|
KozmoNaut posted:This is exactly why I got myself a separate private-only cellphone, despite having a company-paid phone with unlimited private usage (I work at a telco/ISP). Work phone gets turned off when I go home. Why would they give you a cell phone (assuming you are in the office 9-5) if you aren't going to have it on after hours?
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2014 19:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 22:53 |
|
|
Bob Morales posted:Why would they give you a cell phone (assuming you are in the office 9-5) if you aren't going to have it on after hours? It's part of the employment package. DSL, landline and cellphone+subscription, all company-paid. It's a telco/ISP, so it makes good sense that your employees act as ambassadors for your own products. We just got a mail today that our movie streaming service will be free for all employees for the rest of 2014, which is nice. I was on-call certain days of the month in my old position, but everybody in the company gets the same package, since we can work from home one day per week, or more if needed. Because we're getting taxed on these services, personal use is basically unlimited. Although I think they call you in for a chat if your cellphone usage goes over like $500/quarter or something. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Nov 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2014 20:03
|
|
|
FISHMANPET posted:Get Papercut, the license for something that size won't be too much money, and it's pretty easy to setup. Won't be too much skin off your teeth, and it can just run in the background forever being useless. Thanks for the tip. I had been looking at Pharos, which looked to be quite expensive.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2014 20:51
|
|
|
We've got an install in our labs for about 15k students (we actually do limit their printing) and it's a dream.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2014 22:01
|
|
|
Ynglaur posted:To be fair, I've never understood why PuTTY stores configurations in the registry.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2014 23:23
|
|
|
ocall posted:I have been tasked with researching/implementing a print limiting solution. With the size of environment ~1000 students and ~300 or so staff it doesn't seem to really be worth the investment. It just seems crazy to spend a bunch of time and money without being able to quantify how much "print waste" is really costing the college. Cost accounting / recovery might not be appropriate to your organisation, but print release saves a metric poo poo tonne in waste. Our solution payed for itself in 12 months on the print cost savings.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 00:31
|
|
|
Our helpdesk are functionally useless, the team-lead doesn't manage the team in any way whatsoever, and the guy who is supposed to be the escalation point from them dodges every single issue that it's possible to dodge, whilst adding nothing remotely helpful to the process. They claim they are understaffed (they get maybe 30 tickets a day between 3 of them) but have no metrics to prove it because they can't be bothered to set their ticketing system up in a meaningful way, and when they gently caress up covering each others holidays they  to engineering that they need to borrow staff, so people with better poo poo to do end up fielding password reset calls.Jesus christ if you don't want to manage your team then get the gently caress out of the way and let someone else do it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 01:42
|
|
|
Ynglaur posted:To be fair, I've never understood why PuTTY stores configurations in the registry. The registry being used for configuration, who would have thought. One of Reuters market data APIs only uses the registry for configuration, the first thing any non-Reuters developer does is replace it with a file. Did you know Java has a registry too? I haven't met a Java developer that does yet. MrMoo fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Nov 19, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 01:43
|
|
|
Thanks Ants posted:Our helpdesk are functionally useless, the team-lead doesn't manage the team in any way whatsoever, and the guy who is supposed to be the escalation point from them dodges every single issue that it's possible to dodge, whilst adding nothing remotely helpful to the process. Jesus, what helpdesk does 30 tickets a day, whenever I see people come up with that I honestly don't understand what these people get paid to do. Our helpdesk is a total staff of 20-25, we are not a 24/7/365 but pretty drat close, deals with an avg of 700 NEW tickets a day while also following up on other tickets, project work, etc etc etc. What the gently caress do some of your helpdesks do that THREE people are needed to handle 30 tickets a day? *EDIT* I guess this is why the term computer janitor is what helpdesk is often referred to as, but I just never thought that it was true, our helpdesk definitely handles t1-t2 application/hardware issues. MF_James fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Nov 19, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 02:15
|
|
|
Papercut is the best software for controlling the worst things. We only have a small implementation but it just works and the support is good.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 02:15
|
|
|
MF_James posted:Jesus, what helpdesk does 30 tickets a day, whenever I see people come up with that I honestly don't understand what these people get paid to do. Our helpdesk is a total staff of 20-25, we are not a 24/7/365 but pretty drat close, deals with an avg of 700 NEW tickets a day while also following up on other tickets, project work, etc etc etc. Lots of bum picking. I almost fell off my chair when they said they were understaffed. These aren't 30 tickets with in-depth project planning requirements or anything, this is strictly a resolve on first call or pass it along to an account manager as a purchase request type deal.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 02:18
|
|
|
Pissing me off: Azure. We just migrated a fair amount of Important Stuff to Azure for a few clients. Naturally, they are up in arms and telling me to fix it. I wish I could. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 03:10
|
|
|
Priss In Plate posted:Pissing me off: Azure. "We're working with Microsoft to get this issue resolved as fast as possible, and will update you with any new developments."
