RE: A ticket came in: Did they take the printer into the shitters with them?

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > RE: A ticket came in: Did they take the printer into the shitters with them?

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iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

Ok, there's a clear lie here.

"nothing" was not selected for breakfast.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 03:53

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 09:00

Samizdata: May 14, 2007

Can one of you fine scripting gods help me out with what I suspect is a reasonably simple request.

If so, I just need a simple PowerScript that can toggle a Windows 10 network connection off, perhaps wait a few seconds then turn it back on?

I have a machine (okay, it's family tech support) that will randomly drop the network connection. Resetting the connection seems to fix the problem until the next time. As I only really get to do remote sessions, it is awfully hard to experiment with. Due to the family member's preferred workflow (and the fact they are a Type A with rampant rabies), rebooting is really not an option.

Cheers!

If not, fine, be that way!

# ? Aug 22, 2017 10:50

Steakandchips: Apr 30, 2009

Don't do tech support for family.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 11:01

Dick Trauma: Nov 30, 2007; God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Steakandchips posted:

Don't do tech support for family.

How do you avoid it?

My highlight was talking my elderly parents through changing the video card in my Dad's PC. I still don't know how we all survived that one.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 11:03

spog: Aug 7, 2004; It's your own bloody fault.

I've just had an email from our support team, warning me that email wasn't working.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 11:05

Sefal: Nov 8, 2011; Fun Shoe

I have a script at home that should do that for you
It's a batch script that just does something like
ipconfig.exe /release
ipconfig.exe /flushdns
ipconfig.exe /renew

I'll post it later. currently at work.

But yeah. How do you avoid tech support for (extended)family?
I got people to stop asking me to hack banks and stuff. because just wtf.
But helping my mother is something I never minded.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 11:08

Steakandchips: Apr 30, 2009

Dick Trauma posted:

How do you avoid it?

My highlight was talking my elderly parents through changing the video card in my Dad's PC. I still don't know how we all survived that one.

"No".

# ? Aug 22, 2017 11:10

Dick Trauma: Nov 30, 2007; God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Considering how hard it is for regular folks to get good support I'd feel like a right bastard forcing my parents to call Geek Squad or some such thing. I mean, they have a kid that does this for a living. They should be able to come to me for help, even if I don't enjoy it. I have plenty of bones to pick with my parents but this one doesn't rate.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 11:12

Sefal: Nov 8, 2011; Fun Shoe

A old colleague from my old job lives near me. so I met her one day as I was cycling from work to home. We talked a little bit and then she hit me with the IT question. "my printer is having issues, if you have time can you come over and take a look? "

Noped out of there.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 11:15

Steakandchips: Apr 30, 2009

Dick Trauma posted:

Considering how hard it is for regular folks to get good support I'd feel like a right bastard forcing my parents to call Geek Squad or some such thing. I mean, they have a kid that does this for a living. They should be able to come to me for help, even if I don't enjoy it. I have plenty of bones to pick with my parents but this one doesn't rate.

It depends on your relationship with the family members in question obviously.

Basically it's not the actual fix that's the issue, it is their attitude.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 11:17

bitterandtwisted: Sep 4, 2006

My family have done a lot for me and I like being able to help them out with their IT problems.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 11:20

Steakandchips: Apr 30, 2009

Mine have been negative and narcissistic to the point of mental illness.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 11:21

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

Sefal posted:

A old colleague from my old job lives near me. so I met her one day as I was cycling from work to home. We talked a little bit and then she hit me with the IT question. "my printer is having issues, if you have time can you come over and take a look? "

Noped out of there.

At least you didn't have to carry a spare one round

# ? Aug 22, 2017 11:23

milk milk lemonade: Jul 29, 2016

I tell people my hourly rate is $150. I've had a couple people agree only for me to decline. Everyone knows not to ask me that poo poo.

I've helped my brother and parents out for free but it's amounted to answering questions about the best laptop for something or how hard switching to Apple is.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 11:33

Ursine Catastrophe: Nov 9, 2009; It's a lovely morning in the void and you are a horrible lady-in-waiting.

don't ask how i know; Dinosaur Gum

Hot take, if your parents/family/friends respect you as a person then doing IT favors for them is probably cool and if they don't then gently caress 'em

Steakandchips posted:

Mine have been negative and narcissistic to the point of mental illness.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 12:37

DelphiAegis: Jun 21, 2010

Samizdata posted:

Can one of you fine scripting gods help me out with what I suspect is a reasonably simple request.

If so, I just need a simple PowerScript that can toggle a Windows 10 network connection off, perhaps wait a few seconds then turn it back on?

