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guppy posted:I know developers often don't really know poo poo about computers outside their specialty, but I'd expect one to at least read and understand that message, and try retyping the password. My favorite was working with a developer who was having problems connecting to our guest wireless network a lot. It would work 100% when I re-entered the WEP key (this was a while ago...) but would never work when he did it. This was back when WEP was considered "more secure" if you chose the 26-character key, but since this was a guest network for BYOD and visiting folks without access to any corporate resources, it was decided that the key would be code:So one day I decided to sit down with him to just watch him work and see where the wheels fell off. So he flips off of the corporate network onto the BYOD network to do some external testing and starts to enter the ones and he's counting to himself pressing 1 for each number: "one two three for five six sev-en eight nine..." The dude would hit the one key twice every time he counted the number sev-en, thrice for sev-en-teen and four times for twen-ty-sev-en. But only for numbers containing a seven. So he was entering 32 ones instead of 26. No matter how idiot proof you make something, a bigger idiot will show himself.
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Oct 2, 2013 19:30
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Agrikk posted:The dude would hit the one key twice every time he counted the number sev-en, thrice for sev-en-teen and four times for twen-ty-sev-en. But only for numbers containing a seven. So he was entering 32 ones instead of 26. Holy poo poo. I remember early in my career as a developer assuming that my coworkers were like me, actively interested in computers in general, and programming specifically. I can't do the poo poo most sysadmins do, but I'm competent enough to know that the little box under my desk isn't populated by wizards. I'd say maybe 10% of the developers I know and have worked with are on the same level, and I find that so confusing. I get being an office drone who's only responsibility is to update an accounting spreadsheet all day long not knowing a drat thing about computers, but I can't figure out the person who's writing software for the magic boxes not knowing how these things work, even a little bit.
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Oct 2, 2013 19:40
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guppy posted:I know developers often don't really know poo poo about computers outside their specialty, but I'd expect one to at least read and understand that message, and try retyping the password. Not only did he not retype it on his own, he was even resistant to the idea of retyping the password when I suggested it, but eventually he did it and it worked. Of course. Agrikk posted:The dude would hit the one key twice every time he counted the number sev-en, thrice for sev-en-teen and four times for twen-ty-sev-en. But only for numbers containing a seven. So he was entering 32 ones instead of 26. GentlemansSleepover posted:I'd say maybe 10% of the developers I know and have worked with are on the same level, and I find that so confusing.  As an IT-to-developer person, this stuns me. I don't know anyone as a developer in any of my last...2 or 3 workplaces? that are anywhere close to this hopelessly at sea. I do know an IT person who got thrown into a developer position where he didn't know what he was doing, but that's an entirely other  . I just don't get how you could expect to develop but still treat your computer as a magic box impervious to logic when your job description boils down to "write the magic for the box" in some form.
