Shit that you come across daily that pisses you off

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware / Software Crap > Shit that you come across daily that pisses you off

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

c0burn posted:

Do realplayer videos still do this on Vista? I don't even have the plugin installed any more.

Who knows? Real Alternative and MPC have put an end to RealPlayer for me once and for all. I don't miss it.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 02:12

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# ? May 19, 2013 14:01

Midelne: Jun 19, 2002; I shouldn't trust the phones. They're full of gas.

Ryokurin posted:

Then you'll have the problem I used to have. getting them to type in what you tell them when they want to find it on intranet homepage.

How do you get to the timesheet website again? I keep forgetting!
type in timesheet in the browser addressbar.
how do you get to it from the intranet homepage?

It actually is easy to find. there's a drop down that has "Enter my time" that no one ever sees, or interacts with, and if you attempt to get them to find it (its right in the middle of the page) the call that should have been over in 30 seconds is now a 5-10 minute call while they find it, verify it works, verify that they can log in, that it takes their time correctly and on and on. Its not just filling out time, its just about anything that's in that list. Its a big hand holding.

I was having a similar issue with this when the IT department from our new parent company sent out a badly-worded instructional email on how to connect to their mandatory training sessions and everyone was working with the wrong shortcut that took twice as long and four times as many clicks to get to the login screen. At first I was trying to fix it -- playing find-and-replace on a lot of desktops for the shortcuts they'd been instructed to create.

Then I thought hey, gently caress it, and used group policy to push out an IE7 favorite before emailing everyone in the company with instructions on how to use it whether they needed it or not.

I got a lot of positive feedback on that one.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 02:33

AcridWhistle: Aug 20, 2003; Feasting on the flesh of a recently killed zombie probably wasn't the smartest of moves

Midelne posted:

Then I thought hey, gently caress it, and used group policy to push out an IE7 favorite

I got a lot of positive feedback on that one.

My users won't use the favorites and still type in the url wrong

# ? Dec 22, 2008 03:42

Larry Horseplay: Oct 24, 2002

bell biv devoe posted:

poo poo that I come across every holiday that pisses me off;

People who don't think until they're out of town on vacation to call me up and 1; Ask how to get on the VPN, 2; Ask for VPN access, 3; Ask for that one critical file on their workstation.

To be fair, and this was NOT during a holiday but rather last summer, I found out the hard way my laptop didn't have wireless.

I was in CA (work in Chicago) for a conference, and opened my laptop offsite to get some critical info... to find out my laptop's wireless was disabled. Worse, I couldn't enable it without admin access. While the admin is about 1,000 miles away. Fortunately, my IT department knows who I am since I'm one of the developers, and seem to be pretty chill with me, so they gave me the local admin password over the phone, I enabled wireless, saved the day etc. etc. etc.

Now, the geek part of me wants to smack myself for not testing wireless before I got on the plane. The other part of me, the one that now uses Macs at home and programs in Cocoa, just figured, hey it's wireless, I have an icon in my systray, the IT department wouldn't be dumb enough to group policy kill wireless, blah blah blah blah blah. (I don't really blame IT. most laptops in the org leave twice a year, otherwise they sit in a port replicator in an office. It would be easy to overlook wifi until it was too late.)

# ? Dec 22, 2008 06:12

Zhentar: Sep 28, 2003; Brilliant Master Genius

As long as we're talking about wireless, gently caress you, Netgear WG311T. I have one in a computer I've been using off and on as an HTPC for a couple years. Not once has it given me high enough throughput to stream a movie from a network drive without stuttering. I've tried different drivers, in Ubuntu, XP, and Vista, and yet it's always barely in range of a router 30 feet away (with a 9dBi antenna and boosted Tx power). Meanwhile, my laptop sitting next to it can get throughput 5-10 times higher without complaint.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 06:50

c0burn: Sep 2, 2003; The KKKing

People who call up with a problem and are in the middle of a reboot. And it's their 3rd reboot, but they're doing it again, just because.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 09:37

ProjektorBoy: Jun 18, 2002; I FUCK LINEN IN MY SPARE TIME!

bell biv devoe posted:

poo poo that I come across every holiday that pisses me off;

People who don't think until they're out of town on vacation to call me up and 1; Ask how to get on the VPN, 2; Ask for VPN access, 3; Ask for that one critical file on their workstation.

