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?

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

Lum posted:

Is there actually any compelling reason to go to Office 2013 at all. This in the context of a home user who currently has the 3 user family pack for Office 2010.

So far I've heard nothing but complaints which may or may not be true.

lovely installer, lovely licensing model, enforced cloud bullshit.

What are the actual advantages?

I can't really say what the advantages are for home users, the big one I'm seeing a lot of is that Lync is part of Office 2013 Pro Plus, and is installed along with it. For any company staying up to date, that's one less license to deal with. The 2013 Office 365 installer adds a string to the download that associates the install with a particular Office365 account, which is yards better than the Online Services Sign-In Assistant that went along with 2010. A couple of our users just couldn't be authenticated against their servers, so their Office license would time out after 30 days (though in practice this never happened, of course.)

I'm sure as far as Lync goes one man's cure is another man's poison, but the tabbed interface that keeps all chats in one window with a stack of tabs down the left, plus the multi-way video chat, make Lync 2013 client and Lync 2013 Server a good combo. Of course if you still have XP or Vista machines, you'll have to stick to 2010 as well, as Office/Lync 2013 are only supported on Windows 7 and 8/8.1, last I heard. The 2010 client works with 2013 server and vice versa, but of course you lose the extra video chat options provided by 2013 server.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 19:04

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 22:18

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

SPF and cheap barcode scanners are the poison today...

Is SPF as poorly implemented as it seems to be? I've got several different sources authorized to send mail from our main domain, including a Wordpress/Community site, Office365, a web server on premises, another web server at a colo, a couple of IP addresses, etc. I understand the need to prevent needless DNS lookups, so too many makes your record invalid, but one of the IPs is also the mail server for an old company of my boss'. Even though the IP is explicitly included, the reverse DNS lookup shows this other domain that's not authorized by name to send mail so our record is considered a failure. The record is very long: Five IPs, one A record, one include and two mx entries.

The "Barcode Scanner" comes with a programming sheet that has each barcode for the programming less than 3mm from its neighbor, and the minimum size the laser bar makes is about three times as wide as each code. Along with this I was offered a Wasp WWS800 manual, it took me a little while to notice it wasn't a Wasp reader, so of course the programming info doesn't work either. Of course, it's also Bluetooth and the USB charging cable only has two wires, and so the cable certainly isn't going to improve my programming options. I'll probably look into making the software (Filemaker report) it interacts with not require this tab character at the end of each bar code. The current wired model appends 090A0D, the new one just 0A0D.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2013 22:13

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

QPZIL posted:

gently caress those weird attachment files that Outlook adds when your emails are being sent in Rich-Text.

THIS, exactly! I'm dealing with the nefarious TNEF/winmail.dat issue now, and it's further confounding because I don't have access to O365 to run Set-RemoteDomain, or Get-ManagementRoleAssignment, for that matter. It needs to be off for default, but on for some specific remote domains so our Lync Room System can be included in meetings with outside organizations. The worst part is disabling TNEF in a user's profile affects Outlook, but Office365 conveniently uses that format any way.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2013 17:42

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

Lord Dudeguy posted:

E-911 services.

Lync 2010 - "Set up your locations and MAGIC"
Sonus SBCs - "MAGIC and then we forward it to AT&T and MAGIC"
AT&T - "MAGIC and your 911 call has the right address."

Call all three vendors, "What's this MAGIC? How's it work?"
Vendors: "THAT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY AS THE CUSTOMER WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES DONE TO YOU-"

I'm so close to completing this PBX -> Lync conversion I can taste it. I just wish the vendors didn't suck so massively.

I'm learning Lync 2013 deployment yada yada, mainly to get our org to Gold Partner status, so I have at least a little insight into the way Lync does it. You have both physical and network sites, and for network sites you can define subnets. This is important in the Lync world, because in many cases there is no phone, so it's critical in these days of hotdesking that if someone moves, it's not their phone number on which their location is determined, rather their location information as defined in your Lync config. The basic way to do this in Lync is via their local subnet, but E911 can be provided for home workers as well. The basic flow of E911 configuration is to create a PSTN usage and a voice route for the emergency call, Create a user location policy with E911 enabled, Enter the local Emergency services number and pattern match regex, assign the PSTN usage to the location policy, then add that location policy to the appropriate network sites. One thing to understand is the relationships between voice policies, voice routes and PSTN usages has arbitrary numbers of connections between them. They are integrated together very tightly, and even understanding why these decisions were made doesn't help much with understanding the order in which to make these changes or how they work. When a user makes a call, the voice policy is queried about whether (and why) the user has the right to call %recipient%, the appropriate PSTN usage is looked at to see if it's been assigned a voice route that has the right to call the location/site where %recipient% is.

