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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milk milk lemonade: Jul 29, 2016

ConfusedUs posted:

I am bad at office politics. I have little patience for laziness, stupidity, and blame tossing. Nothing annoys me more than having to chase grown adults down to do their jobs.

So how the hell did I end up in a position where I am the grease that keeps the wheels of the whole company running smoothly? I'm supposed to be the bridge between Support and the other departments, but apparently I'm really the spider in the middle of the whole fuckin' web. I just didn't realize it.

No one thought to ask about the consequences of doing X without me, or ensured that necessary thing Y was done. Change Z was implemented, but not tested, and thank god I was here to stop that other thing they planned to put out today.

The place is on loving fire and no one can seem to ask the hard loving questions but me.

Fun fact! I pulled some numbers and reports today and found that 34% of all issues ever escalated out of Support to engineering have occurred in the last 30 days, nearly all of which was due to the poo poo they implemented without me. (I was either on vacation or on a business trip for 20 of those days)

Clearly they are not paying me enough.

That's exactly the kind of quantification you need when you go to your CIO and ask for more money and authority.

Also sometimes 'bad at office politics' translates to 'awesome at office politics'

# ? Aug 8, 2017 22:35

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 11:22

BallerBallerDillz: Jun 11, 2009; Cock, Rules, Everything, Around, Me; Scratchmo

I'm also in the middle of a questionable security decision but at least this one came directly from the CEO (with adequate CYA trail) - the problem is I can't even figure out how the hell to make it work.

A remote sales guy is leaving the company, he works on the other coast and hasn't been to the office in years. Not too long ago I got him set up with a new Mac Book air but did everything remotely. He's a nice guy, and not too terrible with technology but it's a struggle doing things like fixing broken profile migrations totally remotely. He recently helped the company find an acquisition partner, so he knew his job was likely going to end in the next few months and had plenty of time to back up whatever data he wanted. The merger is about to go through and his job has indeed been eliminated. As a parting gift the company said he could keep all his equipment, figuring that if there was any data he wanted to exfiltrate he had plenty of time to do it already.

That brings me to the clusterfuck of trying to get him moved over to a personal email address. He uses Mac and really likes Outlook 2016. He wants to continue to use Office 2016 and went and bought a personal O365 account using his gmail address to register. He also wants to import the whole .olm of his work account with previous emails, but much more importantly contacts and calendar events. I'm still a pretty junior tech and we use hosted exchange, so I'm not super familiar with Exchange, and definitely not familiar with migrating between Exchange and personal mail. I've spent a week now trying to get an email address working in Outlook that will sync his imported contacts and calendar events with his phone. We've tried adding his Gmail account then importing the olm with no success. We've tried switching to the fast insider ring and getting the Outlook 2016 for Mac update that has built in Google sync, but we can only get it to sync one way, even if we jumped through all the hoops to get his contacts out of Outlook and into Google, contacts he creates or edits in Outlook for Mac won't sync with his phone. We've tried accessing Outlook.com with the gmail address he used to sign up for O365 and then adding the ugly Outlook.com address that gets associated with it to his Outlook but that won't even work.

I know that trying to get Google, Apple, and Microsoft products all working together wasn't going to be super easy but god drat this is a mess. I've been lucky enough to get right into duties that are more Jr. Sysadmin that helpdesk, although I do both (our helpdesk is quiet enough that I have plenty of time for both) - This seems like something that should be super easy to solve and it's driving me loving bonkers. This is the first real issue that I've tried to work out where I feel like there just isn't a reasonable solution. I guess manually move all the contacts and calendar events to Gmail and then only use the web interface and iphone app. He's not thrilled with that decision though. I'm spending an unreasonable amount of time on this for someone who isn't even an employee any more.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 00:33

Ursine Catastrophe: Nov 9, 2009; It's a lovely morning in the void and you are a horrible lady-in-waiting.

don't ask how i know; Dinosaur Gum

milk milk lemonade posted:

Also sometimes 'bad at office politics' translates to 'awesome at office politics'

Pretty much everyone I've ever met that "hates office politics" falls into one of two categories:

1. Assumes, either from anecdotes or previous experience, that "office politics" = "mean girls, but in an office building". Deals fine with actual office politics that involve professionals behaving professionally.