My company makes VPN extra awesome because there's about 3 ways that people can get hosed over trying to get on it.

(1) Not being in the proper global group. We have to fill out a form on behalf of the user, which then gets submitted to their manager to approve it. Then once it's approve it gets sent off to our account administrators who put the user in the global group. Yes, I work for a company that doesn't let its helpdesk add/remove global groups.

(2) User is in the correct global group, but their laptop doesn't have the VPN software. Lo and behold, the VPN software can only be dispensed when the user is on the corporate LAN! So if they're off the network they're 100% hosed. The custom software package installer is too large for e-mailing and the deep-scanning of attachments would block it anyway.

(3) User is in the correct global group, their laptop has functioning VPN software and they just logged in. OH WAIT THIS SYSTRAY APP TELLS THEM THEY'RE hosed. Whenever the VPN tunnel kicks in, there's a secondary piece of software that audits the system for a certain set of minimum requirements (antivirus, antivirus being no more than 3 days out of date, data-loss-prevention software, patcher software, and company-specific registry keys).

If any one of those requirements is not met then their VPN connection is in restricted mode. Despite being connected us help desk agents can't even remote in to manually correct the problem. Not through PCAnywhere, or Netmeeting, or Remote Assistance. Nothing will work. They either have to haul their butts back into the office so we can fix/test, or just trust in the automated tool that our network architects put in place.

It's amazing that the poo poo even works at all.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 10:41

c0burn: Sep 2, 2003; The KKKing

Our VPN solution requires like 4 different applications to be installed and integrating correctly on the end PC. And the firewall solution we use frequently corrupts itself and blocks access to the VPN IP address. It is a beautiful thing.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 10:54

MrMoo: Sep 14, 2000

c0burn posted:

Our VPN solution requires like 4 different applications to be installed and integrating correctly on the end PC. And the firewall solution we use frequently corrupts itself and blocks access to the VPN IP address. It is a beautiful thing.

So that purchase got signed off on technical merit then. Sounds like perfect time to be an rear end and suggest a F/OSS replacement as those commercial guarantees of quality are clearly hard at work

# ? Dec 22, 2008 12:02

Scikar: Nov 20, 2005; 5? Seriously?

fartmastr posted:

Punkbuster. It currently won't let me connect to Battlefield 2142 servers. The error message is "PUNKBUSTER".

This is short for "we couldn't be arsed to actually finish the punkbuster dialog". There's a pb.log file in your 2142 folder which will have punkbuster's actual error message.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 12:16

Jerk McJerkface: Jan 16, 2004; I think the government should socialize cell phones.They'd have a matrix of your income, social position, and job type, and then assign you a cell phone that is appropriate.

c0burn posted:

Our VPN solution requires like 4 different applications to be installed and integrating correctly on the end PC. And the firewall solution we use frequently corrupts itself and blocks access to the VPN IP address. It is a beautiful thing.

We use Sonicwall Global VPN client for our VPN. A user that thinks he's technical keeps trying to disable/uninstall the virtual adapter because he thinks it hogs resources. And then when he can't VPN he calls us wondering why our network never works.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 13:17

Midelne: Jun 19, 2002; I shouldn't trust the phones. They're full of gas.

Jerk McJerkface posted:

We use Sonicwall Global VPN client for our VPN. A user that thinks he's technical keeps trying to disable/uninstall the virtual adapter because he thinks it hogs resources. And then when he can't VPN he calls us wondering why our network never works.

Sup Sonicwall Global VPN buddy. One of my users drew me a picture of the Sonicwall Global VPN client window on Thursday to explain why he was having trouble connecting. Seriously, he drew the window, labeled all the submenus, the connection status -- everything.

Problem he reported was that nothing happened, but the connection status as drawn was "Connected". Problem resolution was instructing him to click on the Remote Desktop icon to connect to his work computer.

It was a nice picture though.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 17:19

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

I don't interface with them daily, but still way too often.

I call up a tech support number, like for DELL, because of something like a hard drive failing on a server. You know, no big deal.

The phone is answered by some automated system. It says there is a 5+ minute queue, and asks me if I want to instead schedule a time for Dell to call me back. The recording/conversation goes like this:

"Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

"No."

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

"NO."

