More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

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GI_Clutch: Aug 22, 2000; by Fluffdaddy; Dinosaur Gum

We're in the middle of a statewide contract with a government agency that's worth almost as much as our company pulls in a single year. It covers a few departments in the agency, with the rest to come in another contract that's in the early stages. Of course, they want some stopgap work done in the meantime for one of the departments that's in the pipeline. Our project manager won't say no since we need to be nice to get all of the money.

Basically, some developers at another vendor want to integrate with one of the products we installed. No big deal, I configure a few things and provide them with the SDK. Then they show it to the customer and request more changes. OK, no big deal, few more hours of configuration.

Then they start getting really pushy and annoying, emailing me all of the time. Their PM has been told that requests should come through him, but LOL, like that's going to happen. Highlights since have included:

Being told that I "need to" make additional changes. Sorry, Mr. Developer, but we don't have a contract with you. Tell your boss at the state what you would like done and he can relay it to my boss who can decide if we're doing that for this out of scope project.
Being told that I "need to make sure the environment is uninterrupted during X time period". Uh, that's our DEV environment you're testing in and we're in the middle of configuring a new release. I can restart that environment anytime I please. Don't tempt me.
We had a few folks on site with one of the counties. Their director forwarded us an email sent to all counties giving them specific dates that this would be trained and go live statewide. This email was the first time anyone on our team heard of these proposed dates.
More requests for deploying changes when no approval has been given. Sorry, there's a change management plan.
And of course, the state PM who can make these decisions skipped our meeting Friday and hasn't responded to any emails.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 01:55

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 22:28

Samizdata: May 14, 2007

Methylethylaldehyde posted:

Technically, if you add ClF3 or FOOF to an existing fire, the hot energetic combustion gasses would undergo an additional oxidation reaction due to the Florine present, thus setting the fire on fire again.

gently caress, beaten.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 06:49

Paladine_PSoT: Jan 2, 2010; If you have a problem Yo, I'll solve it

D34THROW posted:

Segoe UI for everything.

Trigger warning that poo poo

# ? Jan 24, 2018 09:21

Paladine_PSoT: Jan 2, 2010; If you have a problem Yo, I'll solve it

spog posted:

Seems that with that setup, literally burning bridges would be an undetectable option.

May I introduce you to the blotto box?

# ? Jan 24, 2018 09:30

Paladine_PSoT: Jan 2, 2010; If you have a problem Yo, I'll solve it

Sefal posted:

Goodluck and congratulations!

Edit for content:

It's beautiful, like barfing in a space helmet

# ? Jan 24, 2018 09:33

Humphreys: Jan 26, 2013; We conceived a way to use my mother as a porn mule

Paladine_PSoT posted:

May I introduce you to the blotto box?

Wow been a long time since I read that! A while ago in the OSHA thread someone posted videos of someone doing a bunch of the builds of the Anarchists Cookbook. Not new but they were old, VHS recorded shows with the host missing many fingers digitized and uploaded.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 12:13

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

Humphreys posted:

Wow been a long time since I read that! A while ago in the OSHA thread someone posted videos of someone doing a bunch of the builds of the Anarchists Cookbook. Not new but they were old, VHS recorded shows with the host missing many fingers digitized and uploaded.

Link?

# ? Jan 24, 2018 12:47

Crowley: Mar 13, 2003

For some reason the IT storage room shares ventilation with two public toilets. Usually that just means a faint whiff of fart until the ventilation gets up to speed. Today, however, the storage smells like the inside of Cheech & Chong's car. The stench is so bad that our contract manager noticed that I smelled of "a good old time with some herbal remedy" when I came back.

In usual BOFH fashion we left the door open, and now the guard room too smells like a dorm during summer break. One of the guards refused to stay there and stomped off to somewhere else, while the other - a all around good-humored Tamil dude - is all smiles.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 15:08

dogstile: May 1, 2012; fucking clocks
how do they work?

Huh, the previous IT guy spent all of his time at his desk, rather than visiting sites like he's supposed to. This in turn is making the people who are sat in the same office question why i'm never in.

