xarph posted:

From a former life, names changed to protect myself although I could care less about the subject:

I worked for a large company of the sort that gets to dictate terms to the likes of Microsoft and Apple. One fine fiscal half, an advertising company was acquired. Some employees of the advertising company were kept. Others were dismissed. A subset refused to sign certain papers and thus were disappeared.

One of the employees that survived the culling was a man who, for the purposes of this story, shall be named Jack Brentwood. Jack's job was to create banner advertisements. At the old company, he received certain concessions from IT as befitting his stature. This was not the case at his new employer, despite his unwillingness to believe such a thing.

Upon arrival and orientation, his user account was created. The automated system in place doled out his new username, which was jbrentwood. He did not like this. A ticket came into my queue, requesting in very firm wording that his account be renamed to "ImJackBrentwood" (caps inclusive).

Now, requests to change user names is nothing new. Women requested them all the time to dispose of their maiden names. However, this was generally discouraged given the extremely large infrastructure in place at this company. Instead, an offer was made to create an email alias with the desired new name. Ninety percent of the time, this was acceptable. If it wasn't, we could change the name, but the user would be unable to log in to any network services for round-about four hours.

Jbrentwood was insistent that we rename his account. An email alias would not be acceptable - he MUST be able to log into any internal service using "ImJackBrentwood." To reinforce the fact that he had to be able to log into any internal service using "ImJackBrentwood," he attached his email signature, which contained his Skype name, AIM screenname, Yahoo screenname, MSN screenname, and Twitter, all of which were "ImJackBrentwood." Presumably, the passwords for all of these services were either identical or variations on a theme, but this was mere theory on my part. It was the only sane excuse I could think up - perhaps he had a strange condition that necessitated muscle memory in order to fill in a username box.

And so, jbrentwood became ImJackBrentwood, and there was much rejoicing.

A month later, another ticket came into the queue which I immediately grabbed due to the unusual username - ImJackBrentwood. ImJackBrentwood, it seemed, required some internet-facing web space on which to store preview advertisement banners for clients. This was not a simple request. Any content that faced the internet at large was handled by a very specific group of gatekeepers. What ImJackBrentwood required - a windows file share where he could drag and drop files to appear magically on the public internet - was flat out against the rules.

The company had many services that were exposed to the internet and allowed user-generated content. Surely one of those would suffice? Negative - the 20MB quota would not do for such important tasks as previewing advertisement banners.

And so ImJackBrentwood's request was escalated, per policy, to the first gates of Network Security. Network Security understood the request, and described an enormous list of checks, bylaws, and regulations that would have to be satisfied before an easement could be granted between ImJackBrentwood's explorer.exe and The Internet.

All of IT rested that evening, for no one had completed the herculean task of satisfying Network Security's boilerplate regulations without support from The Almighty.

A week later, an email roughly the size of a professional athlete's prenuptial agreement appeared in the ticket. Network Security's bluff had been called by ImJackBrentwood! Newspapers were stopped and the ticket, per policy, was duly sent to the Black Gate of Sysops.

The Sysops denied the request within fifteen minutes.

ImJackBrentwood raised a fuss and had the ticket escalated.

The BoFH on duty denied the request within ten minutes.

ImJackBrentwood raised a fuss and had the ticket escalated.

The King Sysop denied the request within five minutes.

ImJackBrentwood raised a fuss and had the ticket escalated.

The Emperor Sysop of the Western Hemisphere examined the ticket, and wrote an email which to the best of my memory read verbatim:

quote:

Dear Sir,

This task you have described would require a redesign of our infrastructure and incur an estimated cost of $100,000 in new hardware purchases as well as $10,000 in labor.

From examining the ticket and inferring time spent on this issue, over $1,500 of company time has been consumed on your request. This could have purchased several years worth of third party hosting which would have satisfied both your needs and our security policies.

Request denied.

ImJackBrentwood resigned a month later and moved to Mexico.

Sormus posted:

Cc: boss, boss's boss, HR, Janitorial dept, and starbucks across the street

Please open the old thread, some of us still use it for work and this is affecting production.

