Saturday, December 19, 2015

Overheard at the office #32

This one comes courtesy of my current job, and thankfully I was just a fly on the wall as it went down.

User forgets password and calls I.T.
User is able to log in once.
User locks account again.
User calls IT again.
User gets password reset.
User is unable to come up with a new password, calls IT for help.
IT refuses to make up a password for user.
User finally comes up with password, but Active Directory won't take it.
User is upset and sends manager to go talk to IT.
Manager talks to IT, discussion eventually leads to 3 members of IT staff getting involved in this dilemma.
It is eventually noticed that users's chosen password contains the user's entire first name, hence the problem.
Third member of IT suggests changing one of the letters in the password to a symbol that looks similar to one of the letters in users name, DC accepts this password.
User's manager is rushed out the door.
IT all goes out for a smoke break, even the ones who don't smoke.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Overheard at the office #31

We had a period where Donald was transferring calls and everyone that called in was Nick.  There was a Nick at one of our clients, and he did call in a lot, but still.   Ring Ring, it's Nick from CompanyA. Ring Ring, it's Nick from CompanyB. Donald, I'm sure that was a woman.

At least he usually got the name of the company right, so that was a start.

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Overheard at the office #30

It's about 5:15 on a Friday afternoon, I'm wrapping up something and trying to get out the door. Unfortunately Donald had different ideas and transferred a call over to me.

Caller: I just bought this fax machine and I'm having trouble setting it up.
Me: settles in for a very long call while caller rambles on about $Diety only knows what

Friday, September 25, 2015

Overheard at the office #29

$BOSS asks Sven a technical questions, Sven looks over at me.
$BOSS: Don't ask him, I want to know if you know.
Sven: I don't need to know everything, I've got Alan.
$BOSS: What are you going to do if Alan leaves?
Sven: I'm going with him.
Me: I can probably get you a desk, but I don't know about getting you on the payroll.

Friday, September 18, 2015

The cast of characters

I don't think I've ever posted this.

When I started at $COMPANY, it was manned primarily by Mitch and Glen. Miguel was part time and focused primarily on special projects. Armando is the owner, Daniel was the Operations Manager. Donald, who is Armando's father, mans the front desk. Finally, Max is in Daniel's office doing telemarketing and other sales functions. There was one other employee, Alex, who was still ours but permanently placed with a large client.

Overheard at the office #28

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, lunch was always an event at the office. So one day we're all sitting around the round table enjoying a nice looking sandwhich spread. There's this pair of old, dirty rusted out scissors sitting on someone's desk, I'm sure they came with the building. Suddenly I notice Sven frantically trying to get my attention. I look over and he's pointing at Donald cutting open a sub bun with those scissors.

It's probably one of those you just had to be there moments, but to this day someone brings this up at least once a month and we enjoy a good laugh. In fact, it was a recent conversation with Sven and his instance that led to this post.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Overheard at the Clients Office #1

The client went with the cheaper option an went with the phone system proposed by their ISP. I'm on site to babysit the ISPs phone installers. At one point I suggest we just trunk their switch to ours, I'll match the VLANs to theirs, and we can avoid recabling since there's a lot of ports not labeled on the patch panel, and I'm not in the mood for cable tracing today.

So I have to keep going back a step, and eventually explain trunking.

ISP: So you're saying VLAN 2 here and VLAN 2 there will be the same?
me: Yes.
ISP: Hmmmmm......

There is a long pause where ISP Guy is turning his head back and forth between the two switches and in deep thought.  I'm not going to like whatever he has to say next, but morbid curiosity isn't going to allow me to just leave now.

ISP: No, that doesn't sound right at all.  That could never work.  Where did you come up with this ****.
me: OK, have it your way, I'll be over there catching up on emails.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Today's Fun Traffic Source

guccibagsguccishoesformen.blogspot or "Official Store Gucci Bags on Gucci Wallets Store, Gucci Shoes for Men!" The site is nothing but a single ad (which my browser blocked, so who knows what it is).

Friday, July 31, 2015

Overheard at the office #27

Coworker is taking the HDD out of a laptop and stripped one of the screws. He has a flat head screwdriver in his hand. He's referring to it as a regular screwdriver. I grab a Phillips head and ask him if that one is an irregular screwdriver. He has no idea what I'm talking about.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Overheard at the office #26

A coworker called in to a large local cable Internet provider in the area to report an outage for one of our clients. After a little back and forth, the support technician did something and then said this gem:

technician: I set up a ping. I'm going on my break, so I'll call you back in a few.