Things are starting to make sense. This place is dumb. I'm glad it pays well.

relatively well anyway, this is the UK

dogstile fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Jan 24, 2018

# ? Jan 24, 2018 15:12

Sefal: Nov 8, 2011; Fun Shoe

dogstile posted:

Huh, the previous IT guy spent all of his time at his desk, rather than visiting sites like he's supposed to. This in turn is making the people who are sat in the same office question why i'm never in.

Things are starting to make sense. This place is dumb. I'm glad it pays well.

relatively well anyway, this is the UK

Yeah. I wish the 6 figures salary wasn't USA exclusive.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 16:51

Foxtrot_13: Oct 31, 2013; Ask me about my love of genocide denial!

Sefal posted:

Yeah. I wish the 6 figures salary wasn't USA exclusive.

But paying staggering amounts for health insurance is though, thankfully

# ? Jan 24, 2018 20:23

Inspector_666: Oct 7, 2003; _{benny with the good hair}

Foxtrot_13 posted:

But paying staggering amounts for health insurance is though, thankfully

Look, just talking about the cost of the insurance is unfair and doesn't take the whole context into account.

It's also very bad insurance!

# ? Jan 24, 2018 20:44

DONT TOUCH THE PC: Jul 15, 2001; You should try it, it's a real buzz.

Sefal posted:

Yeah. I wish the 6 figures salary wasn't USA exclusive.

Beyond 45K you'll get pretty diminishing returns on the amount of happiness you're being paid out in.
It's nice, but it's not a goal in itself.

I'm not making that much more at my new job, but the colleagues are worth it.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 20:47

Sprechensiesexy: Dec 26, 2010; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Sefal posted:

Yeah. I wish the 6 figures salary wasn't USA exclusive.

Brush up on your German/French/Italian and try your luck in Switzerland.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:05

The Iron Rose: May 12, 2012; Cat Army

Oh fun.

So I'm writing a big audit of the impact our senior sysadmin's departure will have in our environment, as well as an assessment of the stability of the systems. Limited in scope to the projects I worked with him on, so mostly SCCM, but that by necessity touches basically everything else.

Anyways, long story short, turns out nothing has been handling Windows 10 patching in our environment. At all. There are endpoints running Windows 10 versions from two years ago. I'm dreading the conversation with our security team, because they're going to justifiably lose their poo poo. On the plus side it shouldn't be too hard to setup a servicing plan through SCCM.

drat if this didn't teach me to never take anything in our environment on faith and assumptions though.

Oh and turns out we're replacing all of our printers with a single model and I need to figure out how to deploy them to all our windows PCs, which includes setting default printers and associating the proper IP addresses based on the per floor vlans. In two weeks. I found out today.

At this point I'm thinking just throw together a really rough VBS script to grab the driver, package it and deploy. But gently caress me I have 8 months of real experience and have no idea if that's really the best way to do things.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:14

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

The Iron Rose posted:

Oh fun.

So I'm writing a big audit of the impact our senior sysadmin's departure will have in our environment, as well as an assessment of the stability of the systems. Limited in scope to the projects I worked with him on, so mostly SCCM, but that by necessity touches basically everything else.

Anyways, long story short, turns out nothing has been handling Windows 10 patching in our environment. At all. There are endpoints running Windows 10 versions from two years ago. I'm dreading the conversation with our security team, because they're going to justifiably lose their poo poo. On the plus side it shouldn't be too hard to setup a servicing plan through SCCM.

drat if this didn't teach me to never take anything in our environment on faith and assumptions though.

Eh it happens if someone else has more important/interesting tasks to handle. Making yourself audit your windows patching is much needed, but thankless and boring. If you have enough info sec people to have a "team" and they don't know that the windows patches are two years out of date they loving suck.

The Iron Rose posted:

Oh and turns out we're replacing all of our printers with a single model and I need to figure out how to deploy them to all our windows PCs, which includes setting default printers and associating the proper IP addresses based on the per floor vlans. In two weeks. I found out today.

At this point I'm thinking just throw together a really rough VBS script to grab the driver, package it and deploy. But gently caress me I have 8 months of real experience and have no idea if that's really the best way to do things.

Put all these printers on a network and setup a print server. Deploy the printers through group policy. Done.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:17

pixaal: Jan 8, 2004; All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.

