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Admin
This is where chain-of-command warfare comes in handy. You call the techie over, throw a fit while they're at your desk, complain loudly about not being able to do your work because of the idiot techie and make sure EVERYBODY HEARS YOU! Then you sign the bastard's pink slip, lock him out and mail his personal affairs, INCLUDING the trash can!
Hell I would probably have smacked the boy by now, but if you haven't noticed, I have an aggression problem :)
Admin
It's amazing. You're such an ass-hole I can smell shit thru my laptop screen.
Admin
You dear Sir are an uneducated balding lunatic with coke bottle glasses.
Admin
WTH is going on here? First the happy-ending stories, now there's not even a punch-line. What's next? Maybe something like "yesterday I was going to work and spent half an hour in a traffic jam".
Seriously, are we running out of WTFs? Or are the victims of WTFs suiciding before they can share their experiences?
Admin
That's why I just go through the scripted part as fast as possible. For every one user that calls tech support and knows what he's doing, there are probably a dozen guys who think they know what they're doing when the problem really is something simple.
Admin
Put that computer in the Trash.
Admin
My aunt's PC was crashing pretty frequently, not just in Windows, but at the BIOS screen too. I made up a Memtest CD, which crashed but otherwise found no errors. Just for the sake of it, I took out both memory sticks and swapped them. Or ... did I? I don't honestly know if I put them in the other way around -- my short-term memory is bad enough that I lost track.
But it's worked perfectly ever since. If one stick was faulty I'd expect the machine to be corrupting data and crashing, but no. I've wondered since if was just dirt or corrosion on the edge connector contacts that I cleaned off by removing and replacing the memory sticks.
At one stage, my 486 started to routinely fail to start: the hard drive was not being detected. After messing about with the Ontrack installer a few times, I somehow came to try reconnecting the CD-ROM drive. The problem was dirt or corrosion on that connection (the two drives shared a cable). At least once after that I had to take the PC apart and redo that cable, to get the hard drive to reappear.
I also have an 8-bit micro with the same problem: a third-party daughter/granddaughter board assembly would periodically go down, and the BASIC ROM had been relocated to the granddaughter board. I'd turn it on and get simply "Language?" as there was no ROM on board to provide a UI. I had to remove the boards and clean the contacts to get it to work. Twice. Only, the second time, I broke a flying lead that went from one board to the other. I don't have the means to fix it, but the boards literally have more flying leads soldered to CPU pins. I moved the BASIC ROM back to one of the original sockets on the motherboard to bypass the add-on boards.
I don't think I've ever had problems with Ethernet cables going bad, but the there are unbounded numbers of ridiculous problems that make no sense. I stopped being able to reach a certain forum for several short periods every day: I could ping/traceroute it but port 80 would time out. In Windows. If I leaned over to the Mac and tried, I'd get through. Apparently, Windows alone on my PC couldn't see port 80. Removing the network cable (at either end) abd replacing it also worked, as Windows would reset TCP/IP on detecting no Ethernet signal.
Eventually someone (not a member) saw my forum posts about this and contacted me on Yahoo! Messenger -- he had the same problem. Same ISP as me, but miles away from me.
I got tired of the forum and left, so I don't know if it ever got resolved. The Web has been flakier for me lately (my ISP has been bought up by another and the Web caching proxy network seems to have been pulled down) so I guess my ISP screwed up somewhere. No way to know.
(Damn this was long.)
Admin
Admin
The instruction is not insane and actually does fix the system sometimes.
"Please check if the cable is plugged in"--the user may simply say that it is without going to the inconvenience of checking, or it could be the plug is not seated but looks ok at a glance.
"Please switch the ends of the cable"--the user actually plugs both ends of the cable in, after doing this it's very unlikely you have an unplugged cable problem.
Admin
Yeah, they are so unable to recognize they are dealing with someone technically competent.
I've had two run-ins with techs that just didn't get it.
