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Are there any free or relatively cheap, ticketing systems that would be good for a one-man IT department? I've been using OneNote for a while to keep track of requests and to-do's, but it would be nice to have more of a history of what I've worked on, and to be able to quantify not only how much I do, but be able to identify high-problem areas. I tried Spiceworks previously and wasn't too big of a fan of the ads. It also just felt cluttered. I might have not spend enough time getting it properly configured though. -Auto ticket generation from email -Simple, clean layout -Basic reports. x amount of y tickets in a date range. Bonus points if I can create a 2nd completely different department/helpdesk for another non-IT team that could use a email to ticket system. Is Spiceworks still the best option or what are some others I should peek at? Inventory is another tough thing. Any sort of network-scan based inventory system is next to worthless because people are constantly coming and going into the field for months at a time. Recently deployed Kaspersky, so I guess I just need to combine info I can pull with that, with some manual effort into one area. Preferably within a ticketing system.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 19:05 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 09:04 |
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I've said it before and i'll say it again. The price of OTRS is spot on.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 19:07 |
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Freshdesk is hard to beat - three agents are free.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 19:26 |
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madpanda posted:It seems like to be a halfway decent IT person you need to be closer to Dilbert as gently caress/CF than a person who works 40-50 hours a week, maybe catches on news/does some lab stuff at home for a few hours per week, and learns a lot on the job. No, that's not accurate however there's a tendency for many IT Professionals to develop a "God Complex" and general narcissism. At the same time a lot of companies will work you to literally death and/or allow yourself to do that.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 19:45 |
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Tab8715 posted:No, that's not accurate however there's a tendency for many IT Professionals to develop a "God Complex" and general narcissism. At the same time a lot of companies will work you to literally death and/or allow yourself to do that. The good thing is those people tend to stall out at some point and never progress past a certain point in their career. I'm currently watching this unfold at my work right now. Almost attains self-realization, then goes off the rails again. This time it's because he doesn't get a private office at our newly constructed building he feels he deserves. There was quite the debate (all of 5 minutes) on whether to give him one to spare others, but ultimately it was decided it would be interpreted as validation of his lovely behavior and inter-personal skills.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 19:59 |
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flosofl posted:The good thing is those people tend to stall out at some point and never progress past a certain point in their career. I'm currently watching this unfold at my work right now. Almost attains self-realization, then goes off the rails again. This time it's because he doesn't get a private office at our newly constructed building he feels he deserves. There was quite the debate (all of 5 minutes) on whether to give him one to spare others, but ultimately it was decided it would be interpreted as validation of his lovely behavior and inter-personal skills. By the way, I really recommend people read Bob Sutton's The No rear end in a top hat Rule.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 20:20 |
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Roargasm posted:Jira is completely cost prohibitive if you're not sharing accounts through, I think it's $10 for ten users and $1000 for a hundred? Beats the $1200/yr "IT management" system that I gutted through It gets even more cost prohibitive when you factor in widgets. Another fun thing about widgets is managing the conflicts between widget versions and Atlassian updates. Best of all is when your widget maker either decides that they don't want to be on the upgrade treadmill any longer, or the widget gets popular and you start paying thousands of dollars to keep your widgets up-to-date.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 20:36 |
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Basically every IT job in the world is full of downtime that can be used to keep up with new technologies. Learning new technologies gets easier as you get more experience since almost everything new is going to derived from or related to something else already out there that you are already familiar with if you're keeping up to date. If you're having trouble finding down time at work to do self-study then learn a scripting language and automate like half of your job away and suddenly you'll have a lot more free time and a really useful skill for future jobs. I work a lot less than most of my non tech friends.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 20:47 |
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madpanda posted:I figure this is the most appropriate thread for my question. Nth-ing "nope". In my pre-developer life, I was an admin, and I currently need to keep up in Linux security problems and new development practices. I haven't worked more than 40 hours a week in years, other than exceptions like "new, major bug a week before code freeze" or "pm 3 timezones away scheduled a required meeting at 4:30pm their time and I'm the principal engineer", but that stuff is comparatively rare Major security problems get posted here. And RHSAs. And CVEs. And you can idle in a sysadmin IRC channel or read hackernews (/r/sysadmin is kind of a ghetto and Slashdot is dead-ish). But learning what your business needs and acquiring skills which benefit that business and you is both easy and more productive than "I'm gonna spend all my free nights learning Haskell/v${product}/ipft/etc". This stuff is possible once you have a good background in whatever subject, but it's way easier to acquire skills if you have a practical use for them (like solving business problems with powershell or python or whatever) and daily use than checking a box that says "I know Rust, what's next?" 10000 hours to mastery and all that. Plus there are a bunch of non-technical pseudo-managerial (and psuedo-project-managerial) skills you'll pick gradually pick up.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 21:14 |
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Chickenwalker fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Mar 1, 2019 |
# ? Feb 8, 2015 02:23 |
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Why, didn't you hear, Dell would be happy to charge you once for the convenience of ReadyRails, and a second time for an adapter so they'll work on a two post rack. I'm not entirely sure what you're looking for at the end result but if you google "dell readyrails adapter" the first couple of results should give you all the options you'll need.
