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blackswordca posted:I know in high school when they locked us down it took us about two days to figure out if you opened MSinfo, then opened task manager from there, the run dialog wasn't disabled and you could run anything. Our standard technique was to create hyperlinks to whatever we wanted to run in Word.
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Jan 8, 2014 19:24
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KweezNArt posted:"The little stars all look the same! How can I be sure I'm typing them in right? Couldn't it just display a capital star?"
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Jan 8, 2014 19:43
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Between one coworker's claims of news bias and conspiracies against Apple and another trying to tell me that the NSA could have a backdoor in AES-256 that nobody noticed or is undetectable, I think someone slipped stupid pills into my department's breakfast.
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Jan 8, 2014 20:02
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Sickening posted:How often are these patching days that take you into the night? The new guy was made aware of the patching schedule the same time I was - a week before Christmas. A notice is sent out after the military approves a request for patching, and in the notice is the official documentation that clearly lists the patching window's date and time. It's also added to our shared calendars with a reminder in Outlook. The week of the patch window we receive a break-out list that tells each of us what servers we will be personally responsible for and what patches are going to be installed. This whole process was anything but last-minute or sprung upon him unannounced. We patch our systems once a month after VA analyzes patches and determines whether or not they meet requirements and pass muster by not corrupting or killing test systems set up for that express purpose. Believe me when I say the folks who oversee this process have this poo poo down to a science, and nothing happens unless the paperwork is all in order and signed off by the military. Now, you're right that we should be able to pass things off to the second shift guys, except for one little hiccup - they also have their own patching to do, so they aren't sitting around staring at the walls with nothing to do. There are a lot of things that can only be done after normal working hours when there will be minimal user impact. That's why my team is the only one with a second shift component, and why people joining the team are made painfully aware that when you start the process you are there until it completes, no matter how long it takes (unless you can convince the second shift guys to cover for you, which they sometimes will if they don't have a lot of their own work to do). Quite simply, the new guy was lucky the second shift guys were feeling magnanimous. We have different patch windows for different networks and systems, but basically for one week out of each month we do patching. It's been that way for years, and expecting them to change the system or the process for one person is unrealistic. My normal schedule is 8-4 M-F, but during patch week I can expect to stay upwards of an hour or two late on Tuesday (if we run late), come in an hour early on Wednesday (and leave an hour early), and work 14-16 hours on Thursday (unless I choose to not come in during the day, but then I have to work Friday, plus we have patching during the day starting at noon, so I could only miss a couple hours in the morning, but it's not worth the effort of adjusting my schedule that much). There is nothing about this that is a surprise unless you just don't pay any attention to what anyone says or emails you. If you aren't reading your emails and paying close attention to details then you have no one to blame but yourself, and I feel absolutely no remorse about you suffering for it (especially if I have to be the one to pick up the slack). With all that said I'm cutting the new guy some slack for first-time jitters and rookie mistakes, but as it stands right now we no longer have the luxury of being able to throw additional bodies at the problem because our team size has been reduced by 50% in anticipation of decommissioning several hundred legacy servers. For the next couple months we either suck it up or quit, and since I'm not at that point yet I have no intention of leaving. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but it's critical for the next few months that the new guy learn his duties quickly and well. Unfortunately, I'm not confident that he has either the willingness or interest in doing so.
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Jan 8, 2014 23:00
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rolleyes posted:Our standard technique was to create hyperlinks to whatever we wanted to run in Word. Insert -> From file is what we did. Just go find what you wanted to run and it would put the icon in word for ya. 
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Jan 8, 2014 23:00
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KweezNArt posted:"The little stars all look the same! How can I be sure I'm typing them in right? Couldn't it just display a capital star?" The fools, a * is a capital already, a capital 8, you can't make a double capital!
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Jan 8, 2014 23:13
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rolleyes posted:Our standard technique was to create hyperlinks to whatever we wanted to run in Word. Ours was to just use the passwords everyone knew because my school district thought it was a good idea to hire a graduating senior to be their network admin.
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Jan 8, 2014 23:15
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rolleyes posted:Our standard technique was to create hyperlinks to whatever we wanted to run in Word. The modern version is using a VB script to bypass Applocker with Word.
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Jan 8, 2014 23:59
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Lum posted:Agree with the above comments. Not on fire not my problem. It can wait till the morning. Saying that, I do try to schedule anything I need to do a minimum an hour after my scheduled end time. I got into the habit back when I worked fast food and its kind of stuck.
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Jan 9, 2014 00:22
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Blue_monday posted:Not on fire not my problem. It can wait till the morning. We support combat operations, so when our poo poo is down then people's lives are at risk. There is very little sympathy from the military leadership that we might have to stay an hour extra to finish a job instead of leaving when we normally do during the day.
