A ticket came in...

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > A ticket came in...

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

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.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2008 12:27

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# ¿ Apr 18, 2024 20:06

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

unruly posted:

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.

Reply to the ticket: "Yes it does."

# ¿ Dec 5, 2008 07:01

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Crowley posted:

That reminds me of the countless times people have asked why an email bounces when the bounce message clearly states that the email does not exist in the organization.

People don't read bounces or error messages. Ever. If you're lucky, they'll read the subject.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2008 08:55

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

n0manarmy posted:

Quoted for truth. I get countless phone calls each month about emails being bounced back and they automatically assume that it's our email server. It's either the other end mailbox doesn't exist, doesn't support file sizes over 5mb, has blocked the recipient from emailing them, or their mailbox is full.

Then you also know how wonderful it is to tell a user that the problem is on [recipient]'s mailserver's end, only to have the user call back 30m later saying "The admin at [recipient_mailserver] said everything works fine so it's on your end", even when the bounce is a wrong user, greylist bounce or obvious RFC flaw (eg mailserver not obeying GreetPause).

Sometimes I really really hate email and those who rely on it.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2008 16:56

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

haljordan posted:

How many times have you guys had this conversation:

Me: "Is [piece of equipment] plugged in?"
Customer: "Yes, its plugged in; I'm not an idiot."
Me: "Please physically look and make sure its plugged in."
Customer: "....It wasn't plugged in."

Replace "plug" with DROP vs ACCEPT in iptables and I'd say about 5 times a day.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2008 18:28

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

guppy posted:

The thing that really disgusts me is that the policies are faithfully carried out at the bottom of the totem pole, but as you get higher and higher into management, where the really sensitive, important information is? That's where it all falls apart, because apparently a Ph.D renders you unable to remember a password that isn't your initials (Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full), and they demand exemption from policy. Which of course they get since they can fire the people responsible for enforcing policy.

My work sells firewall/VPN/bandwidth management appliances. The most common setup is just firewall + proxy + VPN since it fits most SMB's. Guaranteed half of them are set up with "no restrictions" on either the entire firewall (then why the hell did you buy this thing) or on half the computers (instead of on the users) because "it's easier" or "management needs it".

# ¿ Dec 24, 2008 12:47

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Negromancer posted:

O god we use RT and this happens constantly, so now I don't bother closing a ticket until I get the inevitable "thanks, go ahead and close this ticket" reply.

This thread makes me sooo happy I am no longer working helpdesk, although now I have to deal with stupidity on a whole new level. For example, someone needs their servers root password reset. Ok easy enough, they cut ticket, I set it to something random and send them the pw in a separate email that clearly says "Do not reply to this email". Well they have more questions for me, so what do they do? Reply to the loving email with the password instead of in the ticket. So now do I not only have to redo the work, but I also have more work poo poo to do that's not being tracked in ticketing.

I would tell stories of the ridiculous poo poo I had to do at my last job, like multiple trips to the higher ups houses to fix their "work" computers that they have at home, but I have successfully drank and smoked away most of those memories.

It gets better when they open a new ticket for a completely unrelated issue 6 months down the line by replying to the ticket you closed.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2009 23:58

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Spazz posted:

I've had a Logitech MX Laser mouse for a good couple of years. It's beaten up to hell, I have to sometimes jostle it on the charger to get it to charge, but it holds up well.

Off topic, if the contacts are oxidizing and making it hard to recharge, just call up Logitech and they'll replace it for free. Seriously.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2009 19:23

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

It'd be really ironic if we could stop talking about the semantics of irony.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2009 13:45

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Dyscrasia posted:

I get that daily. But instead its over the phone. They say "Oh yea, I am getting an error, it says error: 'blah blah blah'". Then of course, I have to say "So, that part where you said 'blah blah blah', what does it say?"

I used to get the opposite when troubleshooting outlook. Oh what's that error you're getting? 0x7xfFfA? Let me get right on that.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2009 16:10

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Javid posted:

I play an MMO, and every time there's a major update, you have to patch the client to get into the server. The error message if you don't is pretty clear, but still every patch there's people posting "is the server down" threads in droves.

WoW STILL has people posting/complaining about weekly downtime, and it's been going on the same day for years.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2009 17:18

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

devmd01 posted:

2/13/2009 1:47:03 PM (GMT-5:00) Eastern Standard Time, Logged by: ***** ********* -
*********: Problems with gun

Considering the requestor is in Alabama that doesn't surprise me.

Suck it, quicklaunch:

Install Launchy, problem solved.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2009 14:51

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

chutwig posted:

There is a certain cosmic irony in this one, as the originator once managed to get a trojan on his computer which sent out so much spam it got our gateway IP blacklisted by most of the Internet. After this episode, I said "maybe it would be a good idea if we didn't have our Exchange servers behind the same IP as the users". This was 6 months ago? Will it ever be changed? Not while I'm working here, it won't be.

