Overheard at the Office #66

Coworker #1: when I erase a word with a pencil where does it go?

Coworker #2: some people would you just destroy a machine that is because of the lead creates something we can't explain.  symbols craete tools or machine in different dimension


Cocaine is a hell of a drug  --Rick James

Overheard at the Office #65

non-IT coworker: What is JavaScript?
"IT" coworker: It's like Adobe, but it's for text... like printers. printers use Java.
incoherent rambling
"IT" coworker: Adobe uses graphics, Java uses text.
me: **quietly slips on headphones to drown out the rest**

Overheard at the Office #64

Me (on Skype): I'm not feeling too hot today, I'm going to work from home.
Coworker (on Skype): Thanks for not sharing.
Me: Good thing for everyone at the office the Internet came back on this morning here.
Coworker: There's no Internet where you are?
Me:  Yes.  It's out and I'm connected telepathically.

Overheard at the Office #63

While interviewing for a technical position, $CANDIDATE uses this opportunity to push $BOYFRIEND for the position of sales manager, which is not a currently open position.  Instead of, you know, selling herself for the position she was interviewing for.

$CANDIDATE went on and on about how our current sales manager couldn't possibly be as good as $BOYFRIEND, and we were losing sales due to our current sales manager's incompetence.  

Apparently, $CANDIDATE was not aware that the operations manager she was interviewing with was also the sales manager.  

Neither $CANDIDATE nor $BOYFRIEND were hired.

Overheard at the Office #62

Angry user: Wait, what's your name?
Bad Tech:  <<slowly turns around>> I have no name <<turns around again and leaves>>

Overheard on Reddit #2

Another of those not my story but it must be heard gems

I work for a large MSP. Overheard this one from one of my coworkers. "So the Network Admin (our primary contact) of $client calls and says that the core switch wiring was really messy. So he unplugged it and rearranged the wires so it looked better. Now he's really upset that his network is down."

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/50prml/now_it_looks_more_organized/

Overheard at the Office #61

Like many clients we took on, $CLIENT had "a guy" that was unable to keep up as the company grew.  But I don't think this guy ever kept up.  No worries, $COMPANY is on the job once again!  Here's some of the hi-lites of our findings.

• $PreviousAdmin could not tell us where the firewall was physically located.
• Internet Webmail was still over an HTTP connection.
• $SERVER is out of disk space, $PreviousAdmin was unaware.
• Most workstations are not running Windows Update because it "causes problems."
• A 3 year contract was purchased for an automatic online backup that has never been setup.  $CLIENT only became aware after $VENDOR called because of nonpayment.
• Unitrends Backup was purchased for all servers, however it is not installed on any server.
• $PreviousAdmin spent months trying to implement email alerts from $MajorApplication.  $COMPANY diagnosed and corrected the issue within 5 minutes.

Overheard at the Office #60

One of my favorite attempts by a client to get something for free is the good cop/bad cop routine.  It usually comes from a family business and goes something like this:

$WIFE: We need to upgrade this computer to Windows 7.  Can you order a copy and drop off the disc?  You just boot it and next next next, right?
Me: Yeah, pretty much.
$WIFE: OK, great!  We won't need any support on this one.  $GEEK can handle this.

Fast forward a week and Miguel drops off the disc on his way elsewhere.  And then about an hour later....

$HUSBAND:  What is this?  This won't install!  Why did Miguel just drop it off and run?  We're not computer people!
Me:  $WIFE said she didn't want to pay for support on this one so $GEEK would be installing it.
$HUSBAND: obscenity filled tirade
Me: Is there anything else I do for you today?

As expected, they dropped us as their IT company after their contract was up.  They weren't getting any freebies, even with their masterful good cop/bad cop routine.

Overheard at the Office #59

Thankfully this was an internal ticket, only visible to us.  Glad to see the phone is being consulted on matters.

$CLIENT = our client the meeting was for.
$US = our company


"Meeting between:  $CLIENT, Their Phone and their builder and $US.

Overheard at the Office #58

Another ticket gem. Again, this is visible to the client.

"When signing in will take for ever to open . Will all do not responding. Starting in the morning."

Overheard at the Office #57

Coworker: I can't get to the shared drive of this desktop.
Me <<walks over and looks>> Sigh.
Coworker: What?
Me: That's an RDP session
Coworker: Yeah, I can't RDP into the shared drive.
Me <<walks away>>

Box Mitch Update

In a previous post, I told the tale of Box Mitch.  Box Mitch is a favorite of ours still, and even though none of the parties involved work there still, it still comes up in conversation.

