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MJP posted:That doesn't sound awful. Even if it's Joe Non-Technical calling with "how am I do Citrix" I could at least be doing it remotely, if that's what the flex means. Well, just keep in mind RM's typically aren't help desk (at least not in my experience) and not really allowed to do any troubleshooting with a customer. Their duties are more along the lines of account management than any kind of technical support. Like, getting PMs and other resources assigned for any project work. Setting up conference bridges and noting any customer concerns or needs that don't require immediate resolution and forwarding them on to the technical team. Depending on your career arc, that could be a dead-end or a cul-de-sac at best. Honestly, just get clarification from the recruiter on job duties and expectations. Titles are just words. Each company has a different idea of what they are. I'm just letting you know what that title has meant in companies I've worked for.
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Jan 2, 2015 18:57
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flosofl posted:Well, just keep in mind RM's typically aren't help desk (at least not in my experience) and not really allowed to do any troubleshooting with a customer. Their duties are more along the lines of account management than any kind of technical support. Like, getting PMs and other resources assigned for any project work. Setting up conference bridges and noting any customer concerns or needs that don't require immediate resolution and forwarding them on to the technical team. Depending on your career arc, that could be a dead-end or a cul-de-sac at best. I've been wondering about where I'd go beyond sysadmin, if at all. To be honest, the idea of hanging up the headset and (hopefully) being able to have a relatively decent schedule with better wages has sounded a little better, and the option to work remote would be a very, very good thing - my wife's on disability (unpaid, of course, thanks NJ) and can't really drive - even if I'm working, it'd do good for her if I'm around during the day until she gets better. Manslaughter posted:Here I was hoping the job roles would involve setting up matches on their online dating service. Hot metaframes in your area need administration!
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Jan 2, 2015 19:11
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Microsoft changed their licensing for SCCM. Clients on servers now cost 750 each, so we are removing it from the servers. I cannot say that I am sad to see it go.
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Jan 2, 2015 20:40
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Gealar posted:Microsoft changed their licensing for SCCM. Clients on servers now cost 750 each, so we are removing it from the servers. I cannot say that I am sad to see it go. I had to deal with SCCM and SCOM at my last job. Dealing with SCCM and SCOM is like Sharepoint: it has to be done by one person who does nothing but that Microsoft product, or it's going to be a kludgy, unusable mess. Enjoy some restored sanity!
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Jan 2, 2015 20:41
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Gealar posted:Microsoft changed their licensing for SCCM. Clients on servers now cost 750 each, so we are removing it from the servers. I cannot say that I am sad to see it go. I just don't understand this move by them. Out of all the ways to gouge your customers this seemed like the dumbest thing to target. MJP posted:I had to deal with SCCM and SCOM at my last job. Its really not that bad. I think you do have to have someone who understand how to organize things well in your team though because much like active directly SCCM can become a huge mess if you don't have someone who puts their foot down on how things are organized.
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Jan 2, 2015 20:59
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flosofl posted:This may not be what you think it is. Typically a "Relationship Manager" is not the person that deals with nuts and bolts, but deals with nuts and dolts (thank you, thank you). The RM is the one that liaises between the customer and the real technical personnel, so they don't have to interact with lovely clients directly. Relationship manager is to salesman as executive as executive assistant is to secretary. If the job description is meeting targets and closing sales you would likely not have to work with supporting the products at all.
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Jan 2, 2015 21:33
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Renegret posted:This happens but inside our own drat company and I do the same thing with conference calls. I love it when this backfires on lazy fucks, though. Some guys in support are wanting more information on servers we build in the config management database. That's fine. I tell the guy in support, "If you want this information, talk to this guy and that guy and we'll discuss the best way to have this happen, and if our management agrees, we'll start adding it in future builds."  "Oh, but I need this information added to the config database for servers that are already in support." "Ok, then you can add that data yourself, as the servers are in support, and met all the proper criteria for being placed into support at that time." "But there's too many servers. There's 450 of them that need this information." "Uhh, ok. there's 30 people on my team, and 170 on your team. Why are you asking for my smaller, more busy team to do this?" *silence*[fast forward a week] My boss,  emails me with a bridge request. "What is this about with ? He just sent me and my director an email stating you are refusing to do work on a project?" "Well, I guess that's true. The project closed 8 months ago, and support has decided they need more information in the CMDB than we currently provide. I told him i'd be happy to do this in the future if its decided its needed, but we will not do it for projects already closed, unless it's a deficiency in what we'v epreviously agreed to do."I can hear my bosses eyes roll over the phone. We have the call, and my boss basically interrupts as he starts out, basically telling him to go read the support process, that we are not going to remediate things that were not agreed to previously, and that this call was a waste of time that could have been used to generate revenue or used on important projects that are overdue, and disconnects immediately.
