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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Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

I don't know if Lenovo got better, but I know 5-10 years ago they were absolute nightmares to take apart, I counted over 60 screws on one.

Dell for the most part are pretty easy, three layers, 5--10 screws each, with three holding the top of the keyboard down hidden behind a plastic strip on the front.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2017 04:15

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 16:03

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Weatherman posted:

The Dell netbooks were the absolute worst I've ever seen. Want to upgrade the RAM? Enjoy spending an hour completely disassembling and then reassembling the entire stupid thing.

Totally depends on the model. The netbooks were trash, some of the super-cheap consumer grade laptops were too - RAM under the motherboard with no panel to remove, but the decent ones and all business-class that I saw had the little panel on the back you could open with one screw.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2017 05:14

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

I went on 10 days of PTO from 1/5 to 1/15. The week I'm off was supposed to be the shift rotation (24 hour NOC), and I'd be going from working 4 10p to 8a shifts to 4 11a to 9p shifts.

Got a text message from one of my managers on Thursday evening: Work your previous schedule starting on the 15th, shift rotation has been postponed.

So the last several days I spent shifting my body back to normal human hours are totally wasted, and I'm going back to the graveyard shift for at least two more weeks....

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 23:29

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Humphreys posted:

Holy gently caress. Did you let them know what that sort of switch does to your body? LOL who am I kidding...of course HR doesn't care.

I'll definitely bitch when I see them Monday. However, I'm sure it's my fault I didn't know earlier because I didn't check my email while I was on PTO. We get on average 300 emails a day, I'm not touching that poo poo unless I'm on the clock.

I went out of my way to make sure I was on the day shift when I came back before I started my time off, this sort of ruined the last few days for me.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2017 09:59

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

flosofl posted:

No. Just no.

Yes.

(I'm guessing that first part was sarcasm, but so many people I work with are "always on" with regards to email, so I'm not 100% certain)

Yes, the first part is sarcasm. I'm paid hourly, I only work when I'm punched in. Reading work email counts as 'work'.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2017 02:30

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Woogles posted:

So guess who gets to go through GDrive and edit a bunch of sharing permissions by hand because GDrive APIs are poo poo, and so's the management interface? Yaaaaay

The guy using his own log sheet that created the confusion?

:v:

# ¿ Jan 17, 2017 10:45

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Woogles posted:

loving right. He needs to learn that with lovely decisions, come lovely consequences.

Oh, good. I got the impression from your post that it was you.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2017 13:24

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Was theft of the wireless peripherals not an issue, or did you just forget to mention that?

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 09:33

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

sixth and maimed posted:

poo poo pissing me of: Ricoh!

We used a a piece of software to split scanned delivery notes and invoices, rename them and put them in a folder structure so they can be called up in our ERP program. I say used because mid december, the software broke because we virtualized the server and changed the Windowse license key to the virtual one. Of course, the software is no longer supported so I have to find a replacement. As this is part of our Invoice Approval Workflow, it's pretty critical and people are bugging me left and right about when it's going to be fixed. Since the previous program worked pretty well, I go to the same supplier to ask what they recommend (i.c. Ricoh). They get me an offer, not exactly cheap but this is urgent so I accept, stressing that we need this asap.

Between Christmas and newyear I don't hear from them. To be expected, so I don't really fret about it. The first week of January passes and I still hear nothing. I start sending mails and calling people to ask when the install is going to be. Finally, halfway January, an engineer is scheduled. He's on site for about half an hour when he tells me he has the wrong license and there's nothing he can do until the right one is ordered. I give him the same specs I used to get the quote, and according to him, those are pretty clear. After a couple of days, they tell me the new license is going to add about 20% to the quoted price. I agree, as long as they just come and get it up-and-running as management is on my rear end! After this, silence ...

Getting really loving tired of this, I manage to find another piece of software that does exactly what we want at about 1/4th of the price. So, we contact Ricoh to let them know that we're cancelling the order. Suddenly, it's not a problem to return calls or schedule installs. They'll also talk to their legal department if we cancel.

If they'd just done what they were supposed to do in a timely fashion ... But now it's a shitshow with legal treats, my boss (the owner) in involved and I'm getting stressed out.

Ricoh hosed up their entire printer support system when they started trying to use that to transition into an MSP business. "We've got someone that goes onsite anyway, why not offer to support........."