Recently, while pursuing Reddit, I found Box Mitch a friend.  Introducing Cardboard Kevin!

Overheard at the Office #56

A ticket was entered to ask a question:  "In order to get VPN, do your computer at work need to be on standby/sleep mode/lock? If all power is off, can you still get VPN?"

Yes, you can absolutely connect to a computer that is turned off.

Overheard at the Office #55

Keeping with the theme of last week's post, here's another case of Mitch having a different conversation than everyone else and getting upset.

We were discussing phone lines, I don't know why.  Mitch, obviously being confused about the difference between the number of wires and the number of pairs, kept arguing that there were 4 pairs of wires in a phone line.  Even clarifying that 2 pairs is 4 wires didn't clear it up for him.  He kept arguing his point for 30 minutes, even after everyone else got up and left the room.

I bet Mitch was really fun for client's calling in.

Overheard at the Office #54

Mitch was having a conversation with $CLIENT about a new remote access need for $CLIENT's network.

Mitch suggested setting up VPN access for the handful of users, but $CLIENT was hearing VNC, which is something that he had used internally in the past.

The conversation went on for a while.  Mitch was repeatedly saying VPN is secure and citing reasons.  $CLIENT was repeatedly saying VNC was not secure, and citing reasons.

Yes, they were each having a different conversation, and neither one realized it.

Overheard at the Office #53

$Client complained that her email would show up on one computer but not the other when it came in.  She had Outlook up and running on the two computers, and after sending a couple test emails, I was able to confirm that this was indeed the case.  Anyone care to take a guess?

The email account in question was $Client's personal email via her home cable provider.  Wow! cable is apparently still in the 1990's and if they support IMAP, none of the online documentation indicates this.  So when Outlook on computer 1 checks the mail, it pulls everything off of the server, because that's the default setting for POP.  POP doesn't do push, so the email client will check every 15 minutes, and whichever computer checks first after the message is received will get it.

The fix is a simple checkbox in the account settings to leave a copy of messages on the server.

Overheard at the Office #52

Here's a gem to show that IT professionals aren't immune to an occasional WTF comment. The following conversation is between a coworker and I.  The reason I find it so funny is this guy is very smart and has been in the field for years.  Wi-Fi just isn't his specialty.  He had recently set up a wireless bridge for a Blu-ray player in his house he didn't want to run a cat5 cable to.


coworker: Recommend me a good Wi-Fi to Ethernet adapter.  Netflix is constantly buffering over the bridge.
me: Let's rule everything else out first. Do you know you have a good signal in that spot? Have you tried the player on a wired connection?
coworker: No and no.  Let me see about those.....
me: If it looks like I'm avoiding the original question about a Wi-Fi to Ethernet adapter it's because I am. We in the business call such a device a wireless bridge.......
coworker: *face-palming*


Turns out the Wi-Fi signal was just terrible in that spot.

Overheard at the Office #51

Former boss on the phone with a customer who is not getting something that he's explained poorly a couple times.

FormerBoss: OK lady, why don't you go in the back, grab the smartest MAN you have back there, and put him on the phone.

Needless to say, they weren't a customer much longer.

May I Please Speak to the Man of the House?

So I recently came across this nugget of a post on Slashdot recently.  In a nutshell:

I like to hire women for level one.  They're always so polite.  And pretty! *Giggle*
Then I like to hire a competent tech to sit between them and do the actual thinking.  You know, a man.
And finally, ex-military types are great too.  They're used to the abuse I intend to dish out!

Sadly, I've worked for a few places that operated with some or all of this logic.

Overheard at Best Buy #1

This exchange happened years back before Best Buy started thinking themselves to be a cell phone store.

Sales Drone: How may I help you?
Me:  I'm looking for 1GB of DDR2 RAM.
Sales Drone: *very smugly* Well, DDR2 is pretty new and I doubt your computer can use it.  What brand is it?
Me: I built it myself this weekend, it doesn't have a brand.
Sales Drone: All computers have a brand. It's usually right the front of the case.
Me: Yes, the manufacturer of the case is written on the front. But that doesn't change the fact that I built the system.  And the motherboards manual clearly states it takes DDR2.

