Happy New Year

[dog-star-man.livejournal.com]

Server data migration ate up most of my Christmas vacation. Everything went smoothly except for a few missing shortcut links, etc. Then, databases start corrupting willy nilly.

Troubleshooting databases ate up most of my New Years vacation. Finally stumbled upon the solution of turning off Opportunistic Locking on the new servers. Worked like a charm. Then...

Both massive UPS in the server room decided to crap out...
Kewill Shipping System Upgrade went haywire...
Multiple other minor hardware failures around the plant...
One database is insisting on running slower than a two legged dog on a hot day, when yesterday it was fine....

I'm the only IT person on staff. I work 10 hours, go home and then get called at all hours of the night. Sometimes I have to make the 45 minute drive back to work to fiddle with a server or whatever because corp. won't let me VPN into the network from home.

2006 can suck it!

*chortle*

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

apparently, we've been having some persistent and annoying caller call in over the last week. in reference to him, one of my co-workers stated: "Just shut up and give me your phone number. I don't want to hear your sob story. Just shut up and give me your phone number. JUST SHUT UP AND GIVE ME YOUR PHONE NUMBER!"

we have all decided this would be an excellent line to adopt for all our calls.

Stupidity is...

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that managers who make up stupid procedures and policies about the way I should do my job should be made to suffer.

That in mind, I have embraced the latest stupidity with open arms and a disturbingly enthusiastic grin.

Our ticket logs are already required to have the following in them:
1) A step-by-step log of what we did to resolve the problem
2) A pick-list of close codes (often completely useless) saying what we did to resolve the problem

Now we have to add to the log a one-line summary of what we did to resolve the problem. These summaries must be prefixed by a standard text string, allowing them to be skimmed and collated into a report for the manager who had this oh-so-BRILLIANT idea in the first place.

However, they forgot to implement standards for the actual content of the strings.

My resolution strings now contain a list of all the manager-caused, in-house screwups which led to the reported problem being a problem in the first place. Anyone reading the report (and apparently it is one of those few reports which actually DOES get read) will find a litany of damnation against the manager who asked for these redundant, timewasting methods of slowing down the Helpdesk.

A minor but still vocal component will be pointing the finger at the in-house project 'managers' responsible for software which has been spitting out errors for the better part of a decade. These have caused tens of thousands of unnecessary support calls while they themselves remain blithely aloof from the constant screams of rage and demands for fixes.

Stupidity is allowing the staff you're screwing over direct write access to a segment of your reports.

I'm A Professional Masochist!

[fuego.livejournal.com]

Me: Okay, can you take out the battery?

Her: Thats under the computer, right?

Me: Yes, there's a large screw that you can turn with a coin.

Her: I don't have a screwdriver small enough to turn the screws.
( Into the proverbial handbasket... )