The Iron Rose posted:

At this point I'm thinking just throw together a really rough VBS script to grab the driver, package it and deploy. But gently caress me I have 8 months of real experience and have no idea if that's really the best way to do things.

Make a GPO to map the printer on boot? You filter by Active Directory groups who gets what printers and set a default printer as part of the GPO. Don't use VB. You should do everything with Powershell or a GPO if you are running server 2012+ and win 10. You can do the printer stuff with 2008 and XP if you really need to but you should be getting rid of any of that anyway.

If you already have the printers mapped with a print server give the new printer the same IP, change the print driver. The computer will pick up the new driver automatically and print. Anything in queue will come out of the new printer too!

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:18

Squatch Ambassador: Nov 12, 2008; What? Never seen a shaved Squatch before?

E: ^^^ Yeah, what they said
That could work, although I'd recommend powershell over VBS. Group Policy Preferences would be even better if that's an option for you.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:19

MC Fruit Stripe: Nov 26, 2002; around and around we go

Sickening posted:

Eh it happens if someone else has more important/interesting tasks to handle. Making yourself audit your windows patching is much needed, but thankless and boring. If you have enough info sec people to have a "team" and they don't know that the windows patches are two years out of date they loving suck.

Also, if they're concerned about windows patches, they can deploy them themselves.

If you don't outrank me, and have the ability to send me a report on missing patches, you have the ability to install those patches. Good luck.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:27

Ham Equity: Apr 16, 2013; Can't post for 5 hours!; Grimey Drawer

DONT TOUCH THE PC posted:

Beyond 45K you'll get pretty diminishing returns on the amount of happiness you're being paid out in.
It's nice, but it's not a goal in itself.

I'm not making that much more at my new job, but the colleagues are worth it.

This is closer to 70k in the U.S. in general, and closer to 100k if you're living in a major city in the U.S.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:30

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

MC Fruit Stripe posted:

Also, if they're concerned about windows patches, they can deploy them themselves.

If you don't outrank me, and have the ability to send me a report on missing patches, you have the ability to install those patches. Good luck.

Its like they aren't even scanning anything, which is like the bare minimum I expect infosec to do. Did nobody configure nessus to look?

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:31

Sefal: Nov 8, 2011; Fun Shoe

I like where I work now. The benefits are great and the pay is good. I'm not complaining.

Thanatosian posted:

This is closer to 70k in the U.S. in general, and closer to 100k if you're living in a major city in the U.S.

I've never been able to translate the US salary to the EU range. I appreciate this.

The Iron Rose posted:

Oh fun.

So I'm writing a big audit of the impact our senior sysadmin's departure will have in our environment

This may suck at 1st. But it sounds like a great time to get your hands on many different systems. Allowing you to build a diverse skill set relatively quickly. And possibly :yotj:

to greater heights

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:35

SlowBloke: Aug 14, 2017

The Iron Rose posted:

Oh and turns out we're replacing all of our printers with a single model and I need to figure out how to deploy them to all our windows PCs, which includes setting default printers and associating the proper IP addresses based on the per floor vlans. In two weeks. I found out today.

At this point I'm thinking just throw together a really rough VBS script to grab the driver, package it and deploy. But gently caress me I have 8 months of real experience and have no idea if that's really the best way to do things.

We do map our printers using GPOs . Each GPO is bound to a security group containing the computers we need to map a specific set of printers to(we use machine assignment to avoid drivers installation issue). If you don't have a print server to rely for job /printer driver management(you really should) you could use powershell, vbs or sccm to deploy the driver package to all of your desktops/laptops.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:39

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

Thanatosian posted:

This is closer to 70k in the U.S. in general, and closer to 100k if you're living in a major city in the U.S.

Yeah, 75k was the tipping point for me.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:40

The Iron Rose: May 12, 2012; Cat Army

Sickening posted:

Put all these printers on a network and setup a print server. Deploy the printers through group policy. Done.

yeah turns out we're a shop of 700 people and we don't have a print server, everything is a direct add.