I have a machine (okay, it's family tech support) that will randomly drop the network connection. Resetting the connection seems to fix the problem until the next time. As I only really get to do remote sessions, it is awfully hard to experiment with. Due to the family member's preferred workflow (and the fact they are a Type A with rampant rabies), rebooting is really not an option.

Cheers!

If not, fine, be that way!

Last time I had this for my work computer (intermittent dropping of the whole internet connection), after troubleshooting literally everything else (Network, cables, router, modem, et. al) it might have been solved by a driver update for the NIC. I'll never know, though, since the MSP our company used at the time was like "I'm not going to drop a driver for your NIC and potentially not have you online at all, so we're shipping you a new tower." Edit: I WFH exclusively, is why they weren't willing to risk it.

If someone says "BUT I DONT WANNA REBOOT", I carefully and cheerfully explain that not rebooting a computer is like telling you to stay up for 6 days straight and seeing how well you run. "Give it a good night's rest of 30 seconds. It's like a 2-day nap to a computer, especially after running for so long." Usually works.

DelphiAegis fucked around with this message at 13:01 on Aug 22, 2017

# ? Aug 22, 2017 12:59

ookiimarukochan: Apr 4, 2011

In regards to lovely password interfaces, just going to leave this here:

# ? Aug 22, 2017 12:59

Renegret: May 26, 2007; THANK YOU FOR CALLING HELP DOG, INC.

YOUR POSITION IN THE QUEUE IS *pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt*

Cat Army Sworn Enemy

ookiimarukochan posted:

In regards to lovely password interfaces, just going to leave this here:

I need an adult

# ? Aug 22, 2017 13:11

Super Slash: Feb 20, 2006; You rang ?

Ursine Catastrophe posted:

Hot take, if your parents/family/friends respect you as a person then doing IT favors for them is probably cool and if they don't then gently caress 'em

Yup, to be fair I rarely get asked for help but considering my dad rebuilt my bike engine me setting him up with a media PC was pretty small potatoes.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 13:57

Dick Trauma: Nov 30, 2007; God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Steakandchips posted:

Mine have been negative and narcissistic to the point of mental illness.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 14:16

MF_James: May 8, 2008; I CANNOT HANDLE BEING CALLED OUT ON MY DUMBASS OPINIONS ABOUT ANTI-VIRUS AND SECURITY. I REALLY LIKE TO THINK THAT I KNOW THINGS HERE

INSTEAD I AM GOING TO WHINE ABOUT IT IN OTHER THREADS SO MY OPINION CAN FEEL VALIDATED IN AN ECHO CHAMBER I LIKE

Yeah my family is a good family and not shitbag family like some people have. I will gladly help them out in a pinch, they also do not abuse these perks with myself or my brother (also in IT), and most of them are tech savvy enough that I can get them to give me remote control via logmein or teamviewer or whatever I feel like using at the time. Haven't really had physical issues, but I wouldn't mind taking the computer and doing some diagnostics, I even have some (admittedly lovely) laptops laying around that I can loan out so they have computers in the mean time.

Again, though, my family is great, we are very close and we all help each other out.

Also my father and mother did a lot for us, gave us a very good life, full of opportunity, and I wouldn't be the man I am today without their help, so I can help them out when they need.

MF_James fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Aug 22, 2017

# ? Aug 22, 2017 14:21

Dick Trauma: Nov 30, 2007; God damn it, you've got to be kind.

MF_James posted:

Again, though, my family is great, we are very close and we all help each other out.

Get back in your pod.

EDIT: Do you have any idea how long I've waited to be able to post that?

# ? Aug 22, 2017 14:25

Sefal: Nov 8, 2011; Fun Shoe

I have the same experience as MF_James except that my mother is completely computer illiterate to the point she has trouble copy pasting stuff.
But it's my mother so I don't mind helping out. Whenever I need my family they are always there for me. So giving computer support is fine. I draw the line at extended family though.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 14:30

Neito: Feb 18, 2009; 😌Finally, an avatar the describes my love of tech❤️‍💻, my love of anime💖🎎, and why I'll never see a real girl 🙆‍♀️naked😭.

My problem with family IT is that my mom knows what she's doing, but asks me to be around anyway "just in case", so I end up standing there staring at her plugging in a printer or buying Photoshop or some poo poo.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 14:32

Submarine Sandpaper: May 27, 2007

My family slowly transitioned to Apple so I used that as an immediate no and never in the future. "google it"

# ? Aug 22, 2017 14:34

Renegret: May 26, 2007; THANK YOU FOR CALLING HELP DOG, INC.

