When vendors attack

[yanni85.livejournal.com]

Here is the ticket we received today:
$user called last night to say that the printer was down due to an IP address problem. The $company printer rep will call this morning to speak to an available tech.

And the background:
The company that $user is from moved offices yesterday. Just picked up the network and moved it to a new office. Note that this does not involve changing anything on the network, especially IPs. A printer tech was out there yesterday to hook their printer back up and very likely did something stupid... like change ANYTHING!

UPDATE: Finally got a call from the printer tech. Different tech, guessed that the tech from yesterday had reset the device (smart move there, would have worked as it was). Apparently he asked $user for the IP address he should set the printer to and was handed the ISP's sheet of IP information because the user doesn't know any better. Printer tech actually tried setting this IP on the printer. *facepalm* At least it couldn't actually break anything from inside the network.

UPDATE2: Turns out that the printer has an xp computer for some functions. This XP computer has a PCI hub card in it, the printer portion has a network connection and the computer portion has a network connection, both of these plug into the hub and then from the hub to the wall. Well, the hub had a cable plugged back into itself so it was taking down the whole network when it was plugged in. According to the tech it was like that when he got there. I do take some pleasure from fixing other vendors' issues for them.

And, a non-vendor related ticket we received today:
External emails are not working. Internet is also down. effects everyone. no changes, no error message. rebooted computers not server.

Well, yes, I would expect external e-mail is down because your connection to the external world is down. Also, why would you reboot users' computers when the whole company's internet is down? Right, common sense is a bit much to ask of people, that's why.

Solar Flares causing Video Issues......NUH UH!!!!

[asbrand.livejournal.com]

At my company, we are about to offer Video over our Backbone IP network.  That is, in itself, a whole 'nother ball of wax...but this just gives me the giggles.  On occasion, solar flares will cause an outage.   This has happened before.

Got this in my e-mail tonight when I came in, from one of our Video Tech Support guys out in San Diego:

I wanted to tell a story about a time I had to talk to a very IRATE customer. We had channel outages due to a Sun Outage. He was told this when he called our Customer Care Center! He demanded to talk to the engineer in charge! He got me!!

 

He demanded to know why the channels were off. I told him we were experiencing a sun outage. He commenced to call me a liar, and said he was looking out his window and the Sun was indeed shining, and it had not gone out!!!

...please help save me from the stupids...


*groan*



-Az