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anthonypants posted:I'm not a tax guy, but it is about six months after, so maybe six-month extensions need to be filed in a couple weeks? But between the "tax season" thing and the "limiting incoming connections while incoming connections are important" thing, I think the second thing is much worse. I used to do IT at a tax consulting firm that handled corporate taxes (and some businesses like partnerships and sole proprietorships that go on the individual's taxes). You've got it right. Corporate tax = 3/15 Individual tax = 4/15 Corporate tax extensions = 9/15 Individual tax extensions = 10/15 "Tax season" for us was pretty much February 1 through April 15, and August 1 through October 15. Meant there were about five months out of the year that vacations and whatnot were frozen out 
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Oct 3, 2013 23:18
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My former job didn't have anything as stupendously old as a P3-450 box (although they DID have a typewriter!), but what they lacked in age they certainly made up for in messiness! If you guys can con Drighton into posting pictures of it, you'll get a laugh.
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Oct 10, 2013 16:00
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Drighton posted:Alas most of it has been cleaned up and I never took any pictures. Even if I did, this is a very paranoid and litigious company, so I'm extra careful about what I post. No way! Did He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named finally get yelled at about the condition of your storage? Did that giant cabinet filled with 710m's finally get nuked? And he kept the typewriter? Oh man, I'm dying of laughter here 
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Oct 10, 2013 19:17
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Inspector_71 posted:Typewriters are awesome, and I would totally keep one in my office if I had either an office or a typewriter. If I had a manual typewriter, I would totally (and unironically) assign it to people as a loaner machine in the event of user-created damage.
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Oct 10, 2013 20:22
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:I know this, it's why I'm mad. Suck it up, twinkle-tits. That's how it gets done in the real world. That sort of "here's my personal CV resume domain webpagestravaganza" only works in the creative sector (like marketing or graphic design). HR people don't give a poo poo: they need a Word/PDF thing that they can run through their digital OCR scanner, eliminate resumes without certain keywords, and pass on to the hiring manager after a very cursory once-over that takes them a few seconds. Job-hunting in this economy (where there are significantly more job-seekers than job-opportunities) is about not giving HR/HA's a reason to eliminate you, which is exactly what your fancy-pants personal website does.
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Oct 17, 2013 14:03
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Humphreys posted:First speeding ticket in 5 years on the way home to have a celebratory beer. Better on the way to the beer than after you've had the beer. Because the only thing better than a celebratory beer is a celebratory DUI 
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Oct 22, 2013 14:05
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nitrogen posted:Hell, here in Texas we'll go back and fourth from no coat to winter coat multiple times in a week in Fall and Spring. How dare you?
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Oct 22, 2013 17:28
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MF_James posted:^--- 4 10's is nice depending on what you do Still great, in theory, because you have a day off for things like errands or just sitting at home playing with your balls. But because of the incredible convenience of my job (2 mile, 5-10 minute commute) and easy pacing, I don't have a lot of incentive to work 10 hour days just to get an arbitrary day off. I appreciate only having to work 8 hours a day, especially after my last job was pretty much mandatory 10 hour days for FIVE days a week.
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Oct 22, 2013 21:00
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Raven457 posted:... Have you ever worked at a help desk? I can't recall a single one I worked at where management actually encouraged this type of activity. The focus is always on having a low ASA (average speed of answer) and a low call handle time. When the choices were make numbers and keep my steady paycheck or actually give a poo poo and get bad schedules, management riding my rear end, or laid off, guess what I did? This is true. This is also unfortunately a short-sighted thing to do, usually suggested by super-smart "business consultants" with MBA's who've never really had to interact with a helpdesk. They miss the point. When I call a helpdesk, I'm not as concerned about with how long I had to wait (within reason). I'm more concerned with, once I get someone, getting my problem solved effectively. The overall user experience is what's most important, and getting rushed into an unsuccessful conclusion (oh hey wait for a desktop person to get there because I have to get off the phone immediately okthxbye) isn't the way to get there.