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

"NO!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

# ? Dec 22, 2008 18:09

h_double: Jul 27, 2001

Xenomorph posted:

The phone is answered by some automated system. It says there is a 5+ minute queue, and asks me if I want to instead schedule a time for Dell to call me back. The recording/conversation goes like this:

My policy with (any) voice-activated phone menu is to relentlessly mash the 0 key until a human is on the line. Usually if you just keep repeating "OPERATOR" that works too.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 18:42

thelightguy: Feb 6, 2007; Well there's your problem.

Xenomorph posted:

"Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

"No."

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

"NO."

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

"NO!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

Next time, just press 2. Almost all of these systems can be operated from the keypad.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 18:45

Midelne: Jun 19, 2002; I shouldn't trust the phones. They're full of gas.

Xenomorph posted:

"Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

If it's anything like a couple other automated voice-recognition systems I've butted heads with in the past, you might be able to get around its inability to recognize your voice by pressing '1' for yes and '2' for no. It's not mentioned in any of the instructions for any of the places that I've had it work for, but it does work on a lot of them.

edit: ^^^ Yeah, what he said.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 18:46

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

It finally said something like "I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you. Please hold while I get someone" ... or something like that.

After 2 more minutes on hold, it hung up on me.

Dell hung up on my several times today.

Their main web page has one phone number listed at the top of the page. When I clicked on a support page, it had another number listed.

I was trying to get help with file a server at a school.

first number listed on website: 1-800-999-3355
second number on site: 1-877-915-3355
"small business" 1-800-456-3355
"high education" 1-800-274-7799
"k/12" 1-888-977-3355
"medium/large business" 1-877-671-3355 (finally got through to someone with this one!)

Each number had a different welcome message and automated system. The first number left me on hold for a long, long time. I figured it was called the most since its the first other people would see, so I hung up to try another number. The second and third numbers hung up on me while I was on hold.
gently caress you Dell.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 19:17

Lovie Unsmith: Mar 19, 2005

h_double posted:

My policy with (any) voice-activated phone menu is to relentlessly mash the 0 key until a human is on the line. Usually if you just keep repeating "OPERATOR" that works too.

http://www.gethuman.com/

# ? Dec 22, 2008 19:48

Runcible Cat: May 28, 2007; A dog? Never!!

h_double posted:

My policy with (any) voice-activated phone menu is to relentlessly mash the 0 key until a human is on the line. Usually if you just keep repeating "OPERATOR" that works too.

It's # sometimes, instead. Or just not pressing a button at all and hoping it was set up to take rotary-dial phones into account.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 19:52

EVGA Longoria: Dec 25, 2005; Let's go exploring!

Xenomorph posted:

I don't interface with them daily, but still way too often.

I call up a tech support number, like for DELL, because of something like a hard drive failing on a server. You know, no big deal.

The phone is answered by some automated system. It says there is a 5+ minute queue, and asks me if I want to instead schedule a time for Dell to call me back. The recording/conversation goes like this:

"Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

"No."

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

"NO."

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

"NO!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

What kind of horrible accent do you have? I've never once had an issue with a phone system that didn't involve rattling off my account number too fast and saying "Oh" instead of "Zero"

# ? Dec 22, 2008 20:08

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

Casao posted:

What kind of horrible accent do you have? I've never once had an issue with a phone system that didn't involve rattling off my account number too fast and saying "Oh" instead of "Zero"

I have whatever horrible accent white people from St. Louis have.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 20:13

Sock on a Fish: Jul 17, 2004; What if that thing I said?

Casao posted:

What kind of horrible accent do you have? I've never once had an issue with a phone system that didn't involve rattling off my account number too fast and saying "Oh" instead of "Zero"

Dell's system has failed to recognize my responses before and I have a Seattle accent, a.k.a. standard American news anchor.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 20:25

boo_radley: Dec 30, 2005; Politeness costs nothing

me: "Yes, I'd be happy to help with your html form".

"HAY THANX"

code:

      <!-- End Table 6-->
    </td>
  </tr>
  <!-- <tr> <td> <hr /> </td> </tr> -->
  </table>
  <table>

Nested eight levels deep.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 21:14

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

Midelne posted:

Sup Sonicwall Global VPN buddy. One of my users drew me a picture of the Sonicwall Global VPN client window on Thursday to explain why he was having trouble connecting. Seriously, he drew the window, labeled all the submenus, the connection status -- everything.

