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The Electronaut
May 10, 2009

Ynglaur posted:

Pissing me off: mouth-breathers on conference calls. Learn to use loving mute already. Lync and Skype both support hotkeys.

And people taking notes with I can only surmise is an Underwood moving type fit for a billboard being driven by cat that is hitting the nip like an eighties power broker on a coke binge.

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Che Delilas
Nov 23, 2009
FREE TIBET WEED

Lum posted:

Any chance of running Process Explorer on that and seeing what it's doing? I'm genuinely curious.

I want to know if it's doing something really dumb like checking the contents of the Uninstall registry keys to see if the uninstaller for 4.0 is there, or something stupid like that.

I'm afraid not; I don't work at the company where it occurred anymore. It just struck me as eye-roll worthy since 4.5 is allegedly 100% backwards compatible with 4.0, and in fact won't let you install 4.0 once 4.5 is there, but goddamn if there's at least one program out there that requires something that 4.0 has that 4.5 doesn't.

Keep in mind that if you install 4.0 first, and THEN 4.5, it worked just fine despite the fact that 4.0 wasn't there anymore.

HalloKitty posted:

Haha, oh god. Well, no language can stop people from making arbitrary specific checks.

Yeah I'm sure it was some extremely specific and unnecessary check that a developer added in, somehow.

Ynglaur
Oct 9, 2013

The Malta Conference, anyone?

Che Delilas posted:

Yeah I'm sure it was some extremely specific and unnecessary check that a developer added in, somehow.
HP ALM 11.5 literally checks the user agent string a browser sends it, and unless it's whatever two version of IE it supports, it just auto fails to load. If you provide the wrong user agent string, it will advance to the next screen.

This is even more horrible because it's not really a web application. It's a "web based application", which was marketing-speak at the turn of the millennia for "Java application that we make you launch from a web browser because the Internet is cool and client-side applications are passé."

Antioch
Apr 18, 2003
I have never hated anything as much as I hate ALM 11.5

vanity slug
Jul 20, 2010

Bob Morales posted:

We have a couple people with Dutch last names where I work, and of course we get people that try to email them but can't get someones email address right even if they are typing it from a business card or sales flyer.

You end up with a name like 'Dave Graaf'

The guy then calls in to complain he's not getting all the emails he should. I take a look at the logs, and sure enough people are emailing dave.graff, dave.graf, poo poo like that. Either doubling the wrong letter or not doubling the right letter, because they don't speak freaky-deaky Dutch.

The question becomes "Well can't you just make dave.graff forward the email to dave.graaf?"

At first thought it's a fairly reasonable request assuming your email aliases are free. But it doesn't fix the problem.

What do you do?

Yeah, Graaf is really difficult to spell. Just wait until they have to write monstrosities like 'de Boer' or 'van Dijk'!

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Bob Morales posted:

We have a couple people with Dutch last names where I work, and of course we get people that try to email them but can't get someones email address right even if they are typing it from a business card or sales flyer.

You end up with a name like 'Dave Graaf'

The guy then calls in to complain he's not getting all the emails he should. I take a look at the logs, and sure enough people are emailing dave.graff, dave.graf, poo poo like that. Either doubling the wrong letter or not doubling the right letter, because they don't speak freaky-deaky Dutch.

The question becomes "Well can't you just make dave.graff forward the email to dave.graaf?"

At first thought it's a fairly reasonable request assuming your email aliases are free. But it doesn't fix the problem.

What do you do?

Option 1 - ask Dave Graaf to legally change his name to David Smith
Option 2 - fire Dave and hire someone called David Smith

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

spog posted:

Option 1 - ask Dave Graaf to legally change his name to David Smith
Option 2 - fire Dave and hire someone called David Smith

Dave Graaf jr, as well as Jim and John Graaf all work here too (his kids). It gets worse as people email his son and he gets the message etc.

nitrogen
May 21, 2004

Oh, what's a 217°C difference between friends?

spog posted:

Option 1 - ask Dave Graaf to legally change his name to David Smith
Option 2 - fire Dave and hire someone called David Smith

Or do this:



I just know if you did, you'd get someone that says, "How do I email @example.com??