Case #1: Attempting to pull messages from Usenet suddenly started returning authentication errors. Level 1 tech: Didn't know what a news server was, it took a while to get through that it was not a problem with dialing in, only with the news server. Level 2 tech: At least he knew what it was but he knew nothing about it. Another level 2 tech: That's not handled here. Another tech, level unknown: Wrong department. The final tech: Solved it in 10 seconds. We changed news providers, the new address is...
Case #2: I was being a bit uncooperative with the tech--I refused to connect the machine directly to the internet without the router in the picture. I was making do with what I had been given to set up. Stock XP, nothing else. I was supposed to set it up, not get it infected. The mere fact that bypassing the router with W98 (it was dual boot) got the same lack of connectivity meant nothing, he wanted me to work with XP.
Finally I went and got my laptop which had it's defenses in place and got the same behavior which seemed to break him out of his rut and he finally started actually checking things. A hour after the call started the problem came to light: A wrong digit in the MAC address of the modem. A mistake made by THEIR installer.
Admin
Exactly. If it's got a processor someday it's going to need to be rebooted. PC's, routers, DVD players, even my cell phone once. You often need to deny all power to the devices, not merely turn them off.
Admin
Just a comment on the bit of switching memory sticks around: I once was given a machine that was as unstable as nitrogen triodide. This was long ago, no memtest CD but I suspected memory problems and was playing musical chips.
Conclusion: 1 chip in slot 0 worked, another made it crash. The board had enough other problems that I ended up putting the processor and memory on a new board which promptly came up and yelled about two different speeds of chip.
Admin
At a previous job around 5 years ago, we were requested by the development teams to provide them a new dev server. We ran it up, installed the applications they wanted, configured it all nicely, and handed it over - with user rights, not admin rights.
Despite the fact that nothing they used the server for required them to have anything more than standard user rights, they complained to management until eventually we were forced to give them the root password.
Two days later, I get a call from one of the dev team leaders, complaining that the box is down. I check it out, and sure enough it won't boot. After investigating a bit, and with the help of a boot CD, I discovered that majority of the OS was missing, but most of the user data was still there. Very strange.
I eventually found the culprit - one of the developers created a cleanup script to run over a data directory, containing
#!/bin/sh find . -type f -mtime +30 -exec rm -f {} \;Worked fine when he ran it manually - but when he scheduled it to run in cron, as root, it ran from / instead of the build directory, promptly deleting every file on the whole system which was more than 30 days old.
We restored the machine from backups, changed the root password again, and refused to give it to them again. They eventually purchased their own machine, which they ran up and installed themselves, with no involvement from us, to get around the problem.
Of course, whenever they broke it (which was frequently), they'd come running to us for help again, and got irate when we told them we wouldn't support their self-built system.
THAT is why I don't give admin rights away on any system I support.
Admin
this story is absolutely un-believable. and not in the sense that it could happen but it's out of the ordinary. i just don't believe that it happened.
Admin
No, Halon is /not/ toxic (at least most common variants of it, and the variant (usually 2401 IIRC) (formerly) used in computer installations is not one of the toxic ones.
Halon is no longer used because it's a CFC, which a bunch f'ing twits thought killed the ozone in the upper atmosphere. Turns out they wree largely wrong, but we can't un-do the legislation, so we get more toxic fire fighting agents, more corrosive and flamable refridgerents etc.
BTW, it's the same group of ninnies that were warning us about global cooling in the 70s.
Admin
I'll bet that the real funniest, sharpest point to this story (ok so it's fictional --- or IS it?) would be that what the IT people describe as a "trashcan" is actually either the Mac Trashcan or the Windows Recycle bin - or even funnier, she described her tower as a "trash can"...
Ok probably not, but what if the IT people were actually trying to get her to move her Recycle bin away from the icons she'd click on because they kept "disappearing"....?
Admin
First day on the job (as a stagist-developer):
"So, Luca, here's your computer"
"Ok, this is power on... so... uhm... that doesn't seem to work, the screen is black".
