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H110Hawk posted:I'm sorry. They wanted something like a web based file repository, i guess. they stopped talking to me after i suggested getting a real dedicated server on campus, and maybe using a smb share system. (We already have like 3 servers for databases and project hosting. File storage and hosting would be trivial.) They wanted to transfer these huge 50 mb data files over http. Those have a tendency to cause timeouts it seems. :P Poor guy couldn't even figure out how to build php with pdf support. I had to do that for him, and I also caught him storing plaintext passwords in the database and not sanitizing input either 
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Dec 3, 2008 09:36
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Seriously though tell them to use a honest to god file transfer client and it should work fine. Our WebFTP or whatever stupid web based program they are using is only there to appease people like my mother. Squeaky wheel and all.
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"User has dropped a cup of water on his laptop keyboard He then attempted to dry it out by leaving it by a heater which has melted some of his keys Now the laptop keyboard is no longer working" 
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Dec 3, 2008 10:05
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Nebulis01 posted:I do enjoy my job but yes IT is the 21st centuries "Mr. Fix-It" At my job we're Mr. Fix-It plus Guardians of the Thermostat.
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Dec 3, 2008 13:45
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People generally feel that way in small shops, or when their 1st/2nd line sucks.
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Dec 3, 2008 14:01
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Had a fun one to deal with recently. Our ticket system decided it was going to be all and just log in users as the 1st user record in the database instead of the correct user (yeah, argh). So one day we accumulated about a dozen work orders for someone who had no idea what we were talking about when we arrived to fulfill them. We have yet to figure out who any of these people are because the work orders are as descriptive as you would imagine they would be, and without being tied to the correct username, there is no identifying information.
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Dec 3, 2008 20:04
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Incident 69151 (Closed) User thought that since he had to change his password (see previous incident) that he also had to change his computer's dial-up number. Thus he removed phone number and entered "random numbers." Gave user correct phone number and confirmed he now can connect.
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Dec 3, 2008 22:13
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At least they gave the error code for this one  Printer won't print when I click on print. Error message pops up "Printer is out of paper for tray 2. Please load paper in tray 2. Printer will pause until paper is loaded" (or whatever the message is in Windows XP). PLEASE HELP !!!! URGENT!!! Happens at least a couple times a year and I have to drive out to do this as we don't remote support users (calling or taking a phone call to troubleshoot and remote desktoping aren't allowed for the most retarded of reasons, but the MAC protected wireless router (thank God there is only one with this setup) is. Sadly this isn't a joke or my users trying to be funny nor is it someone important wanting the job done for them, they just are that incompetent. Usually takes place at a HP 4xxx LaserJet which is displaying a similar message on the LCD screen when they go to pick up their document, the paper is stored on a shelf right underneat the printers too. In case it isn't obvious, I work for the government. 
AcridWhistle fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Dec 4, 2008 |
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Dec 4, 2008 00:20
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AcridWhistle posted:At least they gave the error code for this one  It says out of paper! try loading paper? Why don't you want to help me?Some people just switch off their brains when they sit down at a computer. My awesome call of the day involved a woman that had her notebook in to our shop for impressive amounts of spyware. We cleaned it off and billed her company $$$ for the time. 2 days later: OMG MY COMPUTER SAYS ELEVENTY VIRUSES FOUND WHAT I DO Does it say that in a popup window in your web browser, or is it whatever antivirus software you have installed? I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS THIS IS WHY MY COMPANY PAID YOU GUYS HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS TO FIX THIS ON MONDAY Well, look around. Do you see any antivirus type software installed? I see something called male wear bites something. Ok, let's open that up, and start a scan. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT PLEASE HELP ME ...and so it went. Reading the notes on work orders for PCs that come in is always fun too. Most of the day we have a guy at the front desk. He's ok, but sometimes writes funny things such as: "There is a floater on the screen and it cannot be removed." The chick that's there all day is really special though. One day my buddy Shawn told her that we were going to "un-fail" somebody's connection. The work order read: "Fix unfail dialup".
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Dec 4, 2008 00:39
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One of our new clients doesn't comprehend the fact that all they have to do is hit 'Reply' to the email they get from our help desk software. Instead, they send a new email with a one line response, so I get 20 new tickets created in the span of 5 minutes.