"I looked into it and it seems you are receiving all the mails you should. If not, please forward the mails you did not receive and we will send them on to you"

# ¿ Feb 25, 2009 17:10

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Kaso posted:

That appears to be one of the 3x3 pixel images that is meant for stretching, if you want a rotating one;

This one takes 1 hour to rotate through the rainbow

This one takes 8 hours to rotate

And just for show here's one that takes 36 seconds

Screw you, it took me half a minute to figure out I wasn't going insane and the last was actually changing colour!

# ¿ Feb 28, 2009 21:51

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Doc Faustus posted:

Working the job that I do can be a bit tricky,

If it makes you feel better, I talk to people daily who shell out thousands for a firewall / proxy w/ contentscanning & antivirus appliance, and then proceed to add 253 ip's (all computers in their lan, basically) in their ACL, all with no restrictions and no requirement of having to use the proxy. And use DHCP.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2009 23:44

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Midelne posted:

Hey, it makes a lot of sense unless you understand spam.

Depending on what kind of filtering package you use, set up a ham/spam adress and tell users to send spam they still get to spam@ . This actually has an effect and placates users too since they get to "do" something about it.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2009 19:08

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Lord Commissar posted:

Man I really hate when people call me, tell me something isn't working, it keeps giving them "some message", but they don't have any idea what the message was.

"Hi we have a problem with our authentication appliance"
- "okay, what seems to be the issue"
"There's a problem with it."

# ¿ May 7, 2009 15:39

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

PirateDentist posted:

Well, I finally landed my first real IT job yesterday, I start on the first. I like to think this thread, and the pain all of you have shared, have somewhat prepared me.

Prepare to be surprised.

# ¿ May 14, 2009 15:22

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

evobatman posted:

When I tell you that someone will be there during the day to check on your issue but I can't be more specific about when than that, rephrasing the question about when exactly someone will be there in 5 different ways will magically endow me with this knowledge.

Alternatively when you ask me whats wrong and I tell you "I dont know yet, I'm looking into it, I'll let you know ASAP" this doesn't mean you need to literally call me every 5 minutes to ask if I know anything yet.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2009 08:39

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

mungtor posted:

Somehow they're redesigning a website and can't create a redirect.

$5 says you make the DNS changes and 12 hours later you get questions why some people are still making it to the old site.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2009 14:03

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

demonachizer posted:

With all the talk of lost data and the like I feel like I have to agree with the users in some ways. I really think that it is the IT departments responsibility to make sure that back ups are being made and to use domain policies to ensure that people aren't saving poo poo to the local machine especially in a university setting.

If your users are educated on the fact that data left locally on a machine is not IT's responsibility combined with an enforced domain policy to prevent local data (mapping common storage sites to the fileserver) then you really shouldn't ever be in a position where a user has to freak out about their important paper.

Things like backups and poo poo are something that IT departments should be proactive about and really makes you look good in the end instead of monsters who didn't foresee a problem. This also ends up making IT's job much easier since the transfer of a user to a new machine will now only include certain settings and not a boatload of data that should have been stored on a network drive.

I know that this doesn't apply everywhere and there can be real issues between the IT department and the administration and the like but you can use proper presentation and people skills to convince people of the necessity of a proper backup policy and implementation.

So where do you draw the line? Do you ghost all machines? If not, what about files saved outside of backed-up locations? You'll virtually always have users going outside IT guidelines or saving poo poo in Recycle Bin and still blaming it on you. In a perfect world you'd make sense, but people don't care about things that are documented until it's too late or it directly affects them RIGHT NOW.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2009 12:40

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Libal posted:

I love it when an IT person is way worse than the user.

A client sent us an e-mail saying that they can't e-mail us and forwarded the bounce message which says "5.7.1 Sender ID (PRA) Domain Does Not Exist".

One of my IT guys responds with this gem:

Now granted any normal Systems Administrator will know that they just need to add an SPF record, but could he have provided them with any LESS info?

Our policy is that we have no policy.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2009 17:30

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

kensei posted:

We are not a telco, and this came from a random gmail address that doesn't belong to one of our customers. Someone else responded before I got my lmgtfy in.

It's +1 cause USA IS NUMBER ONE OORAH

# ¿ Jul 7, 2009 22:30

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Lets bitch about pliers for another page!

# ¿ Jul 15, 2009 08:57

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Farking Bastage posted:

Today is a good day

Click here for the full 2048x576 image.

What firefox theme is that?

# ¿ Apr 9, 2010 12:22

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# ¿ Apr 18, 2024 20:06

Fishstick: Jul 9, 2005; Does not require preheating

Farking Bastage posted:

Dark Fox. Looks pretty sweet with a black themed Aero

Thanks. I usually use the NASA night launch theme with tinymenu, but that does look nice with a dark aero.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2010 15:45

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > A ticket came in...