"Yeah, we know, sometime it gaves us problem with the monitor, try unplug"
Unplug monitor
*Plug monitor
Unplug/plug another monitor
Me: "Uhm, I doesn't think this is the problem, this monitor works on the other machine"
Tech: "uh, we don't know"
"wait 20 minutes and try again"
While 20.minutes.wait(), I suddenly looked at PC's case, which was open. Suddenly, I realized that something was not here, but I can't understand which part, it was like playing "Spot the differences".
No RAM. Apparently, in my company IT tech usually steal other PC's components, such as video card, ram, and sometimes CPUs too.
Sorry for my english :)
Admin
Here's the real WTF
"Maria was a reasonably savvy user" and she still kept moving her trashcan.
Maria is not savvy, Maria is an idiot
Admin
I'd call BOFH fake except these guys genuinly seem to think its the trash can.
That and the BOFH would have done something a little better than that or provided a more plausable solution such as: 'The plastic compound is combining with the electromagnetic field of your keyboard to cause a system wide kernel dump' or some such.
Captcha: Pirates. YARR!
Admin
dude, you're an idiot. read the part of his post where he says BOFH and then do some damn research before you post some idiotic crap. the BOFH used halon. in a server room. on purpose because it was toxic. you NUNCE.
Admin
Here's an anecdote, re: isp techies.
I first got dsl in LA county in 1999. i had 768/768, and there was rarely if ever a problem. when there was a problem, you had to call 1866 444 ADSL. this would connect you to a moron. i learned soon, that my local adminstration office was in long beach. one day i was complaining about my upstream, so i got elevated to a higher "tier" of tech, and the guy, right before he transferred me, gave me the phone number. Now i'm a network admin, and a security specialist by trade, so when something isn't working, it damn sure isn't my fault (at least not with an internet connection!). so everytime something went crazy, i'd call the long beach office directly, and talk to the actual admins of the ISP.
These guys were awesome, and i am sure they saved me from a couple of lawsuits involving NNTP server posts.
always demand to be transfered at the beginning of the call, accept no substitutes... but only if you are competent, and 100% positive that it isn't your own fault.
Admin
Hehe, I once actually had a problem like this. The cable from the socket to the modem had partially come loose resulting in speeds of 10KB/s (usually I can depend on at least 800KB/s from big sites). I called tech support, but no-one asked me the question about the cables :( It would have saved me 4 hours of uselessly trying to diagnose the problem..
Admin
That was classic when I worked on Powerlink support for Adelphia a few years back. Sadly it worked 50% - 60% of the time. I knew people wo would hang up on someone to get them off the phone but tell them they had the issue fixed call back in 5 minutes seems to be a little wrong. At least if you are not giving users false hope. I cringe thinking on those days. When you know people's service is hosed and you cannot tell them the truth. oh well, it beats calling support only to be able to make out one of every five words because of thick accents and broken english
Admin
The problem with your first proposed solution is that it puts all of the onus on developers and testers to make sure that their systems are well maintained, but provides no incentive to IT support to actually fulfill the request. Sure, the IT folks could say yes and then follow up to make sure that the developers are doing their jobs, but it's easier to just say no. The repercussions for them are virtually nonexistent, because it takes a significant loss of business for the product before it percolates high enough up the chain to get noticed, by which time some poor schmuck has probably already lost his job.
I wholeheartedly support the notion of getting test environments deployed in a rigorous, well documented way. The problem is that I've never seen an IT infrastructure group willing to do it.
And, for the record, my most recent position is to be the dedicated admin for the development and test systems in our group. I've been expressly instructed not to communicate this to the IT folks.
Admin
Yay! Yet another whiner is heard from! Oh happy day!
Quit complaining. If you don't like the post, don't read it. If you don't like the site, don't visit. If you don't like the new name of the site, register your own domain and create a site with a name you like. Just quit wasting people's time with your crying.
