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ChubbyThePhat posted:Moving up from small shops and MSPs to the real world is quite the shift I hear (please god let me be the next I've worked for enough large call centers to know that sometimes people just want their little fiefdoms. At the end of the day, I get paid either way. I just keep my manager in the loop.
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Apr 23, 2018 16:40
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out of this hell).
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Oh vendors. Me: One of my users can't save a new contract for client, they get a cryptic error Vendor: Go into the database and run this query, the email it back. Me: Ok. *emails excel file* Vendor: Here is the issue, this column has a line flagged as s. If it has that flag, it can't be saved. Me: So if one line is flagged as s, that prevents all other lines, including new lines generated by new contracts from state changing? Vendor: Oh, I didn't know it was multiple contracts. Me: But there is a column called contractid that has a bunch of different numbers, the excel file has a dozen lines with a unique number on it and your software literally makes every saved client interaction a new contract. I haven't heard back from them yet. I'm guessing they don't know why its failing. blackswordca fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Apr 25, 2018 |
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Apr 25, 2018 16:26
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So a text came in from last job. 'Hey, hope the new job is going well. Could you call *new support person* and let them know how you fixed the windows 10 no USB devices working issue? Thanks" You mean the issue that I thoroughly documented how to fix in an email thread, in my tickets about the issue and in the internal documentation? Sure I can call them. I'll make sure to send you the bill for my time.
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Apr 30, 2018 16:47
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Have you done a bios update? Older versions of the bios dont have proper support for the m2 drive. They will see it as a storage device, not a boot device. Also the Z97 board only has a gen 3.0 x2 m2 slot so there may be some odd performance issues.
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May 2, 2018 16:56
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Sefal posted:This is something I learned from this forum and it has helped me tremendously. Best of luck. I've been in the industry almost 20 years and it still hits me. Just need to keep reminding yourself that you know this poo poo and you are more than a professional googler though it feels like some days that's all you do Edit: So a ticket came in. User reporting sage is throwing an error 'object manager not installed' when logging in to sage on one desktop. Multiple users, same desktop same issue. Do a quick search online to see if there is a quick fix. Only solution, delete the registration dll off the sage sql server, import the one from the previous version of sage and reregister it. Thanks sage, ill try reinstalling the software on the desktop first. blackswordca fucked around with this message at 17:28 on May 15, 2018 |
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May 15, 2018 17:18
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Going from "damnit my phone won't stop ringing" to "what the hell, my phone's ringing?" Is magical.
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May 16, 2018 20:29
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dragonshardz posted:I should elaborate that I'm looking more for general directional advice than specific career advice. How the gently caress do you get HR flacks to do more than toss your resume unread, for example? It depends on area, but here knowing somebody seems to be the only way to get an interview if you aren't a walking tech deity willing to work for half the going rate.
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May 17, 2018 23:02
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The Fool posted:Yeah, anyone that says they play Star Citizen is just participating in the conspiracy that Star Citizen is an actual game that exists and not a giant scam. When I talk to someone who says they play Star Citizen, I just give them a mournful look and tell them " No my friend, Star Citizen played you.."
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May 22, 2018 21:20
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ChubbyThePhat posted:I actually spent months troubleshooting with an ISP to figure out that the internet was so poo poo at a site (huge packet loss) when it was windy. Yes. Exactly when it was windy, there would be crazy packet loss to entire connection death. I don't even remember what random thought lead us to notice that and actually check the weather in relation to the loss we were seeing. We ran into the same issue with clients with point to point radio for internet. Turned out the tower the isp used for its reception equipment wasn't anchored properly and was swaying just enough on windy days to break contact.
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May 23, 2018 19:18
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Inspector_666 posted:Ok we tried this to no avail, but we also then isolated the issue to the switch (in this office, at least. There are a couple of people who had the issue in AZ and I can't test wires there.) One thing I learned years ago is when you hit a dead end with troubleshooting an issue, start at the bottom of the osi model and work up. I can't count the number of times weird issues have been a loose or bad cable or a locked up switch.