YOUR POSITION IN THE QUEUE IS *pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt*

Cat Army Sworn Enemy

I stopped doing tech support for my own family, but I really hope my gf's father comes to me next time he needs help. He knows just enough to be dangerous.

He's a professional electrician, so he know the construction side of it better than I ever well but he doesn't know best practice for network design. That, combined with band aid fixes and "good enough" solutions that professionals are known to do for their own work spaces made his home network a nightmare to understand. I died of a brain aneurysm trying to figure out why I found a 4 port network drop with all 4 ports plugged into the same consumer grade switch hidden in a random cabinet and now I'm posting as a ghost.

I almost feel bad for the people who bought that house, but I hope when he remodels his new house he lets me do the network. How bad would a 24 port switch kill his electric bill?

# ? Aug 22, 2017 14:34

MF_James: May 8, 2008; I CANNOT HANDLE BEING CALLED OUT ON MY DUMBASS OPINIONS ABOUT ANTI-VIRUS AND SECURITY. I REALLY LIKE TO THINK THAT I KNOW THINGS HERE

INSTEAD I AM GOING TO WHINE ABOUT IT IN OTHER THREADS SO MY OPINION CAN FEEL VALIDATED IN AN ECHO CHAMBER I LIKE

Dick Trauma posted:

Get back in your pod.

EDIT: Do you have any idea how long I've waited to be able to post that?

I am currently occupying a conference room all by myself because I'm a jerk! Really I'm training a new team member today, so that's why I'm squatting! (also yay things not pissing me off a new team member to pass poo poo work off to!!)

I also came into work literally 5 hours early. Which brings up a thing pissing me off:

I woke up at 3am because our single SQL server that hosts our ticketing system, password database and 2FA database was down. The overnight guy doesn't have domain admin (he should, he's smart, trust worthy and 99% of the time would have no need to use the domain account unless situations like this arise and I can walk him through fix) and I'll be hosed if I'm driving 45 minutes into the office so I have him use my account to get into the SQL server and we start looking around. SQL services won't start, try to fire them up annnnnnnnnnnddd logon failure? WTF? They are running as NTService/MSSQLUSER, what the gently caress, that shouldn't have a password.

Apparently if the user doesn't have logon as service rights, you can delete the password field and it will then start the service, we did that and yay it works again. Which brings me to the thing REALLY pissing me off, why doesn't that loving user have logon as service rights, and why wasn't I notified of a loving change like this.

Really I needed to vent this, I'm going to get it fixed but god drat changing rights like that is something that I should be notified of*

*I am assuming it is this, I haven't done troubleshooting yet because I'm going to let the new guy do it after I train him on our internal systems, it's a good first ticket for him to get his feet wet and for me to see how he thinks.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 14:37

SEKCobra: Feb 28, 2011; Hi
Don't look at my site

I wish I could get a nightshift in some critical infrastructure but there really isn't anything like that

Working at night is just so very nice, if for the fact that no idiots are at work to call you alone.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 14:43

Kyyrewyyoae: Jul 20, 2007; Vae debilibus!

Samizdata posted:

Can one of you fine scripting gods help me out with what I suspect is a reasonably simple request.

If so, I just need a simple PowerScript that can toggle a Windows 10 network connection off, perhaps wait a few seconds then turn it back on?

I have a machine (okay, it's family tech support) that will randomly drop the network connection. Resetting the connection seems to fix the problem until the next time. As I only really get to do remote sessions, it is awfully hard to experiment with. Due to the family member's preferred workflow (and the fact they are a Type A with rampant rabies), rebooting is really not an option.

Cheers!

If not, fine, be that way!

There's probably a way to do it in Powershell, but this batch file works. I have a Server 2016 machine that does the same thing. I should probably dig in and find out why, but in the meantime I have this set up as a task to run any time it detects Event 10400, which happens when the network driver tries to reset. You could set it up to run every few hours. Change the Interface name to whatever yours is.

code:

timeout /t 10
netsh interface set interface "Ethernet" DISABLED
timeout /t 10
netsh interface set interface "Ethernet" ENABLED

# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:01

tactlessbastard: Feb 4, 2001; Godspeed, post; Fun Shoe

SEKCobra posted:

I wish I could get a nightshift in some critical infrastructure but there really isn't anything like that
Working at night is just so very nice, if for the fact that no idiots are at work to call you alone.

All you're doing is trading for all the rest of the world to be calling you during the day when you're trying to sleep.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:14

Bunni-kat: May 25, 2010; Service Desk B-b-bunny...
How can-ca-caaaaan I
help-p-p-p you?