Admin
And if their whole hard drive goes kablooey, then they still loose everything. You need to drill it into your user's heads that EVERYTHING that is important for your organisation's work (and needs to be kept around) should be stored on the network drive(s) not on the local PC.
The network drives are the only ones that are backed up regularly. The PC is a commodity; and easily replaceable. The network drive is not.
Once your user looses all his work for the last 6 months the first time; they (and their manager), are going to be darn sure that they have been saving things to the network drive.
Admin
Here's a "pointer" (c-a-p-t-c-h-a).
Everyone knows it's much easier to recover your data if you initially tar and gzip it before moving it all to /dev/null.
That way, you'll only have to figure out how to recover one file and not many. ;)
Admin
You were using Windows 95. I've had similar problems in which the ability of Windows95 boxes to see each other depended on which one booted last.
Admin
And it's not entirely a stupid suggestion. Switching cable ends means you're flexing the cable differently, as opposed to simply reseating it and letting it end up in the same position. If the problem is a bad cable, changing how it's flexed has a chance to restore a connection that was cut by a bad solder joint or a hairline crack in the copper. Swapping ends isn't a fix for the problem, but it might tell you that the cable is at fault and needs to be replaced. It certainly wouldn't be one of the first things I'd check, but it's a possibility.
Admin
This reminds me of 2 different calls I took when I worked at a cash register company back in '95.
#1) Cust: "The register is locked up. Constantly beeps, even after a reset. Happened when the waitress went to insert a check." Me: "Open the printer area and blow out the dust in the sensors." Cust: "Hey! Everything works now!"
#2) Cust: "Since 3:30pm today the register is stuck. Even a system reset, power off, etc. won't clear it." After finding out that the last key pressed was the "large fries", me: "Take a screwdriver and pop off that fry key." Cust.: "WHAT?!?!" Me: "You heard me - and replace it with one of the side keys you're not using." Cust: "Wow, that did it! Thanks!"
Education and references can be a substitute for routine and rote, but none of the above can take the place of understanding.
Admin
Yes, although it was HFC-125 and not Halon. And it wasn't a test, it was a multiple sensor malfunction. I had less than 10 seconds to get out of the room before it started going. It let loose right as I was walking out the door to the raised floor area. I would NOT want to experience that again. It knocked all sorts of heavy objects off of desks and destroyed ceiling tiles and all sorts of other things.
Admin
Do you have a scholarly cite for that?
Admin
Turns out they wree largely wrong
In fact, it turned out that they were right after all.
Admin
Halon is not toxic, it's completly inert. However, the whole purpose of halon is to replace the oxygen in the room. So toxic or not, being in a room full of halon without any breathing equipment is probably going to make you dead.
Admin
Halon by itself is non-toxic. However anything that displaces oxygen is inherently dangerous to those who need it to survive (this includes YOU; YES, YOU).
Admin
I've pulled some "sunspot" type answers before.
"Why is the network slow?" -- Because our cables are strung through the ceiling to the computer room, and you are sending a lot of data. The electrons carrying the data moves slower uphill than it does downhill or flat. And it is limited to 100Mbps so when it goes downhill, it hits that speed limit and the differential between the uphill slowdown and "normal" speed is bigger than the downhill max speed and normal speed.
Or...
It's cold outside, so the electrons are moving slower.
Admin
Tech Support people hear from lots of people who think that they know the answer every day. 95% of these people are wrong. Of those, 100% are obnoxious assholes.
You might actually know the answer, but the last 20 guys who sounded just like you were wrong. From the support tech's POV, the odds of you actually being right are very small. The odds that you're an idiot who did something stupid and you're about to try to blame the tech for it are way higher.
This creates a problem, of course. The only way around it is to play along with the script and get escalated when you exhaust the limits of the script.
Or stay away from all consumer product lines...
Admin
Yep, that did happen--once in five years out of over 100 PCs I maintained. I did in fact communicate the advantage of network storage to my users, including the better backup facilities available. I just made other options available as well. I've been there, and I can tell you, OS failures are much more frequent than hardware failures.