Problem he reported was that nothing happened, but the connection status as drawn was "Connected". Problem resolution was instructing him to click on the Remote Desktop icon to connect to his work computer.

It was a nice picture though.

It had been years since I had touched the VPN client so I was sort of dreading remotely setting it up for a new user via webex. I just knew the second I clicked "connect" it was going to kick me off of my webex session and then I was just going to have to pray that there were no errors and I could walk her through the rest of what to do blind.

Much to my amazement, it not only connected successfully first try, but it didn't disconnect my webex session, either! It was nice, much improved over the last version I tried.

Morlock posted:

It's # sometimes, instead. Or just not pressing a button at all and hoping it was set up to take rotary-dial phones into account.

Slight tangent here... the way our previous phone system worked, whenever somebody would call our office, all 4 of our phones (we're a small remote site) would ring at once. No automated attendant, just rings. Since putting in our new phone system, we asked them to put in a very basic attendant-- "Press 1 for sales, 2 for support." 1 rings our one sales person, 2 rings everybody else.

Apparently, many of our clients have been hanging up immediately, then calling our corporate office and saying "something is wrong with the phones in Louisville" Of course, since they actually have operators to answer the phone there, I don't mind this turn of events one bit. I just find it hilarious.

00 bypasses the attendant and rings all the lines here, but I don't plan on ever telling that to any of our customers.

# ? Dec 22, 2008 21:42

thelightguy: Feb 6, 2007; Well there's your problem.

Sock on a Fish posted:

Dell's system has failed to recognize my responses before and I have a Seattle accent, a.k.a. standard American news anchor.

General American English (a.k.a. Newscaster English) is modeled more after the 1950s Chicago accent. People from the pacific northwest have a very distinct accent, even if it isn't as obvious as, for example, Boston. You guys drop vowels, Bostonians drop the letter 'r'.

And on topic: Vista's method of generating a hardware profile apparently takes into account USB harddrives and PCMCIA network cards... Meaning that I've had to reactivate my system 3 times in as many months.

Why on earth would you count removable devices towards the system's activation?

thelightguy fucked around with this message at Dec 23, 2008 around 02:28

# ? Dec 23, 2008 02:24

Spazz: Nov 17, 2005; Embrace this moment.
Remember, we are eternal.

thelightguy posted:

And on topic: Vista's method of generating a hardware profile apparently takes into account USB harddrives and PCMCIA network cards... Meaning that I've had to reactivate my system 3 times in as many months.

Why on earth would you count removable devices towards the system's activation?

To go with the popular Slashdot tag: defectivebydesign

I usually multitask while I use my laptop. Right now, I have my screen split and I'm watching a TV show while typing this. I also install stuff, and it's annoying when the loving overlay comes up asking "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?" and it freezes the show as I'm watching it. loving annoying.

# ? Dec 23, 2008 02:56

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

So either disable the "secure desktop" or turn off UAC completely.

# ? Dec 23, 2008 02:59

mono: Jul 18, 2003; It's toe-tapping-ly tragic!

Xenomorph posted:

I don't interface with them daily, but still way too often.

I call up a tech support number, like for DELL, because of something like a hard drive failing on a server. You know, no big deal.

The phone is answered by some automated system. It says there is a 5+ minute queue, and asks me if I want to instead schedule a time for Dell to call me back. The recording/conversation goes like this:

"Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

"No."

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

"NO."

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

"NO!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please say 'Yes' or 'No'."

Just one more reason I do the Dell online chats 98% of the time for failed hardware...

# ? Dec 23, 2008 05:29

Tapedump: Aug 31, 2007; Oh, just leave that anywhere...

thelightguy posted:

General American English (a.k.a. Newscaster English) is modeled more after the 1950s Chicago accent. People from the pacific northwest have a very distinct accent, even if it isn't as obvious as, for example, Boston. You guys drop vowels, Bostonians drop the letter 'r'.

Could you give a couple of examples? I don't disagree but would find it interesting to hear the observations of a second party. Thanks.

# ? Dec 23, 2008 05:54

plester1: Jul 9, 2004; I am NOT a merry man!