Got a ticket to give a few people read-only access to a calendar used for that department's absences. It's set up as a disabled user with people being given access to the calendar. I've usually been handling thing by enabling the user, changing the password, logging in as the user, handing out the changes, then disabling the user again. Is that about the best way to handle that? Or is there some wonderful way to give calendar rights without logging in to the account?

# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:17

duz: Jul 11, 2005; Come on Ilhan, lets go bag us a shitpost

Sibling of TB posted:

I'm going to write a stupid webpage app which places the cursor at a random character in the string at each key-press.

Do we really need a web based lotus notes?

# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:33

The Claptain: May 11, 2014; Grimey Drawer

A ticket came in. Client cannot receive email. People are getting NDRs.
I send a test email, and sure enough, I get a bounce, "not permitted to relay without authentication. Except, something's not right. On closer look, I am getting bounces from hosting provider's email server. I then take a look at mxtoolbox, and the only MX record is provider's one. I log into cpanel, check the DNS zone, and... There's almost nothing there, just a few default records.

I called hosting provider's support, explain the problem to them, and just get an "Hm, I understand, can you wait 10 minutes for the zone to refresh> Oh, and also, we're working until 6PM.

Thanks a lot, lovely ISP/Hosting provider.

e: after typing my post, I checked again, and sure enough, it "refreshed"

This isn't the first time either, gently caress you ISP.

The Claptain fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Aug 22, 2017

# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:35

Sickening: Jul 16, 2007; Black summer was the best summer.

Anybody here have any palo alto experience that can help me with something incredibly simple that I don't understand? I have a firewall static route that doesn't make any sense to me but somehow loving works.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:37

Renegret: May 26, 2007; THANK YOU FOR CALLING HELP DOG, INC.

YOUR POSITION IN THE QUEUE IS *pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt*

Cat Army Sworn Enemy

The Claptain posted:

A ticket came in. Client cannot receive email. People are getting NDRs.
I send a test email, and sure enough, I get a bounce, "not permitted to relay without authentication. Except, something's not right. On closer look, I am getting bounces from hosting provider's email server. I then take a look at mxtoolbox, and the only MX record is provider's one. I log into cpanel, check the DNS zone, and... There's almost nothing there, just a few default records.

I called hosting provider's support, explain the problem to them, and just get an "Hm, I understand, can you wait 10 minutes for the zone to refresh> Oh, and also, we're working until 6PM.

Thanks a lot, lovely ISP/Hosting provider.

I'm assuming you called them at 5:50PM?

# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:38

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

Move your DNS to somebody competent

# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:39

Boogalo: Jul 8, 2012; Meep Meep

Avenging_Mikon posted:

Got a ticket to give a few people read-only access to a calendar used for that department's absences. It's set up as a disabled user with people being given access to the calendar. I've usually been handling thing by enabling the user, changing the password, logging in as the user, handing out the changes, then disabling the user again. Is that about the best way to handle that? Or is there some wonderful way to give calendar rights without logging in to the account?

Powershell is your friend.

code:

Set-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity CalendarAccount:\Calendar -User UserNeedingAccess -AccessRights Reviewer

I think, or something like that. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff522363(v=exchg.160).aspx

Boogalo fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Aug 22, 2017

# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:41

The Claptain: May 11, 2014; Grimey Drawer

Renegret posted:

I'm assuming you called them at 5:50PM?

4:30 actually, so I'm kind of surprised they didn't tell me to call them in an hour.

e: The zone is now randomly showing as default and properly configured. This is going to be fun.

The Claptain fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Aug 22, 2017

# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:46

rafikki: Mar 8, 2008; I see what you did there. (It's pretty easy, since ducks have a field of vision spanning 340 degrees.)

~SMcD

Sickening posted:

Anybody here have any palo alto experience that can help me with something incredibly simple that I don't understand? I have a firewall static route that doesn't make any sense to me but somehow loving works.

Try a "test routing fib-lookup" from the cli with your vrouter and see if that helps clear it up.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:47

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 09:00

Samizdata: May 14, 2007

Sefal posted:

I have a script at home that should do that for you
It's a batch script that just does something like
ipconfig.exe /release
ipconfig.exe /flushdns
ipconfig.exe /renew

I'll post it later. currently at work.

But yeah. How do you avoid tech support for (extended)family?
I got people to stop asking me to hack banks and stuff. because just wtf.
But helping my mother is something I never minded.

I have that one. I am thinking it is a driver issue, so the last time it happened I happened to talk him through turning the adapter off and back on and that seemed to fix it.

# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:54

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > RE: A ticket came in: Did they take the printer into the shitters with them?

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