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

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TragicMonkey said:
You mean you haven't made yourself indispensible yet? You need to get on that, pronto. I recommend the path of being the only person who does a task which is important but boring, necessary but not so vital anybody else needs to know how to do it.
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Well I kind of have that already as the guy who does the 1030 - 1900 shift. I do it because I like it and nobody else does.
 
My sister (looking for a new job) just asked me if I still have my old COBOL school books.
Yes. Yes I do. The work is still out there.
 
Darat said:
Do you support over the Christmas break?
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No, the entire department shuts down at 12:30 on Friday and doesn't start operations again until the 3rd. We provide emergency on call service over this period except for the 25th and 26th, but I'm not on the on call roster so I don't have to worry about it. In fact, I am taking the whole first week of January off, as is my yearly custom, so I won't be back until the 9th. I'm so looking forward to it.
 
Ugh. I should not be here at this time.

I don't understand people who get up early in the morning and are all like "Yes! I'm awake and capable of mental arithmetic!"
 
arthwollipot said:
Ugh. I should not be here at this time.

I don't understand people who get up early in the morning and are all like "Yes! I'm awake and capable of mental arithmetic!"
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The weather change played havoc with my sinuses and I had a very bad night indeed. But I woke up on this, my last working day of the year, in perfect mental balance! I got up and said to myself "right, today is Tuesday, so I have that regular meeting at 10." Today isn't Tuesday, my regular meeting is at 9, and that's on Wednesdays. Also at some point I apparently had a breakthrough idea on how to improve one of my SQL queries and I carefully jotted it down on notepaper last night. This morning I was delighted to read this brilliant advice to myself: "DON'T JOIN ON THE JOIN, DO IT BY JOINING JOIN, THE JOIN" and a drawing of a happy skull. I also wrote down "buy batteries!!!!" but I don't remember what appliance I found that needs them, and I actually have a bunch of batteries already. I think perhaps I'm all the way done with 2022.
 
Many, MANY JOINs...

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arthwollipot said:
I love finding notes from past me and not knowing what they're on about.
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"I'll just remind myself by jotting down 'PINK, OVER THE OTHER, arrow sign YES!!!' because I'll definitely remember what that means!"

Some of the versions of myself who exist in the past are quite odd, and bad at communicating. Not like me at all, of course. Ham is T, backwards & until it lights up, ask Mom if ceramic (basement??).
 
arthwollipot said:
I love finding notes from past me and not knowing what they're on about.
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I'm more a math/science/tech person. I enjoy the arts, but I'm not that creative and don't really enjoy trying to make any.

In some old boxes of my junk, I once found a flip pad with some poetry that was 100% in my handwriting and I have no memory of ever writing such. I can't imagine ever wanting to write poetry.

Maybe it was for an english class and I did some attempts on a pad, but I don't remember anything like that. Coming across that in my hand was freaky. I don't think I'd be as unsettled if someone walked up to me saying they're my grandson from the future and I need to follow them.
 
I've read some of my old work diaries, and cannot make head nor tail of them.

Clearly I used to work with those technologies, but it's just gobbledegook now.
 
novaphile said:
I've read some of my old work diaries, and cannot make head nor tail of them.

Clearly I used to work with those technologies, but it's just gobbledegook now.
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I recently got a new file cabinet and was going through my files and ran across a folder titled "IMPORTANT WORK STUFF". It was my notes on how to do a bunch of things from my old job, which I left in 2018. That's just four years ago. Half the notes were utterly incomprehensible to me--I've forgotten so much that that half made no sense at all. The other half was incredibly obvious things I must have truly incorporated into my mind during that job because I found it funny I needed to even write that stuff down.

It was pretty much equivalent of finding two notes, one reading "Frzl upgeb mnumuumdoap gzio!" and the other "you need to drink water to live".
 
arthwollipot said:
Here's a true story. It involves the Deputy Service Desk Manager, who I will call Lisa, because that is her name.

Lisa was assisting people putting up Christmas decorations around the office. Our building has something of a competition, you see, for the best-decorated team. At one point she asked me if I wanted some tinsel to put around my monitor.

"I do not," I said. Okay, so establishing my place as office Grinch right there. I am not a fan of the traditional trappings of Christmas and have no desire to participate in them. However, I also don't want to spoil anyone else's fun or tell them they can't have fun doing something. In short, I have no desire to be this guy. This was taken in good grace and we moved on.

A few minutes later, Lisa was saying something about "it's all about getting into the spirit of things". She was halfway between sarcastic and playful. I mean she was having fun, right? Well, in response to this the following words proceeded unbidden from out of my mouth-hole:

"Oh shut up."

Beat.

Oh my god did I just really say that? I don't think I could have made it sound any more disdainful if I had tried. I really said it. Out loud. Not loudly, but clearly enough that everyone around me heard it. Lisa was staring at me, mouth open in shock.

Fortunately, it was universally perceived as absolutely hysterical. Like, really funny. Everybody was laughing and Lisa took it well. I apologised, all was good. I'm fortunate that I work in a fun and casual workplace, otherwise it could have been a Career Limiting Move.
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It occurs to me that the putting tinsel that's made of aluminum foil on a CRT monitor could have some entertaining effects, should a little strip of aluminum foil break loose from the tinsel, fall through a ventilation slot in the monitor and contact high voltage terminals, though those effects would not be conducive to equipment life or workplace safety. It's probably just as well that CRT monitors are pretty much non-existent now, and most tinsel is made of shiny plastic.
 
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CORed said:
Turning it off and on again works just often enough to make it worth trying first. Depending, of course, on just how many people, and how important they are, will get mad if you turn it off.
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It should frequently be done with servers under controlled conditions while all staff are present.

I've lost count of the number of times that auto starting services didn't auto-start because some idiot out-sourced-supplier switched them to manual when performing updates, and was too stupid to return things to their correct state after patching a server.

Not to mention the number of times that things failed to restart because their certificates were out of date, and services could no longer connect to their databases.

(Of course the guy that did that work was out-sourced to a lowest price house of idiots that do four fifth of ****-all too.)

I'm so glad I'm no longer in that world.
 
CORed said:
It occurs to me that the putting tinsel that's made of aluminum foil on a CRT monitor could have some entertaining effects, should a little strip of aluminum foil break loose from the tinsel, fall through a ventilation slot in the monitor and contact high voltage terminals, though those effects would not be conducive to equipment life or workplace safety. It's probably just as well that CRT monitors are pretty much non-existent now, and most tinsel is made of shiny plastic.
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I'm so old, when I was a kid tinsel was made of lead!
And I'm not making that up.
 
novaphile said:
It should frequently be done with servers under controlled conditions while all staff are present.

I've lost count of the number of times that auto starting services didn't auto-start because some idiot out-sourced-supplier switched them to manual when performing updates, and was too stupid to return things to their correct state after patching a server.

Not to mention the number of times that things failed to restart because their certificates were out of date, and services could no longer connect to their databases.

(Of course the guy that did that work was out-sourced to a lowest price house of idiots that do four fifth of ****-all too.)

I'm so glad I'm no longer in that world.
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I'm still in that sphere... This happens more than many like to admit. :(

Usual thing is to find the server management ports are not even connected. IP's are assigned, but no blue cable. That means an hour wait while someone who knows the recipe comes on site and physically punches the GO button again.

*SIGH*
 
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