culling the win from the fail

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

This was too much win not to share, for those of you who missed the (extremely brief) party:

After a clueless teenager^NSFW named velvetetiquette bumbled in here to ask "how do I get the ads out of my LJ, and how do I center stuff, lol", several far-too-mild-mannered responses were given, and the fail seemed inescapable.

Until, that is, our own two_pi_r gave her some sage advice that was just too good not to share:

Sure. Try using the following CSS:

<style type="text/css">body,a,p,div,span,ul,ol,li {display:none;}</style>

In closing, a final note to velvetetiquette:



(and Merry Christmas, kiddo.)

(no subject)

[mtupyro.livejournal.com]

I spent 20 minutes today convincing a user with broken english and a thick Russian accent that Internet Explorer is included by default with Windows Vista and no, they really do not need to install AOL to get online through their new cable modem.

"Sir, Internet Explorer is included in the Windows Vista installation."
"No Internet Explorer! How I get online now!?"
"Sir, I assure you, it's there."
*20 minutes later*
"Oh, I find."

Scotch please. Lots and lots of scotch.

Flip-mode!

[lolotehe]

Oh, I wonder where they are now....

Argh...

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

Dear End-User,

Telling you over the phone that I'm going to unlock your account for you (so you and I can continue on with our happy, at least in your case, lives), does not translate into I'm going to eat your soul through your eyes and rape your babies. At least, not in the version of English I speak.

/facedesk.

No, I didn't say the part in parentheses out loud. :)

Also, d'you really need to hold a personal conversation with a coworker on your end while I'm sitting there, listening, and watching my queues build? And when I politely try to interrupt to check on you and see if it is working, the correct response is NOT a snapped, "HOLD ON!" ::sighs:: I have a job to do too, damnit.

There is not enough rum in the world for this....

Functional blackmail, it's for Christmas now!

[jeffreycornish.livejournal.com]

At the moment the $BigAcademicNWHospitals helpdesk is very very quiet. Santa's gift came a bit early in that way.

Unfortunately the coal in the stocking, that is we the lost of one of the power feeds to our primary location, and this is going to annoy us a lot over the holiday. On a thin crew of one per shift we are not putting too much trust in the rather shabby infrastructure at the primary location and going to operate from our backup at $BigAcademicNWHospitals' proper for the next day.

Downside is that from this location we cannot access a specific tool used to clear oft fouled hospital label printer queues. Why? Because they are phasing out this tool without giving us a replacement. Nearly all of our computers at the primary site can access the tool, as they were grandfathered over. However our backup site has only been up for a few months, so we don't get that here.

I am doing a bit of blackmail as a result. I _have_ to assign these issues to the group that handles the label printer queues, you see. So I'm making every one, which are typically used in the ER at this hour a Critical issue (which I am supposed to do, you see--Policy and all--ER==Critical).

I've just had a nice email exchange with the oncall of this other group who is having to bug her Unix guys this festive eve.

My last email said "Well, you know, we're going to be here tomorrow too. I'd be as shame to have to pepper you with these OMG-Critical tickets throughout the day. Could you maybe just add these two computers so they have permissions to access the particular server?"

We'll see how this tack works.