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Oct 2, 2013 19:50
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Lets talk about Phones. I set up IP Phone systems, and I really kind of like them. We use Asterisk for everything and SPA504s for the most part and we can make them do pretty much everything. There is a curve to learning the systems and the phones, but once you get over that hump, it's not too bad. Except when customers change requirements. So, we setup a phone system for SomeBusiness. Everything is great for months and people are happy and the system just works. SomeBusiness hires a new employee (we'll call him Stan) who happens to have clout. Week 2 of Stan's employment, and he wants things changed. Stan would like the system basically redone so the configuration is closer to what he is used to at his other office with another company. The other business he works for is using different phones and a different backend, but he'd like his phone to be exactly like his other phone is at this other company. Fine. Well, queue an uncomfortably large bill that came through, because it turns out reconfiguring a whole phone system takes more than 3 button presses. He's bitching about the bill, we aren't really in a position where we need to reduce it and while all this is happening, the people under him (who've been with the company for years, not weeks), are now bitching that the phone system is different and want it changed back. No one is going to win here and at the end of the day, everyone is pissed. Old employees are pissed because it's different. Stan is pissed because it costs a lot of money. We are pissed because everyone else is pissed, and we burned up hours on something we shouldn't have done anyway. Sure, we collect on it, but it's not worth the headache, and our business isn't to pad hours, it's to offer solutions. The entire scenario sucks. Ursine Asylum posted:I just don't get how you could expect to develop but still treat your computer as a magic box impervious to logic when your job description boils down to "write the magic for the box" in some form. They are just way, way different disciplines that both require a lot of time to do competently. I'm blessed/cursed in that I get to do both Sys/Network Admin stuff and I write a lot of the custom software that's ordered, but that is both exceedingly rare for a multitude of reasons, and not a good idea for me because I have no mega-focus that every other IT person has. Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Oct 2, 2013 |
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Oct 2, 2013 19:54
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:They are just way, way different disciplines that both require a lot of time to do competently. I'm blessed/cursed in that I get to do both Sys/Network Admin stuff and I write a lot of the custom software that's ordered, but that is both exceedingly rare for a multitude of reasons, and not a good idea for me because I have no mega-focus that every other IT person has. Oh, I'm not disputing that-- hand me a sysadmin box and tell me to modify AD and I'd be completely lost at sea. But my first reaction would be "Google", and barring that, "right click around and see what contextual dialogs there are", not "construct a paper mache bottle, write 'Whiskey' on it, and pray for a giant mechanical bird to swoop from the sky and deliver me a sysadmin". Ultimately, the idea behind both IT and Software Dev is "create solutions for a problem using the tools given you". When you lack the wherewithal to even begin figuring out what the problem is, it doesn't matter if you're a dev or sysadmin, you're already boned.
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Oct 2, 2013 20:10
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Agrikk posted:The dude would hit the one key twice every time he counted the number sev-en, thrice for sev-en-teen and four times for twen-ty-sev-en. But only for numbers containing a seven. So he was entering 32 ones instead of 26.  My password is "indian":bigtran: It doesn't work With the "i":s beeing 1s:bigtran: It doesn't work With "shift" pressed
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Oct 2, 2013 20:20
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:[Big story about people hating it when you change the phones] You should have heard the whining when I started buying Polycom Soundpoint IP331 phones instead of IP430 phones due to finance-department-enforced cost savings + old product being discontinued. The screens are slightly narrower so there's only 3 softbuttons instead of 4. Queue everybody in sales and management saying they want me to get rid of the phones because transferring calls doesn't work at all! The actual problem: transfer is now the middle button instead of the extreme right button  . I ended up caving and changed the autogen rules for the config files to swap the softbuttons, but like, come on. It's right there on the drat screen.
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Oct 2, 2013 20:22
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:They are just way, way different disciplines that both require a lot of time to do competently. I'm blessed/cursed in that I get to do both Sys/Network Admin stuff and I write a lot of the custom software that's ordered, but that is both exceedingly rare for a multitude of reasons, and not a good idea for me because I have no mega-focus that every other IT person has. I avoid mega-focusing as well because screw that silo poo poo. You can do just fine without a specialization- you'll just pick up different job opportunities. As an IT guy, I've picked up a little bit of programming here and there because supporting applications without being an application SME is part of my job. However it seems that some developers, writing code for a server platform, do not pick up a little bit of IT even though having this application live within an infrastructure is a part of their job.
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Oct 2, 2013 20:22
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Agrikk posted:No matter how idiot proof you make something, a bigger idiot will show himself. My brother, when he was 4, used to count by going "1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9" and no matter how many times you corrected him he would always forget 7. Did it until he was 5-6. So a 6 year old was smarter than this guy.
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Oct 2, 2013 20:42
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hihifellow posted:My brother, when he was 4, used to count by going "1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9" and no matter how many times you corrected him he would always forget 7. Did it until he was 5-6. So a 6 year old was smarter than this guy. Did you forget the 4 ironically?