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Jan 9, 2014 02:11
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hihifellow posted:Ours was to just use the passwords everyone knew because my school district thought it was a good idea to hire a graduating senior to be their network admin. Ours was to just wait until the teacher or lab supervisor was helping someone in front of you so they couldn't see your screen, then open notepad, hand them the keyboard and say "hey can you put in the password so I can get to X," and boom now everyone knows the password. If the password ever got changed (which it hardly ever did), repeat this trick as needed. 
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Jan 9, 2014 02:20
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KweezNArt posted:"The little stars all look the same! How can I be sure I'm typing them in right? Couldn't it just display a capital star?" To be fair, this IS crappy design 99% of the time. Masking passwords only helps if someone else can see what you type, but most of the time that's not the case, or you're someplace (home) where that's OK. I'm really enamored with unchecked-by- default "show characters" check boxes below password fields.
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Jan 9, 2014 02:40
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Volmarias posted:To be fair, this IS crappy design 99% of the time. Masking passwords only helps if someone else can see what you type, but most of the time that's not the case, or you're someplace (home) where that's OK. Or they could make it like *nix and just not show what your typing at all.
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Jan 9, 2014 03:30
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Daylen Drazzi posted:We support combat operations, so when our poo poo is down then people's lives are at risk. There is very little sympathy from the military leadership that we might have to stay an hour extra to finish a job instead of leaving when we normally do during the day. So is this all manual or do you guys not roll patches through some type of automated system like puppet or sccm?
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Jan 9, 2014 03:59
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ratbert90 posted:Or they could make it like *nix and just not show what your typing at all. I worked with some godawful thing that would show dots that had no relationship to what you were typing. for instance, you'd type three chars, and you'd see six dots. Type a 7th char and the display would reduce to three. Great out of the box idea, but it was REALLY REALLY distracting when actually using the thing. I wish i could remember wtf it was, though.
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Jan 9, 2014 04:41
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Daylen Drazzi posted:We support combat operations, so when our poo poo is down then people's lives are at risk. There is very little sympathy from the military leadership that we might have to stay an hour extra to finish a job instead of leaving when we normally do during the day. I don't see why you'd have to wait around all night babysitting patch updates. Doesn't that other group you talked about ensure patch compatibility and stability? Can't you just use sccm or puppet to push them out?
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Jan 9, 2014 04:42
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nitrogen posted:I worked with some godawful thing that would show dots that had no relationship to what you were typing. for instance, you'd type three chars, and you'd see six dots. Type a 7th char and the display would reduce to three. Great out of the box idea, but it was REALLY REALLY distracting when actually using the thing. Lotus Notes either shows 3 (or a random number I can't remember) 'X' characters for each character input and when the X characters fill the box it does a sort of clear/scroll thing that basically looks like what you described. I thought it was pretty dumb but most of the users I supported typed with one to two fingers and never looked at the screen in the process so they didn't notice.
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Jan 9, 2014 05:07
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namol posted:So is this all manual or do you guys not roll patches through some type of automated system like puppet or sccm? Puppet is really inappropriate for this. Satellite, Tivoli, HPSA, or whatever, though..
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Jan 9, 2014 06:15
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One of my vendors has really lovely hold music. I mean loving terrible. Static is not what I want to hear when I call in for VOIP service. I opened a ticket. Whatever they're running internally only supports 8bit, 8khz, mono .wav files. In 2013. Then I called in again on a non-hold music issue. "Come Fly With Me" was on a loop. At ten recommendations to pack a small bag, I opened another ticket. So it turns out my VOIP vendor can only ever have lovely, looped hold music. For the duration of the contract. gently caress you VOIP vendor.
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Jan 9, 2014 08:06
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mllaneza posted:One of my vendors has really lovely hold music. I mean loving terrible. Static is not what I want to hear when I call in for VOIP service. I opened a ticket. Whatever they're running internally only supports 8bit, 8khz, mono .wav files. In 2013. Did they complete the trifecta by having the music also interrupted every 5 seconds by a recording saying how important their call is to you blah blah blah, which always causes you to think that maybe THIS TIME it's a real person, never letting you just relegate the hold music to the background of your mind so you can continue on other work? Because that's my FAVORITE THING. 
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Jan 9, 2014 08:35
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On a happier note, one of our domain registrars we would deal with in a previous job basically just had David Bowie's "Golden Years" on repeat for their hold music. Used to love calling those guys! 
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Jan 9, 2014 10:57
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When I used to call FAS for support, their hold music sounded like I was winning battles in Dragon Warrior. It owned.
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Jan 9, 2014 13:39
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I just wanted to pop in an mention, as many posters in the past have, that I'd like to praise every single poster in this thread who's sung praise for PDQ Deploy. Being a Mac-heavy district, most of our attention is supporting apple products, and PDQDeploy fits in perfectly with the handful of labs (maybe 200 machines total) running Windows. Being the only competent tech on the team, I'm tasked with "figuring out how to do everything" , and PDQ took a huge burden from my shoulders.