Sooooooooooooooooooo guess I'm setting up a new Print Server within the next 2 weeks before go date! Any notable gotchas there? Looking online it seems relatively simple, insofar as this is ever simple. Get a Windows Server 2012R2/2016 license and setup a VMWare instance, install the Print Management role on the server, add a firewall exception for Print Management, install the printers on the print server, and then map them via GPO. I think I have that right?

Also I've already been doing Windows patch auditing so at least that's not a big change. We only have a few dozen Windows 10 endpoints anyways.

Sefal posted:

This may suck at 1st. But it sounds like a great time to get your hands on many different systems. Allowing you to build a diverse skill set relatively quickly. And possibly to greater heights

Oh I'm actually loving the audit. I got this job after burning out on my fourth year of a PolySci degree, so it's nice to be able to exercise my writing chops ever now and again.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:47

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

The Iron Rose posted:

yeah turns out we're a shop of 700 people and we don't have a print server, everything is a direct add.

Sooooooooooooooooooo guess I'm setting up a new Print Server within the next 2 weeks! Any notable gotchas there? Looking online it seems relatively simple, insofar as this is ever simple. Get a Windows Server 2012R2/2016 license and setup a VMWare instance, install the Print Management role on the server, add a firewall exception for Print Management, install the printers on the print server, and then map them via GPO. I think I have that right?

Also I've already been doing Windows patch auditing so at least that's not a big change. We only have a few dozen Windows 10 endpoints anyways.

Basically , yes. Technically you don't have to have a dedicated virtual server for this but its cool if you have the resources. The print server needs to be able to communicate with the printers and the computers using the printers.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:51

SlowBloke: Aug 14, 2017

The Iron Rose posted:

yeah turns out we're a shop of 700 people and we don't have a print server, everything is a direct add.

Sooooooooooooooooooo guess I'm setting up a new Print Server within the next 2 weeks before go date! Any notable gotchas there? Looking online it seems relatively simple, insofar as this is ever simple. Get a Windows Server 2012R2/2016 license and setup a VMWare instance, install the Print Management role on the server, add a firewall exception for Print Management, install the printers on the print server, and then map them via GPO. I think I have that right?

Also I've already been doing Windows patch auditing so at least that's not a big change. We only have a few dozen Windows 10 endpoints anyways.

Oh I'm actually loving the audit. I got this job after burning out on my fourth year of a PolySci degree, so it's nice to be able to exercise my writing chops ever now and again.

If you have 32 bit machines you will need to use one of them to install the drivers on the print server(s) as installing the driver from the print server will only work for 64 bit drivers. Configure each printer defaults on the print server to force them on the clients.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 21:54

The Iron Rose: May 12, 2012; Cat Army

SlowBloke posted:

If you have 32 bit machines you will need to use one of them to install the drivers on the print server(s) as installing the driver from the print server will only work for 64 bit drivers. Configure each printer defaults on the print server to force them on the clients.

That's not a concern, thankfully.

Also thank you all very much for your help with this one. A print server looks much easier than direct adding every printer, and it seems like good practice in the long run anyways.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 22:01

pixaal: Jan 8, 2004; All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.

SlowBloke posted:

If you have 32 bit machines you will need to use one of them to install the drivers on the print server(s) as installing the driver from the print server will only work for 64 bit drivers. Configure the defaults on the print server to force them on the clients.

I added drives just fine using win7 64bit and server 2008R2 64 bit, same with 10 64bit and 2016 64bit. I'm not sure what issue you had.

It's useful to be a dedicated server is nice if you need to reboot it for some reason. You shouldn't have to but sometimes print drivers are horrible and a PDF just gets one gummed up. Normally a quick restart of the spooler service will fix everything up nicely and be done in 3-6 seconds.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 22:02

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

SlowBloke posted:

If you have 32 bit machines you will need to use one of them to install the drivers on the print server(s) as installing the driver from the print server will only work for 64 bit drivers. Configure each printer defaults on the print server to force them on the clients.

You can have both 32 bit drives and 64 bit drivers on a print server for a printer.

Also, if you enable point and print in group policy they don't even need admin rights to install printers you host on a print server.

pixaal posted:

I added drives just fine using win7 64bit and server 2008R2 64 bit, same with 10 64bit and 2016 64bit. I'm not sure what issue you had.