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Oct 25, 2013 14:42
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Here's a bitch: IT users with access to the ticketing system that try to make their issue more important. We have a priority matrix based on two factors: impact and urgency, both on a 1-3 scale. Impact level 1 is like a major Exchange outage, level 2 is a group or team impacted like their network share is rejecting their permissions, and level 3 is something like a single user can't log in to the VPN. Urgency is on a similar type of scale. Based on those two factors, your ticket gets a ranking of 1-4: 1 is only if both impact and urgency are 1's. So mister IT jackass who thinks your VPN token being rejected constitutes a BUSINESS CRITICAL OUTAGE, go gently caress yourself. Watch me joyfully knock your ticket down to a 4 while I kick it back to the service desk because I'm not the loving solver group. Edit: Important to note that non-IT users can't change priorities. wintermuteCF fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Oct 28, 2013 |
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Oct 28, 2013 22:26
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Documentation at my current job is very very very sorely lacking, and as the new guy on board, this is particularly annoying. This caused a fun issue yesterday where we had a lot of new hire requests come in with the wrong name listed as the manager. Keep in mind this is a 6000-7000 user organization, so it's not possible to know everybody, or even everybody in various management roles. So from the data given, this non-manager was listed in the manager fields in the new hire request forms. Before I created the new accounts, I even checked this guy out, and lo and behold, he has a large number of people already listed as reporting to him in AD with the same title as the new people, so it looks perfectly normal. EXCEPT OH NO HE'S NOT THE MANAGER! Someone in HR hosed up the requests and put in the recruiter as the manager as opposed to whomever it was really supposed to be. So when the next step in the process occurred - directory access and apps approvals that run through the manager - the "wrong" guy approved them. And you may ask - is any of this written down? Anything at all? Nope! You're just expected to "know" it already. Best part? I've already identified to my leadership (InfoSec manager and IT Gov) that we need better documentation and have volunteered to take on the responsibility for documentation and they've agreed with me. I'll just be essentially starting from scratch, and of course that didn't help me yesterday.
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Oct 29, 2013 15:56
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Moey posted:The amount of wasted money I see in my job (county government) makes me cringe. Moving things from one location to another costs them nothing as long as they get you to do it!
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Oct 29, 2013 15:57
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Nativity In Black posted:Got a call from a headhunter yesterday wanting to put me in a helpdesk position at an area bank. The pay is better and it's less than a mile from my house, but I'd be going from a full time salaried position to a contract. The guy assures me that this thing will be going for a year or so and they hire people all the time but I think I've heard this too many times to trust. I may go to the interview and hear it from the horses mouth before I give up though. How big is the raise in pay? Compare like-for-like yearly expected earnings. Budget about $5k or so for other things like healthcare and no paid time off. Then see if the math works out. Ex. Going from $40,000 annually on salary to $23.00/hour. Is it worth it? On face, sure! $40k converts to $19.23 hourly (2080 working hours in a year). Put differently, $23/hour converts to $47840 assuming no time off, 5 days a week every week. Realistically, most offices are closed on holidays, and you might get sick, or you will want a day off to take care of [car repair / doctor appointments / taking the cat to the vet / whatever], so it might be more accurate to assume 2000 or 1960 hours. At that point, you're down to $45k annually. Then you have healthcare costs, other incidental benefits, etc. The math gets murky when you really start to pull the numbers through the wringer. Plus you have to assume that the lack of implied permanence with a contract means your job is easier to cut. That said, at the helpdesk level (and I'm assuming tier 1 or tier 2 here), the lack of implied permanence may lead you to always be looking for a better job, which is a good thing. Don't get complacent at the helpdesk level. If you get a pay raise, take it, work the new job, and use that higher pay rate to get a better paying job later on. Edit: Moey, you're just the best.
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Oct 29, 2013 16:13
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Bob Morales posted:Remember stuff like going 6 months without 401k contributions and crap like that Yes, the calculus gets very confusing after a point. The bottom line is that you have to really weigh all the advantages and disadvantages. There are good reasons to leave a salaried position for a contract job, and there's never one correct answer for all situations. I left a salaried desktop lead position for a contract sysadmin role because I'd have better and more flexible hours, a 50% rise in hourly pay, more interesting work, and to join a better organization with more potential for advancement and professional development. It was worth it to me in my particular scenario and at this point in my life, but it may not be the right move for someone who needs health insurance (or worse, has dependents who need it).
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Oct 29, 2013 16:50
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MF_James posted:Most of the printer hate is because of the personal printers people have to support Hence, "gently caress printers" becomes a catch-all meme for us.
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Oct 31, 2013 16:11
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mewse posted:The fact that he wants a written assurance from you is fine, but the fact that he's functionally illiterate is not. Also the fact that he seems to be stringing computer words together without any idea how they relate to each other (Mother board! Corruption! Operating system! Firmware! Inaccessible dive!) Don't let this detract from the fact that the idiot asking for "pear reviewed" stuff IS functionally illiterate, but by a hilarious stroke of luck there is something relevant: http://www.uoguelph.ca/peartool/ "Peer Evaluation, Assessment, and Review" A broken clock is still right twice a day!
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Nov 6, 2013 15:09
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Well, it took five weeks for me to see my first incidence of this at my new job, but we've finally seen the first egregious CC game played. "Oh what's that? I don't like the answer IT gave me (even though it's totally accurate), so I'm just going to send an email to the head of IT and ask him to help me!"
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Nov 7, 2013 15:00
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caiman posted:Ha, I had this exact thing the other day. Terminate your address with a \ and Outlook will fix the link. Example: \\server\share\two words\ will link the whole thing. Or you could just put in a proper link? It's not hard.
