(no subject)

[sdaemon.livejournal.com]

Hey folks, new to the community but...yeah, I think I dig it. Here's a snippet from a chatroom some friends and I hang out on, I figure y'all might appreciate the incident as well. I've been handholding (over the phone) a less-than-skilled (but far better paid than me) IT professional in the faraway land of Denver, CO, attempting to fix her company's backup woes for her:


sdaemon: my god I am a fucking babysitter
sdaemon: "is the tape drive plugged into the adaptec controller?" "yes" "the reason I ask is that there is an adaptec controller and an ibm serveraid controller in the server, but the manufacturer of the drive says that it will only work properly hooked up to the adaptec." "it is hooked up tot he adaptec"
sdaemon: hours of waiting on phone, getting ahold of manufacturer again, getting lowlevel utility from them, scanning scsi bus. device adpu320: no devices attached. device nfrd960 (the chipset on ibm serveraid controllers): hay guys guess what?! I HAEV TAPE DRIVE ATTACHED LOLOLOLOLOL
sdaemon: the amount of time they've had me working on this, they could have bought me a round trip ticket to denver to fix it onsite
sdaemon: but this onsite IT lady, SHE REALLY KNOWS HER STUFF OMFG
sdaemon: I have no problem with women in IT. I have problems with incompetence in IT.
animechickwhoalsoworksinIT: by which you mean, she's a giant moron!
sdaemon: this is the same gal who broke their last tape drive, hence me trying to get this new one working. how did she break it?
sdaemon: SHE RAMMED A TAPE IN BACKWARDS AND JAMMED IT THE FUCK UP
hockeychickwhoalsoworksinIT: hahah
sdaemon: that takes fucking dedication right there. You've got to really try hard to fit a tape in backwards
hockeychickwhoalsoworksinIT: oh yea
hockeychickwhoalsoworksinIT: it's damn near impossible

Comments

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of a tech support cartoon I saw a while back and have since misplaced. Here's a brief rundown:

Customer: My computer isn't working - it won't turn on.
Tech: So, have you checked to make sure it's plugged in?
Customer: Look, I have this issue every time I call. I'm not an idiot! Of COURSE I've checked whether it's plugged in - I've tried all the basic stuff. It's. not. working.
Tech: Okay, sir, I understand. Now, could you take a look at the top of your computer and tell me if you see 2 slots?
Customer: Yeah, I see 'em.
Tech: And do you also see a small lever on the side?
Customer: Yup.
Tech: Okay sir, that's your toaster. Have a good day. *click*

[sdaemon.livejournal.com]

more or less. but honestly, I can accept clueless people a lot more easily when they aren't being paid better than I'm paid, and when my services to them are tangential to their own job. She's the highly paid IT director for a pretty big call center for a company that operates all over the country. And I'm basically doing her job for her. I have very little sympathy for this.

nevermind that she can't seem to differentiate between SCSI and USB devices. Hardware is obviously not her forte'. That's ok.

Nor is user account administration.

Or domain administration.

Or phone system troubleshooting.

Or any of the other issues I'm expected to troubleshoot and resolve.

From Atlanta.

...

I hate this crap. I want a vacation and a raise.

[whizzy.livejournal.com]

Y HELO.

funny meeting you here. well... not really.

[sdaemon.livejournal.com]

HEH! Funny, yes :) Surprising, definitely no.

[whizzy.livejournal.com]

since i don't actually work tech support atm, i have to hang around here to remind myself that my current job is pretty frickin' sweet. XD

[kenbrody.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of a support issue years ago. This was before "everyone has Internet access", and 28.8Kbps was "high speed".

A client in Australia (I'm east-coast United States) was having a crash with our program. Of course, the crash would occur something like half an hour (and several hundred thousand records) into the running of a report generation.

I had the pleasure (FSVO) of debugging this, over a 28.8Kbps telephone line, US-to-Australia. Several hours at a time, over many days.

I'm just glad I didn't have to pay the phone bill that month. I understand it was something in the >$5K range. I'm also glad that, when someone from accounting called me about the bill, I was able to say my manager had approved it.

Nowadays, it's telnet/ssh, and no extra expenses.

[sdaemon.livejournal.com]

I would dearly love the equivalent of, say, sudo, setuid and setgid in the windows world. I don't WANT to have to know your password to log into your workstation as you.

And yeah, ssh would be hawt.

As it is, I'll just keep shelling home to use my command line network tools that let me do in 15 minutes what would otherwise take hours and a lot of headscratching to figure out using the Microsft Way.

and here I am approaching being an MCSA...

/cry

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

C:\> runas /user:domain\username command

Or right-click on a .exe file and 'Run As...'

Not really that hard.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

That can let you run a process as you... what about his point about needing to login as them without having to know their password?

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

She's the highly paid IT director for a pretty big call center for a company that operates all over the country

I once called the global IT director for a company which acquired us "unqualified" because she didn't know the difference between a firewall and a router.

Good think I worked in engineering writing printer firmware. :-)

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

The only way I was able to not commit seppuku while working in Windows was to install the cygwin tools... bash, grep, etc... all there and happy. -)