My morning so far...

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Not precisely tech support, but related technical cow-irker stupidity.

"Okay. Import for Client S ran last night... so I need to go pull their error report and send it to them."

*clickclickclick*

"Ehr... no error report this week? Crap. I hope the import didn't fail."

*clickclick* *typtyptypetype*

"Odd. It seems to have finished fine. But while I'm thinking about it, I should modify my query so it automatically derives the date and I can use it every week to verify this import..."

*typetypetypetype*

"Oh, yeah, I had a reason I was in here. Anyway, back to the log tables... heeeey, wait. Why are the timestamps showing it ran from 7:40 to 8:30 this morning? I scheduled it for 3am last I recall. Time to check the Server Agent jobs list, and make sure I didn't just do something dumb..."

*clickclickclick*

"....what?! 'Enabled: No'?! Who the fuck disabled my import? And why the hell is it running anyway? Okay, obviously somebody's running it manually. Time to check all emails from our DBA and see if I missed something important here."

*clickclickclickclick*

"Nothing in the past two months. Strongly worded message to DBA follows. I am NOT going to play guessing games with this shit, and meanwhile, we've got a client who wants their damn error report."

All this before 9:30am. Sigh. It's gonna be a long, long day.

Please shoot me

[freakbarman.livejournal.com]

I work for an IT service provider. We do everything, sell equipment, warranty work, network administration, network setup, etc... I am a level III field technician. I don't do anything for our system in the office or for our sister company, we have an in house team that takes care of that.

I was really surprised when I recieved a ticket from our in house group that consists of 2 sys admin and a system engineer. The ticket was for one of our internal people that was getting a virtual memory error. The only notes in the ticket are: "EU is getting virtual memory error. Added RAM. Did not fix. Suspect hardware issue. Please assist."

I go out and the problem is that her main HDD with one partition c: is full. She has a second HDD that is almost empty. I redirect the page file and everything is great. How do two sys admins and a system engineer not check that?!?!?!?

Local machine password change

[fouttyw.livejournal.com]

So today the local machine password was changed, not that big of a deal. Out of common sense we keep our passwords in a secure database, this is where we keep ALL passwords, well except for the ones that "The Senior Network Engineer" likes. So I asked, why are we not keeping the new password in our database, and the room remained silent.

I weep for our future.

[shadowfairy.livejournal.com]

Me: The reason your computer is running so slowly is because there is a ton of spy ware on it.
Teacher: Spy ware?! What?! But I don't do that at school. I'm real careful.
Me: Don't do...whaaat... at school?
Teacher: I don't go on the internet.
(Aside: All progress reports, report cards, email, pay stubs etc. are web based for our district.)
Me: You never go on the internet huh?
Teacher: No! Never! I am very careful. I don't want to get into trouble. I save all my internet for home. The only places I ever go are (insert list of web sites here), but I never go on the "internet."

*Head explodie*

I guess because her list of visited sites didn't include www.theinternet.com she never uses the "internet" at school. Of course, this same person constantly regales me with her internet dating experiences so maybe it isn't the internet unless it's match.com...sigh.

The Return of Goldfish Girl...for those who remember my last post...

[the-hunter.livejournal.com]

*Ring Ring*

*Hello, it is me, Goldfish Girl (TM). They couldn't fix the other laptop, so we bought a new one. The MSN isn't fitted to this one. Can you come and fit us one?*

Now, you know how it is. You have a tooth out, and as much as you know that you should not prod at it you cannot resisit. I went round there....

Sat in one of the bedrooms was a new laptop. Not just *any* laptop, but THIS laptop!
http://h41306.www4.hp.com/section?SID=f5978315dc6197eccb3cc65507d680fd40c:1223&secid=70492
"Why on earth did you get that??!!??" I enquired.

*Oh, well, Martin is ever so good with computers...*
(Martin, the 11 year old autistic lad who feeds fish pork sausages)

"Really? What kind of computer did he have that he was so good at?"
*He had a PlayStation!*

(Sobs)

Right...First thing to point out is that the husband, Adrian, has bad eyesight. VERY bad eyesight. But is too proud to wear glasses...so the point size of the screen is set to FUCKING MASSIVE!. There are a total of six icons on the screen, and the screen is FULL.
(Clicks *Start*...a total of four commands are displayed...Adrian, Documents, Pictures, Music...I, of course, want *Network*, which, by my calculations, is actually located about 4" below the bottom of the computer desk....)

(Faffs about with keyboard shortcuts, locates *Networks*...ah...MSN won't work because Wireless is turned off and you have no network set up whatsoever.....)

I explain the problem, and attempt to set up a network. Ah, Adrian is not Admin. Goldfish Girl is...(Changes user to Goldfish Girl....*Enter password*)

"Um, Goldfish Girl, what is your password?"
*I don't know. Is that like my MSN name?*

(Head-desk)

(Faffs about, suggesting various obvious passwords...*finally, by chance, hit upon the correct one...and...ah...the *ok* button is located roughly where the *Network* button is...faffs about more...oh...tabbing to where the *ok* button should be and pressing enter will not work. Nor will any other key combination...only solution, change point size...Desktop, right click, settings, point size...ARGH!!!)

"Your computer has biometric security. It needs a fingerprint to allow me to change the point size so I can clock the okay button that will allow me to set up the network...and, oh good, someone has TURNED OFF the password over-ride. Gosh, that was clever, wasn't it? Who's fingerprint do we need?"
*Oh, for the security thingy? We used Martins. He wanted to play with it*
(So, you use passwords that you forget, then for the more important security you use biometrics which means that the one person you are trying to keep out is the one person who you have given open access to every single setting? Fairy nuff...I am not saying a word...)
"So, can Martin come and unlock this?"
*No, He's back at boarding school...*

TWO AND A HALF HOURS OF FAFFING, JUST TO GET THE SETTINGS CHANGED. NOT, YOU UNDERSTAND, TO SET UP THE NETWORK, JUST TO BE ABLE TO SEE THE BLOODY SCREEN!.


Finally got it sorted. FINALLY! And Adrian's parting shot? "Thanks. We'll set it back to the way it was now..."

(They fucking won't, you know. My parting shot was to set the password to a 20 character alphanumeric pass, and turn the biometrics off...)

Not quite the usual fare...

[spiker-uk.livejournal.com]

...but perhaps of professional interest!

Apparently the FAA spotted that some clever designer on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner didn't put an air-gap between the passenger network and the network running to the avionics controls...

Now, if you ask me, that's somewhere where you don't just want an air-gap, but a pretty solid bit of non-conductive engineering which will not conduct network traffic under any circumstances...