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Oct 2, 2013 20:46
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peak debt posted:Did you forget the 4 ironically? No, see, that's his problem. He still forgets the 4. It's a different number for everyone in his family.
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Oct 2, 2013 21:02
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He forgot A, B, C, D, E, F too
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Oct 2, 2013 21:03
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peak debt posted:Did you forget the 4 ironically? Oh thank god, I thought I was missing a very obvious punch line.
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Oct 2, 2013 21:03
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RadicalR posted:No, see, that's his problem. He still forgets the 4. It's a different number for everyone in his family. So what you're saying is, they're the real-life family that all those logic puzzles are based off of? "My social security number is 23082731, and I know my brother's starts with 30275." "My social security number is 34027596, and the last four digits of my brother's are 7431." I'll be the DMV just loves them to death.
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Oct 2, 2013 21:06
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peak debt posted:Did you forget the 4 ironically? No it's been a long day and I have a cold 
hihifellow fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Oct 2, 2013 |
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Oct 2, 2013 21:16
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Glad it's not just us... there's nothing super-mega-secret in our place, so yeah, I do the same as the guy who runs the department - I ask for a password if someone wants me to work on their user account while they go to a meeting. Even the MD has given me his password without me asking. Well, my usual practice is if they're there, I'll let them type it in and only take a password if it's offered. This gets very irritating on the production floor where they won't sit still and I keep having to call them over to type it in, but I'll certainly respect a user's choice to keep their password private if they're obviously willing to keep trotting back over. Yes you can insist they stay put, but sometimes you have people on a higher level than you (say director level) who say "no, I need to go to a meeting and I need this resolved when I get back, here's my password". You can reset it but then yes, you get the issue with the other connected devices. I don't see why MS can't just implement a "log on as this user" for people with domain admin rights, it'd make things so much easier and more secure (even Linux does it)
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Oct 2, 2013 22:15
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I found that resetting passwords doesn't work because the user will inevitably try to set his password to what it was before which of course won't work. Whenever I have to do something under a user's account, I give them the option to either tell me their password, or to reset it, and 90% of them choose the first option.GargleBlaster posted:I don't see why MS can't just implement a "log on as this user" for people with domain admin rights, it'd make things so much easier and more secure (even Linux does it) The idea is that if you can do this, you can impersonate a user without him finding out that anyone ever did that. Which is a bad thing for compliance waah waah etc. The problem with that idea is that if you have admin rights over a PC where a user works on, there are at least half a dozen ways to execute all kinds of stuff as that user anyway (not least of which simply copying a batch file to his Startup folder) and leaving absolutely no trace whatsoever.
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Oct 2, 2013 22:25
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On the other side of the coin, I've been asked for my password by the helpdesk and refused. Why? Because we're a pharmaceutical company and with that password you have access to very sensitive information, including patient records. Sharing passwords is gross misconduct, and this is literally part of the first training session you get when you're hired. Moral of the story: dumb people exist in all roles, everywhere.
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Oct 2, 2013 22:29
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GargleBlaster posted:password My old workplace assigned passwords to employees, with rules preventing employees from changing them. We seriously kept a (password-protected) Excel spreadsheet with the randomly generated six-character alphanumeric passwords for the entire company on our IT share. Yes, even the CEO, COO, CFO, managing directors, etc. We had it all. Time to fix someone's computer and they're not there? Just look up their password! Need to prove a point and find an email that you know is in a user's inbox? Sign in as them to OWA! Setting up a new computer for someone and want to load their profile? Easy peasy! As you can all no doubt read between the lines, that meant that we IT personnel were bound only by the honor code to not snoop through emails and whatnot. We had the keys to the kingdom the whole time. No oversight whatsoever.