# ¿ Jan 26, 2017 19:09

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

SwitchbladeKult posted:

I got a great story about enabling users coming back to bite us (me) in the rear end.

We use Symantec's VIP Access for our 2 Factor identification. Works well enough. Well, my company decided it was going to allow users to install the desktop version of the security code generator software on their work laptops. You might think to yourself, "But wouldn't that undermine the entire purpose of having 2 factor?" and I would say my company doesn't think using logic and reasoning like the rest of us. I brought this to the attention of management at my local shop and while they agreed with my assessment they allowed our users to do this foolish thing that I knew would only end in tears (most likely my tears)! Specifically, they allowed one of our lawyers to do it because management didn't want to hear him bitching. Instead of doing the right thing for my company and in the end the user they acquiesced and allowed him to do this dumb thing I told them not to allow. Well, cut to the present day and the security team has finally got wind that my company was allowing this and freaked the gently caress out (rightly so). They quickly deactivated ALL the credentials that came from any of the company's laptops. This caused said lawyer to suddenly be unable to connect to the VPN and he is trying to leave for vacation in Europe TONIGHT. THANKS! Now I had to spend half an hour trying to help come up with a workaround for him while getting an ear full about how �unfair� IT and security is being to him and mark my words he'll be complaining about it for months on end if not for the rest of time.

Hahaha, something fairly similar is happening where I am (albeit without the cranky lawyer). In the last month or so, they've suddenly realized the company is vulnerable, and have been pushing everything public-facing behind 2FA. They let me set it up with an app on my Win10 work PC.

The 2FA is required whether your're on the network already or not, which is a bit frustrating. There's an app for cell phones, but it destroyed my phone's battery, it drained 3x as fast as without the app installed. I uninstalled it, and they helped me set it up on my work machine.

In the last couple days, they moved our terminal server behind the VPN, and set up 2FA on the VPN, both of which make sense. They also moved our OWA behind the 2FA. The upshot of this is that I have to physically have my work laptop in front of me and powered on to log into OWA, because we were too cheap to provide keyfobs like every 2FA system has for the last 20 years.

I guess the upshot is that, if I'm not in the office, I can honestly tell anyone that calls that I can't help or look at anything, and it'll have to wait until I'm back. Because I can't access anything.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2017 05:25

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

mewse posted:

Office furniture, of course, being an IT responsibility

We got a ticket from some asshat VP of ~*EQUITY RESEARCH*~ saying that his desk chair had broken, he found a replacement in an empty office, but he needed someone to come up and take the broken one away.

Bear in mind that we are an MSP many states away from his office in Boston. He knows this.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2017 16:57

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

ponzicar posted:

Ideally there would be plans in place to refresh old equipment like that, but very often, there's too many higher priority tasks than replacing things that aren't broken, and the new guy gets new equipment because that's what they have when they set him up. It really depends on management and budget; I've seen surprisingly large offices where they don't have a proper inventory system that they can use to track things like monitors, so they just sit at the desks until they die or someone complains about them.

My office is like that. I was stuck with a few 16 or so inch 4:3 screens. Every time I tried to grab a widescreen or a larger one from an employee that left, I was told to stop being greedy, and it was given to someone else.

Have you ever tried to work on one of those stupid super-high-res Macbook pros through something like Team Viewer on a 4x3 screen? Text is microscopic. Eventually I said gently caress it, bought two 23" open-box clearance monitors from Best Buy next door. Then I added my own mechanical keyboard and wireless mouse.

Now they have no control over my equipment, AND can't put new hires at my desk until they get their heads out of their asses and set them up with their own workstation, because they don't want to break my nice stuff. I wish I hadn't had to shell out for all that, but I've been using it all for 2+ years now, and I think it was worth it.

Alereon posted:

We have a popcorn machine too, but the output is free. I'm actually the popcorn master now, and the fresh popcorn is one of the only reasons I still come to work :P

Same!

# ¿ Feb 1, 2017 22:54

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

SeaborneClink posted:

Okay so is this like.. able to be customized? I HATE paying with my chip card because it takes FOR EVER to process. I'd rather swipe a card than sit for 30 seconds waiting for it to 'AUTHORIZING'

Walgreens and Giant both have good ones, pretty zippy.

For what it's worth, they've both had them deployed for a while now, too.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 05:45

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Super Slash posted:

RE: Shopping chat
Self-scan checkouts have come a long way and diversified a bit. Tesco in particular you can walk in and scan your reward card at a terminal, pick up a scanner gun to mount on your trolley, pickup and scan your groceries as you go, scan the gun at a checkout to pay up and leave, simples.

