Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10

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Blue Mountain said:
One thing I've discovered Linux, and Ubuntu in particular, is there's lots of useful information out there on the web. With Windows, a lot of the time I search for a problem and all I find are people asking the same question but not getting any answers. Or the answers that are supplied don't work, because they're all along the line of "well, I don't know what the problem really is, but you can try this ..." That's because some parts of Windows are so arcane not even Microsoft knows any more how they work.
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There's also the minor fact that I'd been working with Windows for twenty-five years and with Ubuntu for a few months...

I literally didn't know where to start.
 
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Blue Mountain said:
One thing I've discovered Linux, and Ubuntu in particular, is there's lots of useful information out there on the web. With Windows, a lot of the time I search for a problem and all I find are people asking the same question but not getting any answers. Or the answers that are supplied don't work, because they're all along the line of "well, I don't know what the problem really is, but you can try this ..." That's because some parts of Windows are so arcane not even Microsoft knows any more how they work.
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Oh those blasted Windows support forums with the answers being, check for updates, reinstall windows etc when someone is asking specific questions. Uh.
I have a clear example of the final point. To help learn C# etc I decided to write a program to rotate user selected windows - something I'd done before when requested years back. Nobody could tell me how alt tab selected visible windows. It's not the visible window attribute. In the end I found a blog that says windows guys don't know so I added lots of debug until I found a combo of the visible attribute and an enum of styles that worked. Crazy. The official standard for MS Office file formats is basically "whatever Office does".
 
arthwollipot said:
There's also the minor fact that I'd been working with Windows for twenty-five years and with Ubuntu for a few months...

I literally didn't know where to start.
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The easiest way to start is to search for the error message, or symptoms on screen.

(Wild example: "black screen with flashing cursor")

I'm not an Ubuntu guy, but Ubuntu is based on debian (which I use) so feel free to PM me and I can see if I can help.
 
novaphile said:
The easiest way to start is to search for the error message, or symptoms on screen.

(Wild example: "black screen with flashing cursor")

I'm not an Ubuntu guy, but Ubuntu is based on debian (which I use) so feel free to PM me and I can see if I can help.
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This was years ago. I ditched it and now I have a Windows 10 PC. :D
 
Here's something that annoys us, though we probably can't stop it.

We resolve a ticket. ServiceNow automatically sends an email to the affected user saying that the ticket is resolved. They reply to the email saying "Thanks! SmileyFace!". ServiceNow reopens the ticket.

:mad:
 
arthwollipot said:
Here's something that annoys us, though we probably can't stop it.

We resolve a ticket. ServiceNow automatically sends an email to the affected user saying that the ticket is resolved. They reply to the email saying "Thanks! SmileyFace!". ServiceNow reopens the ticket.

:mad:
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That’s configurable. Ours doesn’t reopen the ticket, but it will log the comment. The users have a specific link to click, to reopen the ticket if they feel the issue isn’t resolved.


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So... Remember when I said that we haven't had any major outages since migrating to O365?

Yeah. I've spent a considerable amount of time sitting here on my arse doing nothing because everything is broken.
 
arthwollipot said:
So... Remember when I said that we haven't had any major outages since migrating to O365?

Yeah. I've spent a considerable amount of time sitting here on my arse doing nothing because everything is broken.
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I tried very hard to get everyone on my team to sing your "Everything is Broken!" song every time this happened to us, but only had a couple of takers...


Everything is BRO-OKEN!
Nobody can do work, when the servers are down.

Everything is BRO-OKEN!!!
 
I would join in the larking-about singing. But we are a hospital and some of our important clinical systems rely on O365 to work. So we don't get so much pestered as monstered from a great height when it breaks.

We DID tell the higher-ups they would not save money plus put patients at risk. They did not seem convinced. In a government department, decisions are rarely made using logic, common sense or parsimonious expense management.
 
