IT Rant (without imported items)

Reddit is right, if you do this to your IT staff, we hate you.

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 20:34:45 GMT

http://i.imgur.com/qjXQQ.jpg

Work has been a hectic rush from beginning to end for the last week and it's ...

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:34:42 GMT

Work has been a hectic rush from beginning to end for the last week and it's looking like it'll be that again this week. Joy. Then there are some things where I can't decide to laugh or scream.

I'm given a coworker's laptop so I can try to fix whatever's wrong with it. There's an envelope attached to the back. Inside this envelope is a 3x5" index card with *all* of this teacher's log in information on it. I'm talking about school login, SoCT Gas, credit card, etc. Hell, I can buy her shoes on Zappos. I want to scream at her that this is privileged information that should be kept much more confidential.

I'm called out to figure out why a computer isn't turned on. Well, someone had unplugged the power cord.

Another coworker wanted to know how to get the headphones to work. I suggested she plug them into the computer. She wanted to know what to do after that. I assumed that there was a hardware problem since plugging in the headphones should cause the Mac to switch to them. I get there and she's still holding the cord. She hadn't tried to plug them in and go, she just assumed that there was a lot of steps and she wasn't going to plug them in until she had all of the instructions.

Some of the interns were joking around and ask me if I was going to celebrate 4/20. I explained that I knew what that meant. They grew wide-eyed and started talking about how it's Hitler's birthday. They wanted to know if I was celebrating that. I explained that I'd be asking their parents to keep a close eye on them tonight.

Disclaimer: I don't care if anyone "celebrates" 4/20, but don't insult me.

A consultant set up a brilliant back-up strategy. It isn't working.

I've had several requests for putting copyrighted information onto personal websites. I try to explain that Def Poetry Jam *is* amazing, but HBO doesn't like its reproduction without prior consent. People appear genuinely pissed off that I'm trying to keep anyone from getting sued.

I'm watching a "webinar." The term "webinar" aggravates me. The "webinar" is to try to sell us on a teaching workshop. I don't think people who think "webinar" is a legitimate word should teach. They should be shot.

Reddit users share some IT pain.

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:51:59 GMT

http://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/bkfo5/my_friend_just_gave_me_this_for_the_serial_number/

Timesheets

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:33:06 GMT

I hate timesheets. I hate filling them out. I hate turning them in. And I hate that they're never looked at. If I'm going to blow my time doing something tedious and pointless, I want my boss to be miserable, too.

Timesheets are like the ultimate expression of an absentee boss. They're required just so that someone can keep track of what you're doing. It's kind of like a constant reminder that you're not doing your job. Someone has to check up on you. If the boss were around and active, this wouldn't be an issue.

Let's avoid this kind of unpleasantness. Give me assignments and I'll get them done. If they're not done, we can talk about my use of time. As long as I'm meeting the deadlines, don't insult me.

You have consulted me for the last time

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:47:34 GMT

There are times when it's appropriate to demand honor through the lost practice of dueling. I sometimes wish that I had ceremonial pistols by which another individual and I could march off ten paces and then test the nation's health care system. This usually happens when I have to work with a consultant.

I believe that "consultant" is a business practice somewhere between politics and late night TV talk host working with NBC (that reference will be really dated in a year). Basically, you can't be sure whether they're lying, incompetent, or merely trying to take your place. In any event, working with a hired consultant is sometimes like sticking your genitals in a blender.

In certain tech departments, consultants are simply a way of life. Certain networking needs or specific skill sets are required but training a staff member may not be a good investment, either in money or time. If something only needs to be done infrequently or once, it probably makes sense to bring in someone else. However, that person is seen as *the* guru. He or she is *the* expert. Somehow, we find a way to forget that he or she has been brought in for one job. We only need one aspect of their expertise, usually.

Frankly, some consultants only have one area of expertise. It tends to be something necessary and lucrative, but too esoteric for other people to bother with. Because this works out so well, they can become complete and utter morons in other areas of basic knowledge. This is my experience with consultants.

I'll occasionally have a consultant come in and make a remark about some network feature that I'm administrating or a computer that I've configured or a repair that I've done. Great. You know what? You're the database guy. Go work on the damn database. I haven't found any useful criticism from an offhand remark from a consultant because they don't have any clue what our system is. Most of the time, things work a certain way for a reason. I haven't seen any consultants that we've needed often enough to actually get to know the network and needs of the users.

Unfortunately, consultants are "experts." I have to take the time to evaluate all of their helpful tips, regardless of how asinine they are. Most of the time, it sounds like someone read a back page article in a tech magazine and decided to share the wealth. Jackasses.

