• bilon (unregistered) in reply to moving through space
    moving through space:
    Popeye:
    HP is one of the worst companies out there for technical support. Just wait until you have them for software development and support. It only get worse...
    I agree. Yet, our company still seems to find reasons to sign multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts for products and support. My only guess is that our infrastructure people are worse than theirs.
    Maybe, maybe not. I have worked in many organisations where work is outsourced to less competent contractors than inhouse staff. I have always assumed it's a sort of liability things - if we have a vendor, we can blame them for fuckups - ie it's not our IT people's fault.... In reality, it works even better - every major incident results in a blamestorm. And we start to understand how loose contracts are - which allow vendors to complain that XYZ was not actually unavailable, it was merely unusable so there is no breach in terms of availability...

    but I guess it creates jobs and makes the economy go round...

  • bilon (unregistered) in reply to moving through space
    moving through space:
    Popeye:
    HP is one of the worst companies out there for technical support. Just wait until you have them for software development and support. It only get worse...
    I agree. Yet, our company still seems to find reasons to sign multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts for products and support. My only guess is that our infrastructure people are worse than theirs.
    Maybe, maybe not. I have worked in many organisations where work is outsourced to less competent contractors than inhouse staff. I have always assumed it's a sort of liability things - if we have a vendor, we can blame them for fuckups - ie it's not our IT people's fault.... In reality, it works even better - every major incident results in a blamestorm. And we start to understand how loose contracts are - which allow vendors to complain that XYZ was not actually unavailable, it was merely unusable so there is no breach in terms of availability...

    but I guess it creates jobs and makes the economy go round...

  • yuit (unregistered) in reply to eViLegion
    eViLegion:
    Nowhere are any of the details of that first WTF made clear.

    Who is paying who for what to happen? Who created that ticket, and why? Where was the fire? What caused the fire? What actually happened regarding the extinguishing of the fire, and who did it? Why do we care about 40000 more users, sub-contracted SLAs, 3rd parties, or any of that shit... what relevance does it have to a stupid fucking fire ticket?

    Are we to understand that a group of firemen failed to respond to an electrical fire because they were busily trying to submit a "we've got an electrical fire to respond to" ticket in some ticketing system?

    Or, are we to understand that they had an electrical fire themselves, and decided to submit a ticket to their IT guys instead of putting that fire out?

    Or, are we to understand that some subcontractor had the fire, and submitted a ticket to the developers instead of calling the fire brigade?

    Or was there some other user of this service that had the fire, didn't call the fire brigade but submitted a ticket to the sub contractor guys who forwarded it on to Karls company, but not before debating its priority?

    Is this the real wtf: "WTF ACTUALLY HAPPENED?"

    All of that. I actually thought the WTF was that you hire a group to triage your incidents, so they raise a high-severity incident asking you to assess the severity of an (obviously critical) incident....
  • Gemima (unregistered) in reply to herby
    herby:
    Online "help".

    Is it just me, or do most online help dialogs seem like they are a conversation between 'PARRY' and 'ELIZA'.

    The canned responses seem very much that. Are they supposed to fail a Touring Test?

    Maybe there should be a feature of a browser (plugin) that creates responses we users can click to generate verbosity on demand.

    It might even be helpful.

    Example: I am having problem with $PROBLEM, and I have tried powering off and rebooting my computer. My operating system is $OS and my browser is $BROWSER. I have also tried $TASK1 and $TASK2 to solve the problem. I am sure that you can own the problem as much as I can, but can you provide a solution as well?

    I could go on, but why bother.

    Touring Test: How many towns on the Hume Highway between the Barton Highway and the first exit that shows Adelaide as a destination?

  • Not Safe for Whales (unregistered) in reply to Gemima
    Gemima:
    Touring Test: How many towns on the Hume Highway between the Barton Highway and the first exit that shows Adelaide as a destination?
    I suppose that exit would the the Sturt Highway?