Moey
Oct 22, 2010

I LIKE TO MOVE IT

nitrogen posted:

"How do I email @example.com??

I feel like a ton of people would have no idea how to use a QR code.

Inspector_666
Oct 7, 2003

benny with the good hair

Moey posted:

I feel like a ton of people would have no idea how to use a QR code.

I wouldn't know what to do.

The Fool
Oct 16, 2003


Moey posted:

I feel like a ton of people would have no idea how to use a QR code.

I feel like qr codes would get more traction if built in camera apps supported them. As it is, nothing in a qr code is important enough to warrant unlocking my phone, opening some crappy special appthat takes 30 seconds to scan the drat thing.



Also, why doesn't the Swype autocorrect dictionary include curse words?

rolleyes
Nov 16, 2006

Sometimes you have to roll the hard... two?

Che Delilas posted:

Yeah I'm sure it was some extremely specific and unnecessary check that a developer added in, somehow.

It's extra-special levels of dumb because I'm pretty sure the framework itself will pop up an error box if you try to launch an application targeted at a version of the framework which is unavailable on the host you're running it on.

incoherent
Apr 24, 2004

01010100011010000111001
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poo poo that pisses you off?

Getting your boss to ask the CEO to ok a macbook air purchase and putting it on your company card. God knows what else they bought. gently caress I am so livid. I dont even care about buying macbooks, it's the sneaky behind your back and disregarding an entire dept.

anthonypants
May 6, 2007

by Nyc_Tattoo
Dinosaur Gum

incoherent posted:

poo poo that pisses you off?

Getting your boss to ask the CEO to ok a macbook air purchase and putting it on your company card. God knows what else they bought. gently caress I am so livid. I dont even care about buying macbooks, it's the sneaky behind your back and disregarding an entire dept.
Feign ignorance as long as you can. Kill the network port it's on and send out a reminder e-mail that people shouldn't plug their home equipment into the work network.

Sirotan
Oct 17, 2006

Sirotan is a seal.


Four day weekend in Jersey visiting a friend. We're hitting NYC and a few other places this weekend to drink all the beer. Unfortunately she had to work today last minute so we're sitting in her office bullshitting until we can go drink.

Within 5 minutes of being here she asks me if I know anything about connecting printers to the network and can I take a look at this new one in the office that isn't working?

:rubshands:

Just had to do a factory reset, I didn't really mind

Trastion
Jul 24, 2003
The one and only.
Not an attempt to reignite the Java derail but one of my users received this from a major bank whose initials are W & F. There is a part of the website she used daily that wont work. The site says to update your java and she is on the latest.

HellsCargo support posted:

As of the latest Java update (late last week), our website’s imaging platform too old to be ran by Java. We have found that you can still run it by lowering the Security Level within the Java Control Panel.

We have a planned release to update this on our website the night of February 14th so this is a temporary solution until that time, but there is no other way to make Java work on our website. We would recommend that you set the Security Level back to High the first time you come back to work after that update.

Below are some instructions on accessing the Java Control Panel in case you are not familiar with doing so:
...


Also of note is that after she tried lowering the security as to their instructions it still did not work.

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

Trastion posted:

Not an attempt to reignite the Java derail but one of my users received this from a major bank whose initials are W & F. There is a part of the website she used daily that wont work. The site says to update your java and she is on the latest.

If you only knew the way things were run internally. This is a great example of a company whose development is done by 90% contractors, and it shows.

Moey
Oct 22, 2010

I LIKE TO MOVE IT

Sirotan posted:

Four day weekend in Jersey visiting a friend. We're hitting NYC and a few other places this weekend to drink all the beer. Unfortunately she had to work today last minute so we're sitting in her office bullshitting until we can go drink.

Within 5 minutes of being here she asks me if I know anything about connecting printers to the network and can I take a look at this new one in the office that isn't working?

