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?

«‹›20 »

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

"Ok so I put together a Dell that will handle everything you need for about $540 before tax and shipping."
"Oh wow, that's great! I was expecting to have to spend $1000 at least!"
"Nope, desktops haven't been that much in a while now."
"Wow, that's great. So can we get a cheaper one?"

It's official, my mother has become every bad customer rolled into one.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2013 03:28

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 2, 2024 05:40

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

SEKCobra posted:

MOTY outta there as soon as you can, that customer sounds horrible!

At least with family support you can sigh heavily and go "No. Are you being serious right now?"

# ¿ Sep 30, 2013 05:09

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

rolleyes posted:

Here's what I worry about : with all of the revelations about what the megalomaniacs at the NSA have been up to (potential backdoors inserted into industry standard NIST algorithms, or even deliberately compromising the design from the outset, etc) exactly how long is it going to be until someone figures out how to exploit those same weaknesses? I reckon there's going to be a point in the next couple of years where anything encrypted with one of those algorithms today might as well be in pain text.

I know someone's going to say "but password encryption should be one way only" (i.e. hashed) and I agree, it should, but this is Adobe we're taking about so it probably isn't. Plus the credit card numbers definitely won't be.

I don't think the problem is as bad as you make it out to be. I mean, AES has been studied and poked and prodded for over a decade now and still can't be reliably cracked.

There is a good block of text about this from GigaOM via Businessweek about this exact issue in the context of Silent Circle changing their crypto. I am by no means any sort of crypto expert though, so I'm just relying on Professor Alan Woodward knowing his poo poo in this case.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2013 23:26

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

I've been a fan of Microsoft Office for a while, ever since I kind of realized that I understand Outlook and it isn't just a constant cause of shittiness for me.

I mean, yeah, sure, it has totally cryptic errors and the fix for anything too bad is usually "just reinstall everything" but generally it was low-stress for me.

Until tonight.

gently caress Office 2013. When it works I love everything about it but installing it is such a motherfucker with its completely asinine licensing scheme, "Hang on gotta download everything" and "I am done installing by not really!" I wasted five hours tonight installing it on a bunch of computers and then having to roll it back because it couldn't open files on network shares. Godammit.

Inspector_666 fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Oct 9, 2013

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 03:18

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

Oh and the installer on at least 2 computers installed past 100%.

I should have taken a screenshot.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 03:45

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

Typewriters are awesome, and I would totally keep one in my office if I had either an office or a typewriter.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2013 19:57

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

I found an electric typewriter in my basement at home during high school. Whenever I made mix CDs I would type up liner notes using it.

I think I actually wrote at least one essay on it, too.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2013 20:11

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

stevewm posted:

grandfathered free Google Apps account that had a 200 user limit

Holy poo poo that is a sweet deal.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2013 22:54

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

Caged posted:

Yes. I struggled to convince someone that files still needed somewhere to go, and CPU and RAM capacity had to exist, that virtualising didn't just magic resources out of the air.

Well since ~THE CLOUD~ is apparently going to put every hardware manufacturer out of business, it seems pretty obvious that you don't actually need any sort of hardware for anything any more!

# ¿ Oct 16, 2013 03:23

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

evol262 posted:

Don't even apply for those jobs. Think if it like voting with your wallet. Their system is so unreasonable that you refuse to participate.

I did this a few times during my job search. I also figured that if their web stuff was this hosed, I probably didn't want to work in their IT department anyway.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2013 16:20

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

I would be more than willing to give them a copy of my degree but no way in hell is anybody ever looking at my horrible transcript.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2013 20:03

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

Why the hell did Cisco decide to gently caress with the IOS syntax on ASAs? I keep trying to use "do" or typing "sh ip in br" like you do on EVERY OTHER CISCO DEVICE and the ASA just smugly informs me it has no idea what I am asking.

:argh:

# ¿ Oct 22, 2013 15:05

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

Motronic posted:

Because it's not an IOS device? They run PIX OS/Finesse. And used to be even further away in command syntax than they are now.

Oh.

Still seems dumb to make arbitrary changes like that, though.