Good.  I wouldn't want to deprive you of your precious break during a nationwide outage.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Overheard at the office #25

An actual ticket update. The client does indeed see this.

"Researching if can you category in OWA for procedure"

Monday, July 6, 2015

My New Favorite Virus Scare Popup

Your Hard Disk May Have Trojan Virus!
It May Crash Your Data!
Please do not open internet browser for your security issue to avoid data corruption on your registery of your operating system! 



*All misspellings, grammatical errors, and logic defying statements are the property of their original author.

Friday, July 3, 2015

The Great Nicknames are Always Taken

The sales manager had an assistant that we referred to as Meat. Another coworker gave him this nickname because he was about as useful as a slab of meat. He didn't work out and was quickly replaced by a young lady we nicknamed Tofu even before she started because we had high hopes that she would be the complete opposite of Meat, or in other words, useful. 

She quit after a couple of weeks, taking a great nickname with her. You can't just reassign it to somebody else, right? 

Overheard at the office #24

Cowoker: The coal and oil companies could move to solar right now, they're just being lazy.

Yep, it has nothing to do with the billions of dollars they're making doing what they're doing.  Nor is it the millions of dollars they would have to spend to change out equipment and processes.  And it certainly isn't the inability to recoup all that cost.  Nope, they're just lazy.

Friday, June 26, 2015

World Record Malware Infestation

Here's ours, what's yours?






That's 3856 detections if it's too small to read. Making this even better, this laptop was only 2 weeks old at the point of this screenshot.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Overheard at the office #23

Overheard in the datacenter while cabling up the KVM. I'm concerned more about why he seemed satisfied he had found the USB ports.

Coworker: ...where is the monitor port on this router?

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Overheard at the office #22

An obviously confused suit was giving other confused suits a tour of the facility.


Suit: And over here you'll see the <<looks down at paper>> conformal coating booth... where we ummm... coat things... conformally.


Background: I was working as a bench technician and circuit boards came in by the hundred from assembly. I would test them all, repair the ones that didn't work, and then take them to coating once I had a box of working boards. Conformal coating is a thin protective coating that is sprayed over a circuit board to protect the board, components, and solder from oxidation and other enemies of circuitry. There was a large ventilated booth and pretty much an airbrush kit. I don't know if it's still done by hand, but that's how it was done then.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Overheard at the office #21

Coworker: No, I can't log in... When I try logging in, it gives me a goofy little error and puts me back to the login screen.

A goofy little error, why didn't you just say so? I've got that right here in the knowledge base.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Overheard at the office #20

Dear Lord Baby Jesus, or as our brothers to the south call you, Jesús, we thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Domino's, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell.



Our day before Thanksgiving lunch spread, inspired by Ricky Bobby.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Overheard at the Office #19

Coworker: They want to move from a workgroup to a full network.
Me: So they only have a partial network currently?  And they still get work done?

Said coworker confuses the terms network and domain.  Well, lots of things really. But today its network and domain.

The Big Black Ball

You may recall Mitch from a previous story involving his double, Box Mitch. I don't recall where this fits into the timeline in relation to Box Mitch, but here's another tale about poor Mitch getting a little more grief about something completely unnecessary.

At one point, Mitch went on a fitness kick. He was counting calories on everything he ate for lunch, counting every step with one of those belt pedometers, and then organizing it all on his phone so he could show us graphs. The worst of it was that he bought one of those big inflatable exercise balls to sit on. It came with a frame to hold it in place and to make it look more like an actual chair, but he was ultimately sitting on a big black ball all day. You know, because it would help him burn off an extra 3 calories a day or something like that.

This is where Daniel enters the picture. Daniel decided it was time to screw with Mitch a little bit. Nothing big and noticeable, in the beginning Daniel chose to keep it subtle. Every day when Mitch would step out go grab lunch or whatever, Daniel would go over to Mitch's desk and let a little air out of the ball. Again, nothing noticeable in one day, but definitely noticeable after 2 or 3 days.  So every couple days Mitch would pump it back up a little bit and complain about how it didn't hold air very well while everyone else tried to keep from laughing.

Finally after a little while of this, Daniel got pretty upset with Mitch (I don't recall why exactly this time, because it happened a lot) and just completely deflated the ball. Mitch had had enough of pumping it back up and just stuffed it into a drawer. He took the frame home, and the deflated ball sat there in the drawer for a few weeks, until inspiration struck again.....

