Epic. Fail.

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

Recap: Helldesk for Hospital

This was too good not to share. I just spent ten minutes of my life on the phone with an epic user error fail. She was calling from home, attempting to keyfob into her PC, which was at work. I'm troubleshooting away, chatting, and getting frustrated because nothing seems to work. For whatever reason, she is unable to connect to her remote PC, and getting a strange error about her remote connection not being identified.

So... about six minutes into the call, I wrestle the name of the PC she's attempting to remote into out of her, and ping it. Steady Request Timed Out, which is one of two things... unplugged network cable or it's turned off. I inform her of this... and her response was, and I quote,

"You mean to tell me I can't shut down at night, because then I can't remote into it!?"

/facepalm. If you want to remote into it, ma'am, you have to leave it on. If not, then shut it down. The sad thing is, these instructions are in the paperwork for the keyfob, given to the user at the time of receipt of the keyfob...

...anyone want to join me in finishing off the beer in the fridge? I also have rum and vodka.

Comments

[brotherflounder]

Dibs on the vodka.

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

/passes it over to you

[laviededavid.livejournal.com]

well I suppose I'll have to bring my own huh lol

[brotherflounder]

I think this idiot woman destroyed my last shred of faith in humanity.

*glug*

Shank yew very mush for sh vodka.

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

No prob! /clinks the rum bottle against the vodka bottle

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

I can probably dig up another bottle of Mr. Boston for ya...

[fluffydragon.livejournal.com]

There's still rum!

[nem0.livejournal.com]

You're welcome to some of this tequila I found buried behind the paper towels in the cafeteria cabinets.

[major-error.livejournal.com]

Only rum & vodka? you need to get some gin, tequila, Cointreau, and sweet&sour mix to go with them for an "Iced Tea" ;)
For industrial-strength stupidity like that, you need to layer on the liquors! For reference: in a tall glass w/ ice, mix all 5 liquors in equal amounts, fill w/ s&s mix, cola for color.

[demented-pants.livejournal.com]

I do this all the time when someone calls with VPN issues. I'm usually good about verifying that they've got an internet connection active first, but every once in a while I'll spend twenty minutes checking various things, manually creating a new connectoid, whatever, and then have them try to google something and BAM, no internet.

It always makes me feel like an r-tard.

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

*toasts with a double-shot of Southern Comfort*

TO THE HORDE!

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

On the plus side, that error goes into the tech DB/FAQ/wiki so that the next 20 callers who didn't read the manual can get appropriately slammed.

Bonus points if you have enough pull with the SOE devs to have them change the bizarro error to something pithier.

[jrho.livejournal.com]

I've always referred to that as a Long Island or a Long Island Iced Tea.

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

Yummy! :D

I do have a blender and a metric fuckton of ice...

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

Yeah... my first mistake was not getting the PC name and verifying it was actually on... :(

Ah well.. I made the stupid assumption she knew how to read/follow directions... /snickers and passes over some booze.

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

For the mother-huggin' HORDE! And for the ALLIANCE for providing free honor kills! :D

....yes, I'm a switcher. ;_;

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

I'll have to pass that on to the Networking guys... they'll probably drive over to her house and smack her repeatedly with the instructions until the information sinks in. :D

[piepants.livejournal.com]

I prefer rum + coke rather than vodka. I did vodka when I was 19.

I have NO idea what goes on in the minds of users when they do these things. Do they have any concept of what a computer is or what it does? If you turn it off, what is it supposed to do, turn itself back on when you need it?

I met this stoner once who confessed that other than Internet Exploder, he had no idea how to use a computer.

Argh.

[confectionqueen.livejournal.com]

This is my "favourite".
15 minutes of troubleshooting to find out they don't HAVE home internet.

[vampireborg.livejournal.com]

I had a student call once and be all shocked that you need a computer and an internet connection for an online class. It was lulz.

[bonivus.livejournal.com]

*hands you a sack of cookies*

Welcome to the dark side. :)

[superbus.livejournal.com]

...anyone want to join me in finishing off the beer in the fridge?

You need it more than I do at this point.

[major-error.livejournal.com]

So do I :)
I've also found that going cheap on the triple-sec ruins the flavor.

This time around I went with Stoli, Tanqueray, Bacardi Select, Sauza Gold, and Cointreau....and it tastes awesome.

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

I like both sides for different reasons... I miss my Druids, but... I wouldn't give up my Priestess for nothing. :D

It all depends on the Guild...

/takes the cookies and shares them, hands over a bottle of run. :)

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

What makes me sad is that this person makes three times what I do...

Not fair! I tell you, not fair!

Computer does not equal TV. You cannot hit a button on a remote control to make your PC turn on... ....or can you...?

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

I have three drawers and a door full of beer in my fridge... not to mention the wine/liquor cabinet. Two roommates and I haven't even put a sizeable dent in it since the Superbowl party... and we've been drinking 1-2 beers per night, 3-4 on weekends.

[mmaster.livejournal.com]

If you turn it off, what is it supposed to do, turn itself back on when you need it?

Well, to be fair, this is theoretically possible - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-lan

Evidently the computers in question do not have the functionality, though...

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

I have NO idea what goes on in the minds of users when they do these things. Do they have any concept of what a computer is or what it does? If you turn it off, what is it supposed to do, turn itself back on when you need it?

We can turn the TV on remotely when we want, why not a computer?

[piepants.livejournal.com]

That's informative. I did not know that.

Regardless we don't support it. Thank God.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

It's useful for corporate SOE updates in the middle of the night, rather than having users locked out from 9-10am on Patching Day and a bunch of barely-used PCs still sporting installations from five versions ago.

I've often thought that corporate PCs should only be able to connect to a micro-VLAN on boot or being plugged into a network. Said VLAN would contain nothing else but a virtual miniserver, which would simply check that the PC was running an up-to-date copy of the SOE and, if not, force an update. Once the check showed that the correct version had been achieved, the PC would be switched to the regular LAN.

Results:
- Fewer corporate PCs with obsolete images, resulting in fewer version-clash technical problems and thus less downtime.
- Better network security: Anyone bringing in a third-party system and attempting a network connection would find themselves locked out of pretty much anything - including the virtual update server, once it had figured out that the new device wasn't returning corporate handshakes properly.
- Simply network-connecting and switching on a long-unused PC would bring it up to spec - there would be no need to manually trigger an update, wait for the next Patch Night, or rebuild from scratch.

[attackgypsy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it does depend on the guild. I have a BE pally on one server and a Dran DK on another.

[seaofdestiny.livejournal.com]

I thought of Intel's Active Management Technology, part of vPro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_vPro), which apparently goes even further in the extent you can remotely manage a computer even though it's turned off.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Presumably the parts which can be remotely managed remain powered up, or does it do something like cache the entire state of the PC to the network and then apply the diffs when it's next turned on?

[jamoche]

I worked at a place that decided noon would be the perfect time for PC backups to run, because that way they'd be sure to catch them all. And, hey, everyone's out to lunch at noon, so no problem, right?

Unless you're a developer who gets in around noon, that is, and who only uses the PC to connect to a Solaris or Linux server so there's nothing on the PC to back up anyway.

[seaofdestiny.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that some parts remain powered up, just as with Wake-on-LAN (the network card has to receive power). But as I understand it, it's enough that the PSU has power; the user can switch the computer off if she wants, and if necessary, I guess that the management components can switch the computer on if necessary.