More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

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Ynglaur: Oct 9, 2013; The Malta Conference, anyone?

"I'm glad we both agree that I'm being paid an average market rate. Because my performance is significantly above average, you understand why my salary should also be above the market average."

# ? Sep 18, 2014 09:43

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 19:28

Che Delilas: Nov 23, 2009; FREE TIBET WEED

Yeah, again, I pointed that kind of poo poo out. He wasn't making good arguments, and I let him know that that was the case, because the fact was that I was underpaid and there was nothing to justify it. He was just trying to score points while he refused the raise.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 10:15

EoRaptor: Sep 13, 2003; by Fluffdaddy

myron cope posted:

...
So anyway he says he has to get approval and order a license. They approve, he orders it, I was off from saturday until today. I got an email saying the licenses are in, they sent the user the download instructions, I can finish the install when I get a chance. So I go to install it and I don't have a key and I don't know if she needs to login to creative cloud or what. The CC installer is already on her computer and it says she installed Photoshop and Illustrator 59 days ago. So I email manager asking if there's a key or how to actually do it, then I say she already has PS/Illustrator. He emails back with "I bought a license for Adobe Design. You didn't mention anything about Acrobat" and in the next email says "well that was $500 wasted"
...

That claim doesn't jive with Adobe pricing at all. Creative Cloud licenses are infinitely transferable, so it could be moved to someone else with about 3 mouse clicks. They are also billed monthly, and can be cancelled at any time, even if you signed up for the annual plan, so the only cost is the months billed and the backdated price difference between the annual and monthly rate. He's pulling numbers out of his rear end or your reseller is ripping you off.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 15:04

dogstile: May 1, 2012; fucking clocks
how do they work?

Jesus I now get why first liners were treated with such loving contempt by second liners.

A first liner got a call from my client while I was at lunch. He sent me an email saying to call them when I get back. 40 minutes later I stroll in I call them up, turns out they can't login so they can't do any work.

gently caress you guy, gently caress you. Find out what the loving problem is and if its something like that pass it to someone else on my team, unable to log in is pretty drat important.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 15:42

Dick Trauma: Nov 30, 2007; God damn it, you've got to be kind.

My coworkers can't spell. :negative:

# ? Sep 18, 2014 16:21

anthonypants: May 6, 2007; by Nyc_Tattoo; Dinosaur Gum

A naming convention for computers is a good idea.

A naming convention that is just [loc]-[username] is loving STUPID

# ? Sep 18, 2014 16:29

Roargasm: Oct 21, 2010; Hate to sound sleazy
But tease me
I don't want it if it's that easy

Is it really all caps bold stupid? I'm just FBK-FLast for 80% of my end users. You can use AD queries to generate specific lists of computers if you need it

# ? Sep 18, 2014 16:32

Sickening: Jul 16, 2007; Black summer was the best summer.

anthonypants posted:

A naming convention for computers is a good idea.

A naming convention that is just [loc]-[username] is loving STUPID

Before I got here the naming convention was [dept][username]. Almost as bad.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 16:34

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Nintendo Kid posted:

British telephone numbering is amazingly complex for such a small number of people. Doubly so considering the US, Canada, and 23 other countries share the same numbering plan that's been only minorly changed since 1947, and the most major change was effectively invisible to phone users (allowing the middle digit of area codes to be other than 0 or 1).

Lucky that your numbering scheme had a built-in expansion method that allowed you to have five times the amount of original numbers without having to add extra digits to the scheme. Once you run out of those you're in for the same hassle that we've been quietly going through for the last 15 years.

Ours had no such thing, so adding extra digits and migrating everyone's numbers has been a lot more complex.

It's kinda like the difference between switching from Class A/B/C to using subnets vs the switch from IPv4 to IPv6. In fairness to OfTel/OfCom they've for the most part handled it amazingly well.

angry armadillo posted:

I used to work for a company that only dealt with Welsh people so naturally we had a lot of customers from Cardiff. I never knew the area code was actually just 029

That was kinda my point, no fucker does!

anthonypants posted:

A naming convention for computers is a good idea.

A naming convention that is just [loc]-[username] is loving STUPID

My laptop came back in the post from HQ a while back, I had to send it off to have an SSD installed and be reimaged to the new corporate standards after we got bought (free week off work yay!)