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Jan 3, 2015 00:24
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MJP posted:The worst, most unforgivable part, though (TRIGGER WARNING) Jesus christ, sounds like my colleague. I was covering the phones with him for lunch and neither one of us had any tickets left (slow day, just after christmas) so I offered a game of chess, as he'd been bragging that he'd be able to beat me all day. He also doesn't claim overtime, ever. Wouldn't play it as it was during "working hours" despite neither of us having anything to do except sit there and wait for a phone to ring.
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Jan 3, 2015 00:37
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I told my guys that over the holidays, so long as they actually answer calls when (if) they come in, I don't goddamn care what they're doing. But I also told them to be model employees if the president decides he wants to sit in with them, which has been known to happen. Poor fuckers.
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Jan 3, 2015 00:46
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I once sent an Excel spreadsheet with the specs of all of our editing workstations to my nominal boss and he asked me how to read it. Rather than just sort the data in a manner that suited him, he told me to go sort it for him and then email it back. He does nothing but dick around in Photoshop and Lightroom all day while I respond to all the tickets. If a ticket is really important he'll literally stand behind me and breathe down my neck while I solve the problem.
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Jan 3, 2015 01:04
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Google published (on the 29th) an unpatched bug in Windows 8.1 that allows for privilege escalation. You need to be logged in to a local user for the attack to work though. They let Microsoft know about the bug 90 days ago and MS had yet to patch it so Google released it per their policy. https://code.google.com/p/google-security-research/issues/detail?id=118 Some of the people in the comments are mad at Google for making the bug public.
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Jan 3, 2015 01:19
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pr0digal posted:Some of the people in the comments are mad at Google for making the bug public. I'm particularly fond of "Chaos, Mayhem, Riots and Discord."
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Jan 3, 2015 01:23
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What was supposed to be a half-day, easy Friday turned into a cluster. I work at a hospital, and there are about 65 glucometers throughout the facility. They communicate with our EMR through a wireless network. One of them was going batshit crazy, and causing the group username/password to lock itself after every minute or two due to what we believe was too many failed attempts. The effect being that none of the 65 could transmit their data. So instead of attacking the problem logically and using available data and log info to find out which specific device was causing the problem, they just created a new user-name and password and we had to gather each of the 65 devices and manually pair them to the new information. I'm a nurse, not a network guy but I HAVE to believe there is some way to parse the network data to see what device is failing, and block that from the network thereby allowing all the other functioning devices to continue to operate as normal. Instead, it turned into an all day affair.
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Jan 3, 2015 02:45
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Why wouldn't each device have a separate account?
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Jan 3, 2015 02:50
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Thanks Ants posted:Why wouldn't each device have a separate account? No clue. I was kind of baffled with the way it was set up but since it was the laboratory department's show, I just helped. There was one user name / password that all 65 devices used.
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Jan 3, 2015 02:52
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Thanks Ants posted:Why wouldn't each device have a separate account? Because that can be a HUGE pain in the rear end rotating in new equipment as poo poo breaks. For sites I've managed, we use a role based account. It uses EAP and we have a plan to eventually move to ESP-TLS. Regardless, I'm flabbergasted that it turned into an all day affair. All the equipment I've worked with DEFAULTS to logging 802.11 events. It will not only tell me that there was an EAP timeout due to invalid RADIUS credentials, but it will tell me the wireless MAC it happened on. The same holds true for WPA2-PSK. Or EAP-TLS (there it gives me the ID tied to the client certificate that failed). EDIT: Just want to specify, I'm talking specifically about wireless devices like inventory scanners and barcode label printers. Some of my clients have upwards of 5000+ of these devices across 100s of locations. Creating individual accounts is a non-starter for those. Laptops and the like just use the RADIUS/AD account of the user. There's one client I'd *love* to move to EAP-TLS, but they need to get off their rear end and set up a halfway decent PKI first. Proteus Jones fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Jan 3, 2015 |
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Jan 3, 2015 04:37
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I don't know the details of your environment, but here's how I troubleshoot that kind of problem: First, I use a program called lockout tools. I think Microsoft has it somewhere on their site. You type in the account and it'll give you information on every domain controller that includes the last time a bad password was used. With that information, you can check the event logs for that DC at that specific time and with any luck, find the source of the invalid password attempt.
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Jan 3, 2015 19:29
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:I don't know the details of your environment, but here's how I troubleshoot that kind of problem: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=18465
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Jan 3, 2015 20:28
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flosofl posted:Because that can be a HUGE pain in the rear end rotating in new equipment as poo poo breaks. For sites I've managed, we use a role based account. It uses EAP and we have a plan to eventually move to ESP-TLS. Seriously. Who wants Glumeter1-Glumeter60 clogging up their AD?