2. The office version of that one person from high school that "hates drama", yet draws it around themselves like a magnet.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 00:41

ChubbyThePhat: Dec 22, 2006; Who nico nico needs anyone else

The Nards Pan posted:

I'm also in the middle of a questionable security decision but at least this one came directly from the CEO (with adequate CYA trail) - the problem is I can't even figure out how the hell to make it work.

A remote sales guy is leaving the company, he works on the other coast and hasn't been to the office in years. Not too long ago I got him set up with a new Mac Book air but did everything remotely. He's a nice guy, and not too terrible with technology but it's a struggle doing things like fixing broken profile migrations totally remotely. He recently helped the company find an acquisition partner, so he knew his job was likely going to end in the next few months and had plenty of time to back up whatever data he wanted. The merger is about to go through and his job has indeed been eliminated. As a parting gift the company said he could keep all his equipment, figuring that if there was any data he wanted to exfiltrate he had plenty of time to do it already.

That brings me to the clusterfuck of trying to get him moved over to a personal email address. He uses Mac and really likes Outlook 2016. He wants to continue to use Office 2016 and went and bought a personal O365 account using his gmail address to register. He also wants to import the whole .olm of his work account with previous emails, but much more importantly contacts and calendar events. I'm still a pretty junior tech and we use hosted exchange, so I'm not super familiar with Exchange, and definitely not familiar with migrating between Exchange and personal mail. I've spent a week now trying to get an email address working in Outlook that will sync his imported contacts and calendar events with his phone. We've tried adding his Gmail account then importing the olm with no success. We've tried switching to the fast insider ring and getting the Outlook 2016 for Mac update that has built in Google sync, but we can only get it to sync one way, even if we jumped through all the hoops to get his contacts out of Outlook and into Google, contacts he creates or edits in Outlook for Mac won't sync with his phone. We've tried accessing Outlook.com with the gmail address he used to sign up for O365 and then adding the ugly Outlook.com address that gets associated with it to his Outlook but that won't even work.

I know that trying to get Google, Apple, and Microsoft products all working together wasn't going to be super easy but god drat this is a mess. I've been lucky enough to get right into duties that are more Jr. Sysadmin that helpdesk, although I do both (our helpdesk is quiet enough that I have plenty of time for both) - This seems like something that should be super easy to solve and it's driving me loving bonkers. This is the first real issue that I've tried to work out where I feel like there just isn't a reasonable solution. I guess manually move all the contacts and calendar events to Gmail and then only use the web interface and iphone app. He's not thrilled with that decision though. I'm spending an unreasonable amount of time on this for someone who isn't even an employee any more.

iPhones and O365 don't like to play nice. I don't know if you wanted to hear that or not. Generally the contacts will actually sync to the iPhone, however are only searchable. So basically he opens his contacts list and if he searches for a name it will come up, but he wont just get a nice list of names to scroll through. Generally this is how a GAL behaves though and the fix is to copy all those contacts to the local outlook profile and have it sync over the OWA app. Other than these fantastic and annoying data copies, you should just be able to import/export mail as a pst from one Outlook profile to another. Maybe my end of day brain skimmed over something there that is making this more complicated though.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 01:05

beepsandboops: Jan 28, 2014

Tier 1 support gave me a ticket for a guy having problems with Outlook. I get to work on it and he has tens of thousands of emails in his deleted folder and he hasn't rebooted for three months.

:negative:

# ? Aug 9, 2017 01:23

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

Adding Surface Studio drivers to MDT. Microsoft provides easy zip files for all of the other surface models, but not this one. Can't run the msi normally because my workstation is not a surface studio. Have to lookup and run msiexec from the command line in order to extract the drivers for deployment.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 01:30

SyNack Sassimov: May 4, 2006; Let the robot win.
��--Captain James T. Vader

The Nards Pan posted:

I know that trying to get Google, Apple, and Microsoft products all working together wasn't going to be super easy but god drat this is a mess. I've been lucky enough to get right into duties that are more Jr. Sysadmin that helpdesk, although I do both (our helpdesk is quiet enough that I have plenty of time for both) - This seems like something that should be super easy to solve and it's driving me loving bonkers. This is the first real issue that I've tried to work out where I feel like there just isn't a reasonable solution. I guess manually move all the contacts and calendar events to Gmail and then only use the web interface and iphone app. He's not thrilled with that decision though. I'm spending an unreasonable amount of time on this for someone who isn't even an employee any more.