Giant Food has this, it's great. I bring my own big bags, bag as I go, and don't have to talk to ANYONE.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2017 16:56

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Friday evening, CoreOps severed the trust between our two main domains.

Without informing any of our other departments they were going to do this, or having someone available over the weekend to assist if it broke anything.

It broke many things.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 19:02

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Agrikk posted:

Auto resolvers own. Here, if a case is pending customer action for seven days it auto closes. It's reopenable by the customer (usually with a "whoops! Sorry.") but it sure filters out a lot of chaff.

At my place, it's 3 attempts to contact or follow up, no more than once a day. Usually followed by indignant users because we didn't fix it. Fuckers. You opened the ticket on monday, ignored calls and emails tues, wed, and thur, then get mad when you get the closure email Friday that says "no return contact from user".

# ¿ Feb 26, 2017 13:07

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

MiniFoo posted:

Among other things, the ability for users to update the clients to 12.x when we're still only licensed for 11.x, meaning we can't connect to them due to incompatibility between those versions. Yes, I know end-users shouldn't have the capability to update/install anything, but that's a separate piece of poo poo-that-pisses-me-off.

Can confirm, this has been an issue going back to at least TV8.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 00:07

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

ratbert90 posted:

Why the gently caress would you use Team viewer? What a horrible secfuck waiting to happen.

At an MSP, it's a relatively cheap way to use a simple program that even users can figure out. For a while we had a website where they could just download a one use one way client. Then internal systems put a new version of that up before help desk had a license for the new version.... we use Kaseya for the most part now. Probably more secure, and requires no intervention from the user for us to remote in.

Except for a few clients that have a prompt on the remote computer asking for access that some users always hit no on, even though YOU ARE LITERALLY ON THE PHONE TELLING THEM YOU ARE REMOTING IN

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 05:14

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

We run the Kaseya servers in house

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 06:25

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

lampey posted:

Was there ever a resolution to the teamviewer hack?

No idea. Last I heard, TV was saying they were not hacked, that it was people reusing passwords and stuff. Though that was the time we sort of moved away from it and only use it as a backup now.

Edit: ^^well there you go.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 07:59

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

anthonypants posted:

The TeamViewer persistent service is different from the TeamViewer QuickSupport app.

QuickSupport is what I was talking about.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 11:17

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

A Pinball Wizard posted:

poo poo that's pissing me off: the guy talking on the phone in the bathroom while I was trying to shitpost

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 15:22

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

worthless. posted:

Yeah, sorry I didn't make that clear. Manager didn't show and I had to do it without guidance. Wouldn't be a big deal if I had done it even once before.

I was able to sit in on a few, then did a few coop witth my boss before they turned me loose in Geek Squad. I can't imagine going in cold like that.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2017 07:38

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Bob Morales posted:

Sales tax software.

2 years ago we bought Avalara, $10,000/year. They have a product where you install it on your IBM iSeries and you can download updated sales tax tables every month.

They discontinued that product at the beginning of this year. New option is spend $25,000/year on their SaaS product, which we are using in our new ERP system (but from another vendor for half the price).

Bonus points you get to spend $6,000 on 'implementation' again.

So we decided to just keep using the old tables for the first half of this year, then we won't need the product at all anymore. Well, management wants to setup shop in 3 new states (actually they already did and just came back saying 'we need to collect tax in x, y z').

We found a guy who can take sales tax tables from Reuters and upload them into our Avalara install and things should work okay. The other option would be to disable Avalara and re-format the Reuters tables into the specific tables in our current accounting software. He's done both ways so far and says it's easier to do the first one.

Fire your mgmt

# ¿ Mar 9, 2017 15:25

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

You guys have convinced me to get a Pixel XL. I still have a Note 3, and its getting rather slow and crashy. Im also looking at Google's mobile phone service. I'd be paying about what I am now with AT&T for both the Pixel and the Google phone/data service combined. Anything I should know before making the switch? Being able to travel outside the US without horrendously overpriced fees is very alluring as well.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2017 08:26

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

CitizenKain posted:

We had a cert get revoked on one of customer facing servers yesterday, no idea why. Maybe we are supposed to get a email, I don't know. The person who used to handle all the cert business left, his email was sent to his boss, a new guy was hired, he isn't here and now the emails from Symantec go..somewhere.
I go to login to Symantec's site with the password I have on file, it doens't work, password reset goes to the wrong account, so I'll never see that. Person who is responsible for it doesn't want to give me the password, or sign in, so I have no idea.
We started using Digicert for reasons, so I sign in there, get the ok to just get a new cert, see I need a CSR text block. Go on one of our linux servers, run OpenSSL to generate one, paste that into their site. Ok, now I've got a .PEM file, but I need a key and nothing on their site let me generate one. Frantically google how to make these, find out I need the file from Digicert, and the key from the CSR, run them through openssl and the p12 file shows up. Shove that in the site and yay it works.

