Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

Revol posted:

You'd think shotgunning was just done by the job seekers, but it goes the other way around too. I never turned off any of my job search or resume sites (good thing, huh?), so I've still been getting emails and calls. A few days ago I got an email about an IT onboarding job, because my previous job was "onboarding". Sounds great! Until I get to the bottom of their description, and they're saying that years of experience with staffing software is a requirement. If you had even glanced at my resume or profile, you'd know that isn't me. Hell, having the key word "onboarding" means I'm getting hit up about jobs like banking, nothing to do with my true experience.

I get emails for insurance agent and sales positions, saying how it would be a good fit. There is literally nothing about either of those in my profile. I think they just blast those to anyone who has a profile on Indeed or Monster or whatever.
I also keep getting calls and emails for 6 month (or less) contract jobs from Indian folks, but that's to be expected. I'm desktop support, AKA PC Janitor, with Mac experience. I like the job, but outsourcing has made earning potential in that role a bit limited.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2018 15:41

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 23:32

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

Neddy Seagoon posted:

Got to listen to an on-site tech talking to external support in a conference call about how they couldn't figure out the two screws holding a card in to a network shelf after turning them 90 degrees and they seemed to stop. We got a full twenty-five minutes of thoroughly entertaining back-and-forth between them out of this . The tech thought he could use a screwdriver to wiggle it out, maybe?... Maybe there are support screws in the back holding it in??... Maybe the completely unrelated screws?... He could try using a hammer... (as an idle thought, but we could clearly hear the support guy trying to keep his calm over that one ).

We knew full-well what the very simple solution was from the get-go, but you just can't let good entertainment pass by.

Both screws had to be turned at the same time so the card would slide out easily.

We had to show mercy and tell them in the end, because it was clear they weren't going to figure it out on their own. Oh look, it worked perfectly, how about that...

This is the kind of thing where I'm glad I'm a mechanically inclined guy as well. Kind of handy helping out the network and server teams with racking stuff.

A Pinball Wizard posted:

If I can e/n for a bit:

I really can't decide if I should or not this year. I work for a medium sized company. I like what I do and while there's things about this place that annoy me, it's nothing so bad that I'd want to leave. I could easily see myself working here for years.

The thing is, I'm not making any money. I probably would be fine if I was still in the suburbs but I moved into the city this year. I have enough to pay all my bills on time, but not enough to really squirrel money away, which is terrifying because I basically don't have a support network right now.

I'm pretty sure I could easily pull down $10-15 k more than I'm making now, but I'm worried that I'll end up somewhere I really hate in the process and end up the next larches or Dick Trauma. I'm also worried the bottom will fall out of the economy and I'll be last hired, first fired.

We're also planning an ambitious product release this year at my current job, and even if everything goes off without a hitch -which it wont- it's going to be a poo poo's how because all our users are little old ladies in Nebraska who just know they click the blue one to get their email, and any change will be hugely disruptive. Part of me wants to stay and see the fireworks, but another wants to GTFO before this pile of poo poo lands right on my desk.

Should I stay or should I go?

I'm with you, buddy. After 17 years at one place (though three employers, thanks to outsourcing), I got let go last year. I'm now a contractor at a place I like, but after 6 months, all they did was re-up my contract for another 6 months. I don't want to push it, because I actually like the place, people, and job - it's fairly low-stress - but, while the hourly rate is adequate, I don't get holiday pay (which killed me for Thanksgiving and Christmas - they took off two days each, then another on New Years) or vacation, and the medical at the contracting company I actually work for is double what I used to have, and what the host company has. All together, that lowers my overall yearly to less than I was making 2 years ago, which is not ideal. I'm trying to scale my lifestyle down, but it's not like anything is getting cheaper. I really hate that it has to come down to money.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2018 17:39

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

I was stunned to discover that each user is an admin on their own machine (thankfully, just their machine) when I started working at the company I'm currently at. Previous company only allowed that in certain circumstances, and eventually only by an AD group membership approved by Security. And they're all laptops.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2018 16:24

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

Sefal posted:

This was me last year when i started at the company i'm currently at.
even though this bitcoin mining stuff happened, my boss was still hesitant to remove local admin rights.
"too much work, users will come to bug you for every little install" I managed to convince him with explaining how ransomware would have hosed us up if that was the case.

edit: He still hasn't taken my advice of using a non admin account for daily use and a separate domain admin account.