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May 25, 2018 22:25
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Question for any dbas here. Let's say you have an sql2008 database. It is fairly heavily used by 100+ users a day and is tied to a core app. The database seems to rarely but regularly either not write data to some columns or is writing incorrect data. Server itself is provisioned with 8gb of ram and the db itself is 24+ gb Aside from ' Holy poo poo this is underprovisioned ' what other issues should I be looking at? My googlefu is failing me today.
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May 30, 2018 21:44
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Volguus posted:Not a dba, but what do you mean by "incorrect"? It should have Foo but it has Bar in the column? If that's the case I'd look for concurrency issues in the app (record versioning or other problems). Basically some fields.that are supposed to be null have data in them or fields that are supposed.to be flagged a certain way in workflow are being flagged incorrectly.
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May 30, 2018 21:55
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So a ticket came in: Requestor : can you set this field as mandatory in our app? Me: sure *Comes in on Sunday during outage window to do it* Today Requestor: I wanted the field to be mandatory, I didn't want to have to fill it out every time. Probation is over, time for desk scotch to begin
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Jun 19, 2018 19:05
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Kurieg posted:Did you ask him what he thought mandatory meant? I have a meeting scheduled to define mandatory.. Silly me to have gone by the standard English definition.. Oh large corporations, how I missed you.. blackswordca fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Jun 19, 2018 |
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Jun 19, 2018 19:44
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Well came in at 6am to push a change during the maintenance window. Let's see if this is mandatory enough... I need more coffee..
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Jun 20, 2018 14:53
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Thanks Ants posted:I probably know the answer to this, but I assume remote working for that sort of thing isn't an option? I'm not authorized for remote work. Plus side, I get to go home at 2:30. I'm not sure what Vogonesque procedure is needed for me to get remote work, but not having it means I'm not on call.
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Jun 20, 2018 14:58
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An email came in Vendor sent in a replacement production license for an app of ours that had a licensing bug on Monday. So I came in a 6am to apply it. I applied the license but it didn't look right. They sent us a dev server license. Thanks vendor.
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Jun 22, 2018 13:52
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KillianLett posted:Does anyone else have "Due dates" on tickets? This is a new thing for me, and I find them generally pointless. Most of the time due dates and the like are used for stats and metrics. Your department/msp can use it to say "we close 92.65% of tickets under the due date". While for the front line people it means nothing, for managers and c levels it's more numbers to help justify their budgets
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Jun 22, 2018 16:12
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Wibla posted:How nice of them! I sent an email immediately telling them I needed production not dev licensing. 4 hours later I get an email. "Your ticket is now closed. Please fill out the survey below and let us know how we did. This email address is not monitored, emails.sent to.it will.not be replied too." Don't worry vendor, I'm sure you will find the survey quite filled out...
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Jun 22, 2018 17:48
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KillianLett posted:Thanks for the feedback. Welcome to MSP life. Where only the stats count and the customer doesn't matter.
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Jun 22, 2018 19:57
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So a ticket came in. One of our applications is acting up and throwing strange errors on the user side. So I log into the server and check internal logs, nothing. I check event viewer. The app is listed, let's see what info they have about the error: 'The' Thanks for that...
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Jun 26, 2018 22:42
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So an email came in... Project Manager: Hey , do you know if the vendor has made the requested changes and are they in production? See attached form The form is a quote for work to be done. It says on the form that work will commence when payment is received. The copy of the form does not have anything listed for approvals or anything on our end. The quote was also sent late Friday afternoon. So project manager, I read the form for you. It appears we have to give the vendor money before they start working through our dev/preprod/prod process. No it can't be done by end of day. No I'm not paying for it.
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Jul 9, 2018 18:17
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Thanatosian posted:I've found a really happy medium with no car ownership, walk to work, public transit (with my transit pass that my employer pays for) mostly otherwise, and car shares for Costco and large grocery runs. I'm renting a car for the first time for a wedding I have to go to out in the boonies next month, but just thinking about all the money and headache I've saved from not having to worry about car payments, insurance, maintenance, gas, parking ($300 a month in my building, $250 a month at my office) etc... So nice. As someone who used transit for a decade and a half its also limiting. Ive had good opportunities I had to turn down because I didn't drive. Plus the amount of wasted time. 30 min drive vs 2 hour bus ride each way for one job. Winter is also a killer. Standing at a bus stop in -35 plus wind chill sucks. The added expense of a car does suck, but unless your city is built around public transit then it's always going to be the most inconvenient choice.