Thanks Ants posted:

AlexDeGruven posted:

Our children will never get to experience the hilarity and rage of a good old fashioned Reply All storm.

kensei posted:

I bet they will, life finds a way...

AlexDeGruven posted:

Our children will never get to experience the hilarity and rage of a good old fashioned Reply All storm.

Sirotan posted:

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: [SPAM] FW: RE: The logs could do with a courtesy flush FINAL(2) - USE THIS
Date: Sun, Jan 1 2023 12:34:15

>>>From: Sirotan <isaseal@fuckprinters.edu>

>>>Can you remove me from this email chain please? I no longer wish to receive these types of messages especially while I am on vacation.

On 01/01/2023 11:55 AM, Geemer wrote:
> On 01/01/2023 11:46 AM, chin up everything sucks wrote:
>>I'm Replying All because I don't know who should be informed of this, and CCing
>>the entire org chart. The old thread was a huge headache, I hated it and much
>>prefer this new streamlined single page thread. Anyone who used the old thread
>>is an idiot.
>>
>
>Guys, stop using reply all!
>Also %colleague% is not able to load the new thread ever since he decided to trim
>the excess slack on the wires coming from his hard drive monitor. He did a real
>tidy job of duct taping the ends back together again, so that can't be the issue.
>It's the server mainframe maybe down?
>
>

kensei posted:

I bet they will, life finds a way...

Christe Eleison posted:

how do I log in to the old thread

The Claptain posted:

How do I use this new thread, it's different than the old one?

Thanks Ants posted:

We should move to the butt

Arquinsiel posted:

Did something happen to the old thread? I was out of office until tomorrow but now I can't send posts.

Zil posted:

Vegastar posted:

You should copy this to Yammer so some of the other departments can chime in.
[quote="Thanks Ants" post="528798375"]
Ever since you upgraded me to the new thread I've been having problems sending emails from my phone. Can you please fix this problem once and for all because it's impacting my ability to make sales.
[quote="Wibla" post="528798286"]
There's buttons missing! and only one page?!
[quote="The Claptain" post="528798274"]
How do I use this new thread, it's different than the old one?
[quote="Thanks Ants" post="528797403"]
We should move to the cloud
[quote="Powered Descent" post="528797398"]
Since we're replacing it anyway, instead of a regular thread let's get hyperthreading, that's a lot more modern and should be much faster.
[quote="Rexxed" post="528797068"]
I backed up the old thread on this Buffalo but I can't see it on My Network and there's just a red light blinking? CRITICAL. THIS IS AFFECTING PATIENT CARE.
[quote="Thanks Ants" post="528796792"]
We need to move to a new thread, we’ll do it really cheap and have the users move their own posts. Can you provide instructions?
[quote="Wizard of the Deep" post="528796252"]
Someone deleted all the old posts? Can we restore from backup? **URGENT!**

(we might be violating HIPPO/SOCSK without those posts?)
[quote="Weatherman" post="528795799"]
Thank you for your email.

I'm currently on New Year holidays and will be offline until 9 January. Please resend your message after this time.

In an emergency, please contact team lead Sundae or manager PMchem.

Thanks
Weatherman
[quote="Christe Eleison" post="528792523"]
how do I log in to the old thread
[quote="nielsm" post="528792277"]
The new hotness is starting a new conversation in Teams instead of replying to the existing conversation, leaving everyone else wondering what the gently caress you're talking about.
[quote="notwithoutmyanus" post="528791982"]
(intentional bad spelling)