:rubshands:

Just had to do a factory reset, I didn't really mind

Why are you not drinking in the lobby while you wait?

Sirotan
Oct 17, 2006

Sirotan is a seal.


Moey posted:

Why are you not drinking in the lobby while you wait?

We just went to lunch and had beer there, a Kane IPA. In an hourish we're heading to Carton Brewery to get our drink on. Plenty of daylight left to get crunk.

:guinness:

Inspector_666
Oct 7, 2003

benny with the good hair
One of our clients is the US office for a company HQ'd in a far-flung land. Two months ago they had us go in and help do the final touches for a new domain rollout at the location. We were told to get the computers joined to the domain and login so that the profile would be created and make just get Outlook setup. We were emphatically told not to move any data from the local profiles or tell anybody to login using the domain credentials yet.

Today I get a task to go by there and make sure nobody is having issues with the domain logins and that nobody is using their local ones anymore.

Turns out the HQ people never told anybody to use the domain logins. They never moved any data. Nobody even knew what the hell I was talking about.

:argh:

TK-42-1
Oct 30, 2013

looks like we have a bad transmitter



Bob Morales posted:

What do you do?

shoot the hostage

sfwarlock
Aug 11, 2007
Put a QR code on the business cards etc. Make it link to a mailto: URL.

E: And that is what happens when I type a post and then go away before hitting post.

hihifellow
Jun 17, 2005

seriously where the fuck did this genre come from
Today I had the Windows 7 troubleshooter tell me the solution to a missing HP LJ 1200 driver is to install no driver, because one doesn't exist. And then it proceeded to work without issue. :iiam:

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA
May 29, 2008

Someone just changed the certificate on the Exchange server at work, replacing it with a certificate for a different domain (which we own, so it's someone I work with). This has also broken activesync, so no lawyers are going to receive email on their mobile devices until someone fixes this. I took the day off because it's my birthday, so I'm not going to do a drat thing about it.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Bob Morales posted:

We have a couple people with Dutch last names where I work, and of course we get people that try to email them but can't get someones email address right even if they are typing it from a business card or sales flyer.

You end up with a name like 'Dave Graaf'

The guy then calls in to complain he's not getting all the emails he should. I take a look at the logs, and sure enough people are emailing dave.graff, dave.graf, poo poo like that. Either doubling the wrong letter or not doubling the right letter, because they don't speak freaky-deaky Dutch.

The question becomes "Well can't you just make dave.graff forward the email to dave.graaf?"

At first thought it's a fairly reasonable request assuming your email aliases are free. But it doesn't fix the problem.

What do you do?

Create a clever bounce module that will attempt to deduce the intended recipient based on the email address, and send back a helpful message with the expected address.

Realistically though customers will complain that the email is broken because emailing Dave makes it send them gobbledygook, so you should just forward the alias as requested :(

Consider having a catch-all account if you are EXTREMELY confident in your spam filter.

Alliterate Addict
Jul 10, 2012

dreaming of that face again

it's bright and blue and shimmering

grinning wide and comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes

nitrogen posted:

Or do this:



I just know if you did, you'd get someone that says, "How do I email @example.com??

So they would scan it with their phone, look at "jim.graaf@example.com", go to their computer, and proceed to misspell it anyways.

e: Honestly I'd vote for "just bounce it". If people are mailing a nonexistent account and not getting a failure email back, and the only time someone noticed is if they're "not getting all the email they should be", that sounds like a huge problem with your system, not just the user.

Alliterate Addict fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Jan 18, 2014

Lord Dudeguy
Sep 17, 2006
[Insert good English here]

quote:

Java update :words:

Latest Java update declared that all of our HP ProCurve switches' web admin consoles won't work. :argh:

Lord Dudeguy
Sep 17, 2006
[Insert good English here]
^^^^ Shiiiiit wasn't paying attention to the double-post potential, sorry!

The AT&T train keeps on rollin'...