Its name is just FIRSTNAMELASTNAME no number, no location info, no asset tag, nothing, it doesn't even use my username.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 16:37

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

anthonypants posted:

A naming convention for computers is a good idea.

A naming convention that is just [loc]-[username] is loving STUPID

I really don't get why the computer should be named after the user. Ours are just [loc]-Wx-yyyyy where x is a number corresponding to the OS level (was 2 for XP, now 3 for Win7) and y is just an incrementing number.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 16:47

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!

anthonypants posted:

A naming convention for computers is a good idea.

A naming convention that is just [loc]-[username] is loving STUPID

I'd kill for 'x220-win7-jlewis' instead of what we use

B1U-DA-423

It's some confabulation of location+building number+department+something else

# ? Sep 18, 2014 16:49

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!

Collateral Damage posted:

I really don't get why the computer should be named after the user. Ours are just [loc]-Wx-yyyyy where x is a number corresponding to the OS level (was 2 for XP, now 3 for Win7) and y is just an incrementing number.

Isn't the username a hundred times more useful than some random #?

# ? Sep 18, 2014 16:49

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!

My old job used the last two octets of the IP as the machine name. :argh:

2_227

etc

# ? Sep 18, 2014 16:51

thebigcow: Jan 3, 2001; Bully!

I use an abbreviation for the manufacturer followed by the service tag.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 17:00

Sickening: Jul 16, 2007; Black summer was the best summer.

thebigcow posted:

I use an abbreviation for the manufacturer followed by the service tag.

We just do the service tag now. I can't think of a single good reason to put more information in the name. Too many other tools that provides information on the machine that are more effective that messing with the name. If your naming scheme requires you to change the machine name in production than something is wrong.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 17:04

Collateral Damage: Jun 13, 2009

Bob Morales posted:

Isn't the username a hundred times more useful than some random #?

No because the computer isn't personal, and data about who logs on most often is recorded and kept easily accessible anyway.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 17:19

Orcs and Ostriches: Aug 26, 2010; The Great Twist

My hardware is all [Loc]-[RoomNumber]-[N] where N increments as appropriate. They're all otherwise interchangeable and any other data can be found in other ways.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 17:39

Scaramouche: Mar 26, 2001; SPACE FACE! SPACE FACE!

The problem with location in the machine name is... what if it moves? User name in the machine name is... what if the user leaves? I eventually wrestled the last company I worked at into using accounting references because the only thing that wouldn't change is the fact that the company owns the machine and it had to be accounted for.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 17:42

FlapYoJacks: Feb 12, 2009; Can't post for 6 hours!

I got 8gigs of ram, a core i5, and a SSD.

Lets compile Android twice. :cool:

# ? Sep 18, 2014 17:43

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!

Scaramouche posted:

The problem with location in the machine name is... what if it moves? User name in the machine name is... what if the user leaves? I eventually wrestled the last company I worked at into using accounting references because the only thing that wouldn't change is the fact that the company owns the machine and it had to be accounted for.

If the person leaves you're going to have to hit the PC at some point anyway, right?

# ? Sep 18, 2014 17:44

Inspector_666: Oct 7, 2003; _{benny with the good hair}

Every time somebody wants to use a ziptie on any type of wiring, they should have to go through a permitting and review process.

And using them on power cords should be straight up illegal.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 18:08

Sickening: Jul 16, 2007; Black summer was the best summer.

Bob Morales posted:

If the person leaves you're going to have to hit the PC at some point anyway, right?

I think the point is that you don't always have to and its more efficient to blow up a profile and leave the machine depending on the replacement timeline for a lot of orgs.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 18:16

Proteus Jones: Feb 28, 2013

Bob Morales posted:

If the person leaves you're going to have to hit the PC at some point anyway, right?

Yeah, I'm not sure I'm getting all the antagonism toward the naming thing. I have a workstation, a notebook and a few VMs assigned to me and they are all named using variations of my userID. (basically, BuildingID-UserID-XX, where XX is a numerical code for type of device).

If this was a shared device, I can see tying in location and what not into the name. I deal with infrastructure so our naming convention is more "where the hell is this device" oriented.