From: notwithoutmyanus@eatingbackwards.edu

STP RELYING TO THIS CHAIN PLEASE! ITS DRIVING EVERYONE INSANE! REACH OUT OR OPN A TICKET! THE EMAIL SYSTEM COULD GO DOWN IF EVERYONE KEEPS REPLYING. SOMEONE'S CITRIX VDI ALREADY GRAYSCREENED FROM ALL THE SPAM!
[quote="Sirotan" post="528791194"]
I was involved in stopping one about 3 years back so they do still happen in our modern computing age. Some dude was spamming a list with like 30k users on it (that someone did not restrict who could send mail to) with a O365 email OTP decryption link. The email would go to the group with a link and anytime someone clicked the link it would generate another email to the group. This happened over and over and over for a good hour as people on the list just blindly clicked something they shouldn't have. I guess I'm just happy it wasn't a phishing attempt.
[quote="AlexDeGruven" post="528791043"]
When you invent something truly idiot proof, someone invents a better idiot.
[quote="kensei" post="528791022"]
I bet they will, life finds a way...
[quote="Sywert of Thieves" post="528790946"]
As gently caress
[quote="AlexDeGruven" post="528790870"]
Our children will never get to experience the hilarity and rage of a good old fashioned Reply All storm.
[quote="Thanks Ants" post="528790851"]
I've hooked this email thread into Teams so I can respond with a GIF


[quote="Sirotan" post="528790626"]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: [SPAM] FW: RE: The logs could do with a courtesy flush FINAL(2) - USE THIS
Date: Sun, Jan 1 2023 12:34:15
From: Sirotan <isaseal@fuckprinters.edu>

Can you remove me from this email chain please? I no longer wish to receive these types of messages especially while I am on vacation.

On 01/01/2023 11:55 AM, Geemer wrote:
> On 01/01/2023 11:46 AM, chin up everything sucks wrote:
>>I'm Replying All because I don't know who should be informed of this, and CCing
>>the entire org chart. The old thread was a huge headache, I hated it and much
>>prefer this new streamlined single page thread. Anyone who used the old thread
>>is an idiot.
>>
>
>Guys, stop using reply all!
>Also %colleague% is not able to load the new thread ever since he decided to trim
>the excess slack on the wires coming from his hard drive monitor. He did a real
>tidy job of duct taping the ends back together again, so that can't be the issue.
>It's the server mainframe maybe down?
>
>
[quote="my cat is norris" post="528790252"]
hello

i quit my computer-touching job about six weeks ago, and it's been an enormous relief.

unfortunately, stressing about income and bills and things is reducing that relief, so i will probably look for something more permanent and structured than Uber driving sometime soon. my plan was to sell artwork to the horny people of the internet, but i can't seem to get focused enough to get that off the ground. undiagnosed adhd? probably.

anyway, wish me luck as well??
[quote="Thanks Ants" post="528790230"]

[quote="RFC2324" post="528790204"]
Obligatory gently caress Printers
[quote="Nerdlord Actual" post="528790187"]
Happy new year all you computer touchers, sincerely, your clients/coworkers.


Also my monitor's been acting up and sometimes it doesn't turn on????????????????????????????
[quote="Geemer" post="528790129"]
[Reply all] guys, stop using reply all!
Also %colleague% is not able to load the new thread ever since he decided to trim the excess slack on the wires coming from his hard drive monitor. He did a real tidy job of duct taping the ends back together again, so that can't be the issue. It's the server mainframe maybe down?
[quote="Internet Explorer" post="528790014"]
You love to see it. New thread, new year, things are looking up in the professional business email thread.
[quote="chin up everything sucks" post="528789999"]
I'm Replying All because I don't know who should be informed of this, and CCing the entire org chart. The old thread was a huge headache, I hated it and much prefer this new streamlined single page thread. Anyone who used the old thread is an idiot.
[quote="chin up everything sucks" post="528789973"]
May this be the for many of us.

Especially me, since I was laid off in November and need to move to another state as soon as my gf decides which university she's going to go to.
[quote="Sormus" post="528789944"]
Cc: boss, boss's boss, HR, Janitorial dept, and starbucks across the street

Please open the old thread, some of us still use it for work and this is affecting production.
[quote="RFC2324" post="528789770"]
I need a new job so bad

Maybe in a new field. Is there one that pays better for less work? I'm pretty sure after decades of dealing with technology I'm enough of a sociopath to be an exec
[quote="A Frosty Witch" post="528789747"]
Please 2023 ghost, bless me with the to end all so I can finally pass the torch to a new generation of goon in the well
[quote="The Fool" post="528789725"]
hello new thread
[quote="kensei" post="528789664"]
Old thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3845247

Still quite possibly one of the funniest stories I have seen on this forum:

May your 2023 be a for you.