Everything came back, eventually. And it all seems to be working just fine. This was the biggest outage I've seen since we migrated, but it was still nothing like we used to get.
 
Blue Mountain said:
I'm not too familiar with Exchange. My understanding is from a system administrator point of view, as an email server it sucks big time. It might be better as an integrated email, calendar, and task scheduling solution. Linux can do that, too, and possibly at the scale Exchange does it.
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I used to work (originally writing parts of it, then supporting it) on an enterprise-scale email server that could replace Exchange as the back end to Windows based clients (and other clients too - Lotus and X.400 for example). It ran on most flavours of UNIX system, including linux. It was reasonably successful (it was being used in-house with over 100k employees using it, as well as some big customers), then some bright spark decided it should be ported to Windows servers too (NT at that time, IIRC). That seemed to get attention from Microsoft (which may have been the intention), and not too long after that the company replaced its own email system with Exchange, effectively killing the product - how could we sell it to other enterprise companies when we'd replaced it ourselves? The company also, at that time, sold a lot of PCs and they were rumoured to have got a good deal on Windows licenses around that time.
 
Trebuchet said:
I used to have a reasonable ability to manage a VAX. Today I can't manage Win7, let alone 10.
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I've been using UNIX systems since 1983 (including administering some and playing around with kernel and other systems code, though I've probably forgotten most of what I used to know), and Windows since 1988 (some programming, but mostly as a user). I've just got my first Macbook, and I've just worked out it basically runs UNIX (somehow the information that OS X was a switch from their in-house OS to UNIX passed me by), and the prospect of not having to deal with M$ Windows again gives me a great feeling of calm.
 
Party B:

2020: Can we get a copy of Report 1 that you give to Party A? We want to use the exact same numbers they do!

One week later: Can you do a different version of Report 1 that does A, B, and C differently from what Party A wants? This would be more suitable for our needs.

2023: Why is Report 2 different from Report 1? We should be getting the same numbers as Party A! What are you doing wrong?!
 
Norman Alexander said:
I would join in the larking-about singing. But we are a hospital and some of our important clinical systems rely on O365 to work. So we don't get so much pestered as monstered from a great height when it breaks.

We DID tell the higher-ups they would not save money plus put patients at risk. They did not seem convinced. In a government department, decisions are rarely made using logic, common sense or parsimonious expense management.
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Back in the day, it used to be said that nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. Today it's Microsoft instead.
 
Dear User.

This is gonna sound weird since I hate people who "nest" at the desks and have stacks and paper and potted plants and goddamn ice makers and coffee pots and picture frames at their desk so trying to reach behind a monitor and unplug a cable or something like that it like tiptoeing through one of those massive domino setups but... why don't you have ANYTHING on your desk?

You've worked here for years. As long as I've been here. And you've got nothing. You've got a computer, two monitors, a phone, a keyboard, and a mouse. You don't even have a mousepad. Your cubicle walls are blank. No pictures, no plants, no sports knicknacks, no religious motivational messages, no certs or diplomas, no work related stickies or postits, no personalization or spice or flavor of any kind.

No judgement per se, but it's just weird.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Dear User.

This is gonna sound weird since I hate people who "nest" at the desks and have stacks and paper and potted plants and goddamn ice makers and coffee pots and picture frames at their desk so trying to reach behind a monitor and unplug a cable or something like that it like tiptoeing through one of those massive domino setups but... why don't you have ANYTHING on your desk?

You've worked here for years. As long as I've been here. And you've got nothing. You've got a computer, two monitors, a phone, a keyboard, and a mouse. You don't even have a mousepad. Your cubicle walls are blank. No pictures, no plants, no sports knicknacks, no religious motivational messages, no certs or diplomas, no work related stickies or postits, no personalization or spice or flavor of any kind.

No judgement per se, but it's just weird.
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No they haven't "worked" at all. They have spent their entire time tidying their desk and keeping it clean and clear. Or they are an android.
 
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