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We got buy in from upper management to get rid of all desktop printers, with the caveat they keep their own. So we shitcanned all the motherfucking deskjet printers and rolled out laserjets corporate wide, even on exec desks. We went from ~100 printers to 15 or so. We signed a contract with a company where we pay 20% markup on toner and they service and replace our printers free of charge. Now no users bug me on printer issues, they just call them. loving win-win.
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Apr 22, 2014 20:31
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Roargasm posted:Ask me about supporting 150 users who, combined, own more than 150 printers. Blows my loving mind. My t1 techs are on spring break this week and I had to go check out a color printer that's blotting magenta toner all over every print job. I open it up and the entire inside of the printer is colored pink. One of the other desktop techs says stuff like that when anyone complains about users being idiots. it takes a lot of control to not break his jaw everytime he says it.
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Apr 22, 2014 20:36
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stubblyhead posted:http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3564747&pagenumber=143&perpage=40#post423366699 Thank you kindly. I currently work with some university professors, and at least one of them is rabidly hoarding old computers now that XP support has been dropped, since he'e using antique scientific equipment that use drivers that don't work on modern OSes (Fun side story: we had one piece of equipment that wouldn't work with anything newer than, if I'm recalling correctly, NT. But that thing finally died). He claims to want 'backups' in case his primary computers die, but I draw the line at seven "backups", all twelve-year-old laptops that could just barely boot Windows XP in the first place.
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Apr 22, 2014 21:30
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Helushune posted:There really should be a "gently caress printers" emoticon. I'm thinking an homage to Office Space with an recognizable laser printer or something like it pictured just before a bat/hammer/fist comes down and smashes it all to hell. Thoughts?
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Apr 22, 2014 21:35
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kensei posted:I'm thinking an homage to Office Space with an recognizable laser printer or something like it pictured just before a bat/hammer/fist comes down and smashes it all to hell. Maybe just replace the victim in  with a printer, and the word off with printers? Maybe the blood could turn into toner and give the hammer wielder cancer.
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Apr 22, 2014 21:36
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Paladine_PSoT posted:Maybe just replace the victim in Oooh maybe. I think that's a decent jumping off point, let's see what the hive mind comes up with.
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Apr 22, 2014 21:37
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kensei posted:I'm thinking an homage to Office Space with an recognizable laser printer or something like it pictured just before a bat/hammer/fist comes down and smashes it all to hell. Starts as a zoom in shot of PC LOAD LETTER, zoom out to it being smashed Or, it's already smashed and the LCD has become detached and is lying by itself among other various identifiable bits. It could even just be an invert thing like  that says gently caress printers and I'd be more than happy to spam it.
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Apr 22, 2014 23:13
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Speaking of printers, a couple of my coworkers were having trouble with a printer they'd moved from one of our sites to another, and they set it up and it would error out when they sent test jobs to it. They spent like an hour in the printer's configuration webpage making sure the network communication settings were correct, but I suggested that they just delete the printer and the port from the server and re-add it, and then it worked 
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Apr 23, 2014 01:08
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What's the matter with you, you forgot the most important part of that post. gently caress printers.
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Apr 23, 2014 01:24
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We had a client at my old job with some Xerox thing that was just a huge piece of poo poo and probably a lemon, but he refused to entertain that it was the problem. After the 5th time over there I wrote a "script" that cleared out the Spooler folder and restarted the job, and told Windows to run it when the print job failed. I never heard from them again.