Thanks knowledge hoardering bosses for keeping all this poo poo to yourselves, or changing passwords. Fuckers.

We have the opposite problem. Our org is so paranoid after our primary domain expired a couple years ago (due to an expired credit card and the notifications going to an unknown but long gone employee) that now ALL registrations for everything go through our NOC group mailbox. We get anywhere between 150 and 300 emails to that one mailbox every day.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 05:05

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Is the WD Green hate just because they're cheap and cheaply made, or is there more to it? I mean, I'd never buy one either way, but we sold a lot in Geek Squad, so I'm curious.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2017 07:45

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Wibla posted:

monitor works fine with DVI (but at 1080p )

you poor entitled little puppydog

# ¿ Mar 28, 2017 23:15

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

The HR nonsense in my company is either 500 miles or 2,000 miles away, not sure at this point. I guess maybe there's an HR rep in my office, but the fact that I'm not sure.... :smugdon:

# ¿ Apr 14, 2017 14:24

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Thanks Ants posted:

Look man somebody read a blog about DevOps and has done an ITIL course and it's imperative that they set out the rules

Man, I just did some baseline ITIL training. Talk about common sense, it blows my mind that anyone would NOT do things that way.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2017 19:43

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Ursine Catastrophe posted:

I'm exactly the opposite. Send me an email, send me a slack, send me a carrier pigeon, I don't care, just get it to me in writing instead of making me dump my entire mental stack to discuss something that you will literally spend longer talking to me about than it would take for me to fix it in the first place.

Even when I'm remote people have this weird obsession with making it a phone/skype call instead of just typing to me. I don't want to have to take notes for this meeting, I've got other poo poo to do, and someone's going to have to write it up for QA anyways, use your keyboard

Yes this. A million times this. And when I send you a message, don't read it and then get up and come over to talk to me, dammit. I sent you a message because I'm working and focused, I don't want to stop to talk.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2017 21:53

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

spiny posted:

I was scrolling down thinking, not so bad, then got to the old PCs and thought, 'well, first thing would be to throw those old PCs away' then I saw they were plugged in. oh.

That's one of the things I like about my MSP. Sure, some of our customers are cheap as hell (or are running super-customized software that won't work on any OS after 2000), but all the servers we spin up are modern and good, we have lots of space in a really good Equinix datacenter, and even our in-office hardware like workstations and WAPs are up to date. The only times I encounter old stuff (Say, Server 03 and previous) are with things like charities and Joe's Plumbing that has one office and 9 employees. Even then, those customers are generally understanding that their poo poo is going to break sometimes, it's just not worth their while to spend $20,000 to upgrade stuff that works fine most of the time.

From time to time I do see a server with a desktop background that says 'DO NOT LOG OUT OR X WILL BREAK'. :psyduck:

# ¿ May 9, 2017 10:53

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

MF_James posted:

hey we implemented poo poo hosed up, but since it's implemented it's now your problem, have fun. gently caress this job.

Our project and deployment teams do this to us ALL THE TIME. We'll have a meeting at 4pm the day before something turns over, and they'll ask something like 'everything look good?' If we don't have any issues at that moment (how could we? We haven't even started supporting it yet or have any clue what the customer's expectations are) it's almost impossible to get them to go back and either provide additional documentation or to fix things after the fact.

Our internal team is almost as bad. They'll implement new things without documentation or any real communication, and then flat out refuse to take responsibility when it breaks, or take point with end users or vendors as needed to fix the problem. They won't send out communications about it either, though they will send emails to support asking support to send out such an email.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2017 14:10

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

We opened a ticket with Cisco last night, because a router went tits up at one of the schools we support. The engineer we worked with was helpful, and sent an email detailing all the info they need to process the request, and ship a replacement onsite with a 4 hour SLA after we provide the info. At about 8:30 this morning, the school found a custodian to go onsite to provide building access, and gave us the info needed for Cisco. We replied to the tech's email with all the info, and dispatched one of our engineers to go onsite as well. Fairly normal process, the only hitch was the school's IT guy not understanding that we couldn't set this up until we knew when we would have access, and Cisco would need 4 hours after we confirmed everything.

