Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

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I had a running issue for years where many people at a company that is a client of the company I work for had me confused with an employee of theirs with the same name. Took a very long time for them to get everyone who had the confusion straightened out. I would frequently get training materials and other sensitive information intended for him. Also got occasional admonishes that I hadn't shown up for some required meeting.
 
There used to be about 30 of me at Boeing; closer to 50 if you counted spelling variations in the surname. One of the guys with a spelling variation was just in the next bay from me. I got a lot of his emails and phone calls.
Then there was my co-worker, Bob Smith....
 
arthwollipot said:
Wow. I just found/worked out that we have two people with the same first and surname working in the same section. One's brand new, and the other's on mat leave, but she'll be back when the first is still there.

That's going to get confusing.
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Has happened to me. My namesake worked in sales, me in IT training. I learned a LOT about inside deals before he moved on to another company! :D
 
I just was forced to log a non-issue.

The problem was that when the laptop locked because idle, they could wake it up only by using the power switch, rather than by keyboard or mouse. If they did use the power switch, they could then unlock the screen normally.

So... continue using the power switch to wake the laptop. No. It must be fixed. :(
 
arthwollipot said:
I just was forced to log a non-issue.

The problem was that when the laptop locked because idle, they could wake it up only by using the power switch, rather than by keyboard or mouse. If they did use the power switch, they could then unlock the screen normally.

So... continue using the power switch to wake the laptop. No. It must be fixed. :(
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Isn't that just a Sleep/Shut down setting?
 
Power settings are locked down in my company. This is one of those issues where I don't put in a priority on, but it s still part of the job. Ideally, stuff should just work.
 
alfaniner said:
Isn't that just a Sleep/Shut down setting?
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Yeah.

Donal said:
Power settings are locked down in my company. This is one of those issues where I don't put in a priority on, but it s still part of the job. Ideally, stuff should just work.
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And yeah.

Best way to describe it I guess is that it is an issue that if it happened to me, I wouldn't bother calling the Service Desk about it. I'd just use the power switch. But for this person, apparently it was a Big Problem.
 
Taco Bell just introduced kiosk ordering, but the menu doesn't match what we're used to seeing up on the board. It took me an extra five minutes to figure out how to order what I usually get.

And they got it wrong.
 
Ya, I have no idea why they go with those god awful UIs. the McD's by my office put them in and changed it like 4 times in 6 months.
 
Donal said:
Ya, I have no idea why they go with those god awful UIs. the McD's by my office put them in and changed it like 4 times in 6 months.
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Probably went with the lowest bidder. As a software developer, I see this all the time: code developed by the lowest bidder - at the moment, often sweatshop-type operations in India - is roughly the equivalent of random parts held together with bailing wire and hope. Software development -and UI development - is a very intellectual activity. That costs extra, something a lot of companies aren't willing to pay for.
 
grmcdorman said:
Probably went with the lowest bidder. As a software developer, I see this all the time: code developed by the lowest bidder - at the moment, often sweatshop-type operations in India - is roughly the equivalent of random parts held together with bailing wire and hope. Software development -and UI development - is a very intellectual activity. That costs extra, something a lot of companies aren't willing to pay for.
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They take a previously developed product for another industry and then shoe-horn it to fit this one. The clunkiness increases, plus all the bugs get propagated and even more are added.

There is also now the concept of "end-user testing", that is: Running the draft version in a "real" environment to "run out the bugs" and then making further hasty bug-fixes on-the-fly. To my mind as a programmer of yore, that is simply ******* lazy.
 
grmcdorman said:
Probably went with the lowest bidder. As a software developer, I see this all the time: code developed by the lowest bidder - at the moment, often sweatshop-type operations in India - is roughly the equivalent of random parts held together with bailing wire and hope. Software development -and UI development - is a very intellectual activity. That costs extra, something a lot of companies aren't willing to pay for.
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I, personally, don't blame the cheap off-shore coders who grunt out mounds of mediocre code.
I blame the managers who don't understand how much of their 'savings' are either wasted because the end-user declares how crap this is and won't buy use this product again or because the home team then spend weeks tearing the POS apart and rebuilding.
Our problem seems to be that there's no project management (and is pretty lacking at out end, because budgets :rolleyes:) at the off-shore end, every small facet gets handled by different people\teams who all have their own idiosyncratic way of problem solving but it ticks the box for the requirements.
These steaming piles get hammered together and shipped for my colleagues to stare and wonder how anything can technically fulfill the requirements and yet be so, very wrong.
 
I agree it's not the grunt's fault, it's the management: Company A wants $BIGNUM to develop the code, Company B wants $SMALLNUM for allegedly the same thing. Often management doesn't have the knowledge to understand that B is underbidding and/or producing substantially inferior product.
 
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