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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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

Oh god, giving them access to a VM sounds like fun. I wonder how long it would take them to realize something was up.

I tried that once and they just systeminfo'd and saw that it was a VM immediately. Then I pretended to have no idea what they were talking about and they carried on trying to "fix" my unpatched Win ME VM.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2013 23:28

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 11:25

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

dennyk posted:

Hate to say it, man, but after-hours maintenance on production systems is part of being a sysadmin.

Not being compensated for after-hours maintenance is most certainly not part of being a sysadmin.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 01:04

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Belial42 posted:

God, isn't that the truth. I just know we're going to get a weekend on-call rotation implemented soon. We missed a call from a user that locked himself out at 8:50am on Saturday. Unfortunately his name's on the building. New management is in a tizzy about this, and they're asking for cell phone numbers. They're also ridiculously cheap, so I know they're going to push for no compensation.

I need to

Something similar to this happened where I worked and they told us that they were going to set up an on-call rotation. They gave up immediately after the entire IT department said "okay, the industry average for extra pay for being on call is $X/day, with $Y/hr or comped time for receiving and acting on a call, let's get that set up".

I wouldn't mind being on call 24 hours a day for my share of the rotation if I was well compensated for it, even though I don't legally need to be in my province where IT professionals are exempt from lots of labour laws.

My profession is fully exempt from all overtime requirements in the province where I work, but I would immediately give my two weeks notice if my work tried to make me conform to that without also substantially adjusting my salary.

http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/tools/srt/coverage_government_it.php

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 01:46

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

blackswordca posted:

So there was a meeting at my client about migrating from old BB5 devices and moving to BB10 and BES 10. So I let the account lead know whats going on. He asked me to setup a 2008R2 VM so we could use it for the BES 10 deployment, no big deal.

Apparently there was a mini meeting and it was decided I would be to subject matter expert for BES 10.

Its not really that bad is it?

I mean, I guess I would rather manage our BES10 server than be responsible for printers, if that helps at all.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 02:17

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

blackswordca posted:

This is the first client that our company has had that has decided to run BES 10 so nobody know what to expect or what issues to run into..

At least I got it in writing there would be no after hours work for the project.

To be fair, it was really, really easy to set up and get going.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 02:20

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Vin BioEthanol posted:

Maybe some type of warning or indicator light could be implemented in keyboards or laptops to let you know the num/caps-lock is on. Forget OS-level, that's HW level there and should result in no confusion.

Don't be ridiculous that would cost way too much.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 16:57

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Vin BioEthanol posted:

Stupid question: does xp natively support burning DVDs from the send to menu? Or just CDs? Trying to help someone over the phone and googling this some people say yes, some say no.

New drive isn't even showing there, it does on explorer though.

Give join.me a shot if you can, it'll make your life so much easier here.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 19:42

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Dick Trauma posted:

Does the "B" still stand for "Blackberry?" That's enough to determine if I'll install it.

Let's be fair, it's called UDS not BES when you use it for non-BlackBerry devices!

# ¿ Sep 19, 2013 18:39

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

My registrar somehow managed to make all my domains bounce email with a "recipient does not have an account" error! Whoooo!

# ¿ Sep 20, 2013 14:47

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

nexxai posted:

Sounds like your MX record got changed by accident?

That's what I assumed, but everything was normal. It just bounced all email to all of my domains for like 20 minutes, then returned to normal.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2013 16:04

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Belial42 posted:

An email came in: my four man department is getting weekend and after hour call rotations setup with a primary and a backup! Two of the people aren't even on helpdesk, they're admins. No mention of compensation. None of us have offered up our weekends.

This new company's tanking morale at an astounding rate. 3/5 of the original team will be gone in less than six months, taking a combined 30 years worth of institutional knowledge with them. I can't :ytoj: fast enough.

If you're going to leave anyhow, do everything you can to either refuse or be compensated for this.

"I'd be glad to discuss the possibility of setting up an after-hours rotation, let's make the meeting a bit longer so that we have time to discuss the changes in compensation that the affected employees will receive as a result."

# ¿ Sep 20, 2013 16:06

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

nexxai posted:

Then what probably happened is that they either redirected a 1-to-1 NAT policy to the wrong box, or assigned the IP to the wrong mail server temporarily. Either way, glad to hear it's working again.

It was the worst possible time for it to happen, too, since I'm expecting a new job to email me sometime this morning.