In fact, that leads me into my "shaking my fist" issue. I deal a lot with 3rd party network teams for management of our equipment located on customer premisses. So when something stops responding, rather then dispatch a technician first, I ask them for basic information:

"Can you see our gateway device on your switch? The MAC is xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx."

"Nope. We did a port scan and don't see it"

"Ok. Well, then can you give me the switch and switchport our device is plugged into so the tech has that info when we send him out?"

"I just explained I scanned for MAC. I could. not. find. it."

"Yeah, I got that. Can you just check your port inventory documentation and tell me the switch and port for the tech?"

"What's a port inventory document?"

WHY? WHY WOULD YOU NOT TRACK INFORMATION THAT'S SO USEFUL? IT TAKES MINUTES TO MAKE!

# ? Sep 18, 2014 18:16

Proteus Jones: Feb 28, 2013

Sickening posted:

I think the point is that you don't always have to and its more efficient to blow up a profile and leave the machine depending on the replacement timeline for a lot of orgs.

I think that comes down to corporate culture and industry. My previous job was in a global security group at a bank and my current one is at a fairly large tech company. With InfoSec policies being what they are at these locations, they just have a blanket "wipe the computer" and in some cases "nuke the HD" depending on what kind of information is on it. Those of us with notebooks also get to deal with the special hell that is PGP Whole Disk encryption. Although I will say the last generation of notebooks we got are much beefier so it's not as noticeable.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 18:20

Dick Trauma: Nov 30, 2007; God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Inspector_666 posted:

Every time somebody wants to use a ziptie on any type of wiring, they should have to go through a permitting and review process.

And using them on power cords should be straight up illegal.

Anyone that uses a ziptie in a bad place and then cuts the excess off leaving a skin-shredding nub behind should go to prison. If that ziptie is buried in a flood of cabling they go straight to solitary.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 18:26

anthonypants: May 6, 2007; by Nyc_Tattoo; Dinosaur Gum

Sickening posted:

I think the point is that you don't always have to and its more efficient to blow up a profile and leave the machine depending on the replacement timeline for a lot of orgs.

I think they were/are using it as a replacement for an actual inventory database. Because we don't have an inventory of deployed machines.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 18:30

Orcs and Ostriches: Aug 26, 2010; The Great Twist

We had a contractor leave 1000 ft or so of velcro a while back. That was pretty nice to work with while it lasted.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 18:35

Sickening: Jul 16, 2007; Black summer was the best summer.

anthonypants posted:

I think they were/are using it as a replacement for an actual inventory database. Because we don't have an inventory of deployed machines.

Why not? PDQ inventory is free and pretty painless.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 18:37

Scaramouche: Mar 26, 2001; SPACE FACE! SPACE FACE!

flosofl posted:

I think that comes down to corporate culture and industry. My previous job was in a global security group at a bank and my current one is at a fairly large tech company. With InfoSec policies being what they are at these locations, they just have a blanket "wipe the computer" and in some cases "nuke the HD" depending on what kind of information is on it. Those of us with notebooks also get to deal with the special hell that is PGP Whole Disk encryption. Although I will say the last generation of notebooks we got are much beefier so it's not as noticeable.

This is true; at that point I was sole support for a company of 120, with about half that being a call centre with the associated turnover, so relating user names to computers was ludicrous.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 18:40

Super Slash: Feb 20, 2006; You rang ?

Lum posted:

Its name is just FIRSTNAMELASTNAME no number, no location info, no asset tag, nothing, it doesn't even use my username.

A whole load of stuff in our office is the same, variations of FIRSTNAMELAPTOP, FIRSTNAMELASTNAME, HP-BLAHBLAH, especially fun for tracking a bunch of mobile phones named "iPhone". It was only until i got the reins that I drew up an asset label design, sent off an order, and made a simple custom object in SFDC to log whats what then tag & name everything as the following;

AB[Company] - O[Office] - 001[Numbering]
AB[Company] - M[Mobile] - 001[Numbering]

# ? Sep 18, 2014 19:03

Inspector_666: Oct 7, 2003; _{benny with the good hair}

Dick Trauma posted:

Anyone that uses a ziptie in a bad place and then cuts the excess off leaving a skin-shredding nub behind should go to prison. If that ziptie is buried in a flood of cabling they go straight to solitary.