We at least have separate accounts for domain admin.
Best part is I work at an AV/Security company. I'm just desktop support, and a contractor to boot, so I can't really push for a change. It just startled the hack out of me.

Judge Schnoopy posted:

Eliminate 'every little install', problem solved. Why are so many computers getting snowflake software outside of the standard deployment?

We don't, really, so I'm not sure of the reasoning here. I get it for the teams testing releases and such, but Sales guys don't really need to be mucking around with installs. Half the time they ask us to do it anyway.

edit: talking with one of engineers about Meltdown/Spectre, and he brought up the point that our antivirus product is likely to be blamed for slowdowns caused by the patches for years to come, because it's *always* AV overhead from sniffing your file transfers that's the problem. He's probably not wrong.

Darchangel fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jan 4, 2018

# ¿ Jan 4, 2018 19:13

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

Inspector_666 posted:

I just messaged our security people about the AV because I know this is gonna be a "WHOA ALL OF THIS STUFF NEEDS TO BE PATCHED RIGHT NOW!" issue on Monday.

I work at a company that produces enterprise AV. I kind of want to go downstairs and listen to the Customer Support Engineers calls now.
I also can't wait to see what we do in our own house.

edit: according to our homepage, our stuff has been tested and works, but we'll be a bit more getting out patches that enable the ALLOW REGKEY. In the meantime, there are ways to enable the key manually via AD/GPO, etc.

Darchangel fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jan 4, 2018

# ¿ Jan 4, 2018 22:32

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

CLAM DOWN posted:

The Microsoft KB addressing Meltdown is loving with our NAC lmao

e: gently caress everything https://kb.pulsesecure.net/articles/Pulse_Secure_Article/KB43600

Oh, goody, we use PulseSecure as well.
Neat how the article for the MS KB doesn't actually mention Meltdown or Spectre, just "Security fixes" at the bottom of a list of other unrelated minor stuff.

GnarlyCharlie4u posted:

I'm sure everyone has had a manager that talks out of both sides of their mouth before, right?
Well mine does, and today I caught him in a doozy:

We're renovating the building and need to move to a new location temporarily.
The new location also needs to be renovated before we can move in. Walls need to be ripped out and network infrastructure needs to be installed.

Monday, a team is going to the new building to rip out walls. I volunteered some of my personal time (outside of work hours) to help them do some demolition. I also volunteered to run the network infrastructure in the new space because I can probably get it done in about a weekend.

Manager tells me that I am not to run cabling in the new space. We must hire our contractor for that. (It'll probably get subcontracted back down to me anyway because I also work for our contractor, but whatever).
Then he tells me that instead of spending my personal time to help demo the new space, I should instead volunteer my personal time to work on IT projects instead.

...like running cable in the new location?
"Yes, exactly."
So do you want me to run cable in the new location?
"No, we need to hire our contractor for that."
So, you just want me to come into the office early then?
"No you can't come in early just because you want to"
So, then you don't mind if I go volunteer my personal time to sledgehammer some walls? Actually... I don't care if you mind. I'm volunteering my personal time to wreck some poo poo.
"Okay, but I think it would be better if you volunteered to work on some IT projects instead."

Never volunteer for anything work related (unless it's for wrecking poo poo. That's OK in my book.)
I mean, when was the last time the company volunteered some of their personal money to you?
Perhaps I'm cynical.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2018 20:45

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

Ranter posted:

I've been a W2 sub contractor and because the company I was technically an employee of had lovely benefits vs. the company I was placed at for 12 months on a project, I made more than the employees per hour. But I didn't have 401k matching, 3 weeks paid vacation, if the office shut down and no one was working then I didn't get paid etc.

Where I am at now we use Tek Systems for desktop techs (and are about to switch to a better, smaller provider that gives their employees ((our techs)) 401k matching and paid vacation for the same $) and because we found the techs ourselves then referred them to tek systems, we dictated exactly how much a. the tech gets paid and b. how much we pay tek total (so we know exactly how much they're skimming for taking on the liability of a W2 employee).

This is me, and, coincidentally, I work for Tek, subbed to another company, except I'm pretty sure I don't get paid more than the direct-hire desktop guy. All the rest of it, though, as far as benefits, is spot-on. Since my host company takes two days each at Thanksgiving, Christmas, ant the Fourth Of July, that sucks. Those are tough weeks, especially since my medical is twice what it was at the outsourcer I used to work for, and twice what my direct-hire coworker pays. Just the holidays and medical costs knock something like $5K off what would be a pretty good yearly. On the flipside, the job is fairly low-stress, at least compared with working for an Indian outsourcer at a major luxury retailer, where I had been direct for 10 years, then outsourced for another 7. I like the people here, and the job, if I could just get them to hire me permanent. Coming up on 9 months, now. There will definitely be a discussion at 1 year if not sooner.