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Jan 3, 2015 21:24
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skooma512 posted:Seriously. Who wants Glumeter1-Glumeter60 clogging up their AD?
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Jan 3, 2015 21:31
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skooma512 posted:Seriously. Who wants Glumeter1-Glumeter60 clogging up their AD? Throw them all into their own OU and never look at them again. I do agree that one login is best though.
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Jan 3, 2015 21:34
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GreenNight posted:Throw them all into their own OU and never look at them again. I do agree that one login is best though. I would go with one login too, but I see the point of having a bunch too. Let the customer have what they want
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Jan 3, 2015 21:39
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GreenNight posted:Throw them all into their own OU and never look at them again. I do agree that one login is best though. Well, to be fair, I was being simplistic in my set up. For 60 devices, sure, one role-based account is great. For 1000s? We'll break up the locations to use accounts in different RADIUS groups (similar to OUs I'm going to guess), maybe 30-40 of them. And each group has one active unique role-based account. No one location in a group is closer geographically than 200 miles or so. If a device gets misplaced/stolen (happens from time to time) or credentials get compromised, then we only have to create a new role account for that group and push the new credentials to 100-120 devices as opposed to pushing to several thousand. I still want EAP-TLS. But the client needs a decent PKI set up that can automate cert distribution and revocation. Because gently caress pushing those out manually.
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Jan 3, 2015 21:50
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gently caress it. I'm gonna   <site> isn't working! Ok. It's a known issue. We're working on it. I need this priority! It already is. Jesus loving christ people, if I tell you we know, the general assumption is WE'RE GOING TO loving FIX IT. Yes, you can't do X. I know. I knew when the other 4 people called. It doesn't make it magically loving repair itself. My other client's users like to remind me how many times they've called today about an ongoing issue that's been happening for almost a year now. I really don't give a hooting gently caress how many times you called. Tell me the error message so I can ask you for 1 piece of information so I can temporarily fix it so you can get the gently caress off my phone. No, I don't need you to tell me every click you make. No, I don't care it's slow. It isn't my issue. Your company's IT can go fix it some day when the vendor pulls their head from their rear end. The techs for this client are generally great people. I honestly respect a few of them. The paging system they have? Dumb. It either sends a page to an actual honest to god pager in tyool 2015 or a text to their cel. The log shows me if it did it but nothing else. I get to babysit tickets in between calls and make sure they actually respond to these tickets. I totally don't have other poo poo to do. Somehow, the least psychotic client I have is education based. I'm blown away because 99.9% of the time, these users are to the point and calm. I get what I need. Explain what I need to. Call ends. My heathcare client? gently caress, I get 10 minute calls on how to reset a loving password because it's too god drat difficult for these people. Oh, and doctors 9 kinds of mad cause they have to change passwords. Some jerk rear end told me a patient was gonna "stroke out on the table" cause he had to change his password. If I actually drank alcohol, I'd be doing it. Often. (e/n reasons why I don't) The good news is, I technically got a promotion. I'll be doing monitoring\last tier before calling vendor work on 2 clients that aren't these people above. I just have to wait for my people to find someone to work my old shift (Sat-Wed). I also get a bonus for passing a MS cert I'm gonna write on the 14th. 
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Jan 3, 2015 21:56
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We had exchange server go down once I was standing in the server room fixing it and an old women came up to tell me that email was down despite me telling her that just a minute ago and I explained that I was getting it back up now she then proceeded to stand there for 10 minutes explaining how important her email was. Another lady was standing at the door waiting, when the first one finished the second one came up and gave me the exact same loving speech. Sometimes people just don't get that problems aren't solved by bitching at the people trying to work.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:01
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Why do regular employees have access to the server room? I'd have just closed the door on them (I've had to do this before).
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Jan 3, 2015 22:08
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:I don't know the details of your environment, but here's how I troubleshoot that kind of problem: Just as an addition, lockout tools needs a serious update. While LockoutStatus is still pretty decent, EventCombMT won't work on Windows 7 computers unless you turn off UAC and you run it as administrator. Even then it's incredibly inefficient. You can connect to the DC and check the event logs faster than EventComb will. Because of this, we can't train our level 1 guys to do lockouts because they not only don't have the right permissions, but we're not allowed to disabled UAC on our computers because it's against domain policy. They've actively made it impossible to do our jobs (though a few of us said "gently caress domain policy" and disabled UAC the moment we got our laptops) I know someone who's created a custom tool for his environment that acts as an all in one tool. It works pretty well. I'm trying to get a copy from him because it would solve so many issues with lockouts. socialsecurity posted:We had exchange server go down once I was standing in the server room fixing it and an old women came up to tell me that email was down despite me telling her that just a minute ago and I explained that I was getting it back up now she then proceeded to stand there for 10 minutes explaining how important her email was. Another lady was standing at the door waiting, when the first one finished the second one came up and gave me the exact same loving speech. Sometimes people just don't get that problems aren't solved by bitching at the people trying to work. TWBalls posted:Why do regular employees have access to the server room? I'd have just closed the door on them (I've had to do this before). "I'm sorry, but this is a restricted area, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. If you have not created a ticket already, please do so, however you cannot hang around here due to our security policy." VVV  is the only solution. Either that or berating your superiors about how their security and privacy policies suck.