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Dec 4, 2008 00:56
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haljordan posted:One of our new clients doesn't comprehend the fact that all they have to do is hit 'Reply' to the email they get from our help desk software. Instead, they send a new email with a one line response, so I get 20 new tickets created in the span of 5 minutes. I used to use cSupport awhile back. The one thing I liked about it was that as long as the user included the ticket number somewhere in it, it would automatically add the email to the ticket history and email whoever it was assigned to. This way all you have to do is beat it into the users head to include the ticket number.
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Dec 4, 2008 00:59
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Even better is how much bitching I get from my customers when I force them to change passwords EVERY 60 DAYS MY GOD HOW SATANIC. Never mind the fact that we host electronic medical record software that contains literally hundreds of thousands of patient charts. I also find myself explaining why the actual application itself won't let users save passwords & auto log them in.
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Dec 4, 2008 01:05
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haljordan posted:Even better is how much bitching I get from my customers when I force them to change passwords EVERY 60 DAYS MY GOD HOW SATANIC. Never mind the fact that we host electronic medical record software that contains literally hundreds of thousands of patient charts. As long as the password requirements aren't as strict as they are here, I don't see a problem with 60 day expiration.
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Dec 4, 2008 01:50
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m2pt5 posted:As long as the password requirements aren't as strict as they are here, I don't see a problem with 60 day expiration. Yeah but my customers are trapped in a weird time warp zone where 60 days to us is "every other goddamned day" to them, as in "why do I have to change my password every other goddamned day?!"
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Dec 4, 2008 01:55
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I'm studying for a security degree, and password policy was a big topic last quarter. There was much discussion over how to balance between security and usability. I always maintained that if your users can't handle the password policy, get better users.
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Dec 4, 2008 03:04
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ab0z posted:I'm studying for a security degree, and password policy was a big topic last quarter. There was much discussion over how to balance between security and usability. I always maintained that if your users can't handle the password policy, get better users. awwww, you sound so naive. Have you ever worked in IT doing user support? There are no better users.
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Dec 4, 2008 04:38
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Puck42 posted:awwww, you sound so naive. Yes, for a couple years now. And if I was a manager with these clowns working for me, I'd fire them all.
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Dec 4, 2008 04:40
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ab0z posted:Yes, for a couple years now. And if I was a manager with these clowns working for me, I'd fire them all. And who would replace them? In case you haven't noticed, you're not alone in having dumb users. Maybe that's why it's such a common theme?
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Dec 4, 2008 05:05
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my company hires high-school-educated people who know nothing about computers to answer the helpdesk phone and log the cases. the users calling in are mostly foodservice workers who also know nothing about computers, so we get some amazingly bad case titles. - Needs assistance to hook up IP address's - Not able to network card - need to load the softwear onto new computer, what is the best way - Wants to install microsoft patch for microsoft problem - install, but there is already thing there - would like to add the meal plan data to the base, would like assistants on how to do this - register says 173 mg of disc space left - Bookstore needs to troubleshout the UTI: no one knew what UTI meant, and the customer gave us a disconnected number and never called back, so  sometimes the customer gives unnecessary details that end up in the case titles: - need querry for in last 45 days who consummed ham sandwich, they had a recall for that - need password reset, safe door fell off, password was in safe, now cannot find password the worst users can't figure out even the simplest things by themselves: - someones card came up insufficent funds wants to know what it means - they rebooted the register now it will not turn back on she has unplugged the register and plugged back in. resolution: "the power strip was turned off she turned it back on and the register came back up" - printer is sucking report back into printer resolution: "The printer keeps getting paper jam errors. After minor troubleshooting I advised her to contact her IT"
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Dec 4, 2008 06:12
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Then you have the the completely schizoid user submitted ticket: The person that I spoke with yesterday afternoon was a criminal, and another one that I spoke to in the eveing was one too. These people was asking me for personal information. The wanted to format my entire computer. They wanted to put my computer in safe mode networking. My computer has never been in safe mode networking. Networking with who! I realize the person that I was speaking with didn't didn't know what do. He had someone in the background giving him directions. My computer is having problems with your internet service. You know what the problems are and you need to fix these problems. My resume was taking from the internet without my consent. I logged on and you failed to protect me. Like I explained to you in several phone calls. I received a message stating that other people are logged on to my computer. I also told you that a virus was on my computer. The name of that virus is call MSHTA.exe. Activity: The script is attempting to call Reghead method with the IWSHSHELL30bjict file path: mshta.exe status the script executive has been stoped. I got another message why this happened error code: OX80072eff. Vendor need to take care of what they did. I cannot do what is happening on my computer on my end. Another that I notice. All the web addresses are missing. The message that I get is searching the internet at fifteen times. Where did my web addresses go. Who is taking this information inference to what websites I visited. This is illegal and it is against the law.