OpenText Release Notes posted:

Notable updates in eDOCS DM 5.3.1 Patch 4 Rollup 1 include:
In Document Management, eDOCS Edition (eDOCS DM), DMJumpListHelper.dll no longer causes winword.exe process to climb in memory until it crashes or Disk is Full error message appears.
In Document Management, eDOCS Edition (eDOCS DM), using DM Extension for Microsoft Outlook, when you use Outlook Extensions to open documents from other applications, such as Microsoft Word or Excel, it no longer causes Outlook to stop responding if you close documents.
In Document Management, eDOCS Edition (eDOCS DM), using DM Extension for Microsoft Outlook, when you right-click on a document in DM and select Open, it no longer causes Outlook to stop responding.
In Document Management, eDOCS Edition (eDOCS DM), using DM Extension for Windows Explorer, a dialog box to 'Confirm Search' can appear behind the Explorer Extensions Window. Users can now see this and will no longer assume DM has crashed because they could not see the dialog box.
In Document Management, eDOCS Edition (eDOCS DM), using DM Extensions, when you cancel a search, DM no longer moves behind other windows.
In Document Management, eDOCS Edition (eDOCS DM), using DM Extensions, if you expand the public folders containing a large number of public folders for the first time in DM Extensions, the process now takes less time.
In Document Management, eDOCS Edition (eDOCS DM), using DM Extensions, if you cancel a full text search from the File/Open dialog box, Microsoft Office applications no longer stop responding.
In Document Management, eDOCS Edition (eDOCS DM), using DM Extensions, when you attempt to perform a Profile Search, the Profile Form no longer opens behind DM Extensions.

"hey everyone it's a new patch version let's just make everything completely unusable and then fix it in a few months"

I would have had a riot on my hands if I had upgraded to the previous version.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2013 16:19

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

I've done some contract work where my firm was expected to be a bunch of perfectly dressed robots that don't poop or drink coffee, it was ridiculous but I guess I see their "look we have to be perfect" image nonsense?

Just start bringing in a laptop bag or briefcase to carry your gym clothes I guess.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2013 22:23

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

diremonk posted:

Sorry, the part I thought was a bit much was the 45 day password expire and no reuse until you've used 24 different passwords. But the last owners didn't have anything like password expiration policy. I'm still using the same one from three years ago.

That's pretty reasonable though?

# ¿ Sep 21, 2013 06:40

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Volmarias posted:

You all know that's going to end with "passwordpassword" as 50%+ of the passwords. 16 characters, full compliance. There's a reason that special characters are encouraged, after all.

We check our user's passwords about one a year, shaming the ones that have weak passwords and holding a draw for a gift cards for the ones that we can't break.

Their passwords all still suck but this stops the worst of them.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2013 01:41

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Volmarias posted:

I'm morbidly curious how you're doing this.

We just get each user to email us their password and then compare them against a list of common passwords

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Sep 22, 2013

# ¿ Sep 22, 2013 17:02

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

I'm kidding, we just try and bruteforce them using L0pthcrack. People seem almost desperate to email or tell me their passwords though.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2013 19:14

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

GreenNight posted:

Just got this today:

Send them a new glass table by courier.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2013 15:26

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Galler posted:

Huh, I guess the answer to the question of "Can Blackberry get anymore hosed?" is "Yes." Getting bought by a company with "financial holdings" in the name can't mean good things for the company getting bought. Although, I'm not sure how Fairfax intends to scam >4.7 billion out of the Blackberry name. I don't think Blackberry has much in the way of valuable assests at this point and who would loan them money (which would be funneled to Fairfax) at this point?

They could probably do it as a patent troll? BlackBerry has a shitload of patents.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2013 01:35

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

guppy posted:

And leaving a job after a month or two looks bad.

This is not necessarily true - lots of jobs are just bad fits that one or both of the two parties don't realize until they've already hired.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2013 13:57

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

What kind of crazy world do you live in where HP could make their printer drivers fit on anything smaller than a 1GB drive.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2013 19:25

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

MJP posted:

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: is it hard to have the Canadian armed forces annex the NY/NJ metro area, declare it a province, and have us subject to Canadian labor laws? I would kill for fairer treatment as a salaried worker, as I'm sure most other places are... and if the Mounties can't invade, then at least now as I YOTJ I can say "so for the on-call rotation and non-critical scheduled after-hours... what do you do to comp?"

This should be a YOTJ staple, or a megathread/job hunt awareness thread for SH/SC.

Legally, IT professionals are exempt from most labour law requirements in Ontario:

That said, when HR tried to get me to work unpaid overtime and to not take lunch, I told them how much they would have to raise my salary by to make that happen. My boss supported me, shrugged and told them that if they did that I would probably quit.

This has everything to do with managing expectations and making sure that you don't act like a doormat when you're providing a super valuable service in an industry that has trouble finding people that are not useless. This is also WAY easier to do if you're not entry-level helpdesk.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2013 15:16

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

"hacked"

# ¿ Sep 26, 2013 17:15

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

drukqs posted:

Works great, thanks. Glad you weren't eating Oven roasted chicken with
country vegetables in a reduced honey dijon glaze over long grain white
rice.

BRB making every password the name of a complicated food.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2013 16:49

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Siochain posted:

I'm going to pick some smart peoples brains.

The CRM software I currently work as support for offers integration with Google calendars, through their API. It works, awesome.
Does ~anybody~ know where I could find information as to whether the same kind of API is available for Office365 accounts? I'm not a developer, but I'm trying to do our overworked dev team a favor and at least try to find some information to point them at, and I'm striking out hard. I may just be looking in the wrong places, or I might just be down with the Friday's.

For content, a ticket that didn't piss me off.

Emergency ticket from a client at 11:00 pm last night, none of their users could get on the system. Followed up 2 minutes later by another one saying "our bad, internets out here, sorry to have wasted your time, have a great weekend!". I love it when people actually call back and let you know! Makes life better.

