Overheard at the Office #3

Me: ...so we'll probably get them a /29 from Comcast, that's pretty standard.
Him: So here's what confuses me.  What is the slash?  That's some kind of grouping, right?
Me: You've been in IT how long now?  You can't subnet?

Overheard at the Office #2

Did you just warn a client about the dangers of an application that we install on their workstations?

-Me, to an obviously confused junior technician

D-Link Emulators

Have you ever been on the phone trying to walk someone through the setup of their router or trying to troubleshoot their connection?  Wouldn't it be nice if there were somewhere you could go online and see what the GUI that they were seeing looked like?  Well, if that someone is using a D-Link product, then maybe you're in luck.  D-Link has web based emulators for a number of their products online in their support section.  I had a link to a menu of all available emulators, but it doesn't work now and I can't find a new link, but Google has your back. Too bad more manufacturers don't do this.

Overheard at the Office #1

Hoes on the bed, money on the table!

-- A coworker looking at a list of lost files we were trying to retrieve for a client.  The file names were all in Korean. In his mind, a couple of the characters in the first file name looked like a bed and a night stand.

First Post

I used to work for an MSP. The pace is fast, at times the stress is high and you just never know what you're walking into each morning. But for the most part, I loved it. In fact, I loved it to the point where I stayed on in a part time capacity after leaving for greener pastures.  You can't get comfortable because there will always be a new client with an application that you've never seen before.  There will be a firewall that you've never seen before, but now you're supporting it or replicating it's configuration into one of your offerings.  There will be a new application you've never seen before and the entire company uses, and they're looking for help because the server just crashed and backups are for weenies.  There will always be a new marketing buzzword and half of your client base wants you to host it for them starting yesterday.

Before an infamous batch of turnover, we had a very close team.  We laughed, we joked, we talked a lot of trash back and forth. We also all struggled with mouth filtering. That part about not knowing what you were walking into every morning wasn't just computer and network issues, it was also the "interesting" conversations that would be going on when you came in.

A couple of us would often joke that someone needed to write a book about things overheard in our office. I don't know if I could come up with enough material for a book (though I'm sure I can eventually), but what I do have is a lot of stories from over the years that need telling.  These are my tales from the front lines of an MSP.  While most of the stories come from my time at the MSP, there are occasional others as well.  The names have been changed to protect the innocent, but the stories are all 100% embarrassingly true.