Also using a trio of them to attach a modem and/or router to a rack does not count as "mounting" it.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 19:30

BaseballPCHiker: Jan 16, 2006

I think the naming thing totally depends on the environment. Right now I work at a place with every user being mobile and carrying their laptop with them. It would make no sense to name that in relation to their office # or building because they are up and down so much. Turnover is very low to so we name it by employee and then change it if/when they do leave. I've also worked in places where the turnover was crazy high and they worked off of desktops so we would do the building, floor, desk # thing to make it easy on us. Then you have the hellish environment I once walked into where the prior sole "IT guy" named them whatever he thought was funny at the time.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 19:58

stuxracer: May 4, 2006

Inspector_666 posted:

Also using a trio of them to attach a modem and/or router to a rack does not count as "mounting" it.

I enjoy pictures of these so I went looking and found a good one

# ? Sep 18, 2014 20:05

HFX: Nov 29, 2004

stuxracer posted:

I enjoy pictures of these so I went looking and found a good one

Looks like a professional install to me! (Professional defined as residential cable wanting to drill through outside walls, ceilings, and not using wall boxes).

# ? Sep 18, 2014 20:13

Inspector_666: Oct 7, 2003; _{benny with the good hair}

stuxracer posted:

I enjoy pictures of these so I went looking and found a good one

Man, I've had to put plenty of long servers into "racks" that were just one set of rails and I usually just leave them hanging because I don't have a choice.

I keep finding Sonicwall TZ- series routers just tied onto the sides of racks.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 20:20

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Lum posted:

Lucky that your numbering scheme had a built-in expansion method that allowed you to have five times the amount of original numbers without having to add extra digits to the scheme. Once you run out of those you're in for the same hassle that we've been quietly going through for the last 15 years.

Ours had no such thing, so adding extra digits and migrating everyone's numbers has been a lot more complex.

It's kinda like the difference between switching from Class A/B/C to using subnets vs the switch from IPv4 to IPv6. In fairness to OfTel/OfCom they've for the most part handled it amazingly well.

It's not that we're "lucky" our system had expansion room, it's that we actually have a system where as far as I can tell yours is just throwing numbers at a wall and seeing what sticks. Every time I have to deal with dialplans and call routing in the UK I end up with a headache and my nearby coworkers ready to kill me for repeatedly humming the "0118 999 881 999 119 7253" tune.

The following are all valid number formats in the UK:

code:

(0XX) XXXXXXXX
(0XXX) XXXXXX
(0XXX) XXXXXXX
(0XXXX) XXXXX
(0XXXX) XXXXXX
(0XXXXX) XXXX
(0XXXXX) XXXXX

There are all sorts of special cases within these formats so if you need to do much more than verify a number looks valid you're in for a fun time.

As you note, a lot of your own people don't understand the system at all and are confused by their own area code.

Now here's the valid number formats in NANPA territory:

code:

(NXX) NXXXXXX

Where N = 2-9. The only special cases are area codes where the digits two and three are the same, all of which are reserved as "easily recognizable codes" for things like toll-free calls (800, 844, 855, 866, 877, 888) and premium-rate services (900).

The worst confusion we have is that at one time all area codes supported seven digit local dialing. Since then some have been split or overlayed (same area, two or more area codes) and those largely require dialing the area code even for calls within the same exchange. Someone who is used to seven digit dialing and moves to or starts working in a ten digit area can be fun to deal with until they break their habits, but in the era of cell phones where people keep numbers from area codes nowhere near their current location most businesses publish their full 10 digit number no matter if their area requires it or not. The concept of local versus long distance is becoming irrelevant so ten digit dialing is becoming the de facto standard for any domestic calls.