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Dec 4, 2008 06:19
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bob arctor posted:Then you have the the completely schizoid user submitted ticket: Man, I love timecube-grade crazy tickets.
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Dec 4, 2008 06:45
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Buy or find a copy of "May I help you (dumbass)" as soon as possible and listen to it while you do your T1/T2 ticket jobs. It will keep you sane. http://www.mattbesser.com/dumbass.php
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Dec 4, 2008 07:57
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Griz posted:- Bookstore needs to troubleshout the UTI: no one knew what UTI meant Urinary Tract Infection. Insert cranberry juice.
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Dec 4, 2008 08:13
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ab0z posted:I'm studying for a security degree, and password policy was a big topic last quarter. There was much discussion over how to balance between security and usability. I always maintained that if your users can't handle the password policy, get better users. Or do the sane thing and roll out an SSO solution using one time passwords or PKI. No more password policies needed.
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Dec 4, 2008 12:27
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Ashex posted:I used to use cSupport awhile back. The one thing I liked about it was that as long as the user included the ticket number somewhere in it, it would automatically add the email to the ticket history and email whoever it was assigned to. We send out a nice email from inside of TestTrack. It includes a message at the bottom, "Please do not remove the following line or change the to line, as it will allow your emails to be tracked against your ticket." 9 out of 10 people email it directly to me instead of responding, or CC me on it. 
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Dec 4, 2008 12:35
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ab0z posted:Yes, for a couple years now. And if I was a manager with these clowns working for me, I'd fire them all. Even if they were great at their actual job? We only exist to allow them to work more effectively, if that includes loading paper, so be it.
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Dec 4, 2008 15:24
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sanchez posted:Even if they were great at their actual job? We only exist to allow them to work more effectively, if that includes loading paper, so be it. Pretty much this. Solving business problems with technology, hi-ho! On the other hand there does exist a point at which the people being helped are actively interfering with the ability of the IT department to accomplish anything meaningful in helping the rest of the company -- it's not too unreasonable to hope that someone would learn how to put paper in a printer rather than chew up an hour or two of a technician's time to drive out there, pull the tray with the big "2" on it open, and drop paper in the only place it fits. Well, maybe not the person who managed to submit the urgent ticket with the error message indicating that it was out of paper, but perhaps someone near the desk who is literate.
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Dec 4, 2008 15:39
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You guys have some good points, it's clear to see why I'm not in management.
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Dec 4, 2008 15:59
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Midelne posted:Well, maybe not the person who managed to submit the urgent ticket with the error message indicating that it was out of paper, but perhaps someone near the desk who is literate. I have been actively thwarted when I attempted to do this. It's either "well I already sent the ticket" or "you're not IT" or whatever excuse they can field to avoid being shown to know less about technology than one of the plebians.
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Dec 4, 2008 16:10
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ab0z posted:I'm studying for a security degree, and password policy was a big topic last quarter. There was much discussion over how to balance between security and usability. I always maintained that if your users can't handle the password policy, get better users. Yeahhh I don't think telling our customers (who pay us money) that we don't want their business because they don't like passwords is a very sound economic model.
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Dec 4, 2008 18:11
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I don't work in actual IT, I just handle IT stuff along with another coworker for the other architects in our firm of about 20 people. One of the printers that services the floor above me won't say that an ink cartridge has run out when you try to print, but this shouldn't be a problem because it's in the same room as everyone who would be using it. Few things are more frustrating than having college-educated people whine to me about a printer not working because they didn't bother turning around to see the big blinking red "out of ink" light and popping the hood to see exactly which color is empty. These people, like me, spent many an all-nighter in college to get this degree, but apparently spinning around in their fancy swivel chairs is too hard. And how is it that they'll freak out and come running to me or my buddy over every error message, yet they are the ones installing spyware and crap?
