orthorte - I has it!

[taleya.livejournal.com]

Dear Email Cunstomers:

Please to be stopping with the smoking of the bowls of crack before contacting tech support. Howling hysterically that your site is down and claiming I can only see it because I'm on the server doesn't quite wash when a) I'm working from home and RDPing into the work database b) Jtunnel loads it fine and c) the entire IRC chan I just loosed your domain name on can see it. And claiming your emails all disappeared from webmail likewise fails when I can see 130 of the bastards sitting in there.


Dear Livechat Customer:

Well done. You managed to spell "Authority" without an A. Or an U. or a Y. Or even an I. While I am rather flattered that you felt the need to "take you totly orthorte" there is fucking NOTHING I CAN DO FOR YOU UNTIL YOU GET OFF YOUR FAT FUCKING ARSE AND GET IN TOUCH WITH YOUR DOMAIN NAME REGISTRAR TO MODIFY YOUR NAME SERVERS.

I'd count you for simply poor english sklills and attempt to explain again, but I've wasted six hours across three days with this bullshit, and you only seem to conveniently lose your english skills when I tell you something you don't want to hear. Well shit in one hand and want in the other my friend, 'cos unless we suddenly go crazy with the corporate takeover, I cannot force another company to piss about with their A records on your behalf. Especially if you won't fill out the damn authority forms so we can BECOME your registrar and make the whole damned thing moot, but insist on whining how your registrar won't talk to you.

Keep this shit up and your hosting company won't talk to you either.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I feel like I'm being skullfucked by a retarded sloth. Beer. NOW.

I wanna be like this guy when I grow up.

[margaretc.livejournal.com]

This is awesome.

Tech Support FAIL

[the-cynic.livejournal.com]

Short story long: 48 hours ago our remote travel agents suddenly became unable to connect to the $AIRLINE reservation system. $AIRLINE swears they changed nothing; we know we changed nothing [and yeah, everybody says that...].

Call $AIRLINE Tech Support; look at configuration parameters for various items. The Level 1 finds something they feel is misconfigured, suggest we change. In the process, they say "well, no wonder this doesn't work; this is the wrong parameter". We remind them that it had been working just fine for over a year until two days ago.

Their reply: "No, you're wrong. That's impossible. It never worked."

Apparently all the staff travel we've done for the past year was imaginary.

At least it works now.

Oblivious Starfish

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

If, within the space of 72 hours, I have to:

    * Reassemble your vacationing cube neighbor's keyboard prior to installing some software b/c you took it upon yourself to "play a joke on him"
    * Replace your computer chassis (basically swapping hard drives) b/c of your incessant complaints about a "noisy fan" that you attempted to address by OPENING THE CHASSIS
    * Repair a combo drive b/c your "DVD disc" isn't being recognized, only to learn that YOU WEREN'T ISSUED ONE IN THE FIRST PLACE

You can expect to be the guest of honor at a come to Jesus meeting. The part of Jesus will be played by a very special guest star. You won't recognize him, but he will make quite an impression, I promise...

Priceless

[deusmetallum.livejournal.com]

One of my co-workers has been playing around with the phone system recently, specifically he's been looking into automatic fax detection. As a test he's been using the phone on his desk to call a fax machine somewhere in the building.
What I heard today was this:

*ring-ring* (the phone is on microphone)
*whistle* (my colleague using his perfect pitch to mimic a fax machine)
"hello?"
"oh shit, sorry, I called the wrong number."

(no subject)

[random-c.livejournal.com]

Dear Ms Boss

You are not a tech. I am a tech. My job is mostly to make sure that when the helldesk flag an issue coming up a lot on our 20,000 machines that we stop it happening again. Sometimes I just have to make new stuff work on old kit. This means that what should happen is that you tell me the company want to do a thing, I explain to you how we would go about this thing, you write up all the documents in Business, I correct your chronic lack of understanding and we both toddle along to a meeting with the people who hold the purse strings to explain why we should do this.

What should really not happen is that I suggest an idea to you, you say "cool, write up all these docs" and then badger me for them while ignoring my many requests for help in translating things into Business because you're "not a project manager any more". Or inform me that project management is my "natural career progression" and that I have no choice but to learn this without an O'Reilly to help me.

Nor should you talk to $co-head-of-techops1 about exact hardware specs when you already told me to talk to $co-head-of-techops2. They never agree on ANYTHING and I last saw them on the stairs apparently about to have a sword fight to determine whether we should spec a SATA RAID card for the existing machine or use NAS.

What really *really* should not happen is when I give you this document, you tell me it's not right and that you´ll go through fixing it... and amongst other things replace all my references to the data files being stored in \var\spool to references to them being on the d: drive, but leave in all the snide comments and incorrectly formatted sections.

What really really *really* shouldn't happen is that you then send this edited document to the heads of techops, who, if they weren't aware that I'd already sneakily built a proof of concept which works entirely from the command line (and so isn't acceptable as a production system) would have thought I was a complete idiot because you didn't put your name on it at all.

PS, my notice was handed direct to your boss. When you get back from your holiday, which I hope you don't enjoy anywhere near as much as we're all going to enjoy your not being here, your "natural career progression" is trying to find someone else with my skills for the money and who's prepared to put up with your colossal attitude.

(no subject)

[jcaswell.livejournal.com]

Today was the worst day at work in a very long time.( Names changed to protect, er, me. )

(no subject)

[random-c.livejournal.com]

I should have known that today was going too well.

Got home to find that Dad "Can't log in" to his poker. He's got a laptop I got second hand from work, set up with a touchscreen manglement said I could have because it wasn't in the inventory. All he ever does on it is Poker. He was dyslexic when the schools called it "bloody stupid" and the fact that he's excellent at maths - when he doesn't know that's what he's doing - passed the teachers by.
He figured out for himself how to sort it out when the docking station lost the screen, and a couple of other stupid niggles, and he doesn't call me until he's tried everything he can think of. Anyway, I went and had a look - all his desktop settings are gone and AVG has quarantined his entire poker app.
Could I get it to put his desktop back to normal? Could I hell. Rebooted it, and it announced that it had lost his profile. OK, fine, restore the thing, it's not like he's got any files on there.
Can it see the DVD drive? Can it hell. Then the screen stopped responding. OK, fine, reseat the docking station... still nothing, the only thing it's seeing through the docking station is the power. Checked the connector for dust, gave it a good blow out anyway... still nothing. So for now he's got my old laptop - which has no serial, therefore, no touchscreen, which meant teaching him to use a mouse. Only mouse I had free was a mac one thankfully, so at least I'll not have a couple of hours of occasional "what's this bloody box?!" when he accidentally right-clicks like Mother does.
Normally I'd just throw money at it, nip to the shop and pick him up whatever machine I could find with VGA and a serial port but as I've just slung my job in, I'm going to have to be a little more creative. I have to train my assistant up in how to create the XPe images for gaming terminals so that all the software works... and I've got a spare motherboard in my drawer, I know that has serial... mount that on the underside of his table, automatic login and VNC so he doesn't need a keyboard, make the poker app the shell... I think I'm going to enjoy next week. :)