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Nov 18, 2013 21:32
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Docjowles posted:Finding the latest drivers in a 900000 page document with no filtering ability is marginally better than a site that literally doesn't work, I guess My favorite part is that Dell seems to have it as policy to change the support site infrastructure often enough that it's always relatively new to you. Once you get used to the site's foibles and idiosyncrasies, it changes!
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Mar 18, 2014 18:08
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:For Windows stuff it's just "please troubleshoot this error", followed by seeing if they can figure out how to open the event log. "Here is a common problem with multiple possible causes. Walk me through your troubleshooting process, starting with the simplest solutions and advancing to more difficult ones." Examples: -User calls complaining that they can't access a network drive. -User indicates their wireless isn't working. -Outlook shows Exchange is disconnected. Show me that you can think. Show me that you know how to analyze a problem and look through potential solutions in a sensible order.
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Mar 19, 2014 15:40
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Bob Morales posted:Because if I don't he'll text and then call asking why I'm ignoring him. Sounds like my old boss. This was compounded with the lack of a proper on-call rotation, "everyone's on call " (which means nobody is on call) sort of attitude. In hindsight, that probably was a straight derivation of the company's culture; a bunch of tax consultants who worked crazy hours, so they expected us to support them at crazy hours (nevermind the fact that they had an incentive to work in the form of bonuses, whereas we got nothing).Getting shown the door by that company was the best thing that ever happened.
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Mar 20, 2014 17:14
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Sickening posted:"Help, I am stuck in a well." Should I dig? I think I should dig.
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Mar 20, 2014 20:01
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Daylen Drazzi posted:was just venting about the duplicity of the upper echelons who were apparently just leading us on until such time they could pull the rug out from under us. Try to not be bitter. I don't know the circumstances with your particular case, but sometimes these decisions come from multiple levels higher than your bosses. I know I've seen people get laid off when their bosses said everything is fine, because they didn't know that three levels up at the senior management level, poo poo was going down and not communicated downward.
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Mar 23, 2014 00:11
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Daylen Drazzi posted:You're probably correct. It just seems like right when everything starts to go my way and I'm making really good progress something like this comes along and halts things in its tracks. Murphy is like my personal demon it seems. Oh well, just going to keep plugging away at it and eventually things will work out. I've got my VCP exam scheduled for May 5th, and once I have that I'm confident things will really take a turn for the better job-wise. This is often the kick in the pants needed to get you moving. Let me tell you a story, which I'll keep as short as possible. 14 months ago I was slaving away at a tax consulting firm, underpaid and unappreciated; I was one of two sysadmins, but also the desktop support lead. I tolerated the company because they were OK with me working 3 12-hr days so I could go to school and finish my degree, but the job was otherwise terrible. Stupid childish requests from upper management (like pranks), long hours, plenty of stupid on-call poo poo, and an idiot manager who bent over for every upper management request (no matter how unreasonable). I hated that job, and I mean truly hated that job. Every day that I went into the office, I felt a little bit more miserable, beaten down, and dreaded the feeling that my career had stalled. Last February, they fired me. No official reason was ever given, but I'm certain they tired of me prioritizing school and my personal development over working nonstop for them. My wife and I had the resources to get by on her income, and I focused on finishing school. Fast forward to now. I graduated in December. I got a nice contract gig for Q4 of last year that helped pay bills. And I just landed (and am one week into) a new permanent consulting job that pays 65% more than my old job, plus bonuses, plus a reasonable work schedule, plus chances at advancement and professional development. I told you that story to tell you this. If I hadn't been fired from my old job, I'd probably still be there. I would have stuck it out, graduated, and I might have been looking once I had my degree, but I was so sure that I wouldn't be able to get another job while balancing school that I would have added ten more months of misery and IT-hatred to myself, and I'd still have been making far less money. It felt lovely when it happened (oddly, who would think getting fired from a job you hated would make you feel worse?), and it was definitely not a cakewalk this past year on just the wife's income. But looking back? Getting fired from that job was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Take advantage of this opportunity.
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Mar 24, 2014 15:00
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Rhymenoserous posted:huh. Mine was secured with packing tape to the bottom of my old case.
