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

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Originally Posted by xterra
Assuming that "no" here means "no, I do not have a three-legged cat," you have solved your original problem. You should tell your correspondent that she has mistaken your cat for someone else's cat three-legged feline of indeterminate species.
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Norman Alexander said:
Let's be specific.
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Let's be accurate. It is not possible to be specific about the identity of an indeterminate species.
 
RAS is back up. Some bright spark sent an email around to everyone telling them to call us for a password reset.

Settling in for a long afternoon...
 
Oh... My God. I've just discovered something.

In Word, File - Open - Recent has a button labelled "Recover unsaved documents". :eye-poppi :eek: :jaw-dropp

My entire world has changed.
 
arthwollipot said:
RAS is back up. Some bright spark sent an email around to everyone telling them to call us for a password reset.

Settling in for a long afternoon...
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We have a crap roster. For a complete half hour I was the only person taking calls. The entire half hour, we had between 2 and 4 people queueing. I took all those calls, averaging 2 1/2 minutes per call. I didn't drop a single one.

I only took 10 calls, but it felt like twice that many. I'm going to be doing password resets in my dreams tonight.
 
JoeMorgue said:
//Spitball// Licensing for Remote Access can be a goddamn nightmare and most RAS software for security failsafes to "Don't let anyone in" state when anything is wrong.
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This is where (and why) I'm such a big Linux fan.Typically the licenses are open, meaning you don't have to worry about them. Another thing is back-end data stores tend to be text files or can be exported to text (e.g. LDAP -> LDIF), and Linux/Unix has loads of utilities for updating text files. That means you're not stuck having to use the tools that came with the product to fix a problem, especially if they're slow or otherwise not up to the task.

While I can't be certain, I rather suspect the problem that took down RAS on the weekend for three days would have been resolved in under a day in a Linux environment, and possibly even before the start of business on Monday.
 
This again. They don't say what they want. "I've been unable to log on to RAS, so I've got a code." instead of "Can you reset my password please?"
 
arthwollipot said:
This again. They don't say what they want. "I've been unable to log on to RAS, so I've got a code." instead of "Can you reset my password please?"
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Eh, wait til you work with coders.

I had to help troubleshoot a piece of code that was not working right on one of our applications. Research showed that:

1. The coder was using http calls, instead of https. Unencrypted traffic has been blocked on our network for 6 months.

2. One of the calls was aimed to port 6000, when it works perfectly well as standard https on port 443. Yeah, firewalls won't flag on that!
 
Hellbound said:
Eh, wait til you work with coders.
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Oh yes. The number of times I've heard variants of "Your system/environment/utility is totally f'ed and it's stopping my program"

That's right. The other 3 or 4 digit number of people using that happily are all delusional but you are incapable of error so it must be me. The classic was the "expert" programmer with many years experience who was calling our source code library instead of the executable.
Another was the programmer who came along demanding we read his dump. A quick look and we could see the last instruction was a call to take a dump. We pointed this out to him. "It took a dump because you told it to."
"Yes I know that but why?"
"Wait, are you asking us to read your own code for you?"

eta Both from when I worked for a certain big computer manufacturer - call it Large Cyan.
 
Wudang said:
eta Both from when I worked for a certain big computer manufacturer - call it Large Cyan.
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arthwollipot said:
Hey, I've worked for Large Cyan too. A long time ago.
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So, do you get your soul back when you leave, or is that part a one-time transaction?

Currently working on a project with for...er...that company* at my company. Not impressed so far.

*-No matter the business arrangement, you work for them, not with them
 
Hellbound said:
So, do you get your soul back when you leave, or is that part a one-time transaction?

Currently working on a project with for...er...that company* at my company. Not impressed so far.

*-No matter the business arrangement, you work for them, not with them
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It varied. I worked at then UK IT HQ at Portsmouth 84-92 and saw a lot of bad practice and BS. Then the software lab at Hursley for 7 years which was awesome. I hear it has changed a lot though. Dealt with lots of BS and entrenched idiocy at the Austin and Poughkeepsie labs. Been away 20 years now.
 
Hellbound said:
So, do you get your soul back when you leave, or is that part a one-time transaction?

Currently working on a project with for...er...that company* at my company. Not impressed so far.

*-No matter the business arrangement, you work for them, not with them
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I actually worked for a subcontractor, so I got to keep a bit of my soul. Not a lot, but it was something.
 
It's been a really long week. I've been resetting passwords in my sleep.

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