Today we were porting all of IT's phone numbers to the new Lync SIP Trunks. This was after the original scheduled date was pushed back a month because AT&T couldn't get their port order poo poo straight.

AT&T ported the numbers in a way that they only signaled a 7-digit destination number, and not E.164 like they should. Lync won't accept XXX-XXXX. Usually it's "Okay" to just convert to E.164 +XXXXXXXXXXX and be done with it, but multiple area codes with identical exchanges won't allow that, so...

:( "Could you guys please present E.164 when you signal? We have multiple area codes in our number range, so this will get messy awfully quickly."
:j: "You should have asked that when you ordered the port."
:( "Ok, my fault for assuming a telco would use an ITU-T standard. Could you just redo the port to signal E.164?"
:j: "That will require a resubmitted ticket, which has a 30 minute turnaround, and our ticket system is down."
:( "So... I have to deal with it?"
:j: "We'll just re-do the ports at a later time and let you know when it's done."
:( "WHOA wait a sec. You're going to change the port without notifying us? Without testing incoming normalization rules? We could lose calls!"
:j: "Hey it's either that or you get no port change at all."

Oh, goddamn it. Fine. I normalized the 7-digits to E.164, and now I'm sitting on a telco outage time bomb because gently caress you that's why.

I really need to record these meetings and play them back to senior management. They piss and moan about how IT's customer service is lacking, but they've never experienced "100% gently caress You" service like AT&T.

Antioch
Apr 18, 2003
Giant, game changing roll-out of new online banking system tomorrow 1900-0900.

Two new products, online and mobile banking, including new security features and an alert system that emails you for events.

"Gold" code was a month ago, they've been working on this release for 14 months.

Guess who just got a couple panic emails about a "new version" of the code that needs to go in.

Oh and alerts are broken for a whole subset of accounts that should have been tested but our QA department is staffed and run by morons.

Tomorrow is going to be a blast.

guppy
Sep 21, 2004

sting like a byob

Antioch posted:

Giant, game changing roll-out of new online banking system tomorrow 1900-0900.

Two new products, online and mobile banking, including new security features and an alert system that emails you for events.

"Gold" code was a month ago, they've been working on this release for 14 months.

Guess who just got a couple panic emails about a "new version" of the code that needs to go in.

Oh and alerts are broken for a whole subset of accounts that should have been tested but our QA department is staffed and run by morons.

Tomorrow is going to be a blast.

It is absolutely incredible how incapable people are of not doing last-minute changes. To anything. My organization has a bimonthly meeting for which anything being presented must be submitted and vetted well in advance. I still see people trying to make unapproved changes five minutes before we're due to start.

MW
May 20, 2001

"Nooooooooo!?"

Antioch posted:

Giant, game changing roll-out of new online banking system tomorrow 1900-0900.

Two new products, online and mobile banking, including new security features and an alert system that emails you for events.

"Gold" code was a month ago, they've been working on this release for 14 months.

Guess who just got a couple panic emails about a "new version" of the code that needs to go in.

Oh and alerts are broken for a whole subset of accounts that should have been tested but our QA department is staffed and run by morons.

Tomorrow is going to be a blast.

Have you considered looking into Continuous Delivery and what it entails? Sounds like you are doing big bang releases, which in theory is nice but in practice always causes issues like you just described.

We have automated everything that can be automated. Integration testing, staging testing, deployments etc. Code is pushed to production every night. Huge uproar in the beginning from users about the constant flow of new features but fortunately I'm in a position to say "deal with it". 6 months later and everyone is used to it and couldn't imagine going back to the bi-weekly release schedule we previously used.

We use JIRA for issue tracking. A custom in-house application automatically generates professional looking release mails that users immediately get. We track who we want to inform when an issue is completed so users aren't spammed with irrelevant issues. So every morning they simply check the release mail and go about their day.

MW fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Jan 18, 2014

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

MW posted:

Have you considered looking into Continuous Delivery and what it entails? Sounds like you are doing big bang releases, which in theory is nice but in practice always causes issues like you just described.