QPZIL posted:

ASA syntax is even better because you can run enable-level commands from anywhere! Configuring an ACL or interface? Boom, "sh int ip brief" that junk. I will admit that the reverse "int ip"/"ip int" thing is kind of dumb.

I actually like having to use "do" since it means I can be sure I'm not about to commit any actual changes.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2013 16:09

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

Filthy Lucre posted:

My network engineer only learned how to design TDM and refuses to learn IP or Ethernet. I have to double check every circuit he designs because he doesn't understand the concept of trunk ports or what spanning tree does.

Why in gently caress would you ever hire somebody who refuses to learn the protocols used in the vast majority (right?) of networking these days?

# ¿ Oct 23, 2013 01:47

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

BYOD is fine for phones but holy poo poo I would never work anywhere it applied to laptops and poo poo.

Of course, I work for an MSP so I guess I kind of already do...

CatsOnTheInternet posted:

Here's what really baffles, me though: I don't understand the logic behind handing a personal device setup sheet to Joe Sixpack and sending him off to buy a poo poo Compaq at Best Buy. Why am I doing that, when I can buy a pallet of Probooks at predictable bulk pricing with predictable useful life, and stage them all with a known-good config with a few mouseclicks? Where is the cost-savings with BYOD? Where is the labor savings?

A pallet of Probooks shows up on an invoice for somebody. IT's salaries don't. Seriously, if you can boil a decision down to "Will one way create an invoice while the other side won't?" you instantly know why it was made that way.

Inspector_666 fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Oct 23, 2013

# ¿ Oct 23, 2013 21:55

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

Bob Morales posted:

Does FileZilla server for Windows support SCP? SCP and SFTP are two different things right? SCP = 'ssh cp' and SFTP = a whole different ball of wax?

Doesn't Windows just support SCP stuff out of the box? I'm pretty sure I SCP'd some stuff of my "lab" Catalyst to my computer through Putty without having to really set anything else up.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2013 03:26

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

fivre posted:

PuTTY isn't out of the box, but neither is openssh on some distros so whatever.

PuTTY does not do sshd, for that you'd need something like http://sshwindows.sourceforge.net/

Yeah, but I'm saying that outside of installing Putty I don't remember having to set anything else up to SCP stuff from either my switch or maybe the really old PC I tried to setup CentOS on.

But who knows maybe I did have to setup some kind of server and I just don't remember at all.

Unless you're saying the SCP support came through Putty.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2013 03:44

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

FISHMANPET posted:

Putty is an SCP client, you can't make a connect from another computer to Putty. So if you remember logging onto a device and making an SCP connection to your computer running Putty, you're misremembering. You can use Putty to connect to an SCP server and pull the data over, but you can't make an SCP connect to Putty and push the data.

Ah, that would explain it. :downs:

# ¿ Oct 26, 2013 04:06

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

Time Warner just shot up to #1 on my Most Hated list.

45 minutes on hold to speak to a tech about a modem issue.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2013 02:52

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

Sudden Infant Def Syndrome posted:

I once got an urgent "something's wrong, you need to get over here right now!" call from this woman that was a little off her rocker. Getting nowhere with her on the phone I walked over to the building she worked in across the road and found out that her issue was that her battery powered desk fountain stopped working. It might have been out of batteries, I dunno. I just asked if she was serious, and then left to go on lunch.

People try to get me to fix their POTS phones all the time. I flip it over, make sure the cable is plugged in and tell them that's all I can do.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2013 14:25

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

Negromancer posted:

I see nothing wrong with this response.

Neither do I. People need to realize that e-mail can take a bit sometimes.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2013 22:04

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

evol262 posted:

If you're a SMB, managing your own email infrastructure is throwing money away, and there's zero benefit to paying a small shop to manage it instead of just using Office 365 or another hosted service for a flat fee per month.

Yeah, I don't see the appeal of in-house Exchange anymore at all unless you're ~~huge~~ willing and able to give it proper resources. If you don't have the resources to commit to a proper environment for the physical server and the staff to manage it, it will be much more trouble than it can ever be worth.

That goes for any physical infrastructure, really. The amount of times I went to a place at my old job where the "fileserver" crashed, and it turns out the "fileserver" is just some off-the-shelf Compaq running XP Home SP1 sitting in the corner of a closet, with enough dust in it that I literally have to scoop it out was...well it was more than enough to make me write all of this.