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Apr 23, 2014 01:30
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jim truds posted:One of the other desktop techs says stuff like that when anyone complains about users being idiots. it takes a lot of control to not break his jaw everytime he says it. To be fair, with a lot of low level tech jobs, if you weren't supporting people who didn't know how to/were far to lazy to fix things you would be doing very little throughout the day. This does drop massively as you go up in skill levels, i've found. Inspector_666 posted:We had a client at my old job with some Xerox thing that was just a huge piece of poo poo and probably a lemon, but he refused to entertain that it was the problem. After the 5th time over there I wrote a "script" that cleared out the Spooler folder and restarted the job, and told Windows to run it when the print job failed. I never heard from them again. Wait you can make scripts automatically detect when print jobs fail? How the hell have I not known about this before now  E: To clarify, to save on my work load i've been leaving a script around that's got the whole net stop spooler del "print file extensions" net start spooler, but occasionally I still get a call from a user that doesn't quite get how to use a batch file or has forgotten how to and doesn't want to click on it. dogstile fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 01:55
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dogstile posted:Wait you can make scripts automatically detect when print jobs fail? How the hell have I not known about this before now I totally forget where it was, but there was something in Windows that let you define an action on the first, second and third failure of the print job. I just set the "script" (I'm putting it in quotes because it literally was just a line to delete everything in the folder) to the second action. EDIT: Oh, right, go to the Services list, Properties, Recovery tab. Set one of the actions to "Run a Program" and point it to the script. So for this to solve the problem the spooler service has to actually be failing, it can't just be something in the middle loving up. I will say that I felt like a loving boss when I figured that out, though. I don't think my boss at the time even understood what I had done when I told him. Inspector_666 fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 03:39
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Inspector_666 posted:I totally forget where it was, but there was something in Windows that let you define an action on the first, second and third failure of the print job. I just set the "script" (I'm putting it in quotes because it literally was just a line to delete everything in the folder) to the second action. Hot drat why did I never think of that? Here's a screenshot if anyone needs help finding it. 
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Apr 23, 2014 03:45
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Bobulus posted:Thank you kindly. I'm a scientist just reading this thread to feel better about the bullshit I deal with in a laboratory but this made me laugh out load. Every instrument fixer I've met in academia and industry has a grave yard for parts and machines just to keep equipment made more than ten years ago going. In these guys defense most instrument software is poo poo and will crash if you look at it wrong much less try installing it on a machine remotely different then the pos the manufacture supplied, provided you have the disc and something it can be read in. And when getting an instrument that is capable of speaking to modern hardware is $30,000 you try to keep museum pieces going as long as possible. Which leads the the amusing situation of students younger than the computer trying to contemplate DOS or a professor willing to trade chemicals for 5 inch floppy discs so he can write a new method.
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Apr 23, 2014 03:49
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ConfusedUs posted:Hot drat why did I never think of that? I don't even remember how I came across that tab. At least thing thread knocked it loose, so I can put it back in the toolbox.
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Apr 23, 2014 03:53
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Inspector_666 posted:I don't even remember how I came across that tab. At least thing thread knocked it loose, so I can put it back in the toolbox. I'm totally going to set a couple of services to automatically run a log collection script on crash to automate some of my testing.  I knew about the "do something on failure" options but I never realized it included running programs and scripts.
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Apr 23, 2014 03:55
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dogstile posted:To be fair, with a lot of low level tech jobs, if you weren't supporting people who didn't know how to/were far to lazy to fix things you would be doing very little throughout the day. It is also what he says when he tries to drop his work onto other people. I think I have just developed a knee jerk hatred of the joke. Like when someone tells a cashier "It must be free!" when something is missing a price tag.
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Apr 23, 2014 04:25
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SPeaking of printers, a ticket came in that one of my colleagues spent about 7hrs working on today. Printer was working, but the scan/fax option wasn't. Everything they tried, nothing worked. Meanwhile, for me, a ticket came in to extend a Virtual PC's HDD space. Saw that they were eating up 2 OST files worth of information (one in the default location, one in their "My Documents" for some reason), and told them to delete it instead.
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Apr 23, 2014 05:18
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An on-the-spot termination came in today... Apparently rewriting all of our technical how-to's/manuals for two of our biggest clients into a "more convenient (for me) runbook", doing little to no actual work on a daily basis, speaking down to coworkers and senior officials. and being verbally abusive to a female coworker wasn't enough to get this guy fired. Nope, what it took was an 8-hour solo holiday shift (w/ overtime pay) of him refusing to do any actual work or even answer the phone. My colleague came in to that mess and wondered what the hell was going on. "Oh, I didn't do it to spite you. I did it to spite <company>."They didn't know how to react. And after some prodding from a fellow coworker, they finally fessed up to the supervisor. It was the last straw, thankfully. Hopefully we can find someone who will actually do the job they were hired for. 