This doesn't really work when you're a bank and you're converting your ColdFusion site to J2EE but everything ultimately needs to talk to Hogan anyway.

It's nice in theory but in practice you're understaffed, QA has more staff than development, you don't control the web infrastructure so you have to hand over wars and pray, and you're working in a regulated environment. Welcome to banking.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

MW posted:

Have you considered looking into Continuous Delivery and what it entails? Sounds like you are doing big bang releases, which in theory is nice but in practice always causes issues like you just described.

We have automated everything that can be automated. Integration testing, staging testing, deployments etc. Code is pushed to production every night. Huge uproar in the beginning from users about the constant flow of new features but fortunately I'm in a position to say "deal with it". 6 months later and everyone is used to it and couldn't imagine going back to the bi-weekly release schedule we previously used.

We use JIRA for issue tracking. A custom in-house application automatically generates professional looking release mails that users immediately get. We track who we want to inform when an issue is completed so users aren't spammed with irrelevant issues. So every morning they simply check the release mail and go about their day.

Yes, the same people who require that my password be 6-8 characters long without special characters are going to embrace any aspect of software engineering too young to drink or vote. This will of course happen because

incoherent
Apr 24, 2004

01010100011010000111001
00110100101101100011011
000110010101110010

anthonypants posted:

Feign ignorance as long as you can. Kill the network port it's on and send out a reminder e-mail that people shouldn't plug their home equipment into the work network.

The device is a laptop, so there isn't anything they can get at...I just setup exchange 2010 for the org so they can use apple mail app. However, after I sent over the TCO of this rogue purchase vs buying it through our channels management will know there were very noticeable savings to be had (and every penny counts in our death march to insolvency).

Also, they did not buy apple care. And i'll be keeping that omittance under my hat.

incoherent fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Jan 19, 2014

Smoke
Mar 12, 2005

I am NOT a red Bumblebee for god's sake!

Bob Morales posted:

We have a couple people with Dutch last names where I work, and of course we get people that try to email them but can't get someones email address right even if they are typing it from a business card or sales flyer.

You end up with a name like 'Dave Graaf'

The guy then calls in to complain he's not getting all the emails he should. I take a look at the logs, and sure enough people are emailing dave.graff, dave.graf, poo poo like that. Either doubling the wrong letter or not doubling the right letter, because they don't speak freaky-deaky Dutch.

The question becomes "Well can't you just make dave.graff forward the email to dave.graaf?"

At first thought it's a fairly reasonable request assuming your email aliases are free. But it doesn't fix the problem.

What do you do?

You do what happens in my company and the customer we work for and just enter something that appears to be OK. We've got coworkers with different names in different systems as a result(Scheduling, QM, AD and remote AD)

Of course, once you ask about this it never gets resolved and people just deal with having multiple slightly differently-spelled last names.

You'd kind of expect names to just be copy-pasted out of an e-mail rather than being transcribed by whoever's making the account.

Even happened to me at a previous employer, my name was entered properly everywhere except for my e-mailaddress. When I mentioned this on my very first day I was said it'd be fixed soon. When I left 9 months later it still hadn't been fixed.

Also fun: A coworker's AD account was deleted when someone else with the same last name left the company. Somehow IT at this place has never heard of "disable, don't delete".

Varkk
Apr 17, 2004

Bob Morales posted:

We have a couple people with Dutch last names where I work, and of course we get people that try to email them but can't get someones email address right even if they are typing it from a business card or sales flyer.

You end up with a name like 'Dave Graaf'

The guy then calls in to complain he's not getting all the emails he should. I take a look at the logs, and sure enough people are emailing dave.graff, dave.graf, poo poo like that. Either doubling the wrong letter or not doubling the right letter, because they don't speak freaky-deaky Dutch.

The question becomes "Well can't you just make dave.graff forward the email to dave.graaf?"

At first thought it's a fairly reasonable request assuming your email aliases are free. But it doesn't fix the problem.

What do you do?