Even leaving the Apple side of it out, my personal experience has been that Outlook with Google Apps is a god drat nightmare. It might be better with just Gmail instead of GApps (I haven't done that for about 12 years, back when I used to use Outlook for my personal accounts, so I don't know), but typically Outlook is best when it's used with Exchange and nothing else.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 03:27

Varkk: Apr 17, 2004

I think I read it here. Outlook is a terrible email client, but it is the best Exchange client.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 07:55

Sefal: Nov 8, 2011; Fun Shoe

Varkk posted:

I think I read it here. Outlook is a terrible email client, but it is the best Exchange client.

This is my experience.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 08:11

DigitalRaven: Oct 9, 2012

poo poo pissing me off: new task sequence is loving up � machine's still powered on, but the screen's black and nothing I do can get it back up and running except a hard-reboot. Which is a bit of a problem when the OS may only be partially deployed, or it's deployed and working fine but still pulling down some apps from SCCM or whatever.

Thing is, this happens sometime between 45 minutes and 3 hours into the TS. I'm buggered if I'm wasting half a day timing this piece of poo poo, but the people who actually make the task sequence are paranoid and insist I tell them exactly when/what step it's falling over on. I'm not allowed to access so much as the logs.

I had the bright idea of setting up a webcam to monitor it, but the only ones we have available are too low-res to capture anything on screen. I must be missing something incredibly obvious :bang:

# ? Aug 9, 2017 10:14

Sefal: Nov 8, 2011; Fun Shoe

A year or 2 ago. I had a problem deploying images with WDT. While the whole process should have taken 35 minutes at most. It took 3 hours. sometimes 48 hours. It had a problem with windows updates. Maybe that? Or a driver loving the sequence up?

# ? Aug 9, 2017 10:20

DigitalRaven: Oct 9, 2012

Thanks for the pointers. My money's now on a driver loving things up. Just got to pull teeth to get confirmation.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 10:37

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

Got a call from one of the CEO's three assistants that he needed help in his office. On my way she flagged me down and said that he was trying to use GoToMeeting on his iPad.

In his office he had his Surface and his iPad set up right next to each other. I could see that on both he had a browser open ready to join the meeting, but the iPad had a banner at the top prompting him to download the GoToMeeting app.

I said "Your Surface is ready to go, why don't you connect that way?" He said "I want to use the iPad."

:thumbsup:

What followed was over ten minutes of watching him fumble to enter his password, fumble to reset his password, fumble to download the app, fumble to enter the conference ID number, fumble to unmute his mic...

His Surface was right there, ready to go, but he made everyone on the call wait while he hosed around like a goddamn idiot because he wanted to use his iPad.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 16:24

MC Fruit Stripe: Nov 26, 2002; around and around we go

To be fair, if I ever open my own company, being insufferably difficult to everyone around me because I'm The Mother Fuckin Boss is high on my to-do list.

That said, do people get nervous around others during a time crunch like that? I'm talking about the fumbling with passwords, for example. I've seen it myself and while I myself am not particularly intimidating, I've seen people completely fall apart when I tell them to type something.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 16:28

Bunni-kat: May 25, 2010; Service Desk B-b-bunny...
How can-ca-caaaaan I
help-p-p-p you?

MC Fruit Stripe posted:

, I've seen people completely fall apart when I tell them to type something.

The secret is, they're always falling apart.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 16:35

22 Eargesplitten: Oct 10, 2010

Yesterday: "PM, here is what we're struggling with. We can hopefully get part of it done by the end of Friday, then the rest by next Thursday. It's going to be tight, though."