Exchange web services is what you're looking for.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2013 19:36

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Make them give you a money order because you've had difficulties getting money from them in the past.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2013 17:21

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

bort posted:

/\ /\ beat up sales first, this guy's right
Do that and Tweet it with something sarcastic about HP quality. That might get HQ's attention, since they generally have someone watching that stuff now.

I've done this to both dell and HP successfully.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2013 21:30

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

rolleyes posted:

I recall consumer backup solutions being discussed in this thread before, so I'm hoping someone can jog my memory.

I've currently got my parents set up with a backup using Microsoft SyncToy, but the speed of the thing is best described as 'glacial'. It's now at the point where it takes over 24 hours, and we're not talking about much stuff here (20gb tops) and it's only inspecting file dates/times, not contents.

So... what other options are there? Free is preferred, but if there's some magic paid software out there which can turn 24 hours into 2.4 hours then I'd certainly give it some thought.

Crashplan?

# ¿ Oct 6, 2013 20:17

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

GreenNight posted:

Oh good loving lord. My boss just told me to start looking at Hyper-V to replace our 4 node VMWare cluster because it would save us $12,000 a year in licensing.

Hyper-v on 2012 isn't totally worth killing yourself over! It'll be ok!

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 16:20

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Sickening posted:

I find it hilarious when experienced admins take it personal when they don't have local admins rights on their machines. People who should understand the need to have standardized configurations across the enterprise for all the reasons they are necessary.

Lookit this guy who doesn't run all standardized configurations in VMs so that he can test everything with snapshots.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2013 20:38

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

guppy posted:

Very few people are offering a convenient in-house option for (offsite) online data access. We offer VPNs to our employees, but we make them jump through stupid hoops to get an account, and it's way less convenient to use than Dropbox. Consequently, every time I turn around one of my users is using Dropbox instead. I warn them not to put confidential data on it any chance I get, but I shudder to think of how many people just haven't told me they're using it.

Just check with PDQ Inventory or powershell? I get a notification from powershell if anyone ever manages to get a nonstandard application installed.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2013 23:08

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

We have a Trend IWSVA that does https decryption. I don't have that functionality enabled because I don't give a poo poo who goes to facebook.

http://docs.trendmicro.com/all/ent/iwsva/v5.5/en-us/iwsva_5.5_olh/about_https_decryption.htm

We have a few managers who keep trying to get us to block all sorts of random sites when they see an underling use them, but the answer for anything that doesn't degrade network performance/risk damaging us/etc is "stop reading harry potter slashfiction at work you idiots", not to find a technological solution to a human problem.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2013 17:52

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Who gives a poo poo? :dings:

# ¿ Oct 19, 2013 00:15

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

mysteryberto posted:

I have my personal email address as : MRmylastname@gmail.com

Emails about children learning classes
Window coating treatments
Drug testing urinalysis appointment times
Bank deposit confirmations

In each case I have sent an email saying that they have reached the wrong person.

I have firstinitiallastname@gmail.com, with my last name being pretty common, and I get probably 5-10 emails a week. Loads of sensitive medical/financial stuff.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2013 05:23

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Entropic posted:

In my experience UAC largely just taught users to be even more blindly cavalier in auto-clicking OK to security warnings. At least the Vista iteration of it.

Our administrative/clerical users can't do anything that requires elevation. At all.

Feels good.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2013 15:08

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

peak debt posted:

It's a bit negligent to not block exe attachments your incoming emails though.

What if a client sends me one though?

# ¿ Oct 25, 2013 13:05

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

GreenNight posted:

Then have them rename it to .001 or something. Blocking exe files should be mandatory.

Ack I was kidding this is terrible too

# ¿ Oct 25, 2013 14:07

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

blackswordca posted:

So a bunch of emails came in.

Apparently eight of our clients got hit with Cryptolocker this morning. Most of them have proper backups but it is looking like one or two do not. Some of the other techs have been emailing back and fourth about how to decrypt the files without paying the ransom. My reply of "Unless you can crack RSA-2048 encryption, you aren't" got me in trouble for being 'non-helpful"

"hey guys, it should just be a matter of breaking the encryption on it, they foolishly provided you with the public key in the registry at [path] so it shouldn't be too hard

# ¿ Oct 28, 2013 17:04

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

blackswordca posted:

Apparently we setup an email box for clients to forward suspicious attachments to. We are also setting up a machine, off the network, to test the attachments to see if they are viral or not.

Im thinking about taking bets on how long it is until we have an internal infection

Just forward all email from all mailboxes to that machine, and if it's clean someone can just save those emails to a folder on the right user's workstation for them to check later!

# ¿ Oct 28, 2013 19:42

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 11:25

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA: May 29, 2008

Entry level clerk with a BYOD phone attached to their account.

(The most demanding user in my entire organization is a administrative entry-level clerk who will barge into a meeting with half a dozen of the firm's partners while I'm giving a presentation to say that she can't send an email that isn't even related to work)

# ¿ Oct 28, 2013 19:57

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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