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# ? Feb 8, 2015 02:27 |
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Chickenwalker fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Mar 1, 2019 |
# ? Feb 8, 2015 02:29 |
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I don't think I've ever seen a network switch that required a 4 post rack. Even huge rear end 4U chassis are fine with just front brackets.
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# ? Feb 8, 2015 02:32 |
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Yeah every time I mount some big rear end 3U router on the front two rails, I shudder, but I've never gone back to the datacenter to find it crashed onto my servers. e: I will admit though, the sheer OCD in me wants to install some rails for larger devices to rest on, though, to get what I'd consider an even cleaner installation. MC Fruit Stripe fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Feb 8, 2015 |
# ? Feb 8, 2015 02:34 |
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Chickenwalker fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Mar 1, 2019 |
# ? Feb 8, 2015 04:34 |
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Ask me about installing a gigantic UPS on a two-post rack (actually don't, I don't want to re-live it).
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# ? Feb 8, 2015 04:35 |
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Chickenwalker posted:Their adapter is just a bracket, is that really going to hold the weight of the back of the switches when they're only mounted from the front? Done properly, you should only need the front mounts. http://youtu.be/jszfgxBD1ds Ask me anything about channel partners performing the shittiest installations you could imagine
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# ? Feb 8, 2015 07:17 |
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Chickenwalker fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Mar 1, 2019 |
# ? Feb 8, 2015 10:35 |
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These are awesome http://www.racksolutions.com/2post-center-mount-brackets.html Whoever designed our call center put in all 2 post racks so the server rack was basically converted for about 20U using these things.
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# ? Feb 8, 2015 17:36 |
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Chickenwalker fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Mar 1, 2019 |
# ? Feb 8, 2015 18:58 |
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oh boy, I fancied taking an intensive formation in London on Rails and TDD but here's the catch: I can barely afford living in London for four months without a job, and this without adding up the tuition and admition fee. This is the place http://www.makersacademy.com/ I do feel assured that the money would be well spent, I simply don't have it. Oh well, better find another wayout. poo poo's expensive is i guess what im saying
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 11:09 |
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That feeling when you start becoming the sensitive/privileged data person who may end up with a NDA and clearance involuntarily. Either way I'll get to ad a S to my title and some $$$
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 15:22 |
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Honest Thief posted:This is the place http://www.makersacademy.com/ I do feel assured that the money would be well spent, I simply don't have it. Generally these companies hire because they're just banking on people who could make it through an intensive 10/12/whatever week camp being able to learn quickly enough to pick up whatever stack they're using fast enough to make meaningful contributions, not because they're exceptional engineers or diamonds in the rough or whatever. Their cost estimator looks like it's near $17,000 with no guarantees other than "a hiring round with London companies as an entry-level developer" (which probably doesn't even pay 200% of the cost of the "Maker's Academy"). It's a scummy practice for people who think there's an easy way. There isn't. Learn to loving code if that's what you wanna do. But you don't have to pay seventeen grand plus living expenses to get a job as an entry-level developer. You need to learn to code at your current job by automating poo poo you already know and learning more about things you're curious about or that you encounter while you're automating that stuff, then start applying to jobs as a junior/entry level developer in whatever language you're using (don't use shell or powershell). Please pay me $17,000.
