Amusing

[docskurlock.livejournal.com]

What I find amusing is when you first start a job, and you meet people. There's always the one that mentions they were a "UNIX guy." Like that has street cred or something. Like I should respect him more because he worked on some UNIX system 20 years ago (which is true in most of the cases I've seen, which number 2). Every "UNIX guy" goes on and on about their time with UNIX and databases.

This actually turned into a rant, so I'm stopping the rant at that line. Just wondered what you guys think about the guy that always mentions their prior UNIX experience.

IBM tech support to the RES-Q

[bdinger.livejournal.com]

I'm a IT admin who previously worked for years on a ISP helldesk, so I appreciate the excellent support offered by certain companies. I've always been happy with IBM, but what they did recently goes "above and beyond".

One of our employees had their home burglarized earlier in the month, and among the things taken was their company-supplied ThinkPad A30. Among the things I did, in panic of course, after this happened was to call IBM and report the serial number as stolen. I never thought that the actual crook would call for support, but figured maybe someone down the line would be stupid enough to. I was wrong.

http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2005/10/01/local/doc433dc3acd80c9830493202.txt

Yup, you got it. He called for support, and got nailed. The Deputy Sheriffs were already onto him, but that gave them exactly what they needed.

So, if any of you work for IBM - THANK YOU. I've passed an email and phone calls to every ThinkPad support team supervisor I can get ahold of in hopes that the person handling this call gets a nice pat on the back.

And remember, criminals really are a bunch of dumbasses.

Rant

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

( Gonna cut this since it's not call-related... )

(no subject)

[fuego.livejournal.com]

(Keep in mind that this woman purchased the blasted thing almost 4 years ago and claims to use it every day.)

Fuego: "Okay, I'd like you to restart your computer."

User: "I can't do that. It's already turned on

Fuego thinks: "Yes, that is the standard condition under which one RESTARTS the unit"

Fuego says (in a voice that is trying to sound non-sarcastic and non-patronizing): "Well, yes I realize this. Restarting is shutting the computer down and turning it back on."

User: "Oh, okay. Just a second I need to save something....okay, there."
(about 30 seconds pass)

Fuego: "Just let me know when it finishes restarting."

User: "Restarting? It never shut down."

Fuego: "Is it still in the process of shutting down?"

User: "No, I never turned it off to begin with."

Fuego: "I see, okay in order to get this working, I am going to need you to restart. Do you-"

User cuts in: "Uh, er..*unintelligible mumbling*..but what do you want me to do?

Fuego: "Go to the apple menu and select restart."

It was a damned lucky thing that all we needed to do was reboot once.

Throwing a question to the gallery

[arkady.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping for some advice from fellow admins here.

I'm the newest addition to the sysadmin team, and the head of the team has asked us all to think about training courses for next year. The NT/Windows guy is currently working his way through the MCSE. The Unix sysadmin has requested Solaris and Cisco. And now I'm trying to decide what I'd like to do. (I'm mostly desktop support on Macs and WinXP at present but the intention is for me to pick up the Unix and Windows adminning stuff as I go along.)

Thing is, we have a very ... eclectic mix of systems that we work with. There's the Windows Server 2003 stuff which include a couple of file servers, the Active Directory servers, and the Exchange boxen - but there are also the Debian boxes, a mixture of Powermac G4 and G5s running MacOSX, Windows XP based Intel boxen, and servers running Solaris, a FreeBSD-based Exim mail server, OpenBSD, and Red Hat. We also have a single Windows NT4 box that talks to the phone system hardware.

We have three separate lans, one wireless, the other two wired. The bigger of the two wired lans runs Appletalk and TCP/IP, and provides access to the (non-internet facing) Exchange server, and Active Directory. Network authentication and access control for the Windows-based protocols is handled by Active Directory, as is the configuration of Exchange accounts. Login authentication on the PCs is done via Active Directory. The Unix sysadmin has plans afoot for a Mac OS X Server box running Open Directory, replicating the data on the Active Directory server - if it works, all authentication would be made against Active Directory, Open Directory and via Kerberos.

Given the heterogenous nature of the network, what would folks recommend I persue in terms of certification? I'm not overly keen on the Microsoft stuff as to be honest, I'd rather not get saddled with being "the Windows geek". Given the intended plans with regards to running a Mac OS X Server box, I'm thinking possibly ACSA.

Any suggestions?