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

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Alright it's official. I'm found the stupidest, most convoluted, most bassackwards way of connecting a device to the internet I've ever found.

One of my sites has a little postage meter, you weigh something, it puts the postage on it, pretty standard. It requires internet connectivity so it can deduct funds from a postage account. Again not that weird.

They put a ticket in saying they device was showing offline and not letting them add more funds.

I go to the device. There's no menu for connectivity. I go to the company's website.

This is, not joking, my hand to God, the steps to connect this machine to the wifi.

- Physically remove the wifi module from the back of the postage meter.
- Enter your SSID, Password, and other information on the company that makes this meter's website.
- Physically hold the wifi module up to the screen of your computer (perfectly flat and still for a good 45 seconds) so it can see the sequence of flashing lights.
- Reconnect the wifi module to the postal meter.
 
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arthwollipot said:
Lovely. That's just the kind of thing you want. I'd be keen to close that call as well. Here, we'd put it in pending customer, check every three days and close it if it isn't reopened after the second contact.

In other news, though I'm WFH this week I went to the office this morning to get a workstation assessment done. Looks like I'll be getting a new mouse, keyboard AND chair.

It's the chair that I'm really looking forward to. I haven't worked on a Service Desk ever that actually splurged out on decent chairs for the agents.
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Ask for the legally mandated ergonomic assessment and mention periodic back pain. It works out wonders.....
 
JoeMorgue said:
Not really IT related but does every office just get issued one person who sits on the phone screaming at her kids all day? Do they just manifest naturally in office environments?
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Yes. Though I knew a salesman who insisted on listening to his voicemails on speaker in an open plan office.
He had his profile edited and lost his speakerphone privileges.
 
catsmate said:
Good work covering up your mistakes and moving blame.
:D
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You can imagine some of the hard-nosed characters running facilities like that. I was second guessing myself most times talking to them. Then I am driven to prove myself to me as much as them! Loved it though. I seem to thrive under that kind of pressure.

Openness about issues and engaging the right people was a key to success. We had some doozies and real neat solutions too.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Alright it's official. I'm found the stupidest, most convoluted, most bassackwards way of connecting a device to the internet I've ever found.

One of my sites has a little postage meter, you weigh something, it puts the postage on it, pretty standard. It requires internet connectivity so it can deduct funds from a postage account. Again not that weird.

They put a ticket in saying they device was showing offline and not letting them add more funds.

I go to the device. There's no menu for connectivity. I go to the company's website.

This is, not joking, my hand to God, the steps to connect this machine to the wifi.

- Physically remove the wifi module from the back of the postage meter.
- Enter your SSID, Password, and other information on the company that makes this meter's website.
- Physically hold the wifi module up to the screen of your computer (perfectly flat and still for a good 45 seconds) so it can see the sequence of flashing lights.
- Reconnect the wifi module to the postal meter.
Click to expand...

And then if the mousetrap falls you win?
 
JoeMorgue said:
Alright it's official. I'm found the stupidest, most convoluted, most bassackwards way of connecting a device to the internet I've ever found.

One of my sites has a little postage meter, you weigh something, it puts the postage on it, pretty standard. It requires internet connectivity so it can deduct funds from a postage account. Again not that weird.

They put a ticket in saying they device was showing offline and not letting them add more funds.

I go to the device. There's no menu for connectivity. I go to the company's website.

This is, not joking, my hand to God, the steps to connect this machine to the wifi.

- Physically remove the wifi module from the back of the postage meter.
- Enter your SSID, Password, and other information on the company that makes this meter's website.
- Physically hold the wifi module up to the screen of your computer (perfectly flat and still for a good 45 seconds) so it can see the sequence of flashing lights.
- Reconnect the wifi module to the postal meter.
Click to expand...

In its favour, it's pretty secure against its profile being trashed by someone with just enough knowledge to be dangerous. On the company's side of the ledger, if they license use of the machine it's a decent anti-piracy measure. If your license has expired, all they have to do is remotely clear the wi-fi settings and the user can't reconnect it until the license is paid up.