Monday, June 1, 2015

Overheard at the Office #18

So I've got this coworker who insists on calling every single product in a class by a single name. Kind of like how a lot of people in Florida like to call every form of carbonated beverage a Coke. But he extends this out to ridiculous levels. Every printer is "The Printer," any layer 3 device is "The Firewall," and so on. It really comes in handy when you have no idea where to go, you can just blame "The Firewall," regardless of what is actually on the edge of the network.

Earlier today, this coworker managed to waste 2 hours of his own time in addition to wasting 2 hours of a client's time looking for "The Buffalo." According to him, a Buffalo Linkstation (which only exists in his head) went missing in a recent move, and he cannot wrap his mind around the fact that the Seagate Blackarmor that they do still have isn't The Buffalo, never has been The Buffalo, and never will be The Buffalo.  I guess a Buffalo Linkstation is the first NAS unit he encountered, so now every NAS in the world is "The Buffalo."  We did have a lot of Buffalo Linkstations deployed, so I'm going with that.

The same guy once told us in a meeting that grammar and spelling aren't all that important in network documentation. All you really need is completeness. So yeah, you just need 5 different things on that Visio diagram labeled "The Buffalo." Clear as mud.

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Overheard at the Office #17 - AKA "The Gum"

This comes from a previous job.

It started out as a joke around the office about this piece of gum that was spit out into one of the urinals. Someone offered up $10 if someone else would pull out the gum and chew it. After a week of the price escalating and the urinal not being cleaned of this piece of gum, another certain someone carefully removed the gum from the urinal (no idea. He didn't say how and we didn't ask), taped it to a piece of paper with a written offer of $50 to chew the gum and proudly taped that piece of paper to the wall right above the urinal.

2 years later when I left that company, "The Gum" was still on the wall with the offer of $50.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Overheard at the Office #16

$COWORKER: We have this one phone that is randomly rebooting no matter which port it's plugged into.
$VENDOR: Is the switch rebooting?
$COWORKER: No, we've checked into that. And the client said no other phone has rebooted, just this one. I've got some logs from the phone.
$VENDOR: Are you sure the switch isn't rebooting? It has to be the switch.
$COWORKER: Yes, I'm sure. Here's the uptime of the switch in figure 1, and here's the log from the phone showing the resets that it's receiving from the PBX in figure 2.
$VENDOR: (ignores the email with the figures, calls in) I've checked the logs of the PBX, it hasn't logged any problems. Therefore it's either the switch rebooting or a bad cable. Can I close this ticket?
$COWORKER: No, you haven't done anything. It's not the switch. We've had this problem 3 other times with this model PBX, and there's dozens of cases of this online if you Google it. And could you stop calling at 3am? I told you nobody is here.
$VENDOR: (Sends three more emails, two of them over the weekend, ignores $COWORKER's reply to all of them Monday morning, closes ticket due to "lack of response.")

At one point $VENDOR was in a webex screen sharing session with $COWORKER and was actively trying to wrestle away mouse control to prevent $COWORKER from pulling up the phone log. Remind me why we pay for this "support?"

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Overheard at the Office #15

Me: <troubleshooting an issue and then see a dialog box with a major error>
Me: How long has this been happening? It's probably related.
Client: That's a click-through error, don't worry about that.
Me: A what?
Client: A click through. It's nothing.
Me: OK.....

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Overheard at the Office #14

We received a phone call from an on again/off again client. They were having a new switch installed to replace one that was the victim of a power surge. First they need passwords.  Then they call back because they guy has been there for 5 hours now and they're still down. So I head out.

Me: How's it going, I'm Alan from $COMPANY.  What seems to be the problem?
Contractor: We're having trouble turning on PoE on this switch. I'm not really a network guy so I've got my guy remoted in from the office and we cant figure it out.
Me: Are you sure this is a PoE switch?
Contractor: Sure it is, aren't they all now days?
Me: <Looks at the part number written on the box and shaking my head>
Contractor: What?
Me: You brought the wrong switch.....

So I go to talk this over with the client, and when I come back, the contractor is gone (he packed up his stuff and bolted).  I'm able to cable up everything that needs PoE to the half of the blown switch that still works, and everything else to the new non-PoE switch, and then connected the new switch to the rest of the network (yeah buddy, that's why there was no connectivity for the devices plugged into it) so they're at least back up for now. Maybe this is why the other company charges so much less?