This back and forth goes on way longer than necessary until I tell him point blank that if he doesn't want the sale I can walk 2 doors down to CompUSA and I'm sure they'll gladly sell me what I need.

So I get the RAM finally, take it home, and it works perfectly in my new build.  I wonder if their sales people today know more about cell phones than they did about computers back in the day?

Edit: I better make this Overheard at Best Buy #1.  There's no way it can be the only one.

Overheard at the Office #50

Coworker: Hmm, today is Cinco de Mayo.
Other Coworker: Yes it is.
Coworker: I have to call my friend. She's Puerto Rican.  I need to wish her a happy Cinco de Mayo!

Overheard in the Barracks #1

Let me set the scene.  It was 1997 or 1998, we just got phone service in the Barracks which let us finally get on the Internet.  I was showing my roommate around the Web and then we decided to jump on IRC.  I was showing him how to use mIRC.

roommate: No, stop. I don't want to make any long distance calls.
me:  WTF?  Your ISP is local.
roommate: You're calling Phoenix!  That's long distance.
me: No, it's a server in Phoenix on the Internet.  There's no long distance on the Internet.
roommate: I don't know about that, that doesn't sound right.

I was connecting to the Phoenix Undernet server.

Overheard at the Office #49

I have no idea what the context of this exchange was, but it make me chuckle.


Coworker1: Interns?
Coworker2: No, people.

Overheard at the Office #48

Coworker: We should leave AppleTalk enabled.
me: Why? It hasn't been used in decades.
Coworker: $HIGHERUP uses a MacBook.
me: So?
Coworker: So what if he needs to print?
me: You want to leave AppleTalk enabled on 500+ printers because $HIGHERUP has a MacBook? NOBODY USES APPLETALK!
Coworker: You never know....

Overheard at the Office #47

A client is having trouble with a PC dropping off of the network randomly. I drive out and look over the PC. After cleaning off thousands of things with Malwarebytes (anti-virus is just a scam to take my money! claims the owner), we still don't see a drop.  Maybe the cleanup did it?

Then somebody prints something, and the power strip trips.  Everything but the PC in that cubicle goes off, including the only light in the cubicle, and the little switch under the desk that the PC is connected to.  See, it happened again!

You didn't notice that every time it happened, you were sitting in the dark?

Overheard at the Office #46

A client called in and reported that their Active Directory account was locked out.  They had no idea how, they hadn't tried logging in yet today.  So I unlock the account and stay on the phone while they verify that they can get in now.  I ask one more time about how it could have got locked, and then the user suddenly puts 2 and 2 together.  They were cleaning their keyboard out, and afterwards noticed that the computer was at the login screen when they were done.

The Small Client and Their 5 Routers

Keeping with the theme of the previous post about the client with their "redundant" servers, here's another amazing sight that I walked into. It's another small client with a part time IT guy. We're told immediately that he has a PhD in computer science. I'll give him credit for creativity, but I still have nightmares about fixing this.

The client was pretty cheap before we came on board, and they didn't want to spring for a business grade firewall or router. So our guy goes over to Bestbuy to pick up a Linksys. Problem is, they have a few servers on site that they want to make available to the Internet, and the Linksys could only handle one IP address on the WAN interface.

The solution?

• Buy two more Linksys routers. 
• Give all three unique IP addresses on the WAN side, and on the LAN side. 
• Statically assign everything, so all workstations are going out one router with NAT overload, the email server is going out one with a static NAT, and the webserver is going out the third, again with static NAT. 
• The asterisk box can be tied directly to the Internet, with a 4th public IP address.
• The 4th router was also sitting in the pile, using the 5th public IP address. He wouldn't tell us what that router was doing, but we found out soon enough that it was his unauthorized back door into the system.
• The 5th router was sitting in a file cabinet as a cold spare.

By the time 5 Linksys routers were purchased from Bestbuy, or wherever they came from, why couldn't they have just bought a decent firewall?

Small Client and Their "Redundant" Servers

I mentioned this client and their "redundant" servers in a previous post. Here's what they had. Their previous IT guy set up a pair of servers with ESXi. One hosting the live servers, one hosting the backup server for each of the live servers. Failover meant him running over from his 9 - 5 job at Ford as soon as he could, pulling the virtual Ethernet connection on the live server, and then connecting the virtual Ethernet connection on the redundant server and powering it up. And of course hoping that it connected to the .vmdk file correctly on the datastore. If this is the best that you're capable of setting up, I guess I get that. But what I don't get is why a company of 6 people needed 8 live servers and the corresponding 8 backup servers set up. There was a SAMBA server running an NT style domain, an LDAP server in addition to that doing the actual authentication, A file server, the Peachtree server, an engineering server (which I think was pretty much just another file server) and a couple others I don't recall now.