(Almost all of this is from memory, and I'm lots of studying away from either of the certs, so I'm sorry if I got any of it wrong, but the this is close.

Oddhair fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Dec 6, 2013

# ¿ Dec 6, 2013 20:41

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

Trastion posted:

Right now I am trying to figure out a problem with a new firewall (Cisco ASA 5510) and my Asterisk based PBX (some custom thing that is out of date and we don't like the company we bought it from so we don't pay for their support anymore).
The issue I am seeing is that all my external phones are getting password errors when trying to talk to the PBX. If I swap back to the current one they log right back in.

The ASA5510 is running a copy of the config file from our current 5510. The only difference is that current working 5510 is running ASA Version 7.0(6) and the new one is running 7.2(2)19.

I assume something changed in the ASA versions that is interfering with it but I am not sure where to even start and Cisco's documentation is terrible to fond anything.

It's only kind of related, but Cisco ASAs have a really hard time with H.323 prior to 8.2, and the "H.323 fixup" is best left deactivated. There might be a similar Application Layer Gateway in place for SIP that could be enabled/disabled for testing. From 8.2-8.3 it was best left on, and in 8.4 apparently its name has changed. Since SIP and H.323 are both used for voice and video telephony, hopefully this can help, though I mainly advise other companies' IT about this change, I haven't worked with the ASA platform directly. Other firewalls also have trouble when deep packet inspection is used on these protocols, like older SonicOS, Firebox prior to 10.0, etc.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 17:17

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

Trastion posted:

Hmmm the only thing I can find in the config file is
code:
policy-map asa_global_fw_policy
 class inspection_default
  inspect dns maximum-length 512 
  inspect ftp 
  inspect h323 h225 
  inspect h323 ras 
  inspect netbios 
  inspect rsh 
  inspect rtsp 
  inspect skinny 
  inspect sqlnet 
  inspect sunrpc 
  inspect tftp 
  inspect xdmcp 
  inspect pptp 
Both configs have that same section and the older 7.0(6) version works fine with it.

I will try to remove the inspection for the 2 h323 entries and see if that helps.

I was mainly thinking about the similarities between SIP and H.323 and their usages, and how their traffic gets mangled by older FW software. The two H.323 rules shouldn't have any effect at all on your SIP behavior. H.323 is a little more tweaked, in that NATed devices include their local IP in the video information, for example, you call out from a system with proper port forwarding, and the remote party sees a call from 10.1.1.65 or something instead of your public IP, making return calls impossible. This is handled well by most firewalls, it's the extra behind-the-scenes traffic that's confounded, like H.239, which carves out a portion of the bandwidth, mid-stream, for a laptop presentation; essentially it's another stream.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 23:48

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

As frustrating as Java is, they seem to be listening. Now you no longer must click on the actual check box to disable the Ask toolbar installation, you can click on the verbiage next to it, the way most installers work.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2014 18:06

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

I get that network security is important, but I can't for the life of me figure out why "Unidentified Network" isn't just a checkbox you can clear. I'm trying to get connected to an AudioCodes Mediant 1000 we picked up off ebay, and my machine gets arp -a responses from my VM test bed that's on the same isolated switch, even though they're HyperV multicast addresses and I'm working in 10.1.0.0/16.

Isn't there any way to goose Windows into accepting that I'm aware of the network and its odd features like a lack of DHCP or even a gateway? The only troubleshooting step it offers me is to enable DHCP, and of course there's not a DHCP server for it to contact.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2014 17:42

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

stevewm posted:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/71408-unidentified-networks-set-private-public.html

Scroll down to option one.

Thanks for this, I went into sarcastic mode and just added a 1721 to the little managed switch that this is all isolated to and my laptop still can't see the (media) gateway but can see its default gateway, at least.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2014 18:38

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

SubjectVerbObject posted:

Pissing me off: my job. But they have online training for a variety of products.

I am looking to acquire more skills. Does anyone here use/administer Lync? I do telecom, and this is one of the things that I could get training on. My big concern is that the jobs I see end up being, 'Need Windows Admin, 5 years exp in an AD environment, blah blah, oh yeah and admin Lync too. Anyone want to share their experience?