A few days later, the vendor ships out the switch that the client paid for, and I'm called back out to finish the job. Client is happy and I'm a hero for a few minutes until I bring up how they should do something to protect their infrastructure from surges. A good surge protector is a lot cheaper than a new 2960 every year.  Cisco switches should't blow out this often, look at all these dead ones in the rack because you're too lazy/cheap to have them pulled out. Aaaaaaaaand now they're not talking to us again because all we want is to constantly try to sell them stuff.  See you in another year or two when this one blows.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Overheard at the Office #13

My coworker was on a call with Cisco troubleshooting a completely nonfunctional setup of Cisco Smart CallConnector, and it wasn't very productive this far. Then all of a sudden the Cisco technician had an aha! moment.

Cisco: I've found the problem!
Us: Great, what is it?
Cisco: You guys haven't set up your email server yet. This needs a working email server.
Us: That's odd, this client has been receiving mail on this server for years......
Cisco: Impossible, the mail server isn't up. I can see that it's not working!
Us: Ok, I'll play along..... How can you tell that?
Cisco:  I can't telnet into it on port 25.
Us: Yep, that's by design.
Cisco: Huh?
Us: The server only accepts external traffic from the spam filter on port 25.
Cisco: <silence on the line>
Me: Presses mute and lets out a loud sigh.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Overheard at the Office #12

A colleague tossed a Slurpee cup into the trash.  The next morning it was on his desk with a yellow sticky note stating "Please do not throw liquids in the trash. Building rules."  He then put another yellow sticky over it asking for a copy of these building rule, and then tossed it back into the trash (still containing a sizable amount of liquid).  It wasn't there the next morning. 

I would have probably just left a note to stop wasting my sticky notes.

Friday, March 13, 2015

Overheard at the Office #11

Dear $NetworkTeam,

The email server appears to be down.  Please advise when it will be back up.


--Message received via email.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Overheard at the Office #10

Coworker: ....I'm just trying to mitigate what has to be done out there.
Me: No, if it needs to be done, then you need to do it.
Coworker: right....
Me: Don't use big words if you don't know what they mean.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Box Mitch

It started out simply enough as a joke within the office. Mitch, one of our technicians, was told that he had a strong resemblance to Uncle Vernon from the Harry Potter movies by another of my coworkers.  Next thing you know, there are pictures of Uncle Vernon with Mitch's name on them framed over Mitch's desk. It went on a while, but died down eventually.

Then it happened. Mitch called in sick one morning with the sniffles, and then again the next morning. I'm not sure exactly how it started that afternoon, but the picture of Uncle Vernon was attached to Mitch's chair as if he were sitting in it.  Next, there was a tshirt that Mitch got from a vendor event in one of his desk drawers, so we put it over the back the chair with the picture sticking out the top like a head. From there a phone headset was put on the picture.  We actually had a good week and got the ticket count lower than it had been in some time (with Mitch still out sick), so we jokingly attributed it to the hard work of Box Mitch.  It was probably a bit much and appeared as goofing off, but it really was just 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there across an entire week.

Now here's where the trouble started. At least one of our clients got wind of this.  This particular client has a great sense of humor coupled with an inability to let a joke go.  I'll just say that I've been onsite at his office and listened to him call back to my office frantically screaming that everything is down, we're way behind schedule, and he not seen me all day.  So after referencing Box Mitch a time or two over the phone, he put into a ticket that he wanted Box Mitch to handle this issue due to his success with other recent issues.

That's when management became aware of Box Mitch.  Did I mention that we awarded Box Mitch Employee of the Month and hung a plaque on the wall too?  Arts and Crafts time has hereby been eliminated from our office. It's a shame, because the ticket count shot right back up as soon as Mitch took his seat back from Box Mitch. I could have created a box army.


Overheard at the Office #9

A coworker is on the phone working on an issue with a clients vendor.

Coworker: We use $VENDOR1 as a management platform.  No, it has remote control built in.  Yes, we do that.  No, we use $VENDOR2 for that, but it integrates pretty well.
Me over IM: Why are you fully describing our environment to this vendor?

Imagine what this guy is willing to disclose to people he thinks he actually knows.  Again, he is working with a client's vendor, on a client's system. Not anything in our environment.

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Overheard at the Office #8

Me: Have you ever installed FreeBSD before?
Coworker: What's FreeBSD?
Me: Go sit in the corner.