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Jul 10, 2018 17:09
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Thanatosian posted:I mean, a lot of it is that I've chosen to live places with easy public transit access. The ubiquity of car shares has made it waaaaayyyy easier to do without. Where I live transit is great if you want to go from major residential areas to the downtown core or a couple of major malls. Outside of that transit is terrible. One place I had a job prospect at was 4 hours from my condo to work over 6 buses. It was a 35 minute drive there. There are cities where transit is not only a viable option but the best option. A lot of cities though, particularly in North America, transit is an underfunded afterthought used by the poors. I'd bus to work if it wasn't a 2.5 hour shitshow of transfers and hoping each of the 4 busses I need are on time. The other option is 20 minutes of rush hour driving each way.
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Jul 10, 2018 19:07
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Methanar posted:lol what how do you live without a car in edmonton. I don't transit anymore. Kingsway is a gongshow for everyone and the new lrt to the west end is going to be worse. I have a buddy who is going to live less than a block or so from the west end line. He barely avoided having his property eminent domained. Part of the advantage of transit, the lovely Edmonton drivers are someone elses problem.
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Jul 10, 2018 19:13
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So a few tickets about one of our mission critical apps came in. Not only is it constantly not working properly, the server it's on is running out of disk space . Talk to the vendor, tells me to delete a bunch of empty files the app made. One folder had 3.6 million empty files created at the same time. Vendor says to not worry about it, and it's not a big deal... I think I may know what's causing some of the disk space errors
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Jul 12, 2018 18:41
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So a ticket came in: our accounting program doesn't work!!! P1!! Legitimate p1, Sage 500 was completely down. Look at the errors, db connection errors and random timeout errors. Send ticket to the dba's to look into it. They close the ticket and email c-levels, server needs to be upgraded. A lot of people are not happy with this answer. So I get to wrangle people from multiple teams to track down a viable solution. Db server is actually not underprovisioned for a change so that's not the problem. A day and a half later I hear a whoops from the DBA... Turns out the db index is increadibly fragmented. He defragments it and everything works great again.. DBA is now in one on one meeting with manager to 'figure out' the RCA
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Jul 19, 2018 23:07
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GWBBQ posted:Hostile user calls us useless because we don't do data recovery on personal computers. Next day, follows up and tells us we need to do a better job maintaining our computers because his starts beeping every day at noon. Send someone to his office to check on the computer and he demands that they come back at noon so they can hear what's happening. Our guy looks around the computer and quickly finds the problem: he has an alarm clock behind the computer that he forgot about. I'll take having to babysit dba's and sysadmins over doing the end user bs any day of the week. Getting paid 50% more is just icing...
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Jul 20, 2018 16:56
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*at an analysis meeting to go over a major outage we had and resolved* Manager: is there anything we can do so we don't have to lose a full day of data if we have to restore? Me: have a mid day backup? Accountant : No, that might make the accounting program laggy while the backup is running Manager: well nothing can be done.
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Jul 24, 2018 18:19
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ConfusedUs posted:Break up the backup job into multiple smaller pieces that don't impact performance? They immediately kaiboched any backup talk as it would impact performance. I guess they'd rather work ot to manually re-enter days of data.
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Jul 24, 2018 19:41
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PM: hey blackswordca we need you to write a powershell script to copy files from a single source to one of six network destinations dependent if the destination folder is empty or not then archive the file in a compressed folder. Me: uhh I haven't done much with PowerShell, mostly use it to make AD additions or removals. Im not the best person for this. PM: our normal guy is on vacation so your it. We need it end of day tomorrow. Each day it's not done it costs us $6000 a day in project overages. If you'll excuse me I have another meeting Guess I'm self teaching myself some ps stuff tonight...