"We Fight for Freedom, and Windows Vista Is F*cking Us Up"

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:12:24 GMT

There should be an IT desk *at the base* that can ignore his request for a few weeks. Also, Excel is a high-grade military tool? Depressing.

http://gizmodo.com/5423716/we-fight-for-freedom-and-windows-vista-is-fcking-us-up

The light won't blink

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:28:46 GMT

A user called today to complain that her printer was frozen. The green light wasn’t blinking and it refused to print anything. Sure enough, when I got there, the light wasn’t blinking. It also wasn’t supposed to. This particular printer only blinks when it’s doing something. It turns out that this lovely lady was printing to a shared printer in another room, not to the printer on her desk. The fix was a brief lecture on choosing printers.

I should have known better

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:10:54 GMT

I just got done helping a user with why no one could send her email. She complained that she wasn’t receiving email and nothing was bouncing back to the senders. My first thought went to the spam filter. Of course, she had never bothered to set it up even though that was an IT requirement. We went through configuring her spam filter and the 1k+ spam emails that she’s received in the last few weeks but didn’t see any of the missing (real) emails.

Before I go further, I need to make this disclaimer: I’m an idiot. My first inclination should have been to assume that the user is the idiot. Instead, it was my second inclination. I shouldn’t have bothered with the spam filter. I should have just assumed that she didn’t know how to use her email client. Whenever I give a user the benefit of a doubt, I’m almost always wrong.

And so we launcher her email client. Sure enough, everything looked like it should except for one thing. She wasn’t sorting her emails by date. The emails that were shown were in chronological order, but date ordering was secondary. And since she never deleted any messages, the several hundred in her inbox prohibited her from actually seeing the new ones in the sea of unread old ones. Sure, she could have used the search feature, but let’s start slow. As soon as I clicked the header to sort the emails by date, her missing emails from this week suddenly appeared!

Now, I have to love people like this. They are what give me a job. Sorting emails is like magic. Now she can see the date for her daughter’s recital and emails from church. She’s every so thankful that I “fixed” her email. I’m consoling myself that I didn’t have to waste 30 minutes explaining spam filtering, but at least it’s set up.

A quarter-inch fix

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:28:04 GMT

Just the other day, I was called out because a particular printer needed to be repaired. Apparently, the first sheet would feed perfectly but the subsequent sheet would turn sideways and jam. The fix was exceptionally simple.

The paper feeder had been bumped and the guide that holds the papers in place was off by about a quarter-inch. I pushed the guide flush against the paper and there were no more jam.

I'm reminded of something I read a while back in that younger people were better at technology because they weren't afraid to try things. Older people are afraid of breaking something. Since I'm always fixing something mind-numbingly stupid like this, I recommend that no person over the age of 35 be allowed to use a computer unless they're actively engaged in high risk behavior or thrilling extracurricular activities.

Some days were made for drinking

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:53:47 GMT

Monday after Thanksgiving break. Normally, days after a break are simply a headache since everyone manages to completely forget how to use computers. Perhaps mass amounts of high-fat food products cause stupidity. Or perhaps the inverse. In any case, if people have more than two days away from their computers, they return as idiots.

Were it a graceful option, I’d drink on these days.

Today, I didn’t get to worry about the idiots. No, there was an actual problem. One user had been given a new computer just prior to break (and thus ensuring that there’d be Hell today). Of course, the key application that the user spent around 90% of her time in didn’t work. Even worse, there was no reason why it wouldn’t work.

I tried everything. I reinstalled the application, brought in other computers to test, ran through every option and preference that I could think of. No, nothing. The application simply refused to connect to the networked database. The frustrating part was that everythingelse worked every time. No idea was too out there. A few hours in and I was checking port settings on the firewall.

Were it a graceful option, I’d have a drinking problem.

The moral of the story is that the problem was mine although it wasn’t my fault. The installer had “expired.” A certain file that it was supposed to install was time sensitive. This wasn’t a problem since I had normally simply reimaged a computer with the file already installed and configured correctly. This time, though, I used the installer for some unknown reason (perhaps I had been drinking before the break). The installer was broken and so the application was broken. The solution was to locate the file on a working installation and simply copy it over.

In the end, I had spent half of my day working on this bear of a problem just to turn around and face a mountain of the idiot-requests. Screw graceful. I’m getting a drink.

Expectations.

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:48:30 GMT

I consider a large part of my job as IT personnel to be about managing expectations. Every user has some expectation of that their computer is supposed to do. More often than not, the expectation and the reality or close enough that the user thinks everything is working the way they want. Then something goes wrong and they want me to explain to them why the computer isn’t working properly.

I’ve been training my coworkers to think in terms of expectations. My consults tend to follow this pattern:

“What did you do?”
“Then what happened?”
“Okay, what did you expect would happen?”

Certain people have learned, slowly, this pattern. Now I’ll receive emails with those three questions already answered. Great. Makes my job easier.

Talking in “expectations” has also changed the way people think about computers. Rather than someone saying, “the computer should do this”, my coworks now tend to say: “I expected my computer to be able to do this.” That’s a big difference psychologically and makes my job much, much easier. My coworkers no longer talk about fighting with the computers but how they’re learning to work around some of the limitations. When they realize that they were holding on to their own expectations of how computers should work, they were more readily able to let go of their preconceived notions and learn to use the applications on their own terms.