But I would be hesitant about giving my company's WiFi password to someone else. Unless their privacy policy is really good, I'd be concerned they're storing that information in their database, unencrypted, just waiting to be leaked.
 
Babysitting a thing, special system configuration due to different covid regs across this United Kingdom

it's 2117 now, might be done by 0200
 
I will now share with you an e-mail exchange I just had with a user.



From: User
To: Me

Hey do we have an extra privacy screen for the computer? If so can I please have one? I have wondering eyes that keep staring at my screen.

Thank you!
__________________________

From: Me
To: User

Sure, I can check. Do you know how big your screen is or what model monitor you have?
__________________________

From: User
To: Me

I have an HP monitor and I stuck a sheet of paper up to it and it is longer than the 8x11 sheet
 
JoeMorgue said:
I will now share with you an e-mail exchange I just had with a user.



From: User
To: Me

Hey do we have an extra privacy screen for the computer? If so can I please have one? I have wondering eyes that keep staring at my screen.

Thank you!
__________________________

From: Me
To: User

Sure, I can check. Do you know how big your screen is or what model monitor you have?
__________________________

From: User
To: Me

I have an HP monitor and I stuck a sheet of paper up to it and it is longer than the 8x11 sheet
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This is why I'm no longer in support. My response would have been: "Dear Sir, I must remind you that it is not permitted to view pornography on work computers."
 
And that login problem that Arth closed happened again, right at the time I said it would be most troublesome
 
You know what I just hate?

When people who build buildings label network drops. I mean who wants it to be easy to actually go into the switch closet and know which drop goes to which port? No make it a challenge.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
You know what I just hate?

When people who build building label network drops. I mean who wants it to be easy to actually go into the switch closet and know which drop goes to which port? No make it a challenge.
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Much the same can be said about street signs.

And filing systems in libraries.

The list goes on. No wonder modern society is so wimpy.
 
JoeMorgue said:
You know what I just hate?

When people who build buildings label network drops. I mean who wants it to be easy to actually go into the switch closet and know which drop goes to which port? No make it a challenge.
Click to expand...

You don't know how long it took me to parse this sentence. Five (potential) nouns in a row is tough.
 
alfaniner said:
You don't know how long it took me to parse this sentence. Five (potential) nouns in a row is tough.
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I'm sitting within sight of a properly labeled network drop and had trouble figuring that out. I think it's the paragraph space that makes it hard to realize that one sentence is the answer to the question. I kept wondering what the second half of that sentence was supposed to be.

When people who build buildings label network drops [x happens].

When people who build buildings label network drops and don't realize the numbers actually mean something.
 
I had to go into the incident management tool (Service Now) and start to associate all the individual incidents, but I have managed to get them to look at THAT ISSUE
 
Sigh. What I hate is corporate politics. I'm a data monkey. I just pull the data from the database, when asked. I don't know or want to know what they're doing with that data, beyond what I need to know to get it. Aaaaand now it seems the fancy project for the fancy executives for whom I've been pulling fancy data is somehow getting corporately political: some director I've heard of but never interacted with requested a call with me and his data monkey, in which they brought up some data I did and tried to grill me as to what the people asking for it want to do with it. I really don't know. I really don't care. But the impression I got was that this data is something this guy and his data monkey already do, and they're worried that the bigwigs are trying to get it from me instead, making them redundant. I don't know if it's just a power thing where they don't want to be sidelined in whatever fancy bigwig crap this is, or if it's actual fear for their jobs. Either way, I don't want to be involved. When my boss asks me to "get X data", I get X data, send her X data, and collect my paycheck. I don't care beyond that. I shouldn't have to care. It's SQL, lovely, logical, SQL. My pretty CTEs. My beautiful CASE statements. My insane-but-effective fake-arrays-using-string-concatenations. Leave me out of the politics, please.
 
Yeah every once in a great while I'll get asked some version of "Okay but what does [completely technical question] mean for our company?" question and I'm pretty much always some version " I literally don't care. You asked me if Option A or Option B had better [completely objective] criteria. I didn't run a broader trolley problem on it, sorry."
 
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