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Jul 26, 2018 23:21
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Sickening posted:That is really not something you want to be rolling out yourself in that kind of deadline. Even if you were more familiar with powershell its something with real stakes that I would want to test test test test. I agree 100%. I got pulled into this project tuesday. It's already months behind schedule and c levels are breathing down the PMs neck. I'll be chatting with my manager tomorrow. I'll let them know I can probably have something rough but this is something that needed to be looked at weeks ago. Not two days before deadline. Edit: I can't even properly test it when it's working. I only have access to one server out of the 6 processing boxes and access requests have a 1-2 week lag time on them blackswordca fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Jul 26, 2018 |
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Jul 26, 2018 23:29
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Arquinsiel posted:I mean, if you want to do that go for it, but if you weren't planning on learning powershell for your own amusement then that's a Work Task for Work Time TBH. Trust me I'm not doing it for free. I'm getting banked time at least for this. Job is very life/work balance friendly.
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Jul 27, 2018 00:23
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Have an it solution implemented to give me time. Instead of everything nicely in one script it's in 6 small bulletproof ones
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Jul 27, 2018 02:25
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Weedle posted:I am cracking up at this. Boy is your PM’s face gonna be red. Ill let you know how it goes. Meeting is first thing in the morning
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Jul 27, 2018 05:55
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Meeting went ok. Showed them what I had, turns out they forgot to mention some caviets. As for the access somehow the pm strong armed the server admin team to expedite access. Whole project is on hold as the vendor migration tool randomly triplicates database entries. They are investigating internally. Seeing how it's almost 5 pm for them I suspect they are investigating monday.
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Jul 27, 2018 21:45
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So a ticket came in. Install vendor update into critical customer facing app. Two weeks ago tested a vendor update in dev works. Tested in preprod Friday, works. Came in this morning at 8 am to push the update to prod. I'm in the office, server admin in office, DBA no show. We waited two hours before calling it. Thanks is DBA... I really wanted to wake up at 530am on a Sunday for no reason...
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Aug 19, 2018 16:35
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So a ticket came in two months ago. Desktop support user can't print from internal app. I troubleshot, couldn't find anything wrong with the application and told him to see if it was a profile issue and to log into another PC. He said ok and that was that. He comes to me today and asks if I fixed the issue yet. I ask him if he's tried a fresh profile and he gives me blank stare. I follow him to his desk and help him log into a spare laptop, prints fine. I tell him he needs to rebuild his profile. He looks at me for a minute then asks what I have to do application side to fix the problem . I tell him again the application is fine, there is an issue with his windows profile and he needs to rebuild it. He looks at me again and tells me to follow up with the vendor for a fix. I'm pretty sure this guy had no idea how to rebuild a Windows 7 domain profile or they call it something increadibly weird here. This guy is a tier 2 agent who supports desktop issues
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Aug 30, 2018 05:19
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Renegret posted:"Diaper Guy" as he was termed had a very obvious Diaper fetish. And while I'm not one to kink shame, we're pretty sure his fetish also included getting other people to look at pictures of himself against their will. He used to call in multiple times a week and would say anything he could in order to get someone to remote in. Eventually most reps knew him by name. A note was put on his account to never, under any circumstances, remote into his PC. He used to be used as a sort of hazing ritual where new people where taught the hard way to read customer notes before doing anything. Consumer support is always a gong show. With phone support between people having sex when calling, cam girls trying to get me to "test their stream to make sure it works" or people shooting their laptops to get a replacement for accidental damage as it being slow didn't qualify. To in person stuff when a PC is so loaded with malware and a browser history full of kink, the minefield of who to have the conversation with so you don't destroy a marriage, or having to crawl under a desk, looking up and regretting looking up. Also opening up a PC and finding two cats worth of cat hair covered in nicotine from the guys 3 pack a day habit. As frustrating as corporate can be, I just look back to my consumer days to remind myself it's not that bad. blackswordca fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Sep 6, 2018 |
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Sep 6, 2018 20:45
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MJP posted:
One of my best friends is a radio music director so I've heard a ton of stories about working in the industry, good luck on the new job and commute upgrade !!
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Sep 7, 2018 18:41
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