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Jan 9, 2014 14:22
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GreenNight posted:When I used to call FAS for support, their hold music sounded like I was winning battles in Dragon Warrior. It owned. All hold music should be chip tunes.
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Jan 9, 2014 14:31
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skooky posted:On a happier note, one of our domain registrars we would deal with in a previous job basically just had David Bowie's "Golden Years" on repeat for their hold music. Used to love calling those guys! I had a client who used the entire album of London Calling. It was a pet groomer.
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Jan 9, 2014 16:44
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nitrogen posted:I worked with some godawful thing that would show dots that had no relationship to what you were typing. for instance, you'd type three chars, and you'd see six dots. Type a 7th char and the display would reduce to three. Great out of the box idea, but it was REALLY REALLY distracting when actually using the thing. My FIOS router did that. loving annoying.
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Jan 9, 2014 18:22
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The third party we use for invoicing has some awesome hold music. It sounds like the Ghostbusters theme. I tried doing a song look up on my phone but it couldn't recognize it 
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Jan 9, 2014 18:30
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ijustam posted:The third party we use for invoicing has some awesome hold music. It sounds like the Ghostbusters theme. I tried doing a song look up on my phone but it couldn't recognize it Was it I Want a New Drug?
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Jan 9, 2014 18:59
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mllaneza posted:One of my vendors has really lovely hold music. I mean loving terrible. Static is not what I want to hear when I call in for VOIP service. I opened a ticket. Whatever they're running internally only supports 8bit, 8khz, mono .wav files. In 2013. That file format restriction for music-on-hold is pretty common, due to most VOIP systems running G.711 for most of its devices, as well as PRIs, etc, which is an 8 pit, 8khz, mono codec. That way they don't have to dedicate any transcoding resources to MOH.
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Jan 9, 2014 19:11
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In between doing labs at an IT certification course I'm (re)reading the old thread in the Goldmine. Did Dick Trauma ever find out what happened to his old pre-pod company with Tony?
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Jan 9, 2014 19:38
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GreenNight posted:When I used to call FAS for support, their hold music sounded like I was winning battles in Dragon Warrior. It owned. One of our telco providers had something from Legend of Zelda as their hold music.
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Jan 9, 2014 20:23
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stubblyhead posted:Was it I Want a New Drug? If the word "Quack" appears in the song at any point, it may be a Weird Al album.
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Jan 9, 2014 21:28
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So a call came in: Hey blackswordca, last Friday none of the network drives were working when I was connected to the terminal server Oh, ok, so none of the network drives are available? No, they are fine now. But were broken last Friday I need an extra set of hands in here this week, but the sr and account lead are nowhere to be found. Ive gone from 20 tickets on the clients board before Christmas to over 60 now and they are mostly high priority issues. I had a phone interview this week that went really well. Just have to wait and see if any contracts come out of it.
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Jan 9, 2014 23:12
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n0tqu1tesane posted:That file format restriction for music-on-hold is pretty common, due to most VOIP systems running G.711 for most of its devices, as well as PRIs, etc, which is an 8 pit, 8khz, mono codec. That way they don't have to dedicate any transcoding resources to MOH. Yeah I was going to say that's the restriction on ours and if I don't drop it in at the correct format it won't play. The last version used to do a conversion on the fly whenever an audio file had the wrong format but that changed at some point. I just use audacity now for conversions and I make sure it sounds ok before I drop the files in. The built in file converter for the phone system makes music sound like scratchy poo poo. At least with audacity I can smooth out noise and other crap.
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Jan 9, 2014 23:21
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blackswordca posted:I need an extra set of hands in here this week, but the sr and account lead are nowhere to be found. Ive gone from 20 tickets on the clients board before Christmas to over 60 now and they are mostly high priority issues. Wouldn't either of those 2 being there just result in more stuff being broken?
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Jan 9, 2014 23:37
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Khisanth Magus posted:Wouldn't either of those 2 being there just result in more stuff being broken? The pessimist in me says most of these are because of the internet cut-over. I'm going to start doing a quick RCA on these to confirm.
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Jan 9, 2014 23:42
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stubblyhead posted:Was it I Want a New Drug? Could also have been Pop Music by M - the first song with the Ghostbusters/New Drug rhythm gone soon
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Jan 10, 2014 00:14
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A call came. 30 minutes of heavy breathing while customer slowly did everything themselves and I basically did nothing. One of those calls I hope got QAed so a bunch of managers were stuck sitting around listening to it.
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Jan 10, 2014 00:15
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Looking at the tickets, most of the new ones this week are caused by the ISP cut-over. Either updates to back end settings like reverse DNS or zone files either weren't done or weren't done correctly. A little of this falls on the client for not reporting the issue until yesterday then flooding me with tickets.
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Jan 10, 2014 00:41
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It's the MSP equivalent of doing gently caress all work and dropping a ticket in on a Friday saying your computer's been broken all week and why hasn't anyone fixed it before running out the door early.
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Jan 10, 2014 00:45
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