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

[TragicMonkey]

So the changeover Genesys is happening at the end of this week.

I'm not looking forward to it, and it's not entirely because I get anxiety over new things. I can see many ways in which it is likely to be problematic.

Awww, just chillax! Breathe deeply, remain calm, and understand that while things will go disastrously wrong they will not be the disasters you anticipate, they will be novel disasters undreamt of in your most paranoid anticipations! #OptimistPrime #BlessingsCounted #JCPenneySale #CopingWithProfessionalismProfessionally #EarwigAttack

 

[arthwollipot]

Strangely enough, that actually helps.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Awww, just chillax! Breathe deeply, remain calm, and understand that while things will go disastrously wrong they will not be the disasters you anticipate, they will be novel disasters undreamt of in your most paranoid anticipations! #OptimistPrime #BlessingsCounted #JCPenneySale #CopingWithProfessionalismProfessionally #EarwigAttack

Earwigs! Like merkins but for your ears!

 

[TragicMonkey]

Strangely enough, that actually helps.

The philosophy of unanticipated disasters was inspired by a friend of mine who was reclining on the sofa complaining about something when abruptly an adult beagle of considerable heft fell directly onto his stomach from a height of five feet. The dog was fine, but the friend was a bit put out by the event.

 

[novaphile]

The philosophy of unanticipated disasters was inspired by a friend of mine who was reclining on the sofa complaining about something when abruptly an adult beagle of considerable heft fell directly onto his stomach from a height of five feet. The dog was fine, but the friend was a bit put out by the event.

Flying/materialising animals are just weird.

Walking through the city one morning, a kitten landed on my shoulder with considerable impact. I was a long way from any building, and was literally the only person on the street.
My best guess, the kitten had fallen from very high and had been moved sideways by updrafts/wind on the way down.

Best part? The bloody thing bit my hand when I took it off my shoulder, and I had to get a tetanus shot. (And it was a really serious bite) Cute as a button and as feral as a bag of razor blades.

 

[quadraginta]

Flying/materialising animals are just weird.

Walking through the city one morning, a kitten landed on my shoulder with considerable impact. I was a long way from any building, and was literally the only person on the street.
My best guess, the kitten had fallen from very high and had been moved sideways by updrafts/wind on the way down.

Best part? The bloody thing bit my hand when I took it off my shoulder, and I had to get a tetanus shot. (And it was a really serious bite) Cute as a button and as feral as a bag of razor blades.

The idea of feral flying kittens becoming a regular part of the urban environment has a certain darkly exciting appeal.

 

[novaphile]

The idea of feral flying kittens becoming a regular part of the urban environment has a certain darkly exciting appeal.

Sad though, they'll probably replace drop-bears in our urban ecology.

 

[a_unique_person]

Sad though, they'll probably replace drop-bears in our urban ecology.

Forget the drop bears. The dropped branches are deadly and really kill people. The worst part is that it doesn't just happen during a storm but the trees decide to drop them at any time.

 

[quadraginta]

Sad though, they'll probably replace drop-bears in our urban ecology.

Surely they can co-exist. They might even team up. A two-pronged attack, with the kittens getting their prey to hold still for that crucial moment the drop bear needs to jump in for the kill.

 

[arthwollipot]

Oddly enough, flying Satanic kittens was the subject of a Sluggy Freelance story back in 2002.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Flying/materialising animals are just weird.

What? No, the sofa was against a wall that held a staircase, and the beagle coming down the stairs thought she could take a shortcut to reach the sofa (and the food). She was both correct and incorrect in that assessment.

 

[quadraginta]

Oddly enough, flying Satanic kittens was the subject of a Sluggy Freelance story back in 2002.

I thought that was a documentary.

 

[arthwollipot]

T1 escalation: "Hi, I've got a user on the phone who created a folder on the C: drive of his old laptop and wants to have it on the C: drive of his new device. Can we fix that for him?"

Turns out this person still had access to the old device so all was not lost. Lucky, that.

 

[Norman Alexander]

T1 escalation: "Hi, I've got a user on the phone who created a folder on the C: drive of his old laptop and wants to have it on the C: drive of his new device. Can we fix that for him?"

Turns out this person still had access to the old device so all was not lost. Lucky, that.

Answer should be "NO! But you can put it on a suitable share drive and never lose it. AND have it backed up!"

 

[novaphile]

Answer should be "NO! But you can put it on a suitable share drive and never lose it. AND have it backed up deleted at random by any user in our organisation, and we only do backups, we don't do restores!"

FTFY.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Answer should be "NO! But you can put it on a suitable share drive and never lose it. AND have it backed up deleted at random by any user in our organisation, and we only do backups, we don't do restores!"

FTFY.

Yes...well. There is that.

We provide our users a limited quota personal share for this purpose. Group shares are supposed to be managed by someone...which happens rarely to never.

 

[arthwollipot]

Answer should be "NO! But you can put it on a suitable share drive and never lose it. AND have it backed up!"

Yeah we advised him to copy it to OneDrive, which is where it should have been all along.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Yeah we advised him to copy it to OneDrive, which is where it should have been all along.

Ditto. This will be our new standard practice soon. Our on-site capacity has been capped for a while now.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

Our implementation plan, which we have not got, would not have survived first contact with the enemy

 

[JoeMorgue]

Again I'm just so overjoyedly happy for all you IT folks who have the option of telling your users how to do things.

Meanwhile most of us have to just magically figure out a way to transfer data from an 8 track cassette to a cuneiform tablet over fax if that's how our users want to do it.