Thanks Ants posted:

An application was playing up so 'Everyone' was added to 'Domain Administrators' and it fixed it.

Oh, you've worked at my previous company?
(They weren't quite that bad.)

Sefal posted:

I like my boss. As a person, he's ok. It's just that I've been fighting him for over a year on changing our security policies. Local admin being the biggest one. It really is a blessing that it was just miners.
I hope I can finally get it through his head. That whether or not he's dealing with adults or children, an unsuspecting user with no malice in mind can get his pc crypto infected and have it spread easily with the local admin stuff.

My current company is doing this. My mind was blown when I discovered that every user was local admin on their own machine. At a company that makes AV and Security software. We didn't even do that at the aforementioned luxury retailer. It went through Security if a user wanted local admin, and they usually only got it for a set period.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2018 21:40

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

Captain Ironblood posted:

My current company that I'm trying to get away from in the next few months is an MSP and the orders on high are to give everyone local admin, firewall disabled. I didn't know how bad this was when I was a little baby Tier 1 tech a few years ago but this is part of why I die a little inside every day now.

gently caress it. Sit back and watch the chaos. Implement that the only fix for anything is re-imaging the machine.

GreenNight posted:

We don't even get CoL increases. Each increase is "be happy you have a job and are getting anything".

QFT. At least at my previous job or two.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2018 00:24

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

ChubbyThePhat posted:

One can always hope that by 60 I am no longer a sysadmin and am instead spending all my days yelling at clouds.

Isn't that what sysadmins now do, yell at The Cloud? (pity I don't have the "my butt" substitution for "the cloud" installed here at work.)

# ¿ Jan 16, 2018 18:29

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

loving awesome. Someone is saturating our internet connection, and our network monitoring was set up incorrectly to figure out what, who, and where. We�re still getting intermittent outages. I�m phone posting now because I can�t reach SA from my PC. And this started yesterday. Whee! Glad it�s not my problem. Well, I mean, it�s a problem *for* me, but I don�t have to fix it.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2018 17:02

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

Collateral Damage posted:

Check your edge router or firewall to find the adress that's the source or destination of the traffic.
Look up the ARP entry for the adress.
Find the switchport for that hardware adress in your switches and disable it. No need to take anything else offline.

Yeah, I've got no access to any of that poo poo. I sit a cube over from the guy who does, and I'm letting him handle it, while being simultaneously amused and annoyed.
Not only am I just a desktop guy, I'm a contractor with no authority, so... I'm struggling to keep my mouth shut.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2018 17:44

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

22 Eargesplitten posted:

The guy is 40, nobody wants to still be working desktop at 40.

I�m 48, lol. And, yeah. Oh well.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2018 19:14

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

jaegerx posted:

Being 50 and doing tier 1 support sounds better than being a wallmart greater.

This is a fair point. I�m not really complaining.
Also, our internet issues now appear to be ISP related, but still no resolution. Or email to tell the users what�s going on, so guess who gets to keep fielding the same questions and listening to complaints about how they can�t work? Yep, it would be the FNG contractor, which is me.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2018 21:43

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

The Fool posted:

Yeah, some people only care about their career enough that they can take home a pay check and go fishing on Saturday.

Um. Well, I care a *little* more about it than that, but not fishing. My cars and projects related, maybe.
I want to do a good job, and advance if I can, but I don�t focus well. I�m a jack of all trades, which can be useful, but it crap for paychecks. I really sort of just fell into IT back in the �90s, because I liked computers and stuff. Amazingly, I still do, but I�m not nearly as high tech at home as you might expect an IT guy to be. Cobbler�s shoes and all that.
I do welcome something that would get me away from end users a bit, though, because people are idiots, you see. Not just users, of course, but them especially.
I may not be the perfect fit for a customer service or customer facing job (yet, here I am, for the last 25 years, more or less...)

I may just be grumpy old guy today.