At 11:30, we called Cisco looking for more info, because the ticket in their portal wasn't reflecting any new information, or a dispatch, and we had received no return emails from them. Apparently, Cisco does not use group mailboxes or have a team that works cases. As the guy we worked with last night is off-shift, no one saw our email or had any idea that we wanted this done today, even though we followed the instructions provided verbatim. Turns out, that at the bottom of the Cisco guy's signature is his 'office hours'. Which are given in Australian Eastern Time (we are in the US). Cisco insists that we should have seen these hours and known that individuals work cases, and if we wanted this done when he was off shift, we would need to call in, and therefore, the clock starts now.

So our engineer and this poor custodian will be chilling onsite for about 3 hours.....

# ¿ Jun 3, 2017 18:13

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Jerk McJerkface posted:

I run into this stuff all the time. I work for an Italian company so alot of our support contracts are based in Europe time. Frequently I can't get help after 1pm on some items even though they are US based because their contract with my company is Europe based.

No, that's not quite my issue. They're a 24 hour operation, the support was 'available'. They just apparently do not have any way whatsoever to work tickets opened by someone not currently on shift unless you call in, spend time on hold, and wait for them to screw it up that way.

One of my peers has now been on with Cisco and our guy onsite for more than an hour, Cisco is apparently not able to accurately transfer their license from the old router to the new one. They've sent us three different zip files with the licenses now, and all have been wrong.

I knew Cisco was not perfect, being a massive international hardware syndicate, but this is my first real interaction with their support. I had no idea it was *this* bad. We've now had an engineer onsite for coming up on 8 hours on a Saturday just to replace a router. Apparently the custodian that went onsite to give him access gave up and left, just propped a door open and told him to make sure it closes when he's done.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2017 00:15

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

Agrikk posted:

gently caress everyone who uses a mechanical keyboard in open seating. gently caress every one of you.

I regret nothing. I love having the same keyboard at home and work, if I knew it irritated a coworker that is in the office twice a month complaining about his monitors, so much the better.

To be fair though, I did also buy myself matching 22 inch monitors on clearance for my desk because mismatched monitors drove me far crazier than I thought it would.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2017 07:10

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

MF_James posted:

I have a co-worker that just will not leave me alone, asks me questions all day, some questions are welcomed, being at my desk every 5 minutes is not because drat, have some independence you are severely impeding my work. During these 100 interruptions a day he will often just walk up and start talking while my back is turned, sometimes I'm on the phone which he won't notice until 10-20 seconds into whatever he's saying, and sometimes I won't even know he's there because he's talking at my left side and I'm half deaf in that ear.

Normally I welcome questions, because if I can answer a question that often means a ticket won't get escalated to me, or I will have to do less work when it does get to me. This is way beyond that and it's getting annoying, he needs to be more independent and apply what I tell him to a wider array of things and have confidence in himself that he's doing the right thing

Have you considered, the next time he comes up to ask you something, saying "We need you to be more independent and apply what we've told you to a wider array of things and have confidence in yourself that you're doing the right thing"?

# ¿ Jun 8, 2017 18:08

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

MF_James posted:

poo poo, I never thought about using my talking hole instead of complaining on the internet with my fingers.

No worries, happens to me too

# ¿ Jun 8, 2017 19:16

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

lampey posted:

4TB thin provisioned vmdk on a 3TB datastore. The datastore is a single 3tb disk. It has turned into huge headache because of unrelated issues with restoring a database backup. The silver lining is that this will be the push to for this client to get a real SAN

I see things like this wayyyyy too often. Is there ever a valid reason to overprovision?

# ¿ Jun 13, 2017 23:05

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 16:03

Corsair Pool Boy: Dec 17, 2004; College Slice

The Fool posted:

Dear HR,

I am across the hall from you, so when you have private conversations with your door open, I can hear everything you say.

ESPECIALLY when you mention my name.

Man, I'd never write that letter. I don't gossip, but I very much like knowing stuff.

And yeah, you can't say that and not explain.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2017 00:27

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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