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Dec 4, 2008 21:02
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OP, stop being a wimp and argue your position.
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Dec 4, 2008 21:29
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I just got one yesterday. - A user wants their deleted file recovered. Standard stuff, right? Well, the user doesn't know the name of the file. They also don't know where it was located. They couldn't tell me when they last worked on it either, or what program they used. They are sure it's deleted though. They needed it back, because it's really important. It was on a 300 Gig share along with 60 other users' files. Running any type of undelete would show thousands of files. How would I know which file was the one they wanted? It would be like playing "is this your card?" with a deck of 1,000,000 cards. I told them we couldn't even begin to recover the file unless we knew what we were looking for. Well, they had part of an older copy printed that they had been hand-writing notes on. They scanned that and sent us a copy of it. It looked like some standard document, probably a Word file. It even had a date of November 24th listed. So, I ran an undelete (using Recuva) looking for DOC files. No deleted DOC files found. I read through some of the scanned file, and it mentioned a Conference or something. They had a Conference folder on the share. I checked "Previous Versions" of the folder from a few days back, and it had the same files then as it did now. Nothing deleted from there. I was thinking - if they don't know the name of the file, or where it was located, how do they know it was even deleted? So I just did a Search on all DOCs in the folder, and sorted them by last modification date. I then opened each DOC there that was saved recently and was looking for text that matched the page they had printed out. I found the file. It had some weird file-name, like about an August meeting, even though the info inside was for a November conference. The good news was that I found their "deleted" file. I was then worried that they probably saved this file with the weird name and over-wrote the real data that was in that file, and that they would want me to recover the older version of that file next - but the Previous Versions of the file don't go back far enough to recover it.
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Dec 4, 2008 22:03
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NightGyr posted:"What does doc. formate mean and why cant i post my assignment in the writting center for exalnce" You do tech support for the University of Phoenix, don't you?
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Dec 4, 2008 22:19
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I saw the time honored "our internet is not working" request arrive by e-mail the other day.
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Dec 4, 2008 22:43
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When I worked on a Helpdesk, I had to work the occasional Saturday for the handful of sites that were open. Hours were 8:30 - 2:00, with 90% of the calls between 8:30 and 9:30, that day we usually had about 4 calls. On morning, I got in and noticed there were messages on our afterhours VM box. After I finished singing in, I checked the messages. First one: 7:20 Hi, I can't log in. Thats it, no call back, no name, nothing. 2. 7:25 This is Deb, please call back, I can't log in. Ah hah, a first name. 3. 7:30 This is Deb at xxxxx, I still can't log in, why haven't you called back, customers will be showing up soon. Alright, a name and location, now we're cooking, but customers won't show up there for another hour and a half. 4. 7:35 If you people won't call me back, how am I supposed to do my job, I'm calling my manager. 5. 7:40 Fine, you guys are lazy and incompetent who never return calls. I'm going home and filing a complain. 6. 8:40 Hi, please ignore the calls from Deb, she was confused on the time and wasn't feeling well, thanks Deb's Manager. On Monday we had a notice to remove her account.
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Dec 4, 2008 23:38
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I really wish I this was made up. I really do. I worked at a magazine company, and someone from the design department e-mailed in a ticket to me stating simply: "My e-mail doesn't work". I'll let that sink in for a bit.