    What actually counts as a town being 'on' the Hume Highway? For a start there's Yass and Bowning (both of which I've been to many times) but technically they're both 'off' the highway, though not by much.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Not Safe for Whales
    Not Safe for Whales:
    Gemima:
    Touring Test: How many towns on the Hume Highway between the Barton Highway and the first exit that shows Adelaide as a destination?
    I suppose that exit would the the Sturt Highway?

    What actually counts as a town being 'on' the Hume Highway? For a start there's Yass and Bowning (both of which I've been to many times) but technically they're both 'off' the highway, though not by much.

    I think it would be the Sturt Highway....I also think since the Hume has been realigned to miss as many towns as possible, the only one that would come close to being considered 'On the Hume Highway' would be Gundagai (or Gundagai West or whatever the place is - first exit after the dog on the tucker-box - has a Hungry Jacks there) - there's also one called Juriong or something, but I think that might just be 3 people camping...oh, and there might be a little one with a T (tumut or tarcutta seems to ring a bell))

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    Not Safe for Whales:
    Gemima:
    Touring Test: How many towns on the Hume Highway between the Barton Highway and the first exit that shows Adelaide as a destination?
    I suppose that exit would the the Sturt Highway?

    What actually counts as a town being 'on' the Hume Highway? For a start there's Yass and Bowning (both of which I've been to many times) but technically they're both 'off' the highway, though not by much.

    I think it would be the Sturt Highway....I also think since the Hume has been realigned to miss as many towns as possible, the only one that would come close to being considered 'On the Hume Highway' would be Gundagai (or Gundagai West or whatever the place is - first exit after the dog on the tucker-box - has a Hungry Jacks there) - there's also one called Juriong or something, but I think that might just be 3 people camping...oh, and there might be a little one with a T (tumut or tarcutta seems to ring a bell))
    I must have meant South Gundagai, and oops...it's not the first exit....

    Google Street View

    Fark you akismet you dog

  • Kasper (unregistered)

    I wonder why the bot is also a consumer of HP printers. I suppose it must be printing out all the chats for documentation. I can't think of anything else it could use a printer for.

  • (cs)

    The real WTF is trying to “widget” an FTP server on port 80.

  • (cs)

    I don't get WTF about "Troubled Widgets". Is it because their IT department is dysfunctional that the CTO had to personally come over?

  • austin (unregistered) in reply to Gomez Addams

    Interestingly enough, I've had to do this in the U.S. The leased line from Sprint would randomly fail to transmit any of our VoIP packets, so calls would just drop from our remote office sometimes. A microwave link to connect the two offices about a mile apart fixed this issue for us, weather permitting. CAPTCHA: saluto

  • (cs)

    After reading the widget one, I found that using Google for "wget" really wasn't that hard.

  • (cs) in reply to gswe

    [quote user="gswe"]To be fair, that's the problem with no IT people reporting IT issues. To them the issue is with the product they're using, not what they are (often unknowingly) trying to do with the product - and I think that's reasonable to a degree.[/quote]

    Yes, but try to find out what is going on, and some people just will not give a straight answer.

    [quote](think about when you have issues in fields you're not the expert in - do you make assumptions about what the problem? how accurately do you report the problem (from THE EXPERT'S perspective?). Unfortunately, most of us seem to have the habit of explaining problems based on what we think the problem is - not based on what we experienced.)/quote]

    We all make assumptions, but I try to separate that out. I typically will start with something like "I am using PROGRAM to DO_ACTION. Instead of USUAL_RESULT, I am getting BAD_RESULT." THEN, I might add speculations. Mind you, as a programmer/analyst, my speculations are worth more than most people's if it is a computer-related issue. If it is not, I throttle back on the guessing.

    There is nothing arcane about this.