As for expansion, when we run out of space (looking like some time in the early 2040s, though that's been pushed back a few times as pooling, portability, and VoIP have reduced the demand for new numbers) we'll just throw another number or two in there somewhere (current leading proposal is adding one digit at the end of the area code and one at the start of the exchange) and existing numbers are all changed in an identical way. PBXes can easily be updated in bulk with a simple script, permissive dialing can be supported where someone dialing the old number format for a local call could still be connected to the right destination, and everything remains logical. It would just change to something like this:

code:

(NXX0) 0NXX-XXXX

Anyways at the rate alternative forms of communication are taking over for a lot of personal and some business calls it wouldn't surprise me if the demand for new numbers continues to drop quickly enough that the deadline keeps getting further away and never actually happens. There are still tens of thousands of numbers in most area codes wasted on "rollover lines" and other legacy bullshit from purely analog phone systems which aren't relevant to PRI or VoIP systems. These will continue to go away as businesses eventually upgrade to modern systems.

Sickening posted:

We just do the service tag now. I can't think of a single good reason to put more information in the name. Too many other tools that provides information on the machine that are more effective that messing with the name. If your naming scheme requires you to change the machine name in production than something is wrong.

Same. We used to do {Abbreviated company name}-{Abbreviated site name}-{Service Tag} but realized quickly that we often were setting up machines for a customer with no immediate idea which site they were going to, so we'd need to do a name change on site. Then another one got bought out and the new owner didn't want the old name on anything, so we decided the service tag was all we'd use from there on out. At least on most Dells it makes dealing with the user really easy since the service tag tends to be in an obvious place. It really sucks with some other vendors though who insist on using a long serial number. Powerspec (Microcenter's house brand) is a bad one with this, their serial numbers are the model number followed by ten digits, as if they're ever going to make billions of that particular model. Dell's format allows them to make 78.3 billion devices (36 possibilities, seven characters) without repeating while being a lot easier to read.

If it is a situation like flosofl's though where the entire machine gets reinstalled for every new user I don't see any problem with making the machine name very descriptive. It doesn't take any more time so why not? It's situational though. My general rule would be anything that could be useful in locating a machine and is not likely to change before a reinstall is fair game to put in the machine name. If your documentation isn't up to date and a machine starts spewing crap it can be very helpful to be able to look at the DHCP server and see that the machine is "CLE-EAST-FRONTDESK" or "CHI-JOESMITH" as long as that name is likely to still be truthful.

Inspector_666 posted:

Every time somebody wants to use a ziptie on any type of wiring, they should have to go through a permitting and review process.

And using them on power cords should be straight up illegal.

Agreed on both counts. They are great tools to semi-permanently attach things together. Wires are not something that should be attached together in such a way. Zip ties belong in the garage, not in the server room, wire closet, or under/behind a desk.

wolrah fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Sep 18, 2014

# ? Sep 18, 2014 20:22

luminalflux: May 27, 2005

poo poo that pisses me off: Phone number inputs that don't like my phone number.

Yes, +467xxxxxxxxx is a valid phone number for me even though my shipping address is the US. No, it's not (467) xxx-xxxx. Let me just put the international poo poo there and don't care about trying to validate if it's NANP or w/e.

Also, address fields. I had a run-in with my bank because my address is apparently too long:

code:

Buttecorp S.A de C.V
Att: luminalflux
Paseo de Reforma 471, Despachio #103
Colonia Lomas de Chapultepec, Delegacion Cuauhtemoc
11000 Cd. de Mexico, D.F
MEXICO

Inevitably one line would be too long or too many lines or something.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 21:14

JosephSkunk: Dec 16, 2003; Yes, evidently you had misperceived it as rain.

Dick Trauma posted:

Anyone that uses a ziptie in a bad place and then cuts the excess off leaving a skin-shredding nub behind should go to prison. If that ziptie is buried in a flood of cabling they go straight to solitary.

What in THE hell boy. You use zip ties on everything not network, and use velcro for network. You also trim that poo poo down, and any DC tech worth his salt knows to be careful for those nubs, as they should be EVERYWHERE.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 21:22

luminalflux: May 27, 2005

Cable lacing is the way to go.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 21:25

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 19:28

Sickening: Jul 16, 2007; Black summer was the best summer.

JosephSkunk posted:

What in THE hell boy. You use zip ties on everything not network, and use velcro for network. You also trim that poo poo down, and any DC tech worth his salt knows to be careful for those nubs, as they should be EVERYWHERE.

Will this piece of equipment/wire ever move again? Yes? Then use velcro, no zip ties. All equipment/wire is going to move again.

# ? Sep 18, 2014 21:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

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