Admin
Wow.
I moved, and it was 3 days before I could get my computer setup again to dial out to my isp. In the meantime, they isp sent out emails describing that they were going to change login access THAT WEEKEND!
Needless to say, I spent hours trying to figure out my dialup problems before giving up and waiting until the following business day to contact the isp directly.
Yes. Nothing like giving more than a few days notice of major changes and then using a catch-22 method.
Admin
Thats a pretty strong statement. I would suppose you must be some type of superwizard that has an encyclopedic knowledge of 8 years of possible desktop environments, operating systems (at their current patch levels)drivers and the hardware that they run on, as well as possible issues with different BIOS revisions for ancillary cards,motherboards,printers as well as being a really great guy who's a pleasure to be around. Its a wonder that we shouldn't pay YOU a per incident rate !
Admin
Years ago my sister moved into a college apartment complex with ethernet access. She hooked up her PC, and could ping by IP, but not by name. I figured there was a DNS problem.
Called up the apartment tech support. Told them their DHCP server wasn't handing out any DNS addresses. Person on the other end of the phone had no idea what I was talking about. I instructed them to find a PC, asked what version of windows they had (win 2000 or 98) and walked them through running the appropriate commands to tell me the IP addresses of the DNS servers. Plugged the numbers into sis's machine, everything was just fine.
Admin
I have a story about a friend of mine. He just got DSL, when USB modems where all you could get, and actually managed to get an ethernet modem (huge brick on the wall). His connection kept dropping and at some point stopped working. He calls customer support, knowing full well what to expect. I even think at this point he was still using his Amiga and chose to answer "MacOS" or "Win98" when asked about his operating system, just to save time. Anyway.
The girl on the phone asks him:
That's what he did.
I don't blame the support person (well, maybe a little for being dense), I blame the company hiring totally unqualified people to lower their costs (while still asking for a premium for the account, mind).
Admin
Oh gee, the first bit I quote above almost made me spit out my soda. I carried a "dev support" cell phone for 3years where I used to work, which took internal company calls as well as customer calls, fortunately I never was driven to twitching. I did feel homicidal rage on occasion, but whatever. Users are users after all.
That second bit, did you laugh out loud yourself, when they offered you a job? =) Pretty good stuff. Kinda scary, but good. It at least puts things in perspective when as a developer I am trying to get something fixed in QA and have to go through the networking dept because I don't have sufficient access to the QA machines to fix it myself. It is no fun at all...
Admin
For sure. This is DEFINITELY a BOFH-ism :)
BTW- captcha = gotcha. I think I hit the nail on the head...
Admin
Admin
OOps Just read it again. Aargh - The own goal was mine - sorry. Er - I suppose that just proves the point. I could have been on to some tech support guy and had the same brainslip about DHCP.
OK OK I'll move the waste bin to the other side of the room.
Admin
I always do this kind of thing to the jokers upstairs
CAPTCHA : First!
Admin
Then, there are the users with potted plants sitting on top of the tube part of their CRT monitors complaining that their monitors are dying or behaving in an otherwise strange way.
Plants need water to grow, but monitor size is dependent on the judicious use of bovine manure.
Captcha: darwin - if only he was right more often
Admin
I couldn't figure out what was wrong, so I forwarded the problem to the manufacturer of the printer, and one of their techs called me back. He asked me if there was any sunlight or other bright light shining on the printer. The customer was taking the printer out on the road to public events, so I told the tech that sunlight was a possibility. He told me to move the printer or block the sunlight, and although it sounded ridiculous to me, it ended up working.
It turns out that the printer has an optical sensor for detecting whether there are any cards in the tray, and if a bright light shines directly on the input tray, sometimes enough light gets through to the sensor and it thinks the tray is empty. In this case, the "Increased Sunspot Activity" line wasn't that far from the truth!
Admin
It's getting pretty bad when I have to reboot my freakin' TOASTER. I'm not kidding.