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 03:33
|
|
|
Azure has had problems in US-East for majority of the last two months, it has been hilarious watching a Azure hosted service be completely unavailable in a pro-Microsoft environment. Multiple-region failure is the best though, just to capture those unlikely few who actually attempted high-availability. Azure have no concept of availability zones and there is still no concept of region independent traffic manager.
MrMoo fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Nov 19, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 03:36
|
|
|
Azure really is something of a joke at this point. We have been really keen on pushing it on people, and some clients have just gobbled it up without doing their research.Che Delilas posted:"We're working with Microsoft to get this issue resolved as fast as possible, and will update you with any new developments." "I know it's a Microsoft issue, but isn't there anything YOU can do?" "It's out of my scope. Sorry." "..." 
Great Orb! fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Nov 19, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 03:40
|
|
|
Is there a slightly less terrible way to manage printers? A print server? We literally install every printer driver on every machine we set up and then anytime someone wants to print to another printer. There has to be even a somewhat less ridiculous way
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 03:42
|
|
|
print server and group policies? Location aware printing?
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 03:54
|
|
|
myron cope posted:Is there a slightly less terrible way to manage printers? A print server? We literally install every printer driver on every machine we set up and then anytime someone wants to print to another printer. There has to be even a somewhat less ridiculous way With some solutions you can set up one queue, and then swipe in on the printer to collect output from wherever you want. Best bet is to hand the whole thing, from the Server software, hardware and consumables off to the photocopier vendor. This way you just pay x cents per black and y cents per colour
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 03:56
|
|
|
incoherent posted:print server and group policies? Location aware printing? Oh I should also mention I am helpdesk and have no authority to do this so I'd have to rely on 1) getting something approved and 2) our lazy sysadmins wanting to set something up
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 03:59
|
|
|
myron cope posted:Oh I should also mention I am helpdesk and have no authority to do this so I'd have to rely on 1) getting something approved and 2) our lazy sysadmins wanting to set something up Give everyone pencils. Use unpaid interns to deliver interdepartmental memos.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 04:09
|
|
|
Oh man, this is where someone who likes to interject with "good advice" like 1. grab all the printer tickets 2. Identify the specific ones that are "printer driver" or the time it took to install a new printer on everyone computer 3. Compile a document outlining the business case to setup a windows server print server and leveraging group policies 4. Send it to your manager* But if you have a lazy admin that can't even deploy a print server (if only for the print driver deployment benefits: make the end users render the print job on their computer) the only thing you can do is get some tech knowledge under your belt, put an arbitrary amount of time in, and jump ship. If I was looking to hire a jr admin, asking for a high level overview of a print server would be one of them. *If your lazy admin is your manager...whelp.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 04:15
|
|
|
myron cope posted:Oh I should also mention I am helpdesk and have no authority to do this so I'd have to rely on 1) getting something approved and 2) our lazy sysadmins wanting to set something up Easy answer: Stop caring, put in your hours, and head home to a nice single malt. I recomend a nice west coast highland malt or Islay. Hard answer: write the buisness case, get it sponsored by the executives, and make a very large amount of enemies from people who took the easy answer.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 05:11
|
|
|
KennyTheFish posted:Easy answer: Stop caring, put in your hours, and head home to a nice single malt. I recomend a nice west coast highland malt or Islay. I like scotch as much as the next guy, but there's a seriously undervalued world of bourbon and rum out there. Basil Hayden's has actually gotten cheaper . Smith and Cross, Zacapa and a number of other rums are almost criminally underpriced. Drink scotch. But branch out.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 05:59
|
|
|
KennyTheFish posted:With some solutions you can set up one queue, and then swipe in on the printer to collect output from wherever you want. This is what we're using, SafeQ Print with Minolta hardware. It works so goddamn well. Hell, the printers even order new toner by themselves when they've run out. It's extremely convenient when you have hundreds of printers per location. It also means that I scored a free pre-SafeQ Kyocera laser printer when we made the switch, which was nice. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Nov 19, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 06:50
|
|
|
Priss In Plate posted:"I know it's a Microsoft issue, but isn't there anything YOU can do?" No no, you don't answer "It's out of my scope." That could get you a talk from the management about "doing more than the bare minimum" since it's probably going to be interpreted as "it's not my job." You answer something like, "We're all over it, we're doing everything we can to fix this issue and we'll be sure and keep you updated." It doesn't matter that you can't do anything until Microsoft gets its poo poo together, your clients are going to feel better knowing that you aren't just ignoring their problem.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 11:42
|
|
|