PM: "That does sound tight."

Today: PM: "I need part of it done by noon Friday, then the rest by noon Monday. Plus more than we had originally talked about."

Thankfully I have a meeting with my manager soon, where I can get input on how to tell the PM and VPs the fact that there's no way in hell that's all getting done on that schedule

E: turns out this has gone up to the CEO level. Goodbye weekend.

22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Aug 9, 2017

# ? Aug 9, 2017 16:38

devmd01: Mar 7, 2006; Elektronik
Supersonik

gently caress servicenow and the team that is driving all of the ITIL bullshit I have to deal with.

I'm fine with change requests but all the other bullshit? Problem? Incident? Request? Request item? Whatever, gently caress right off.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 17:41

Bunni-kat: May 25, 2010; Service Desk B-b-bunny...
How can-ca-caaaaan I
help-p-p-p you?

NFC cards are used to access most rooms in this building. These cards are controlled by Facilities, not IT. Whether they should be or not? :shrug:

The point is, we don't touch them in any way, shape, or form. You go to facilities to get your picture taken for the card, and you pick up the card from them after its printed and programmed.

So why the SAM HILL do I have to explain to THREE different people that we didn't deactivate someone's card 2 weeks before their vacation started: the person, their boss, and the boss's admin. Also, we don't remove individual access for vacation, we disable the account, so no, I don't know why you can't save in that folder that you say you could always save to before.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 17:59

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

You disable accounts when people are on vacation?

Facilities controls physical access here too. It's better that way.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 18:12

pixaal: Jan 8, 2004; All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.

The Fool posted:

You disable accounts when people are on vacation?

This would never work, how are they supposed to log into the VPN with the loaner laptop if they are disabled?

# ? Aug 9, 2017 18:19

22 Eargesplitten: Oct 10, 2010

I just want to quit. I have no idea how to do this, and I don't think there's enough coffee in the office to change that.

:smithicide:

# ? Aug 9, 2017 18:19

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

22 Eargesplitten posted:

I just want to quit. I have no idea how to do this, and I don't think there's enough coffee in the office to change that.

Treat us like a rubber duck.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 18:23

mattfl: Aug 27, 2004

devmd01 posted:

gently caress servicenow and the team that is driving all of the ITIL bullshit I have to deal with.

I'm fine with change requests but all the other bullshit? Problem? Incident? Request? Request item? Whatever, gently caress right off.

We just recently switched to servicenow. It's such a POS lol

# ? Aug 9, 2017 18:26

Wrath of the Bitch King: May 11, 2005; Research confirms that black is a color like silver is a color, and that beyond black is clarity.

mattfl posted:

We just recently switched to servicenow. It's such a POS lol

I think I'd take it over Ivanti/HEAT/ITSM at this point.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 18:31

Bunni-kat: May 25, 2010; Service Desk B-b-bunny...
How can-ca-caaaaan I
help-p-p-p you?

The Fool posted:

You disable accounts when people are on vacation?

When people are on vacation, we make sure they are on god-damned vacation.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 18:32

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

Make me go on vacation.

I DARE YOU

# ? Aug 9, 2017 18:43

ConfusedUs: Feb 24, 2004; Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!

mattfl posted:

We just recently switched to servicenow. It's such a POS lol

I'm so sorry.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 18:44

mattfl: Aug 27, 2004

ConfusedUs posted:

I'm so sorry.

Well we switched from servicedesk so it's a slight improvement...still lovely.

It doesn't help that our users don't understand the difference between a request and an incident....and by users I mean nurses who don't give a gently caress and just want their poo poo fixed now lol

# ? Aug 9, 2017 18:49

Bunni-kat: May 25, 2010; Service Desk B-b-bunny...
How can-ca-caaaaan I
help-p-p-p you?

Dick Trauma posted:

Make me go on vacation.

I DARE YOU

*hits Dick over the head, shoves on plane to Amsterdam*

# ? Aug 9, 2017 18:54

Judge Schnoopy: Nov 2, 2005; dont even TRY it, pal

Hey guys? If you schedule a project kickoff meeting and send me a webex invite, and then include "Webex" as the meeting location, don't loving show up to my office.