Overheard at the Office #45

Meat had just started recently and was set to go out with Daniel to meet with a prospective client. Apparently he was excited at the prospect as he came in wearing his suit. He popped his head in and then it started.

Sven: Holy crap dude, did you just lose a bunch of weight?
Meat: Um, yeah.
Me: So do you own an iron? Or a mirror?
Meat: .....
Daniel: Dude, you are NOT going to meet a client looking like that.....

Meat was wearing a suit that was obviously 4 or 5 sizes too big and looked like he pulled it out of the bottom of a bag where it has sat crumpled up for a couple years. To top it off, he was wearing some really old beat up Chuck Taylor's with said suit.  He never did go out to meet clients.

Overheard in the Office #44

Lunch was a big deal at the office. We had longer discussions on what we were going to eat and who was going to get it that day than any technical discussion. If you've read a few of these posts, it's apparent that this was a group of guys who took lunch very seriously. So this one day Mitch was completely adamant that we get Domino's. He had a Domino's app on his phone, and had a coupon for free bread pieces, that day only! Despite none of us caring for chain pizza, we gave in and Mitch went up to get the pizzas and his precious bread pieces. Now here's the kicker. The bread pieces were terrible, no matter how many times Mitch said otherwise. Second, they only cost 99¢. It's not like the guy was hurting for money.

Overheard in the Office #43

Not long before Cynthia started, we did a bit of a reorganization/cleanup of the office. The well stocked refrigerator was brought out of the back room that became the lab, and it was brought into the tech area. There was a single row of interconnected "desks" that ran around the room, and the refrigerator was put on top of it in the middle of one long wall.

Cynthia's desk was set up in the corner, right next to it. Naturally, her first question was "Are you putting me next to the fridge because I'm a woman? Am I going to be making sandwiches?" Without missing a beat, Daniel replies "Yes. And here's all you need to know. I like mayo, but not mustard. Alan likes mustard but not mayo. DO NOTmess that up."

I should mention that I knew Cynthia before she was hired. We probably wouldn't have pulled that on someone we didn't already know.

Overheard in the Office #42

Donald can be a little tunnel visioned at times. He came over to my desk one afternoon to let me know about the carpet cleaners coming in over the weekend. As this conversation was happening, Mitch, who was on the phone with a client, yelled over to Sven and I that a client was completely down. All their "redundant" servers (which I'll cover in a future post), were offline. Sven and I sprung into action, remoting into something that was still up at the client,and assessing the damage. Sven figured out the issue and got everything back going. During all of this, Sven and I were frantically typing and clicking away and yelling things back and forth to Mitch, who was still on the phone with the client. It was about this time I noticed that Donald was still standing off to the side, mumbling about the carpet cleaners as if nothing was going on.

Did I mention that he's a bit tunnel visioned at times.?

Overheard in the Office #41

Non-IT coworker: Are we using Windows 10?
"IT" coworker: Yes, Twenty-ten.
Non-IT coworker: No, I mean Windows, not Office.
"IT" coworker: Yes, Windows Twenty-ten.
I just ignored that exchange. We're using Windows 7, and there is no Windows 2010.

The Big Black Ball Part II

After leaving the big black ball in the drawer for a little while (days, weeks, I don't recall), inspiration struck Sven again. One afternoon while Mitch was out, Sven grabbed a coney dog that was otherwise going to get tossed and put it in the drawer under the remains of the big black ball. It went unnoticed for a few days until it started smelling. Then Mitch started digging through the top drawer, trying to locate the source of the smell. Unfortunately for him, he never found it.

A couple weeks later, everyone else started noticing the smell of the rotting coney dog, so Sven took it back out. Before tossing it in the trash, he talked Cynthia into eating it for $20. But Daniel overheard what was going on and put a stop to it before money could change hands.

Overheard in the Office #40

I'm sure to the user, this made perfect sense. But to us in IT, it was a good chuckle.  Sven took this call one day.