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Oct 2, 2013 23:33
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rolleyes posted:On the other side of the coin, I've been asked for my password by the helpdesk and refused. Why? Because we're a pharmaceutical company and with that password you have access to very sensitive information, including patient records. Sharing passwords is gross misconduct, and this is literally part of the first training session you get when you're hired. Yeah I fully understand it in that situation. In that case you and everyone else just have to deal with it, even when the top brass insists that they want you to log into their account while they're sat in a board meeting (unless they sign something saying "I understand that this is completely retarded and may end up ruining the company, please do it anyway" But I would say not everywhere is handling such sensitive data. peak debt posted:The idea is that if you can do this, you can impersonate a user without him finding out that anyone ever did that. Which is a bad thing for compliance waah waah etc. So as part of the implementation, have it pop up with "Administrator Soandso logged onto your account on 02/10/13". If you're a domain admin you can impersonate the user anyway by simply resetting their password, so your other concerns still stand even without that features. The only difference is them knowing.
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Oct 2, 2013 23:38
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underlig posted:
"Oh, you mean a capital 1, why didn't you say so?"
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Oct 3, 2013 00:48
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I spent 45 minutes today trying to get an elderly man to install LogMeIn Rescue on his computer so I could log on and fix his "urgent" problem. Finally get logged on: "Oh, sorry, the problem is on my LAPTOP, not my MAC  "
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Oct 3, 2013 00:50
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stubblyhead posted:"Oh, you mean a capital 1, why didn't you say so?" Those are actually a thing - and computers have trained two generations to put their numbers in all caps, and ledgers (where doing so actually has merit) did some serious work on generations prior. That's actually why upper-case and lower-case numbers are called 'tablature' and 'old-style'. I don't know if this is more  or  - it might be both - but I pretty much agree with this guy.
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Oct 3, 2013 02:18
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There are these god drat buzzwords that float around, so for a couple weeks roughly half the tickets my group gets will be poo poo like "Windows says my password is expired, I think it's a DHCP issue" (the current one) or "My laptop battery only lasts 20 minutes, must be group policies" (the last one). It's so frustrating to get 40 "I think it's DHCP" tickets a day when 39 of them are the wall jack is bad, or their password is expired, or they're just plain retarded. Doubly so because I have to SSH into a switch to get their MAC address then remote halfway across the country to the DHCP servers to see if they actually are getting a lease every. Single. Time.
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Oct 3, 2013 03:16
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I have a user who gets multiple reports a day and she setup an Outlook rule to automatically move reports to a folder. Well, her mailbox gets full because she never remembers to delete those emails. Is there a way to setup a rule for Outlook to automatically delete emails in that folder older than 90 days? We have auto archive disabled through GPO so that isn't a solution.
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Oct 3, 2013 03:33
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GentlemansSleepover posted:Holy poo poo. It really makes no sense to me either. One thing I've noticed though, there seems to be strong correlation in my experience with being a good programmer and having a decent understanding of computers. But there's so many "programmers" now that don't even know strong fundamental Computer Science principles, let alone what's happening underneath all of that code. I get that not everyone is a Linux kernel programmer, but you work on a computer all day and write code that runs on a computer, you should probably have a bit of an understanding of computers.
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Oct 3, 2013 03:43
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GreenNight posted:We have auto archive disabled through GPO so that isn't a solution. If you have not only *a* solution, but *the* solution, you should probably just do that one.
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Oct 3, 2013 03:47
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nexxai posted:Then re-enable it? Yeah I was hoping there was a different solution. We disabled it because everyone was dumping all their emails to disk then having a fit when they lost it due to a hard drive crash. Maybe I can just re-enable it for the one user, if the boss even allows it.
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Oct 3, 2013 03:57
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GreenNight posted:Yeah I was hoping there was a different solution. We disabled it because everyone was dumping all their emails to disk then having a fit when they lost it due to a hard drive crash. Maybe I can just re-enable it for the one user, if the boss even allows it. If it's actually turned of via GPO, then making a 1-user OU is probably going to be an ever worse headache than just turning it back on.