Great Orb! fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 06:09
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An actually somewhat interesting ticket came in! A lady complained that her laptop had entered sleep mode 30 times in the last 10 minutes, it happened as soon as she started typing. Turns out she was wearing a bracelet with a magnetic clasp, and it triggered the sleep mode sensor in the palm rest. She took it off, and all was well.
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Apr 23, 2014 07:13
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One of our SMEs had two floors in the building resurfaced, to use laminate instead of carpet. No one told us and the carpet fitters were a bit dim, so the server/comms racks are just left there. On a tiny patch of carpet in a sea of laminate. Best part is the carpet company want to charge half as much again to replace 2sqm of carpet.
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Apr 23, 2014 12:49
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evobatman posted:An actually somewhat interesting ticket came in! I had that one before but it was a bs "magnetic healing bracelet" she was wearing.
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Apr 23, 2014 12:54
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I've accidentally put my own laptop into sleep mode while playing with buckyballs at my desk. Multiple times.
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Apr 23, 2014 13:02
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I just had a customer request a /31. EDIT: And no, not for a point to point, he wanted to put servers on it. I really hope it was a typo.
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Apr 23, 2014 13:25
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evobatman posted:An actually somewhat interesting ticket came in! Ha. Excellent. I can't tell you the number of times that's happened to users with iPads (we put them all in cases with magnetic covers). Why Does my iPad keep turning off? - take it off the pile of other iPads Why does my macbook keep going to sleep? - take it off your pile of iPads
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Apr 23, 2014 13:55
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nitrogen posted:I just had a customer request a /31. Collateral Damage fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 14:15
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Collateral Damage posted:Wouldn't it be technically possible (but stupid) to use a /31 for a network with a single host on it? It would basically be a PtP network except you have a host instead of a router as one of the endpoints. You'd still need to use an address for the routing interface and one for the host?
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Apr 23, 2014 15:54
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A sales VP's phone came in... ... to get the Android mobile device security set up. On the front page: Drudge Report and FartDroid. Shouldn't surprise me.
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Apr 23, 2014 15:55
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Two hours in... reboot or wait? https://www.dropbox.com/s/adfub286wxs305r/2014-04-23%2015.17.12.jpg
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Apr 23, 2014 20:28
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Zero VGS posted:Two hours in... reboot or wait? Let it run over night.
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Apr 23, 2014 20:32
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A cisco device can use the network/broadcast address
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Apr 23, 2014 20:37
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Ezekiel_980 posted:I'm a scientist just reading this thread to feel better about the bullshit I deal with in a laboratory but this made me laugh out load. Every instrument fixer I've met in academia and industry has a grave yard for parts and machines just to keep equipment made more than ten years ago going. In these guys defense most instrument software is poo poo and will crash if you look at it wrong much less try installing it on a machine remotely different then the pos the manufacture supplied, provided you have the disc and something it can be read in. And when getting an instrument that is capable of speaking to modern hardware is $30,000 you try to keep museum pieces going as long as possible. Which leads the the amusing situation of students younger than the computer trying to contemplate DOS or a professor willing to trade chemicals for 5 inch floppy discs so he can write a new method. One XP-connected machine was donated as a tax write-off because it was 'glitchy' and unsuitable for sale to an actual customer. It used the only USB (1.0  ) driver for the connection and would require a reboot if it ever lost signal, so you couldn't use thumb drives, and the machines couldn't connect to the network because they had an outdated OS and were a security risk. The OS couldn't be updated because everything was hardcoded by the stupid manufacturer, and the software it ran was ancient, slow, and glitchy. The files it generated were huge, too; I had to transfer data by 3.5" floppy... across three computers.  Long story short, I wrote a bunch of batch scripts in EDIT.exe, used SyncToy to keep files synchronized (and as a backup) on any PC that wasn't a POS, and had to document how to do everything because I was the only one in the lab besides the PIs that had seen a command prompt before. When we talked to the companies about getting updated hardware their bids were for the millions of dollars to get the same capability we had. It'll be interesting once the hardware finally gives up the ghost.