Inspector_666 fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Nov 1, 2013

# ¿ Oct 31, 2013 22:34

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

Motronic posted:

The problem with that is (for the fileserver part) you'll have crazy SMB apps that still require a local file server, or worse yet a local MS SQL server. I have some side jobs that are not worth doing in offices like this (and I only do them because these are my friend's businesses). I've tried to find suitable replacements, but nothing has been practical as of yet. One of the worst offenders is in the insurance industry (small family office of agents).

We went from on PC being the "server" when they first asked for help (YEARS ago) to a debian box running samba that was cron jobbing everything to an external drive on a schedule and now on to an SMB RAID 1 NAS solution + MozyPro. I wish I could do better for them, but some of the crap they need to run is ancient and no one is making suitable SaaS replacements. At least not a year or so ago the last time I got called for help that took long enough that I revisited the basic problem and potential solutions.

I know it's easy to say "there has to be a way to move them off of <x>" and while that may be true in a technical sense.....these places aren't interested in moving in many cases or it's financially burdonsome. Mom & Dad have been using the same drat software to do the same things for a couple of decades and it works for them. They are ready to retire in the next decade or less and have no interest whatsoever in learning new software. Forcing Win 7 on them because they needed new desktops was bad enough.

Fortunately, there no real money to be made in these markets so most of us (who aren't suckers for their friends) won't have to deal with that mess.

Yeah but if you have to run that server, at least put it on a shelf and try to dust the room every now and then or something. I'm not saying "Oh if you can't afford a full rack and separate redundant power you should just use Dropbox you loving plebes" but you also can't just ignore your infrastructure responsibilities, especially if whatever is on that one box is mission critical.

Which of course it always was. Which of course would never have backups. And of course the people never want to pay for updated hardware even when the existing poo poo is dead/dying, it's always just "Well fix this one!"

Again, at my old job I once had to restart a Server 2003 box and before doing it I straight up told the business owner "Listen, there is a very real chance that this thing will simply not come back on." This was one of the few times we knew we had good backups, so that's not quite as apocalyptic as it sounds, but the guy I told it too still refused to buy a new server even though he readily admitted that "if" (it was when) this one died he would pretty much be out of business.

Inspector_666 fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Oct 31, 2013

# ¿ Oct 31, 2013 22:55

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

evol262 posted:

Document retention and confidentiality is no worse on hosted email. If you don't have in house expertise, you're probably safer hosted with Google than with "Bob, IT consultant" grasping the nuances of SOX.

Your lawyer comment is a bit . If there's one thing the NSA stuff should have showed you, it's that you're no safer on servers you host yourself, and security requires that you use GPG or another encryption method yourself on the actual text. Anything across the wire is questionable unless they only used self-signed certs and the client did as well. Illegal discovery still applies regardless.

Google and Microsoft don't get their fiber cut. We had ours cut at my first job. Then the copper two weeks later. Hosting yourself isn't a safety net from municipal workers.

I think ~~he missed my point~~ I totally misstated my point. I'm not saying "Don't host your own stuff unless you're a 1000+ person multinational." I'm saying "Don't host your own stuff unless you're going to respect the upkeep it requires." His examples actually kind of make my point for me, since if either of those businesses just setup an Exchange box and have somebody's nephew who is "good with computers" run it, they're going to be in a world of loving hurt, as you said.

Inspector_666 fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Nov 1, 2013

# ¿ Nov 1, 2013 02:52

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

Syano posted:

There are still tons of reasons to run in house exchange and doing so is easier than ever if you have any sort of competent on site staff.

Yeah, sorry, I didn't realize I actually did say "huge" in my initial post.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2013 03:45

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

Potato Alley posted:

Problem is, it appeals to shareholders, because it creates short-term profits, which is all they care about.

One of the more interesting things I've heard is that Amazon plans on a 7-year out timescale, because no one else is competing with that viewpoint, and it's enabled them to really become the powerhouse they are precisely because they're not focused on the short-term. They sink almost all their profit back into the business, and basically make very little quarter-to-quarter, but because of all that reinvestment, they keep growing even huger and becoming, if not the 800-lb gorilla in certain markets, at least a major player.