Edit: I know the comment wasn�t targeted at me. It just hit close by chance.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2018 21:56

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

I�m all kinds of trailing edge. That, and IoT can just gently caress right off. I have a Nest, because it was free with my electric service, but I very rarely look at its website, and I definitely don�t need my refrigerator surfing the net.
I keep thinking about a connected garage door opener or interface, though, just so I can check and close the door remotely. More remotely than, you know, the remote.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2018 22:17

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

Matt Zerella posted:

I have hue, logitech hub, and a few star switches and its super nice to yell goodnight at alexa and all my poo poo shuts off and the white noise/humidifier turn on.

It took about an hour or two to get everything set up.

Oop, forgot about my Logitech hub, I love that thing, because gently caress multidevice IR remotes. Logitech's IR remotes are great and all, but standing there point the thing at the equipment while waiting for it all to turn on blows goats. My setup is simpler than it used to be, but having one-button activities is the bomb. I don't have the Alexa stuff for it, but just the included basic remote, and the smartphone app are easy. I just use it for AV stuff.
I also have a Ubiquiti AP-lite, because I got tired of the garbage that U-verse saddled me with. Not on U-verse any more, and having the Ubiquiti made changing over painless for WiFi devices, since it didn't change.
I have an old Intel Mac Mini connected to a drive array as a file server. Does that make me 7334? I'm running Universal Media Server on it to feed DLNA media to my XBone... Eventually I want to play with Plex, but, meh.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2018 22:53

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

Matt Zerella posted:

Yeah I have an unraid NAS that been hands off since I got my dockers all working correctly. And 5 friends leeching my Linux iso collection off plex.

Took about 6 hours total to get working right but goddamn it's worth it.

Well, now, unRAID looks interesting. Thanks!
unRAID should run on my Mac Mini. If not I've got a dual Xeon older HP XW5000 with plenty of drive bays. The only thing that really sucks is that I'll have to move my data and reformat my LaCie drive array, because I formatted for Mac rather than something universal. Wish Apple would get over themselves and let Macs write to NTFS without third-party garbage.

Avenging_Mikon posted:

Fuckin' Mondays. They're reglazing the windows in the normal room I'm in with my co-workers. So they scattered us to the four winds, and I ended up in a cubicle in the testing centre. It's quieter than I thought it would be, since I'm by the student lockers, but fffffffffff.... I've already had a user just walk up and start telling me their problem instead of calling or emailing. Computer poo poo don't need in-person, it needs distance, so I can maybe actively troubleshoot!

Welcome to my life.
At my previous job, we had drive-bys from users even though we were in a key-card accessed room. NOBODY wants to talk to the help desk.
Current job I'm in a cube out in the open. They're wanting to remodel the floor an put in low-wall cubicles, so we don't even have *that* facade of privacy or individuality. I have no idea where management gets the idea that any of us want to look at everyone else, and vice versa, while trying to get poo poo done, in an environment that suddenly a lot louder because some dipshit removed all the sound baffling walls. Do they ever visit a call center and notice how loud it is? Or even call one and get annoyed by hearing 3 other conversations while on the call?

# ¿ Jan 23, 2018 01:03

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

Dick Trauma posted:

In the absence of raises I supplement my income with ~~points in my Amazon account~~ surplus and e-waste equipment and hardware

Internet Explorer posted:

My place finally changed the dress code so I don't have to wear a loving tie everyday and dry clean my poo poo and oh god it's the only thing that kept me for rage-quitting recently.

Ask me about having to wear a dress shirt and tie, slacks, and dress shoes, while still having to crawl under rear end in a top hat's desks to plug in goddamned network cables and poo poo, and schlep around PCs. No, I'm not bitter, why?
Thank god they relaxed that policy years before I left, and I moved to another office that didn't dress that way in the first place.
Current gig is blue jeans and t-shirts, and I'm so shell-shocked I can't bring myself to do it. Still wear polos and short-sleeve button-downs. Am wearing blue jeans, though..

# ¿ Jan 24, 2018 01:20

Darchangel: Feb 12, 2009; Tell him about the blower!

dogstile posted:

Add me to the list of people that are probably clever enough to get by but certainly not clever enough to post in this thread regularly. You guys teach me a lot of poo poo via your normal discussion (and you even got me out of my first well) so i'm super happy you guys are, well, you guys.

Same.

Vargatron posted:

Windows Surface tablets are a bitch to work on. I'm old and new things scare me.

AHHHHHHHHHHH

Nah, just throw a Bluetooth keyboard on that bitch and pretend it's a laptop (because it is.)

George H.W. oval office posted:

Recruiter called this morning and said they will not be moving forward with me on two applications due to not providing salary history. Get fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.

Proper response.
I mean literally email that back to them.