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Apr 23, 2014 21:57
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I work as a cashier in a retail drugstore/pharmacy. Not a tech support person by any means, but there are sometimes issues that rival things I see in these threads. Today, a pissy-sounding guy called saying he couldn't figure out how to make the calculator he bought from us work. Not even a big rear end graphing calculator or anything; it was one of those ones that just did basic mathematics. He didn't even say which model calculator it was, and didn't actually seem to know beyond "it's a <company name> calculator". I had to first grab one of every calculator we sell and figure out what the hell calculator he actually bought, and he was pissed off as all hell when I asked him to hold to look for them. Eventually, I figured out the problem: all he was seeing when he pressed the power button was '12345678' stuck on the screen. He had actually not even removed the plastic film sample display that covered the screen. Once that was done, everything worked as normal. His attitude disappeared pretty quick once he realized his mistake. We parted on good terms, but I still can't help but think how the dude managed to avoid seeing the "REMOVE THIS FIRST" tab that stuck an inch or so out off the calculator. edit: We frequently have problems with the old, lovely windows XP photo kiosks in our store, and my 60-something manager always is the one to answer tech support calls and troubleshoot the machines. It is absolutely frustrating as all hell to have to listen to her try to figure out how to do something for literally hours on the phone when I could fix it in five minutes ("I don't see any stop light icon on the screen!") She also reboots the machines by physically flipping the switch on the power supply strip, and then reads off the text on the monitors when they turn back on, and would rather have a field tech guy come in to take care of things like loading the default settings on our passport camera (which people constantly screw around with for reasons I don't understand). 
Feedback Agency fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 23:33
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Lord Dudeguy posted:
"Hey good idea, why don't you type up a proposal for the executives to that effect? Of course, you're going to have to walk three feet to the big printer to get it, so somehow I think I'll still be here a while." dogstile posted:To be fair, with a lot of low level tech jobs, if you weren't supporting people who didn't know how to/were far to lazy to fix things you would be doing very little throughout the day. Yes, and everybody knows that. But you're still a douche if you go up to a custodian and tell them how lucky they are to have the opportunity to clean up after you.
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Apr 24, 2014 00:37
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Feedback Agency posted:I work as a cashier in a retail drugstore/pharmacy. Not a tech support person by any means, but there are sometimes issues that rival things I see in these threads. My mom worked at Walgreens for 40 years and these are basically some of the stories she would tell too.
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Apr 24, 2014 00:47
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once in a while... works with girls: me: *takes care of a problem* girl: that was quick! thanks! me: that's what the girls always tell me... ba-dum ching!
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Apr 24, 2014 13:22
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Emushka posted:once in a while... works with girls: My last place of work was a factory, and there were a lot of machines on the shop floor. This factory was filthy as poo poo with tons of metal dust everywhere. That said, a common fix for malfunctioning computers was to bring it outside and blow it out with a can of air. My typical response to "So what did you do to the computer?" was "Computers, much like the techs that work on them, sometimes just need a blowjob to wake up in the morning."
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Apr 24, 2014 13:43
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So a ticket came in: A month or two ago the account lead setup email filtering for the client. He didn't document any information for them like login, password, registration email, anything. The customer signed up for it, we made the changes to our MX record, all is good. Slowly over the past week, multiple government agencies that the client works with have been getting bounce backs. So now I get to try a bunch of possible emails/usernames in the password reset tool for the spam filter, or try and convince one of the phone agents, that even though I have no information about the account, they should give me login information for it. blackswordca fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Apr 24, 2014 |
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Apr 24, 2014 15:51
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blackswordca posted:So a ticket came in: Remember this is your fault because the account lead is never wrong 
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Apr 24, 2014 16:27
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Lord Dudeguy posted:"Sean Connery" VoIP problem loving Microsoft support. Opened (and paid for) a ticket for Unified Messaging "Sean Connery Mode". Noted my availability in the ticket, and that I preferred to be contacted by e-mail. After two weeks and three after-hours phone calls (that I didn't answer), he finally calls me for the "intro call".  "Ok just e-mail me a quick two-sentence summary of the issue with as much detail as you can." "I have all the details in the ticket, as well as a link to the TechNet thread I posted in, with even more detail." "Oh we never check the tickets or the forums."
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Apr 24, 2014 19:18
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