"Wall Street" (using that as a descriptor for a monolithic bloc is pretty dumb but it gets the point across) loving hates Bezos for never making a profit, but they loving love him for the absurd revenue figures Amazon delivers. Bezos pretty much tells them all to get hosed when they bitch about the profit figures.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2013 00:33

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

Powdered Toast Man posted:

OK, I think using a computer to cool off your beef stew is completely new to me. I'm pretty impressed.

I would imagine it would also fill the food with dust.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2013 18:21

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

Dick Trauma posted:

I know people hate printers, but executive assistants have to be a close second place.

One usually leads to the other.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2013 18:15

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

Holy poo poo I just dealt with the new Linksys config interface and gently caress. that. Everything takes three times as long as it should, and it doesn't show you all sorts of handy info like the loving WAN IP.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2013 19:06

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

underlig posted:

There isn't a moanmyip tab?

It ended up not really being a problem since I was having to set the thing up double-NAT'd behind an ISP's modem/router combo unit, and I was trying to DMZ the thing, so I had to assign it a static one anyway. But still, how do you not have that info show up somewhere?

# ¿ Nov 15, 2013 20:14

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

It's loving astounding how lovely scanner technology is, given that you can plus a camera into any computer and use it with pretty much no fuss whatsoever.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2013 20:00

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

Edit: nope, I'm dumb.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2013 20:35

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

Bob Morales posted:

Get one of those cell extender things you plug into a network port.

I got to setup an AT&T one of them in the basement of a house once. Of course, if the unit can't get a GPS fix, it won't fully turn on (E911 purposes, apparently). However, apparently it only needs an initial GPS fix and unless the power is turned off, will retain that location and work just fine no matter where it actually ends up.

The solution was to setup a UPS in the kitchen, wait until the cell unit was fully on and then unplug the UPS and run downstairs and plug it back in.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2013 15:46

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

Caged posted:

Do they not have a provision for an external GPS antenna hidden under a plastic cap or something?

There is a port for an "antenna" but I dunno if that's for GPS or more cell reception or what, because apparently AT&T doesn't actually make anything that plugs into said port.

Also even an external GPS receiver would have been pointless since the entire house was reinforced concrete, and we would have had to get somebody drill a hole through the exterior wall to thread anything. The unit needed a UPS anyway, so the solution wasn't really excessive in the end.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2013 15:51

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

gently caress printers.

Why the gently caress can't these massive MFC units give you any useful error information? Doesn't matter what the problem is, all it will say is that it failed.

Oh gee, thanks.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2013 19:30

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

thebigcow posted:

The two Toshibas we've had like to give numerical error codes without providing a list of what they mean. It took some searching to find out that 0050 on a fax meant busy signal, everything else meant a line condition problem.

This wasn't wasn't quite as bad as a lot of others since we already knew the problem was network connectivity going in, but the other month I was trying to get scanning to an SMB share working and it just kept saying "FAILED."

No reason. Not "Path not found", not "Username/password incorrect" not anything about rights issues. Just that the scan job failed. loving thanks, I didn't realize the scans weren't going through before you told me!

# ¿ Nov 23, 2013 04:31

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

mewse posted:

Those things will never, ever get re-used in any respectable capacity

Plus, they're punchdown blocks. I would rather they cut them right at the connector so that there's still enough slack in the wall to redo them if necessary.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2013 01:17

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

Paladine_PSoT posted:

What the engrish? DONT USE IT DUDE!!! Send it to Blacksword, let that mess solve itself.

Well he can use it, just not beyond usage.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2013 18:40

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

QuiteEasilyDone posted:

You may laugh, but we wound up having to replace everything at a clients server room because of dirty power... That we had built out a week prior. Everything

Shouldn't any UPS worth using in a server room clean up the incoming power?

# ¿ Dec 3, 2013 01:40

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 2, 2024 05:40

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

QuiteEasilyDone posted:

You're presuming that both UPS devices on both racks are functioning out of the box. Current fried them both crispy.

Edit Both devices were on brand, brand new devices. Both had been tested before deployment for functionality in our lab and both died within a week

drat, that's some hosed up power.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2013 05:32

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?

«‹›20 »