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Oct 3, 2013 03:59
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Inspector_71 posted:If it's actually turned of via GPO, then making a 1-user OU is probably going to be an ever worse headache than just turning it back on. What? No - I can deny her user account security rights to process the GPO.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:01
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GreenNight posted:What? No - I can deny her user account security rights to process the GPO. What I don't understand is that the rest of the company is required to managed their own email and this person isn't? There is nothing wrong with the technology. This is a personnel problem. The sooner you treat it like what it is the sooner you can move on.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:04
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Sickening posted:What I don't understand is that the rest of the company is required to managed their own email and this person isn't? There is nothing wrong with the technology. This is a personnel problem. The sooner you treat it like what it is the sooner you can move on. I agree, but there are some people you have to baby because of what position they are in the organization. Regardless, it's good to know that the archiving is the correct solution, so I can pass that on and make the boss decide how he wants me to handle it.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:07
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Pudgygiant posted:There are these god drat buzzwords that float around, so for a couple weeks roughly half the tickets my group gets will be poo poo like "Windows says my password is expired, I think it's a DHCP issue" (the current one) or "My laptop battery only lasts 20 minutes, must be group policies" (the last one). It's so frustrating to get 40 "I think it's DHCP" tickets a day when 39 of them are the wall jack is bad, or their password is expired, or they're just plain retarded. Doubly so because I have to SSH into a switch to get their MAC address then remote halfway across the country to the DHCP servers to see if they actually are getting a lease every. Single. Time. Are you incapable of or disallowed from gently informing people that they're wrong when they so clearly are? If I couldn't tell a user "no, it's definitely not a dhcp issue, Windows isn't taking the password you're entering", I wouldn't have made it a day in the help desk. Taking the time to check if leases are going out when the user doesn't know/can't type the correct password is a colossal waste of effort and money.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:08
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GreenNight posted:I agree, but there are some people you have to baby because of what position they are in the organization. Regardless, it's good to know that the archiving is the correct solution, so I can pass that on and make the boss decide how he wants me to handle it. To each their own I guess. Once you start down this path you only make the work harder for you and everyone that follows after you. At least make a group to apply the exception to. Name it properly and document it somewhere.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:11
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Sickening posted:To each their own I guess. Once you start down this path you only make the work harder for you and everyone that follows after you. Oh I know, trust me. I doubt anything will happen because it was a huge loving hassle when we allowed archiving with GroupWise and the boss is keen to never ever let that happen again. We even have a GPO blocking all pst's from being created or being imported. Sickening posted:At least make a group to apply the exception to. Name it properly and document it somewhere. Well, of course. That's only best practice. If it comes to that.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:12
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So, Malwarebytes did a giveaway of these over on Reddit's sysadmin page, and I ended up winning one. Not sure exactly how it's worth $400 dollars, but I suppose I'll find out in a few days when it shows up.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:40
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TWBalls posted:
We have a GPO that puts the PC name under My Computer on the Start Menu. I mean I still get user names instead of the computer name, but I'm able to walk them through it easier. I can look it up in the morning.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:43
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Malkar posted:So, Malwarebytes did a giveaway of these over on Reddit's sysadmin page, and I ended up winning one. Not sure exactly how it's worth $400 dollars, but I suppose I'll find out in a few days when it shows up. That doesn't sound risky at all!
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Oct 3, 2013 04:53
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AlexDeGruven posted:Are you incapable of or disallowed from gently informing people that they're wrong when they so clearly are? It's not the help desk- I'm a network engineer. These are getting elevated from the help desk
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Oct 3, 2013 05:07
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Nativity In Black posted:So I'm getting tired of my current position and rather than look for another similar position I'm considering getting some business cards printed up and striking out as a "consultant." Have any of you other goons done anything like this successfully? Being a consultant sucks dick unless you are one of those valuable ones that can command work at will from the ether.
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Oct 3, 2013 05:09
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