Migishu fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jan 3, 2015 |
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Jan 3, 2015 22:12
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TWBalls posted:Why do regular employees have access to the server room? I'd have just closed the door on them (I've had to do this before). Because it's also a storage closet and where they keep all the rolling half full trashcans, this place is a shitshow.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:13
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socialsecurity posted:Because it's also a storage closet and where they keep all the rolling half full trashcans, this place is a shitshow. All Employees having access to the server room is a security risk.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:18
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jadeddrifter posted:All Employees having access to the server room is a security risk. Telling him that is just as helpful as telling him how important your emails are.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:28
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Last week I set up a workstation for a new employee whose desk is right next to the servers which are in the corner of the office. When I got there the administrator account was left logged in on the domain controller.
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Jan 3, 2015 23:00
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jadeddrifter posted:All Employees having access to the server room is a security risk.
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Jan 3, 2015 23:39
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jadeddrifter posted:All Employees having access to the server room is a security risk. Thank god ours doesn't even have a tumbler on the outside, housekeeping would have left it unlocked years ago. Badge or walk your rear end outside to the locked emergency door.
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Jan 3, 2015 23:49
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Our office has servers scattered haphazardly around. There's a rack in one corner next to the entrance door to our office suite, and a couple in the lead tech's office, a few in with the level 2 techs (one of which is a domain controller that got unplugged when the new guy was setting up his desk), and a bunch more at other buildings that I haven't ever seen. Thankfully supporting servers isn't a part of my job but I feel real bad for my boss even though it's pretty much his fault.
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Jan 4, 2015 00:21
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Gilok posted:Our office has servers scattered haphazardly around. There's a rack in one corner next to the entrance door to our office suite, and a couple in the lead tech's office, a few in with the level 2 techs (one of which is a domain controller that got unplugged when the new guy was setting up his desk), and a bunch more at other buildings that I haven't ever seen. Thankfully supporting servers isn't a part of my job but I feel real bad for my boss even though it's pretty much his fault. Wow. Is this what I have to look forward when I join the civilian world.
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Jan 4, 2015 00:26
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A woman at one of our clients once asked about putting a strike plate on the door to the server room since apparently people were just carding themselves in there (I don't know why, they have no on-site IT people and there's nothing else in there.) This is great, a good show of initiative and hell yes physical security! However, we're just their MSP. When I told her she should talk to the people who manage her building as this required bolting stuff to the doorframe, she became snappy and impatient that it wasn't something that I could "just do." Like I carry a loving power drill with me at all times along with strike plate hardware in case somebody asks about it, and then I just start drilling holes in incredibly fancy buildings without asking anybody.
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Jan 4, 2015 03:40
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A ticket came in ... but our sysadmin had quit before Christmas. I'm not even a sysadmin myself, just a dev, but don't like what the management did to one of the sysadmins: company was closed between Christmas and New Year, so all employees were forced to take few days of their holidays for that time. One senior sysadmin didn't had any vacation days left (as the decision about place being closed was made few weeks ago, when almost nobody had holidays left), so management tried to force him to take 3 days out of his next year pool of vacation days. He didn't agree on that, massive discussion happened, and in the end he just said "gently caress this" and quit. I mean, he made a good decision here (and he already found a way better position), but it's really sad. Two of us were in this company from the very beginning, him looking after the sysadmin part of it, me writing the application which would utilize the hardware - but being treated like that is not cool at all.
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Jan 4, 2015 13:26
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kaaj posted:A ticket came in ... but our sysadmin had quit before Christmas. Was he not salary? If the office is closed that should be free paid time off for all.
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Jan 4, 2015 16:57
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Sickening posted:Was he not salary? If the office is closed that should be free paid time off for all. That's what I was thinking
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Jan 4, 2015 17:37
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Sickening posted:Was he not salary? If the office is closed that should be free paid time off for all. If he's salary then Federal law says he has to be paid in full for any week in which he works at all, but since there are no Federal laws (and few if any state laws) governing vacation time or holidays, it's not usually illegal to charge people vacation days for office closings, and there are a lot of companies that do it. It is a pretty lovely thing to do, though (particularly when you're springing it on people at the last minute), and a really stupid policy to lose a key employee over. But hey, the less outstanding PTO on the balance sheet, the better, right? 
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