AskReddit: Help with my barely computer literate dad.

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:32:20 GMT

For IT staff, there can be a lot of barely computer literate people in the worksplace. Luckily, they aren't family. And we don't like them.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/a619t/help_with_my_barely_computer_literate_dad/

Will it burn?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:12:36 GMT

I saw a burning USB flash drive today. I was called in because there was an awful smell coming from the computer. Electronics smells are very distinctive and immediately recognizable. I reach behind the computer for the flash drive and, as I'm unplugging it, there's a pop, a brief flash, and I'm holding the melted case in my hand. The rest of the drive (a scorched board and USB plug) is still in the computer.

I removed the USB drive and placed tape over the USB slot on the computer (plug something in there and the computer crashes immediately). That computer will quickly be pulled and have a hardware inspection, but it should live through the day.

As for the scorched flash drive? Souvenir.

When someone says, "All you need to do is…", we're thinking: "You don't understand."

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:26:40 GMT

When someone says, "All you need to do is…", we're thinking: "You don't understand."

When someone says, "What happens when I…", we're thinking: "Try it and find out before you ask next time."

When someone says, "I need it fixed now," we're thinking: "We own you, bitch."

To her credit, they hid it really well on the side of the printer

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:24:09 GMT

Today was the day that made me finally start this blog. This is the story that did it. I'm called in to a fair number of issues that boil down to simply seeing that a cord is unplugged. It happens to everyone eventually. Being called in to a situation like that is rarely a problem (unless I'm in a bad mood). It's a simple oversight and everyone feels embarrassed just to be involved.

I received a call this morning from a coworker that was absolutely perplexed as to why her printer had stopped working. She had checked the plugs (better than most so far) and even moved the printer across the room in case it was an issue with the wall socket. Still, the printer would not turn on. It was dead to the world, so she called me.

I know a thing or two about printers but I have somewhere between zero and no formal training in printer repair. So far, all of my repairs have been simple blind luck: pulling out parts until I find something obviously broken, reconfiguring using the on-display controls (painful) or the web interface (less painful), and, my personal favorite, unplugging the printer and then plugging it back in. If you have a printer problem and you call me, I will try one of those three tactics before I give up and make up an excuse. If I'm ever found out for the low-rent hack masquerading as a computer hardware technician that I am, it'll be because of a damn printer.

I mentioned the above simply to say this: my coworker was explaining to me the only things I could think to do to fix this printer. There was nothing left. No ideas, no thoughts, nothing that would help me fix this printer. I agreed to take a look at it anyway.

So, we're standing in front of this minor tower of a printer. My coworker has met me at this networked beast, sitting atop multiple paper trays. If she hefted this thing, she's stronger than I gave her credit for. I look. I make a few awkward gropes (on the printer). Then I fixed it.

Printer technology has come so far in the few decades of common home computer use that they now include a feature known colloquially as the "on/off switch." This particular model had a very large switch on the side. In the "off" position, no amount of moving, plugging, or cursing could coax the printer into an active state reliably. But, turn "on" the printer and it will roar to life, whizzing and grinding gears, and making much ruckus, until it finally chews a few pages and announces that it would like some jam.

As it whirred to life (and promptly jammed), I had that epiphany moment. I will probably not have many opportunities to tell people that I "fixed" a printer simply by turning it on. It's too ridiculous, too outlandish, too outrageous. Hitting the "on" button doesn't require a tech support staff. It was so ludicrous that I couldn't help but chuckle silently.

I know, laugh riot. But consider that I get paid to hit the "on" button for consumer electronics and gadgets. Now who's laughing?

For her part, my coworker was absolutely embarrassed. I didn't mind and I didn't say anything. She made my day... and this blog.

Insult us and we pull the plug

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:54:27 GMT

Today was the day. I had this idea rolling around in my head for a while. I’ve always fundamentally known that people in general saw computers as a black box. A magical machine that was completely inscrutable to the ordinary person. I, however, had long been fascinated by computers since my first “pizza box” Performa. A little while back, I decided to forego my Earthly ambitions and became the “IT Guy” to pay the bills.

While I appreciate the opportunity to help people by introducing (and re-introducing) them to technology as well as sometimes get wrists deep into an iMac, this isn’t exactly the best use of my technical talent. Most of the issues I deal with could be resolved by a well-trained monkey. Most of the time, I save the day simply by making sure all of the wires are plugged in. Some days I just want to stare at my coworkers judgmentally. Other days, I can’t help but laugh.

This blog is a bit of a cathartic release, a place to complain about current and past users. It’ll probably be somewhere between Waiter Rant and Not Always Right. I encourage anyone with a witty or funny IT Rant to email it to me. Names and attribution will be held at request of the sender.