    Sincerely,

    Gene Wirchenko

  • callCommander (unregistered)

    Sometimes call center engagements are extremely limited. I do support for some big vendors and all we have is basic troubleshooting info (read: what you might have in the manual, Solutions, and a knowledgebase). All I can do is make a support ticket, give you that info if it fits, and slap a "someone will contact you shortly" on it and that's all I can literally do.

    Yes, your entire installation and servers and agents are offline -- but sorry, nothing I can do. I'm not even given a transfer procedure if you're angry. I can use IM to all of one or two people who will tell me making a comment on the ticket saying "we'll contact you shortly" meets their SLA for the entire case.

    //I keep mental note of these clients. I'll never do business with them.

  • asdf (unregistered) in reply to eViLegion
    eViLegion:
    Nowhere are any of the details of that first WTF made clear.

    Who is paying who for what to happen? Who created that ticket, and why? Where was the fire? What caused the fire? What actually happened regarding the extinguishing of the fire, and who did it? Why do we care about 40000 more users, sub-contracted SLAs, 3rd parties, or any of that shit... what relevance does it have to a stupid fucking fire ticket?

    Are we to understand that a group of firemen failed to respond to an electrical fire because they were busily trying to submit a "we've got an electrical fire to respond to" ticket in some ticketing system?

    Or, are we to understand that they had an electrical fire themselves, and decided to submit a ticket to their IT guys instead of putting that fire out?

    Or, are we to understand that some subcontractor had the fire, and submitted a ticket to the developers instead of calling the fire brigade?

    Or was there some other user of this service that had the fire, didn't call the fire brigade but submitted a ticket to the sub contractor guys who forwarded it on to Karls company, but not before debating its priority?

    Is this the real wtf: "WTF ACTUALLY HAPPENED?"

    ok, glad I wasn't the only one confused. I reread it 3 times trying to figure out the connections/;relationships and failed.

  • iWantToKeepAnon (unregistered)

    Totally understandable if your internet stack is built on the "Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers" RFC1149.

  • (cs) in reply to Gomez Addams
    Gomez Addams:
    The "windy" story might not be a WTF, depending on the era and geography.

    Era? Wireless services of various sorts are all a lot of people/businesses can get where I live. And even then, it often means sticking a big antenna on the roof and hoping for the best. And yes, if the wind blows the long pole the antenna is on, the signal can drop/disappear.

  • CZeke (unregistered)

    What's so hard to get about the first story? Some fire department has reported a fire like it's a tech support problem. The joke (maybe accurate, maybe not -- we'd need context) is that they should just go put the fire out.

    I was confused briefly, but only because I wondered if the intro was trying to be cute by describing a fire department like a hi-tech company. Hence the need for 24/7 support, and what's a fire truck if not a platform-as-a-service?

  • Captain Oblivious (unregistered) in reply to Roby McAndrew
    Roby McAndrew:
    A friend of mine worked for a major oil company in Southampton. Their office was in the city, and they had a data cable across Southampton Water to Fawley refinery. The data connection would fail whenever a sufficiently large ship sailed over the cable. The theory was that the cable must have had a hairline crack, and the ships would open the crack enough to drop the signal for a few seconds.

    The answer is inductance. A big enough ship will have its own magnetic field, and the high frequency signals going through the cable will interact with it. The ship will absorb power that ought to be going through the cable, the signal to noise ratio will drop, and the modems will need to remodulate.

  • Martin (unregistered)

    But of course: When it's windy you need to close windows!

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered)

    http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/firefighters-rescue-cop-tree-trying-rescue-cat-questions-143304363.html

    Firefighters did the rescuing, but still a WTF.

  • caspian (unregistered) in reply to Maciej

    My guess is that they have employed the no-speaka-da-English helpdesk.

  • Niel Malan (unregistered) in reply to Gomez Addams

    You don't even have to go to Mexico for that. In Mid Wales at a university we sometimes waited a few days for the storm to abate so that the technicians could climb the towers safely to repair the (intermittently broken) hardware.

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    when told to edit the M.A.C. address, the client responded, "but my computer is a PC!"

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