

code:

public double TheNeedful()
{
	double profit = 0;
	try{
		profit = Google();
	}
	catch (Exception Obscure){
		Manual TFM = Manual.Read(Obscure.Problem);
		profit = Answer.toProfit(TFM.Obvious);
	}
	return profit;
}

# ? Aug 20, 2013 02:36

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > RE: A ticket came in: Did they take the printer into the shitters with them?

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