User: I'm not able to send my .pdf attachment.  Outlook is saying the file is too big.
Sven: OK, let's take a look at what's going on here.
<remotes in>
Sven: See, here's the problem.  This .pdf is 25MB in size, and the person you're sending it to can only receive 20MB.  The message is saying that their server is refusing to take it.  Unfortunately, while we control your server, we have no control over theirs.  Is there another way you can transfer the file, or can you break it up into 2 smaller files?
User: But it's only 3 pages!
Sven: Yeah?
User: Yeah, I sent a .pdf yesterday that was 7 pages and it went through just fine. And this one is only 3 pages.  How can it be bigger when it's 4 pages fewer?
Sven: <opens file and sees 3 pages of full page, full color graphics>  OK, here's what's going on........


You can say a lot of things about Sven, but the man has plenty of patience with users. Especially when the user is an attractive blonde.

Overheard at the Office #39

I've been through this before with a couple other coworkers, so I gave Mason the low down on how this would go.  Since you don't know what the hell you're doing, you're probably going to call GoDaddy support from the beginning, and they'll walk you through the process of moving a DNS zone from somewhere else to our GoDaddy account.  Since its moving from one GoDaddy account to another, they'll probably even tell you that all the records in the zone will just transfer over.  But they wont.  You'll come in tomorrow to an empty zone.  Record everything now and recreate everything as soon as the zone is available to edit in the new account.


So what happens?  Mason comes in the next morning to calls from $CLIENT that the web site isn't working.  Hmm, wonder why.  His ticket update:  "GoDaddy said that they would copy over all the DNS settings but they didn't. I put everything back in now.  Give DNS a little time to update and then the site will be fine."  If only you would have known this would happen and put everything in last night, right?

Overheard at the Office #38

Not too long after Steven Richard came onboard, I couldn't help but think of that scene in Talladega where Dennit says "Ricky Bobby? He's got two first names!" So I informed Sven that we were giving him the nickname Ricky Bobby and why. Sven was immediately onboard and started calling him Ricky Bobby directly. Steven eventually rage quit after making a lot of threats, in no small part to being called Ricky Bobby constantly. A few weeks later, I was debating the relative merits of a particular firewall line in a Facebook group, and because of my expressed distaste for said firewall, I got a private message from another member of the group who worked for the manufacturer of said firewalls and wanted to talk about my distaste. And I'll swear on a stack of Holy Books of your choosing, his name was Richard Steven (well, reversed from Steven Richards real name of course). We still keep in touch on Facebook, but he has thankfully moved on to bigger and better things since.

Overheard at the Office #37

There was only one phone line to the office and Donald was first in line to answer incoming calls. When someone called in, he would transfer the call to the appropriate party.  If said party was at their desk and picked up, all was good.  However, if they weren't, that person would come in the next morning and find a voicemail of Donald saying Hello over and over again because he didn't get the difference between someone picking up and voicemail picking up. 


Hello?        Hello?          Hello?        Hello?


Mitch saved one of these voicemails where the Hello's went on for at least 3 minutes, and then before hanging up you could hear Donald grumbling "Doesn't anybody work back there anymore?"

Overheard at the Office #36

User submits a ticket stating that he can't see emails for today in Outlook.  Previous days are fine however, as is the OWA page. User just so happens to be one of the owners of the client, no big deal right?


Mitch gets the ticket and updates it asking when he can look at the machines. This of course sends an email to the client which he will never see.  A few hours later I see this ticket, put 2 and 2 together and give client a call.  It turns out he hit the little arrow to collapse today, and hitting it again restored visibility of today's email.  "I guess I've got a trigger finger," laughed the client.

But how are you going to send someone an email that you know they'll never see?

Overheard at the Office #35

DOH!

ATM located in the building where I work.

Overheard in My Livingroom #2

A computer that I was asked to take a look at. Surprisingly, it was a software issue, not an overheating GPU.

Overheard at the Office #34

Coworker, reviewing the vulnerability scan's report: ...so we need to disable FTP, Telnet, and TCP on all these printers....
Me: WTF?  You can't disable TCP!
Coworker: Yeah, all these are TCP vulnerabilities, we need to disable TCP.
Me: Well, I guess that will mitigate all risk for the printer....

Overheard at the Office #33

Coworker on the phone with a client:

Yeah, but that doesn't always work. Because of the way memory works these days, what with capacitors and such, it doesn't always erase it all when you reboot. Sometimes you have to shut it down for a minute

Me to a different coworker on Lync:

Are you hearing this?