I will not be ready. I will be wearing shorts, eating lunch, and will not have a conference room booked. We will all be miserable because you didn't notify me you were going to be here.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 18:55

22 Eargesplitten: Oct 10, 2010

The Fool posted:

Treat us like a rubber duck.

Thanks, but I don't even know how to explain the problem I'm having.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 19:01

Sheep: Jul 24, 2003

So just to recap, I changed jobs about a month ago. They've done a bunch of stupid stuff in the interim (like giving everyone local admin). Today I was told that the MSP they brought in to help accidentally set three of our firewalls' configuration pages to be accessible to 0.0.0.0. Previously they were disabled entirely.

poo poo pissing me off: I gotta clean up the resulting mess and reaudit everything.
poo poo not pissing me off: consulting fees.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 19:01

ConfusedUs: Feb 24, 2004; Bees?
You want fucking bees?
Here you go!
ROLL INITIATIVE!!

mattfl posted:

It doesn't help that our users don't understand the difference between a request and an incident....and by users I mean nurses who don't give a gently caress and just want their poo poo fixed now lol

Your users will never learn.

There are a lot of ways to resolve that! One is you could just have one type of ticket to be created, and the person who touches it first sets if it's an incident or a request or whatever. You can also change how people get to the form, or which options appear, to guide them to the right choice.

So much of User Experience/Design is planning for the worst user, because the worst is what you'll get.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 19:02

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Thanks, but I don't even know how to explain the problem I'm having.

That's kind of the point of rubber ducking.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 19:11

22 Eargesplitten: Oct 10, 2010

The Fool posted:

That's kind of the point of rubber ducking.

Okay, here goes. I have an Excel sheet with budgets and transactions. Budgets and transactions are broken down into five categories. Transactions have specific categories for each row, budgets do not. I need to make it so that on a pivot table there is a row for each category for each cost code. The thing is that there's no guarantee there will be a transaction for any given category, so it won't necessarily show up automatically. That's the first problem, at least.

I know that's not very IT. I was supposed to be doing Excel for a couple months before working on getting something identical through SQL, but the people in charge want more and more without ever giving us a chance to redo anything in SQL. Which means I spend more and more time each week just keeping up with what we've already done.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 19:29

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

The Fool posted:

Treat us like a rubber duck.

Kinky.

The Fool posted:

That's kind of the point of rubber ducking.

This. Formulate your problems further than "incoherent rage".

# ? Aug 9, 2017 19:30

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Budgets and transactions are broken down into five categories.

Are these five categories a known list that will never/rarely change?

quote:

I need to make it so that on a pivot table there is a row for each category for each cost code.
The thing is that there's no guarantee there will be a transaction for any given category, so it won't necessarily show up automatically.

You need a column of categories, with each row for a specific category?
You need the cost codes to be listed, summed, or counted for each category?
If a category has a no transactions in it, do you need it to be listed with a value of 0?

# ? Aug 9, 2017 19:44

mattfl: Aug 27, 2004

ConfusedUs posted:

Your users will never learn.

There are a lot of ways to resolve that! One is you could just have one type of ticket to be created, and the person who touches it first sets if it's an incident or a request or whatever. You can also change how people get to the form, or which options appear, to guide them to the right choice.

So much of User Experience/Design is planning for the worst user, because the worst is what you'll get.

That's the thing. The portal that users go to to enter a ticket has 2 options and could not be more clear.

Somethings Broke and I Need Something

Somethings Broke takes them to the next part of the portal where they say what is broke, machine name, application etc.

I Need Something then opens up a catalog of things one might need or they can just choose general request and put their request in there.

Obvious to you and me what type of ticket each creates, apparently not to users!

They just don't care.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 19:53

milk milk lemonade: Jul 29, 2016

fuckin end users. Can't live with em, wouldn't have a job without em

# ? Aug 9, 2017 19:57

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 11:22

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Something's Broke: Printer broken, says load letter.

I Need Something: I need to send this email and it's giving me an error.

# ? Aug 9, 2017 20:10

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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