Bag of Hammers Anyone?

[ohmyhead.livejournal.com]

SHE IS BACK. Actually, she has never left, unfortunately. But my first 30 minutes at my desk this morning were aaaaall her. The following is the absolute truth.

Her <--- Executive Assistant: Can you fix my chair? It's too far forward! (She struggles with the levers, violently shaking in her chair)

Me: You haven't mastered your own chair YET? It's been like 6 months.

Her: We have Gremlins in here, I am telling you.

Me: I fix her chair. Receive zero thanks.

* 10 minutes pass *

Her: Do you have a stapler? Mine is out of staples.

Me: I spin around in my chair, point to my stapler, then spin back to my screens.

Her: *struggling* Then, "Alan. I was trying to staple my papers in here. *Points to the Cordless Drill Battery Charger With Battery IN IT* THEN complains that we don't have any electric staplers!

* 5 minutes pass *

Her: She approaches me with a bagel in one hand and a tub of cream cheese in the other.

Me: What, you want me to spread cream cheese on your bagel for you??

Her: She holds them out in front as if to say "YES".

Me: What is it now?

Her: My e-mail...

Me: E-mail has been restored just now.

Her: No it hasn't.

Me: Yeah, it has. Just now, while you were on your way to my desk. Again.

Her: No it hasn't!

Me: Dammit, you are starting to piss me off! Now go back to your damned desk and see if your email is working!

Her: Utter silence.

Me: You're email is connected, isn't it.

Her. Yes.

DIE, BITCH!

I swear, her boss, the big kahuna here, is sitting 10 feet from all of this, door wide open, and he is utterly clueless how moronic this woman is. Now, I know my tone with her here isn't the smartest thing to do, but Jesus, ENOUGH ALREADY. Fix my chair??!!

(no subject)

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

Two conversations I actually just had. Keep in mind that I am not in charge of the office printers:

IN THE PRINTER ROOM
Laura: This stupid printer isn't working.
Me: *hits power button* *hits power button again*
Printer: *starts working*
Laura: Wow, you're amazing! How did you do that?

AT MY DESK
Cow-orker from the next office over: Jane? [Ed: my name is not Jane.] The laser printer is not working. It has a little orange light on.
Me: I don't know how to do detailed troubleshooting on that printer. I've just been restarting it, which seems to fix it temporarily.
Him: How do you do that? ...Do you just unplug it?
Me: *stare* No, I use the power button.
Him: Oh, wow! It has one of those? Where's THAT?
Me: *headdesk* Left side, towards the bottom.
Him: *leaves*


In other news, anyone know how to fix a networked HP LaserJet 2200dn? /le sigh

I know it's asking a lot

[purple-mctacky.livejournal.com]

You're either lying or stupid, I don't care to guess.

Don't call me up freaking out because I haven't ordered your fancy new mouse. I gave you some selections and asked you to choose which one you wanted. DON'T LIE and say you didn't get my email.. I have your inbox open in front of me!

The last six emails from me are the three I originally sent you, last week, and the three I just re-sent because you don't know how.. to read? Or something?

Dear email "administrators"

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Get a fucking clue about how to configure your systems if you want to play with the other kids on teh intarwebs.

1. Ensure you send your mail from a server that has a goddamned A record in DNS!!! How hard is it? I would like to do the most simple header checks on my mail, but because there are so many morons who administer email servers that don't have a proper DNS entry, I had to turn it off today. And if you administer any local body email servers in New South Wales, you're a moron (as far as I could tell today, none of the servers relaying mail to us from any subdomain at *.nsw.gov.au was properly identifiable).


2. Get a PTR as well. Just one, unlike those idiots in Bahrain who have 24 PTRs associated with one host. No wonder DNS queries time out every time I get a connection from that IP.


3. Make sure your server issues a fully qualified domain name with its HELO. If a server says "HELO < fred>", guess what, that equals "HELO SPAMMER" to me.


4. And if you actually do have enough brain to configure it with an FQDN in the HELO, make sure that bloody FQDN resolves in DNS as well. Again, how hard is it? And why oh why do people use HELO FQDNs that bear no relation to the server that is sending the messages? Idiots. (Oh, ok, sometimes your internal application relays via the mail gateway - it still doesn't stop you from using a resolvable FQDN!)


5. Also, while you're at it, ensure that your MX server actually exists. If it's down for a while, that's one thing, but no A record for that as well makes me suspect it never existed.


6. Guess what? Having a sender domain that actually exists is a wonderful thing as well. Ok, I expect spammers to get it wrong, but if you send mail to us and expect a reply, it helps if your sender domain is correct. (I don't care if your "reply-to" is correct - if your envelope sender domain doesn't exist, I'm gonna bounce your message).


7. For chissakes, do not accept mail to recipients that don't exist in your organisation... and then bounce it to the forged sender address later on. This is called backscatter. It makes sensible admins Very Angry, and gets your servers on RBLs, and then we start bouncing all your emails. If you can't figure out a way of ascertaining who a genuine recipient is on your internal networks, you have just won the Giant Moron prize, and your servers should be forcibly removed from your sweaty hands.


8. If you're an ISP (I'm looking at you, Verizon, Comcast, RR) do something about the spammers that keep hijacking your networks. Implement SMTP AUTH for your senders. Yank machines that start broadcasting excessive traffic. Because I'm sick of our servers rejecting 10s of thousands of messages a day from your bot-infected networks.


9. Don't implement Sender Verification on a global basis. Save it for frequently-forged domains (eg. Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo) only. I don't need you making unnecessary connections to my servers when our sender addresses are very rarely forged (no more than anyone else), and we have never sent spam. Also, if you suddenly turn on global Sender Verification, the odds are you'll end up on an RBL because your message traffic will double overnight. Which means that we start rejecting your mail, and my users get cranky with me because they're not receiving mail from your stupid network.


10. Start implementing simple header checks, and checks for SPF or DKIM. Publish your own SPF or DKIM records. If you don't know what any of these things are, then find out. Don't touch an Internet-facing mail server until you've assessed their merits.

...I'm sure I'll think of more things when I'm back at my desk tomorrow. ::sigh::