Tapedump posted:

Could you give a couple of examples? I don't disagree but would find it interesting to hear the observations of a second party. Thanks.

According to http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local..._nwspeak20.html:

quote:

Say 'caught' and 'cot' out loud. If you're a true Northwest speaker, the words will sound identical. Linguists call this the "low-back merger" because we've merged these two vowel sounds. On much of the East Coast, these same words will sound different.

# ? Dec 23, 2008 10:21

Mr. Fix It: Oct 26, 2000; "I never killed a man in my whole life!"

plester1 posted:

According to http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local..._nwspeak20.html:

I don't think merging vowels is the same as dropping them, as the vowel is still said.

# ? Dec 23, 2008 10:55

haljordan: Oct 22, 2004; the corpse of god is love.

Customer: "OH MY GOD I GOT THIS PRINTOUT AND EVERYTHING ON IT IS COMPLETELY WRONG!!"

Me: "OK, no problem. Can you fax that over to me so I can do some research?"

Customer: "Oh I ran it through the shredder, its gone now. Fix it now!!!"

# ? Dec 23, 2008 14:59

Spazz: Nov 17, 2005; Embrace this moment.
Remember, we are eternal.

Users who don't know how to correctly operate the technology they are presented with, so they blame us and expect us to fix a problem that is a user error.

# ? Dec 24, 2008 01:04

Lovie Unsmith: Mar 19, 2005

Spazz posted:

Users who don't know how to correctly operate the technology they are presented with, so they blame us and expect us to fix a problem that is a user error.

I think you just pasted this whole thread into Word and ran the Autosummarize feature.

# ? Dec 24, 2008 01:12

boo_radley: Dec 30, 2005; Politeness costs nothing

sm8000 posted:

I think you just pasted this whole thread into Word and ran the Autosummarize feature.

let's autosummarize that:

autosummarized summary posted:

argle bargle users

recently, it's been Microsoft ISA. Christ, I hate you.

# ? Dec 24, 2008 01:14

Lovie Unsmith: Mar 19, 2005

Here's one that bugs me:

ZIPs, RARs, or other archive files - that contain a folder full of files.

FFS, just put the files in the archive. Otherwise when I unzip it, it's going to create a folder within a folder (with nothing else). Sometimes I remember to delete the last folder off the destination path, sometimes I forget or am too lazy.

# ? Dec 24, 2008 01:19

johndoe7776059: Aug 31, 2001

sm8000 posted:

Here's one that bugs me:

ZIPs, RARs, or other archive files - that contain a folder full of files.

FFS, just put the files in the archive. Otherwise when I unzip it, it's going to create a folder within a folder (with nothing else). Sometimes I remember to delete the last folder off the destination path, sometimes I forget or am too lazy.

I can see the point of having a folder full of files. Otherwise you could accidentally do something like right click-> extract here on your desktop, filling it with a bunch of files. The worst I have ever seen is a rar file, containing a bunch of rar parts, which contained another rar file.

# ? Dec 24, 2008 01:28

Crowley: Mar 13, 2003

johndoe77760 posted:

I can see the point of having a folder full of files. Otherwise you could accidentally do something like right click-> extract here on your desktop, filling it with a bunch of files. The worst I have ever seen is a rar file, containing a bunch of rar parts, which contained another rar file.

Yeah that happens with warez from newsgroups.

Wait, how do I know this?

# ? Dec 24, 2008 01:32

Lovie Unsmith: Mar 19, 2005

johndoe77760 posted:

I can see the point of having a folder full of files. Otherwise you could accidentally do something like right click-> extract here on your desktop, filling it with a bunch of files.

I at least remember to put an archive in a folder first, but yeah I could see that. Heck I think I've slipped up and done that once or twice.

johndoe77760 posted:

The worst I have ever seen is a rar file, containing a bunch of rar parts, which contained another rar file.

# ? Dec 24, 2008 01:56

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# ? May 19, 2013 14:01

Epsilon Plus: Dec 30, 2006; oh lawd

johndoe77760 posted:

The worst I have ever seen is a rar file, containing a bunch of rar parts, which contained another rar file.

I hate that poo poo. I hate it so much. There's no purpose, there is no reason to rar something, re-rar it and split into 16/32/46MB chunks or whatever, and then rar that mess. Stupid.

# ? Dec 24, 2008 04:18

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