It's useful to be a dedicated server is nice if you need to reboot it for some reason. You shouldn't have to but sometimes print drivers are horrible and a PDF just gets one gummed up. Normally a quick restart of the spooler service will fix everything up nicely and be done in 3-6 seconds.

Its easier to restart the print spooler service (the server) on one machine than all the individual machines.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 22:04

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

SlowBloke posted:

If you have 32 bit machines you will need to use one of them to install the drivers on the print server(s) as installing the driver from the print server will only work for 64 bit drivers. Configure each printer defaults on the print server to force them on the clients.

? You can import x86 drivers without any problem. The only gotcha is that they have to be the exact same version as the x64 driver installed for the same printer. But that shouldn't be hard if you're setting it all up at the beginning.

e:fb

# ? Jan 24, 2018 22:05

pixaal: Jan 8, 2004; All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.

Sickening posted:

You can have both 32 bit drives and 64 bit drivers on a print server for a printer.

Also, if you enable point and print in group policy they don't even need admin rights to install printers you host on a print server.

Its easier to restart the print spooler service (the server) on one machine than all the individual machines.

I was saying dedicated print server over throwing it on a file server or domain controller.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 22:05

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

pixaal posted:

I was saying dedicated print server over throwing it on a file server or domain controller.

Oh definitely. A single license of server 2012-2016 is pricey just for a print server though. I could see why a larger org would want to do it though and its a nice luxury to have.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 22:07

pixaal: Jan 8, 2004; All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.

Sickening posted:

Oh definitely. A single license of server 2012-2016 is pricey just for a print server though. I could see why a larger org would want to do it though and its a nice luxury to have.

If you have datacenter it's just RAM and CPU.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 22:08

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

You can deploy a printer server into :yaycloud:

and tick the box to make all the printers branch office printers. If you have a non-old version of Windows client then you get all the nice print management features that come with a print server, but the clients render the jobs locally and send them directly to the printers.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 22:20

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

Do this with an A1 in Azure and it'll cost $30/month

Might be able to get away with an A0, at $13/month

# ? Jan 24, 2018 22:25

stevewm: May 10, 2005

Ugh... printers...

Our main line of business software is run on a small terminal services farm consisting of 2 servers. Due to the way this software works with printers, it needs to have a LOCAL copy of any printer that employees need to use with it. The result of this is that each terminal server has 167 printers installed on it. And additions, changes, etc.. means I have to do it twice. And I have to make sure the settings are identical on both servers.

They only recently added the ability to use a RDP redirected printer to avoid this problem.

It's a pain in the rear end to manage, but surprisingly it works well. I use the Print Services snap in and have all the drivers set to run isolated. This means a shitload of PrintIsolationHost processes are spawned, but it keeps printer drivers from reeking havoc.

stevewm fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Jan 24, 2018

# ? Jan 24, 2018 22:38

SlowBloke: Aug 14, 2017

Maybe microsoft has improved x32 driver handling for x64 printservers since win 7/2008r2 when we started having such problems(or printers driver have improved but I�m not betting on that). Our current printservers always hosed up when installing a 32bit driver on printer management from a 64 client/server while not showing any issue doing the same from a 32 bit client. Good to know that they solved that issue now that we have almost decomm all of our x32 machines :shobon:

SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jan 24, 2018

# ? Jan 24, 2018 23:21

Super Slash: Feb 20, 2006; You rang ?

Sickening posted:

Its easier to restart the print spooler service (the server) on one machine than all the individual machines.

Just make sure the print driver isn't complete dogshit, I have no idea how but last week either windows or someone changed a print driver on our print server which eventually got into every endpoint machine causing the local print spooler service on them to constantly crap out.

On the whole though print management and gpos to push out settings is a cinch, even better when you pre-configure the defaults.

Now it's time for show and tell;

# ? Jan 24, 2018 23:34

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 22:28

anthonypants: May 6, 2007; by Nyc_Tattoo; Dinosaur Gum

Super Slash posted:

Now it's time for show and tell;

Is that yours? Tell me that's yours.

# ? Jan 24, 2018 23:37

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

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