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 19:14 |
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Chickenwalker fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Mar 1, 2019 |
# ? Feb 9, 2015 19:40 |
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Pulled this out of a rack today: Not sure how well it translates in the picture, but those top two batteries are bubbled up and it was a complete bitch to get out of the unit. I was sure any second I'd be sprayed with lead acid
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 22:41 |
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Also don't sign up to expensive courses with places that aren't schools or don't offer actual industry certs. Some of them might be good, most of them scream scam. If you feel that you need to spend money to get out of a career rut then do an Open University degree.
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# ? Feb 9, 2015 22:46 |
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Thanks Ants posted:
Is there any recommended Open University-like thing for USA? Seems like theres very few options available if you aren't in Europe.
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 00:18 |
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I thought there were a few US colleges doing online part-time study that weren't scams? It's not anything I have knowledge of though.
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 00:23 |
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Danith posted:Is there any recommended Open University-like thing for USA? Seems like theres very few options available if you aren't in Europe. Coursera? The Cryptography course is great. They have programming courses, as well. edit: I might not actually know what Open University is.
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 00:29 |
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I had the weirdest thing happen at work today. I had installed a new hard drive and PC last week because the hard drive on this machine was bad and the tower itself was EOL. The touchscreen attached also had an inverted y-axis, so I called in to our helpdesk to get them to start calibration. For some reason they lock calibration behind administrator logins, and I don't have that login, they're probably afraid I'm going to set desktops to goatse or something. Anyway, we recalibrate the screen, it works fine, but as soon as we reboot the machine, it won't finish booting. The first time, I thought it was just a bad hard drive. But I got a new hard drive, installed it today, the calibration was reversed again, and it did the same thing once we recalibrated it. Any idea what could cause that sort of thing? I ordered a different model of hard drive and a new monitor, but I have never seen anything like that before.
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 02:31 |
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Erwin posted:Coursera? The Cryptography course is great. They have programming courses, as well. Udacity's intro to programming was on par with my college intro to programming course (they were for different languages). The bonus with the college course was I could email my instructor and get near instant responses. It really depends on what path you're wanting to take with your career.
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 06:15 |
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sooooooo... I just found a copy of arrangebypenis.7z and I'm about to , friday is my last day. must I do the needful?
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 06:32 |
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GnarlyCharlie4u posted:sooooooo... I just found a copy of arrangebypenis.7z It's time to fire up ye olde gpmc.msc
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 11:01 |
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I have a whole day to learn what I can about aws. Where should I begin?
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 14:51 |
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Create a free account is probably the first step, that way you can play with things without breaking production.
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 15:09 |
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Sheep posted:Create a free account is probably the first step, that way you can play with things without breaking production. Alright so, maybe I should be more specific. I've gotten an account set up, set up groups / users / roles / keypairs, rolled out a few AMI's, ssh'd (putty/rdp) into a few... it seems most tutorials are all about setting up wordpress so I guess I'll do that. edit: to get out of the company firewall I'm using my 2012 R2 vm on azure to connect to my personal aws vm's.. kinda thought that was funny Fiendish Dr. Wu fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Feb 10, 2015 |
# ? Feb 10, 2015 15:42 |
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have a stab at cloudformation/opsworks rather than setting up a single instance
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 16:28 |
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Also, do poo poo via the API rather than the web console. The point of the cloud is not to spin up special snowflakes slowly one-by-one, so don't treat it that way. There are libraries for basically every language under the sun so you can take your pick. Autoscaling is a fun feature to experiment with. Set up an instance and an autoscaling policy, then run something in an infinite loop to spike the CPU and watch a second instance pop up automatically to help out.
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 17:45 |
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What would be the simplest/cheapest way to go about having a box somewhere that I can remote into from work & run a smallish SSMS on? Work only has 2008 and I want to practice on 2014 for the first MS SQL cert. (Trying to get security folks to approve me accessing a 2014 version will literally take over a year. I've already tried that route.) ETA: I don't have an 'extra' home computer to set up myself or I would have done so.
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 19:16 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 09:04 |
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meanieface posted:What would be the simplest/cheapest way to go about having a box somewhere that I can remote into from work & run a smallish SSMS on? Work only has 2008 and I want to practice on 2014 for the first MS SQL cert. http://www.lowendtalk.com/categories/offers They can be really cheap if you can deal with a little less reliability and a weaker control panel compared to linode or digitalocean.
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# ? Feb 10, 2015 19:57 |