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Dec 5, 2008 00:53
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bob arctor posted:Then you have the the completely schizoid user submitted ticket: Ahahaha. God I love it. I used to work with a customer back when I worked the help desk. She'd call practically every night, and talk, and talk, and talk, but nothing important would ever come out of her mouth, she'd just keep contradicting herself, and go off on tangents about how her computer is a, "monitor" because it connects to a, "server", and we can't call it a computer because someone from IT told her that it's not a computer, but, you know, that really doesn't make sense to me, it's a dell, and it keeps locking up, like the other night I was logging in to do my transcriptions, my kid was screaming, and I had popcorn in the microwave. I used to have a wyse box, but now I have a dell. Wait, no, can you hang on? Sorry, it's an HP. I've rebooted. Sometimes the PC slows down, I try to reboot daily. Anyway, my computer is a monitor, and it keeps locking up. I've tried unplugging it. I don't want you to kill my session. I'll lose my work. The help desk killed my session once I lost 2 hours of work. I'm at a login screen. This happens all the time. I have roadrunner. I called roadrunner and I was on the phone with them for 2 hours. My internet isn't out, but it is a bit slow. I've rebooted the modem. It says linksys. Wait, maybe it's a router. Is that what they call it? And on. And on. And on. Wall of text, except on a phone. It got to the point where I'd just interrupt her and be really terse, I got the calls down from sometimes an hour to 5 minutes. On the topic of stupid tickets.... "User request to add server pass per Financial analisis. evrytime she trys to logon to the server it tell her that user doesnt exsist. If any questions about this this her cell phone xxx-xxxx" WHAT?!? What server? Who from the financial team? What application? What the gently caress? ashgromnies posted:OP, stop being a wimp and argue your position. I don't bother. Some of our project managers sometimes just toss over projects without like actually getting information from the customers, breaking up the project\delegating tasks, or organizing things. I don't fight because even if I do fight for something, it'll be a waste of time since tasks like this become something totally different by the end. One user logging in to check some excel files turned into 10 users. Excel files turned into multiple applications regarding patient registrations, RCS and other financial apps. I set them up with a terminal server and Citrix, our department ate the cost. Since no PM really coordinated this, the vendor ended up with several accounts on different systems that don't match at all, like GKORN2 on one system, GKORN3 on another, etc, as I'm not the only one touching this task.
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Dec 5, 2008 02:47
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Technicians who insert carriage returns into their case notes rather than just letting the field word wrap, and you can tell just how big their input field is. I wonder if they sometimes try to go too far, see the text wrap to the next line, backspace it, press enter, and then continue on.
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Dec 5, 2008 03:21
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haljordan posted:Yeahhh I don't think telling our customers (who pay us money) that we don't want their business because they don't like passwords is a very sound economic model. one of the few good parts about supporting the foodservice industry is that the customers are required to have good password policy, either by law (HIPAA) or industry regulations (PCI compliance). there was a guy today whose local IT was making him change the passwords on the 10 or so system/database logins we use. he wanted to use the same password for all of them, including database and Windows admin, and we got to tell him that he had to use a different strong password for everything to maintain PCI compliance. and the usual stupid tickets - mouse appearing on the screen and covering different buttons needed to push a coworker told me about a case he had where a college foodservice contractor bought some software and a server (the software doesn't work properly on a virtual machine). they installed it, it worked fine, then the local IT told them that they had to "move the server to a more secure facility". the software started having really weird bugs, and after like two weeks of troubleshooting, we discovered that the local IT had stolen the server and moved the software onto a VM. then there was a month of daily conference calls with 20 people to make them return the server and reinstall the software. everyone blamed us for the whole thing (even though they were told not to use a VM) and was really angry all the time. D13F00L posted:I used to work with a customer back when I worked the help desk. She'd call practically every night, and talk, and talk, and talk, but nothing important would ever come out of her mouth everyone's got one of those. mine takes 10 minutes to tell the dispatcher that her cash register has an error message, or that she wants "help with reports". she's also never in her office and gets really upset with phone tag, but won't let us call her cell because her husband said she was using too many minutes for work. I looked at her case history and the internal notes fields have things like "If you take this call, be prepared to be on the phone for a long time. She will give you a ton of uncase info. And she will not let you cut her short. You will know everything about <college> when you are off the phone with her" "This was the most intense 50 minutes of my life. She can't answer these two questions. 1.) What is the problem with it right now? 2.) What did you want to see change?"
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Dec 5, 2008 03:22
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 16:03 |
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Griz posted:one of the few good parts about supporting the foodservice industry is that the customers are required to have good password policy, either by law (HIPAA) or industry regulations (PCI compliance). How does food service intersect with HIPAA? Is this for a hospital cafeteria?
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Dec 5, 2008 03:35
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