If people emailing the person will bring revenue in to the company then you set up the alias. If it will make more work without bringing in revenue or worse a bill you let it bounce until they get the right address. Feign ingorance when they ask why it isn't coming in and say "I guess you should be using the right address." :smug:

Or at least that is what previous bosses expected us to do.

Fil5000
Jun 23, 2003

HOLD ON GUYS I'M POSTING ABOUT INTERNET ROBOTS

Smoke posted:

You do what happens in my company and the customer we work for and just enter something that appears to be OK. We've got coworkers with different names in different systems as a result(Scheduling, QM, AD and remote AD)

Of course, once you ask about this it never gets resolved and people just deal with having multiple slightly differently-spelled last names.

You'd kind of expect names to just be copy-pasted out of an e-mail rather than being transcribed by whoever's making the account.

Even happened to me at a previous employer, my name was entered properly everywhere except for my e-mailaddress. When I mentioned this on my very first day I was said it'd be fixed soon. When I left 9 months later it still hadn't been fixed.

Also fun: A coworker's AD account was deleted when someone else with the same last name left the company. Somehow IT at this place has never heard of "disable, don't delete".

I had something similar once - my name was spelled correctly everywhere, but then one senior manager started spelling my surname with an I as the final vowel instead of an A. Then other people started doing it. Then the operations team started amending official records because they thought if everyone was spelling it that way the records must have been wrong. The first I knew of that last part was getting my first payslip with the wrong name on it.

Lord Dudeguy
Sep 17, 2006
[Insert good English here]

Bob Morales posted:

What do you do?

You let management make the call.

I worked in a place where a sales guy's name was Joseph McIntyre (made up), but when he spoke on the phone he introduced himself as "Joe Mick". Unprofessional? Yes. Manchild locked in high school nicknames? Yes. Made money? Yes.

He put in a request to break our Firstname.Lastname[at]contoso.com e-mail policy so he'd be Joe.Mick[at]contoso.com. We rejected it. He pushed it up the chain to the CEO, who then told our CIO to "make it happen". After which, the floodgates opened and every "Skippy", "Marty", "Slick", "RJ" and "Pimpmasta Nasty" wanted their e-mail addresses changed to reflect their nicknames of yesteryear.

We executed about four of those change requests before the CEO erupted in a ball of unrighteous fury - a CEO from another company poked fun at him for having employees with the names a six-year-old would choose for themselves. All e-mails were reverted to their original names, except for Joe Mick.

Lord Dudeguy fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Jan 20, 2014

Varkk
Apr 17, 2004

Back to the Java is poo poo complaints. I caught a good one today.
An insurance company here has a java web app which they need to panel beaters to use to upload photos, damage assesments etc and of course final invoices for work done. This app has a little feature which when you launch it checks to see if you are running the latest Java release available. If not it closes and directs you to update. This is all nice and fine. However the app is not signed and so won't work on the latest Java release.
Sure there are workarounds, but not exactly the kind of things panel beaters want to be dealing with.

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Ynglaur
Oct 9, 2013

The Malta Conference, anyone?

incoherent posted:

The device is a laptop, so there isn't anything they can get at...I just setup exchange 2010 for the org so they can use apple mail app. However, after I sent over the TCO of this rogue purchase vs buying it through our channels management will know there were very noticeable savings to be had (and every penny counts in our death march to insolvency).

Also, they did not buy apple care. And i'll be keeping that omittance under my hat.

Just blacklist the laptop's MAC address in your routers. I'm still amazed that organizations don't run MAC address whitelists for their internal networks. DoD was doing that over 10 years ago. The look on people's faces when the military police showed up to see some guy on guard duty plugging his personal laptop into the wall was hilarious.

Then again, such things can make life hell for contractors or consultants, both of which tend to be expensive resources. You really don't want to pay $100-$300/hour for somebody to twiddle their thumbs while you determine that yes, indeed, they know how to run antivirus software, use full-disk encryption, and their OS is 2 versions ahead of yours, fully patched.

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