Having Telecom experience will definitely help you appreciate Lync's Seemingly-Sarcastic Blunderbuss of Complexity�. I've been now to boot camps for both of the certs for 2013, 70-336 and 70-337, and taken both tests and failed spectacularly. They were my first MS cert tests, and I could obtain a retake voucher only under the stipulation that I take the test within 30 days of class completion, but that aside they're some rough exams. Of course, If I post something that someone deems to be wrong I do appreciate being corrected, I'm going to have to take them again soon.

I do some Lync admin in our organization; we have Lync 2010 Standard on-premises including Enterprise Voice (i.e. PSTN connectivity.) We also use Office 365 for the additional features of Lync Server 2013 like Lync Room System functionality, the multi-way HD video capability, but Office 365 doesn't offer Enterprise Voice. It is possible to use a third party service to add PSTN connectivity to Office 365.

Some of this relates to planning and implementation, so if you end up in an up-and-running Lync implementation things like cert naming requirements and E911 could be simple maintenance rather than challenges.

This poster does a good job of illustrating the traffic of different workloads in a 2010 environment, but I've never found a resource this good for 2013. Much of it is the same as far as ports are concerned, pay special attention to the certificate requirements along the bottom. The combinations of SN and SAN requirements for certs for different roles trip me up a little (conceptually.)

A couple of aphorisms I picked up in the MS boot camps:

This book has been a great resource for 2013, but I don't have admin over Lync online so I really mainly mess with 2010. The versions have some sweeping differences, like:

et. al.

also in a conference room

Edit: Just thought of this: the reverse proxy role still exists in the Lync environment, but it's not really something that's specified outside of "you need a reverse web proxy to allow outside conference participants to download address book information." It was a perfect role for Forefront Threat Management Gateway, but EOL on that product kind of left a gap and you just need to roll your own.

Oddhair fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Feb 7, 2014

# ¿ Feb 7, 2014 03:00

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

I really enjoy (not) the hodgepodge of compatibility issues between Office, Exchange, Windows and ancillary software like Reader X. Lync 2010 and 2013 both work with Lync Server 2010 or 2013, but of course no Vista support in Office 2013. I'm okay with no Vista support, but we do still have a couple of Vista desktops kicking around. Plenty of big companies have Lync 2010 server only, but Lync Room System is just blowing up and, of course, it pretty much requires 2013 Server to really function the way it's intended to. This doesn't slow the spread of Lync Room System, of course, just hastens the adoption of 2013, or a lateral move to Office 365 for LRS and "on-prem" 2010 for everyone else.

It sounds like I'm bitching, but the 84" Smart boards are 4K displays, so hopefully this whole trend will also spur 4K penetration, can't wait for that to be a common resolution.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2014 00:32

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

I was kind of lackadaisical about AdBlock for a long time. Then one day on my Win7 machine I had exactly 5 tabs open: Gmail and 4 SA forums tabs. I got a pop up window that looked a lot like WinXP Security Center telling me I was infected. Alt-F4ed the browser, relaunched it, installed AdBlock and NoScript (aka huge pain in the rear end) and I'll likely be using AdBlock in some shape or form forever.

# ¿ May 20, 2014 02:21

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

On the flip side of this, I was on a web chat with Avaya for 45 loving minutes yesterday, asking if a discontinued part had been replaced or had a new number. That was the entire purpose of my attempting to chat with them, and might I add that even getting the chat window to respond requires you to be logged into their site. The rep spent the entire chat hemming and hawing only to wrap up that they couldn't identify us as a reseller/business partner even with our partner ID and therefore couldn't help with anything. I'm the one who got certified to earn us that reseller certification, now called the APSS-SME, so it's a little extra galling. I only resort to web chat as a last resort, it's the worst possible way [for the customer] to have to interact with a business. Maybe if it wasn't like pulling teeth trying to find part numbers I wouldn't need to resort to chatting.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2014 22:27

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

For me this week it's been Office 2013, with an emphasis on Outlook. I spent roughly half my day yesterday trying to hand hold a remote user for whom the processes he uses are done mostly by rote memorization. Any deviation from the norm and he'd seize up. Since we were screen sharing through Lync, I can't interact with anything that runs elevated, in fact I lose the ability to interact with the desktop at all when an elevated program is in focus. Couple all of this with Outlook just being stupid, taking 20 minutes to load his profile, all 400 MB of his OST, then freezing once it finished loading. Safe mode Outlook launches basically instantly, but will still freeze. We've tried repairing Office, which failed hilariously, followed by reinstalling it from O365, blowing away his Outlook profile and rebuilding it, etc. This is the third machine to have random craziness since the July updates.

