it's not my fault

[momentarygenius.livejournal.com]

I promise, I'm just the middle man woman.

Luser: so, this week I have had the damndest time with $MAJORAPPLICATION. First I had to get a new password. Then the password didn't work. Then it turns out it was for the wrong production system. So now I'm in the right system, but I don't have any transactions available. What's wrong?

Me: Well it sounds like you haven't been set up for any roles. Have you used our new self service site to get those added? (Obviously, yes. She used it to get her password reset.)

Luser: Well I never had any problems with $MAJORAPPLICATION until you guys started that new site. So you need to fix it.

Me: Well, we sent out a notification a month prior to the conversion stating that if your account was inactive when the conversion happened your account would not be recreated in the new system. I see you are on $LOCATIONMAILINGLIST, so I'm sure you received the notice. I can help walk you through recreating your account if you'd like.

Luser: I want it all back the way it was right now. I only use this $MAJORAPPLICATION twice a year and when I need it, it's business critical .blahblahblahimimportantlistentomebalhblah...




So of course I reluctantly walked her through the recreation process. But really. I'm just the support center tech. I didn't make her not read the notice. I didn't make corporate decide to change the system.

Grr!

misdirected anger

[ebtb.livejournal.com]

I <3 angry emails that have nothing to do with us... no, wait - I like telling them they are barking up the wrong tree more.

( Email #1 )

( Email #2 )

( Email #3 )

( Email #4 )

( Email #5 )

how to piss off the IT guy

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Dear lusers, when dumping your problem on me and bailing please first:

1. make goddamn sure I know your username and password
2. make goddamn sure I actually know what your problem IS and how to replicate it
3. make goddamn sure I know the username and password for the application you're having the problem WITH
4. take your goddamn cell phone with you
5. turn your shitty little Milton-esque constantly burbling talk radio OFF!

I just spent half an hour manually hacking registry keys for $oldversion of $random_industry_niche_app out so that $newversion could be installed (not only did the old version not uninstall cleanly, the "fix" application errored out on running) and the user in question both left her cell phone behind to chirp non stop shitty MIDI at me while her son frantically tried to get hold of her (as it turns out, to make sure she added pellets for his BB gun to the shopping list: btw, this kid is 19) AND left her clockradio tuned into some creepy jesus talk radio shit. Even better, the clock radio was one of those bizarre melty half-sphere/half-cube monstrosities with buttons sprayed randomly across the front of it "artistically". I could tell at a glance how to set alarm one, set alarm two, change either alarm to weather / radio / buzzer / CD, set the time, change the time ZONE, snooze the alarm if it was going off, turn the clock to sleep mode, or change the color of the display. But it took me five minutes to figure out that the only way to turn the radio OFF once the motherfucker was ON is to, I shit you not, press "play" on the CD player.

I. Hate. People.

how to piss off an IT guy, part two

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Earlier this week, I installed a server at a customer's office, and noticed a badly faulty ground on the circuit it (and his other servers) were plugged into - in fact, I noticed it that hard way, when I plugged the VGA cable in and got shocked. On closer inspection, I discovered that the monitor was plugged into a different circuit than the servers were, and the shock came when I touched both the buttplate on the VGA cable and the chassis of the server. On further inspection, the UPS for the servers had its ground fault light lit.

I unplugged the UPS, plugged it into the (good) circuit the monitor had been plugged into, and notified the customer, warning him that this was a potential fire hazard as well as "not a good place to plug servers into".

Fast forward to today: I get a call back from the customer. He has called his building manager, who has brought his electrician, who says there is nothing wrong with this outlet. I express irritated disbelief. Customer puts me on the phone with the building manager's electrician, who says "I checked it, and there's nothing wrong with that receptacle." I explain to him that there is a faulty ground, and explain to him how I discovered this, including the fact that in addition to "the little light lit up" I in fact got shocked by the damn thing, and for that matter verified to my own satisfaction that I could GET shocked by it any time I liked by repeating the experiment.

He stubbornly says "well I plugged stuff into it and I didn't get shocked."

I go through the story again. I tell him he has to be touching something connected to the ground on both the bad circuit and the good circuit in order to get shocked. He says that he has done so, which is precisely as true as when users tell me they have rebooted their windows machine before calling me / not rebooted their Unix server before calling me: in other words, a complete crock of shit. This pisses me off. I patiently explain to him again that, regardless of what he did or did not feel, the ground is hot, it lights up the ground fault light, it is faulty. He now informs me that he "put it on his tester" and it was fine. I inquire further about this "tester", and it turns out that what he has actually done is put his multimeter, set on AC volts, between both the hot and the neutral, and the hot and the ground, and - this is a direct quote "I got 120 volts, so it's good."

Stop. Breathe. Flies. Honey. Vinegar.

"That's not the way to test for a faulty ground." "Yeah it is - I'm an electrician!"

For those of you who not only are not electricians (as I am not) but also don't know any more about electricity than this guy does, you don't have "120 volts" on any given circuit to begin with. You actually have 115V +/- 10%. Meaning the actual, nominal, good reading on any given "hot" power line can be anywhere from 103.5V to 126.5V. Meaning that anybody who makes a claim like "if I have 120V, nothing can be missing" is probably their own cousin, uncle, and probably would be their own stepfather if only their mother were "the marryin' type."

The way you actually test for a ground fault is by checking the current flowing across the hot line and the current flowing across the neutral line, upstream of the possible fault, and checking for a discrepancy in current. Note: CURRENT, not voltage. (For reference, a GFCI - Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor - will break a circuit at 30milliamps of current discrepancy between hot and neutral.)

What you do NOT do is check voltage across hot-to-neutral and hot-to-ground on a multimeter, on the circuit while it's not even loaded, say "looks like 120V, it's all there!" and refuse to, you know, FIX THE FUCKING FIRE HAZARD. THE ONE THAT WAS BAD ENOUGH TO GIVE ME THE SIXTY CYCLE SHUFFLE EVEN WHILE BONE DRY. AND LIGHTS UP GROUND FAULT LIGHTS ON ANYTHING YOU PLUG IN THAT HAS A GROUND FAULT LIGHT.

At this point, I accepted the futility of trying to talk to this "electrician" and instructed him to put my customer back on the phone and told my customer "Don't argue with him, don't talk to him, don't explain anything to him. Just tell him YOU WILL REPLACE THIS RECEPTACLE NOW and see if the ground fault light goes out."

Customer: "OK, I'll try. What the hell, we're moving out of this building in another couple of months anyway."

For the second time today: I hate people.