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Mar 24, 2014 16:46
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Assorted poo poo (for reference, I'm consulting with the Exchange team at a company) 1. Helpdesk analysts who don't even bother to troubleshoot, then compound their fuckup by not escalating to desktop support. If a user says their Outlook isn't connecting, and the helpdesk didn't bother to look at it (just log-and-routed the ticket), then I don't even want to see the ticket unless it's passed through desktop support because it's probably Outlook, and without troubleshooting, you can't just instantly assume "welp everyone else is fine except this one user, MUST BE A SERVER ISSUE OMG" 2. Lazy-rear end desktop support agents who, when this ticket gets routed to them about a probable Outlook issue, along with a note indicating that it's not likely to be a server issue and rather an issue with the local Outlook client, just reassign the ticket back to the Exchange team. Separate incident: 3. Helpdesk analysts with horrible language skills, for example: "heared" instead of "heard", "explination" instead of "explanation", along with mutilated sentence construction (to the point of being difficult to follow). This is the sort of poo poo I expect a high-school graduate to possess. 4. loving lying users. Just had a ticket escalated up to us (Exchange server support) from the helpdesk because a user is bitching about her archives (which we evault). That's all well and good, and is something I'd look into. The lies start with the user complaining about loads of past tickets that have been mysteriously closed, no responses, the usual complaints bullshit users say to try and get their ticket treated as a priority. Well guess what? I have access to the ticketing system and can look for tickets you raised! And there are only two, one from a April of last year, and another from December of last year; the April ticket is worknoted with emails from the Exchange team and you, indicating a successful resolution and no more issues; the December ticket is closed because the user didn't get back with the Exchange team in a reasonable timeframe (two weeks of dead silence).
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Mar 28, 2014 16:32
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Sickening posted:All those words and the only thing I can pay attention to is that you are on the "exchange team". I would think its too bizarre to go into work and know you are only going to be supporting the enterprise in one specific skill set. I don't know if it would be great or boring. I'm an outside consultant. My company helping their messaging team handle an Exchange migration from 2003 to 2010. We touch handful of other systems out of necessity (AD, Enterprise Vault, BES, Lync), but our project is Exchange and that's the bulk of our work here. e: and it's a little bit great and a little bit boring, so you're on the money with the ambivalence. On the one hand, it annoys me that I touch so few systems, on the other hand, with this client that's a good thing (because if their other systems are as big a mess as their Exchange cluster, I'm not sure I want to go near them). The good news is that once this project is over, I go consult with some other company, doing any number of things. It's not a bad gig.
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Mar 28, 2014 16:59
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So CitizenKain, I'd be interested to know if you work for a company whose name is three letters and does engineering and was famous for doing logistics for the Army in Iraq, because my dad's company just killed off their BES (I think the deadline is tomorrow) and is giving employees an allowance for buying a new smartphone so they can use ActiveSync via MobileIron. Don't get me wrong, I approve of ActiveSync and BYOD (I'd hate carrying a second phone). I don't know much about MobileIron or other MDM solutions, my current company and previous companies have just used the ActiveSync features built into Exchange 2010 - even our client who is 20k users uses Exchange without MDM. What annoys me, and annoys my dad, isn't the MobileIron, it's that they make the company email run through Touchdown instead of the native iOS client. iOS has such a nice Exchange client, and Touchdown was a piece of poo poo the last time I looked at it.
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May 8, 2014 16:48
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Inspector_666 posted:Touchdown for Android is nice and I vastly prefer that to using the native app since if, for whatever reason, they do a remote wipe you don't lose any of your personal data on the phone. I won't argue with this on Android, because the native "Email" app on Android has poo poo Exchange integration and is pretty much garbage. Or was, the last time I really tried to use it was on my old Nexus S, so they could have fixed some of the things I hated about it.
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May 8, 2014 17:32
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:"Hey Bob, can you open this email? I tried opening the fedex invoice but it doesn't do anything. Maybe my machine is having problems." Fixed: "Hey Bob, can you open this email? I tried opening the fedex invoice but it doesn't do anything. Maybe my machine is having problems. But I'm not going to contact IT, those guys don't know what they're talking about anyway!"
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May 9, 2014 14:15
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Mutar posted:Let me ask you guys something - how would you react to a mobile email policy of "BYOD, no subsidy"? With all the companies in the world looking to dump BES service I've heard that this is something that people are seriously looking at, and I'm wondering if my reaction (namely FUUUUUUCK THAT) is normal or if I'm spazzing out a bit. I put my work email on my phone for my own benefit, not the company's. It keeps me informed, I can put out small fires before they become disastrous conflagrations, and I can communicate better. The fact that the company pays me a bit of money (really just enough to cover the data plan) is a bonus. That said, if there was no subsidy, then if I don't want to put company email on my phone, I don't feel like I can be required to do so. And any expectation of "we must be able to reach you" can go fly a kite. You want me always available? At least pay for the tool that allows me to be.
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May 9, 2014 16:28
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poo poo pissing me off today: Broken Lync! Broken Enterprise Vault! Leftover nausea from last night's vomit-and-diarrhea food poisoning funfest!
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May 9, 2014 17:13
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mewse posted:Web design is so frustrating because everybody is an expert "If I can make a Word document I can make a website, right?"
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Jun 12, 2014 16:39
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