Che Delilas posted:No no, you don't answer "It's out of my scope." That could get you a talk from the management about "doing more than the bare minimum" since it's probably going to be interpreted as "it's not my job." You answer something like, "We're all over it, we're doing everything we can to fix this issue and we'll be sure and keep you updated." It doesn't matter that you can't do anything until Microsoft gets its poo poo together, your clients are going to feel better knowing that you aren't just ignoring their problem. "We're engaging all available third-party resources to ensure this situation is resolved as quickly as possible. If you'd like, I can explain the issue in greater detail, or I can return to integrating paradigms with telephony bridge and addressing the COM parity incompatibility with..." At this point, the customer's brain should have fully disengaged, so you can go back to refreshing the Azure status page.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 14:06
|
|
|
I hate working with any cloud products for this reason. People don't quite grasp that they are paying someone else to handle their poo poo for them and when it breaks I can't do anything to fix it. Even had people ask if we could bring Salesforce in house  This weeks thing that makes we want to scream is a contractor leaving with 3 days notice and the only person left who udnerstands what he was working on being me while I am working on 3 other projects. So of course all the hand waving and BS about how this is not going to be dropped on me is shown to be lies when I get the first of three two hour long hand over meetings appear in my calendar. Find a replacement you say? Well that would be ok if it wasn't for: a) The project is finishing mid Dec b) It is November and no one is looking for short term contacts c) Lead times on getting the person up to speed will take us past the date this work is due BigPaddy fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Nov 19, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 14:41
|
|
|
BigPaddy posted:I hate working with any cloud products for this reason. People don't quite grasp that they are paying someone else to handle their poo poo for them and when it breaks I can't do anything to fix it. Even had people ask if we could bring Salesforce in house I hate working with cloud products to the extent that we do because it reduces me to being simply a support number concierge. Somebody calls me with a problem and then I just call somebody else and repeat it, then I repeat the response back to the original caller. Inspector_666 fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Nov 19, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 15:23
|
|
|
Inspector_666 posted:I hate working with cloud products to the extent that we do because it reduces me to being simply a support number concierge. Somebody calls me with a problem and then I just call somebody else and repeat it, then I repeat there response back to the original caller. The worst is having to work with some hosted product, but buying it through some other company. "We are paying them the exact same price (or more) than we could buy it direct, and we have to go through them for any changes or issues? Sign me the gently caress up!" A prime example was hosted antivirus/spam for email. We'd have to put a ticket in with another company to have a user added, deleted, whatever. Or to submit an email as spam, or add a whitelist... So you'd put a ticket in to have a user added, wait 4 hours for them to do it, then find out they spelled the new user wrong so it wasn't working, re-submit a ticket, "we added him I just checked", wait 4 more hours and then say YOU SPELLED IT WRONG YOU NITWIT... Bob Morales fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Nov 19, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 15:32
|
|
|
Yeah MSPs are the worst of both worlds. On the topic of cloud since we have customised Salesforce up the ying yang we are running out of space for Apex source code. The answer to this? Start putting our work in managed packages so they don't count against that number but need a ton more overhead to maintain and publish.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 15:37
|
|
|
Spazz posted:Nope, he was just annoyed that I applied a 10-15 minute fix instead of prioritizing other tickets he has open and were assigned to me since I handle 90% of their tickets. This was back in March, and he's no longer with that company. He could realize not all tickets take the same amount of effort, and sometimes it is better to clear the queue of the small stuff before working on the hard stuff. I run into this problem with feature requests. MrMoo posted:The registry being used for configuration, who would have thought. I'll bite. What are you talking about? There are several APIs I can think of that behave registry like, but I'm lost too that which you are referring. I would like to also point out that at least some Java developers come from the Unix world where configuration files reign supreme.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 16:23
|
|
|
Priss In Plate posted:Pissing me off: Azure. Do we work together? Higher ups are constantly pushing for office 365 hosted services for our clients - nevermind that you are Microsoft's bitch for maintenance and downtime, nevermind that if there's a problem at the db level you are out of luck, nevermind that all support will be going through Microsoft's black hole ticketing system. We have no problems with our current setup, but everyone is too lazy, stupid, or cheap to have their own boxes to put things on so they look to someone else to do their hosting so that when poo poo goes wrong they can point the finger at someone besides themselves.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 17:53
|
|
|
So one of the guys I work with asked our manager for some formal training on a piece of software he's expected to use. He's done a little bit of the work at Uni with a different software package but has otherwise been thrown into it head first and had to learn as he goes along from the help files. The manager turned it around into "Why are you doing this work, if you need training you're obviously bad at the job."  This guy's already proven to be an absolutely awful manager but that's an obscene thing for him to say. Morale in the department couldn't get much lower, I know our contractors are un-interested in continuing on and I have a phone interview for another gig in a couple of days. Hopefully if the entire department leaves within a few weeks of each other somebody will cotton on to how awful this guy is. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 18:54
|
|
|
Looks like everyone spent about 90 minutes troubleshooting or going around in circles this morning before finally calling me. Took me five minutes to fix it. Pissing me off - how am I going to communicate this in job interviews to give myself a 40% salary bump, while stressing that I'm a rock star, not that my coworkers are useless?