He's also a user who feels his laptop should work well simply because he spent a lot of money on it, but at least he's friendly.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 14:43

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

Martytoof posted:

You need entitlement from HP to download firmware updates for servers? That is indeed poo poo that pisses me off. Want to repurpose two DL380 G5s we picked up from a bankruptcy as Veeam servers, but they haven't been updated like.. ever.. and now apparently I can't download the firmware because I don't have entitlement :|

I have a SmartStart DVD I burned when we picked up a couple of these same servers and I'd be willing to send it to you, I'm pretty sure it can update the firmware.

Fake edit: Though I see they haven't locked everything away completely.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2014 17:48

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

AT&T is the thorn in my side this week. We can reliably get busy signals on any of our ~125 DID numbers, like every other test call we place during business hours is returning busy. Their support has been hot-potatoing this issue back and forth since last Wednesday, and only today have they figured out this affects the whole Houston area. I can't tell where the capacity problem lies, but it is affecting calls from mobile phones to all BVOIP customers.

This would be bad for a sales-based organization anyway, but one of our biggest vendors farms out their sales calls to distributors/resellers in a round-robin fashion. Since their callers don't know they've been sent to us until we speak with them, any of those that got busy signals would likely then call back to the vendor's main 800 number.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2014 14:31

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

We have a couple of the Smart Lync Room Systems and a Crestron RL/Polycom CX8000, as well as Smart's new Kapp device and there are some snazzy features.

Kapp is monochromatic and connects only to power, using Bluetooth and your mobile device's internet connection to push the content to Smart's servers. It's got a QR code you can scan plus NFC for pretty quick pairing, and by default you can share with up to five people. It's more like an electronic version of a flip pad, and anyone you're sharing with can initiate snapshots,with everyone getting a snapshot at once if anyone triggers one.

The Lync Room System from Smart has their Interactive Sharing cable, and when coupled with their Meeting Pro software you can use a single computer with two boards, and two people can actively annotate over different parts of the same document on the two adjacent boards. There's also their Unbounded Whitespace, which is a plain without borders. It's like Minecraft for execs. They had to add a mini map because it's easy to get lost in Minority Report fantasies and throw your content off to the side. I'm certainly not arguing against traditional whiteboards, but the advances in collaboration in the last couple of years have resulted in some amazing technology.

# ¿ May 21, 2015 18:31

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

I'm installing Server 2008 Standard 32-bit on a PowerEdge 2650 to try some RAID 10 recovery on the remaining 3 of 4 U160 drives. Even worse, it's got 1GB of RAM.

I don't mean to one-up anyone (one-down?) but I do normally work 8-6, this 10-year-old machine's got to go.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2015 06:32

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

President Ark posted:

Yeah, bounced an email off the person I originally spoke to and he said it's 2. Dunno what that other person was talking about.

They might simply mean 7-10 years using MS Office. In thinking about this I just realized I have 25 years experience using Office. Yeesh.

(Edit): On the 4-10s thing, a week's vacation can be an extra day with that schedule. On a 5-8s a week off is nine days, but a week off with 4-10s is those four days with three at each end. This works whether your employer views vacation as hours or whole days, though of course it also needs your four work days to be together in a single block.

Oddhair fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Jul 7, 2016

# ¿ Jul 7, 2016 12:33

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 22:18

Oddhair: Mar 21, 2004

I've been running into lots of poo poo lately that pisses me off. My laptop (Lenovo Ideapad P400 Touch, aka Best Buy Special from May 2013) has always been kind of weird with wireless, but lately at home it's especially awful. It will show a bad connection or simply show disconnected, but when I click on the tray icon it immediately re-connects. Normally I'd think this was a reporting error, but it legit isn't able to pull online content until I click into the menu, at which point it does the reconnecting. Sometimes it will fail to disconnect but simply not resolve anything, then take a long time to disconnect. Then upon re-connecting it will take forever to do so, and if I don't watch the progress in the system tray it will stop trying to connect as soon as I click away (thereby hiding that menu). Sometimes it will simply tell me it "Can't connect to this network" even though it's the network I just disconnected from.

Wired works fine, albeit at 10/100, and some days WiFi is just fine as well. This is on Unifi 2.4 APs, my 2.4-only Dlink at home, both with 20MHz channels and everything just vanilla WiFi.

Also, Skype for Business 2016 now pops up my new chats in my system tray for a fraction of a second, tells the far end that I didn't receive the message then hides the message in my missed chats. None of the people who tried to chat me last week mentioned seeing a message I hadn't received their chat.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 21:38

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