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 18:59
|
|
|
ConfusedUs posted:So I got a "promotion" yesterday. I hope my new boss comes back with something better later today, because our earlier conversation went like this: "So, what's in it for me?" "What do you mean?" "Same job, same pay, why do I want this?" "Uh, mumble, value for company, mumble, new responsibilities, question mark?" "What new responsibilities?" "blah, blah, mumble, stuff you already do, interrogative?" "I already do all of that." "Uh, mumble, confused stammer, maybe?" It went on like that for a while.  ConfusedUs posted:I have a second interview with one of my dream companies on Tuesday also. If they make an offer I'll probably take it. I'd only refuse if they somehow offered me less than I make now. This, on the other hand, is turning out to be very promising. Interview went well. I hope to god they make an offer. If it's even remotely good I'm gonna take it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 19:09
|
|
|
jammyozzy posted:This guy's already proven to be an absolutely awful manager but that's an obscene thing for him to say. Morale in the department couldn't get much lower, I know our contractors are un-interested in continuing on and I have a phone interview for another gig in a couple of days. Hopefully if the entire department leaves within a few weeks of each other somebody will cotton on to how awful this guy is. This doesn't happen. You know why? Because the manager responsible for shattering department morale is the only point of contact with the decision-makers. He'll scapegoat the people who leave and continue to lie to his bosses about how much value he personally is adding despite the grunts he's saddled with (I know he does and will do this, because people who don't do this don't say things like he said). Nothing will change. Even if people go over his head and complain to the executives directly, it won't matter, because the executives automatically trust the management more than the staff. So yeah, do what you're doing and work to get the hell out as fast as you can.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 19:17
|
|
|
The stunning level of competence of the upper management here continues to amaze. We use Google Apps for business and the director here has completely ignored the fact that you can set up groups within it, even when we've directly pointed him at them. So there's been no mailing list for development or anything, and he doesn't include all the developers most of the time when he's sending out mail. Today, after months and months if not a year plus of asking, he finally set up some groups. For service uptime notifications. On googlegroups.com. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 19:37
|
|
|
Bob Morales posted:A prime example was hosted antivirus/spam for email. We'd have to put a ticket in with another company to have a user added, deleted, whatever. Or to submit an email as spam, or add a whitelist... This is a royal pain particularly with our hosted VOIP system since I keep conflicting with our finance manager; lately about creating new agents with our stupid new payment agreement with the provider. Personally I log into the control platform and create a new agent or recycle/rename an old one if someone has left and tack on the DDI number and assign them to groups, apparently this is wrong and yadda yadda. There's this ridiculous balance of things you have to do yourself and things the provider has to do themselves on your behalf, I wish it was just spelled out in plain English what the hell is supposed to happen. If I had a quid for every time someone came to me saying "Are the phones down?"... What do you want me to do about it? I can call them and get a generic "We know it's broken" response if you really like, because that's all I'll get. I did let out a hearty laugh the day when SFDC went completely offline for about ten minutes though.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 20:17
|
|
|
Zamujasa posted:The stunning level of competence of the upper management here continues to amaze. We use Google Apps for business and the director here has completely ignored the fact that you can set up groups within it, even when we've directly pointed him at them. So there's been no mailing list for development or anything, and he doesn't include all the developers most of the time when he's sending out mail. Tangentially related, but if somebody can teach me how to automatically generate or update distribution groups from Google OUs with Powershell I would be forever grateful. Right now I download the filtered user list into a CSV and copy paste the addresses into the Google group add dialog (max 25 at a time, so there MUST be a better way)
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 20:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 22:53 |
|
|
Roargasm posted:Tangentially related, but if somebody can teach me how to automatically generate or update distribution groups from Google OUs with Powershell I would be forever grateful. Right now I download the filtered user list into a CSV and copy paste the addresses into the Google group add dialog (max 25 at a time, so there MUST be a better way) There's gShell but I haven't really used it, so I don't know how powerful it is.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 20:30
|
|