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

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Blue Mountain said:
I notice the first two are Microsoft products. However that may say more to the ubiquity of Windows in the business environments than the quality of the software itself.

From what I've seen of Bitlocker, mostly from people posting comments about it, it's actually well designed and fit for its purpose, namely providing a solid encryption environment for Windows. Please feel free to correct me on this! :D
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That's the intent, yes. But problems occur when the software incorrectly identifies an activity as a potential hacking attempt and locks the computer down. And then they have to call us. We generate an unlock code which is a 48-digit number that we have to read out over the phone, and they have to enter correctly.

This happens on a regular basis. There are times when we've pushed out software updates, and Bitlocker freaks out, resulting in a ton of calls to the Service Desk. At those times it gets quite surreal, with many operators constantly and simultaneously droning out random sequences of numbers.
 
Ugh. Had to use Cisco Unity implemented by amatuers at my last job at a major bank.


At IBM Hursley in the 90's we had what was called Computer Aided Telephony development in the lab. Separate teams for actual "phone" functions and "mailbox" etc. No problem, they wrote a combined doc that described nicely how to just do stuff with the phone sat on on your desk.
Then it got "fixed" by corporate. Now 2 separate guides written separately and customer "support" were baffled that we expected a single doc on just how to use our phones.
Oh yeah they also locally integrated telephony and Lotus Notes, worked great and I think it would have sold. Integrating email, phone and IM(Sametime)? Crazy talk according to corporate.
 
Blue Mountain said:
I notice the first two are Microsoft products. However that may say more to the ubiquity of Windows in the business environments than the quality of the software itself.

From what I've seen of Bitlocker, mostly from people posting comments about it, it's actually well designed and fit for its purpose, namely providing a solid encryption environment for Windows. Please feel free to correct me on this! :D
Click to expand...
It's a hair-trigger tool that reacts badly to a vast array of "threats".
 
Bitlocker is a textbook example of "Well it works in the lab."

The problem is functionally being used in any normal working environment it's a ticking time bomb that will essentially brick a computer at the worst possible moment with no effective way of troubleshoot via any method other then "via relayed instruction to end user" which is the absolute worse possible way to troubleshoot.

Basically Bitlocker, for all it's noble and useful intent, is ransomware that will take it upon itself to lock out a PC and not let you back on until you can get the end user to type in 40 characters of gibberish correctly.
 
As to Cisco Unity, and at first this might sound like a case of praising with faint damnation, my main issue is that I don't have to use it often enough to become "Second nature comfortable with it" like I am with Active Directory and Exchange Management Console and all that jazz.

I basically have to relearn it everytime I have to use it.
 
I'm currently setting up a new site, my primary client has expanded and is opening up a new clinic. No biggie, done this several times.

I'm got about 10 standard HP mini-PCs set up. I set them all up, plugged them all in, got them on the network, all right as rain. Head back to home office to work remotely.

But 6 of them keep going offline. Over and over. I'll remote into them, start doing something, and 5-10 minutes later they shutoff. Sometimes they'll come back online later, sometimes not.

So I go back onsite. Go to all the rooms. Turn on the computers back on. Stay there. Log into them. Give it a few minutes. Nothing happens.

I pull out my laptop, jump on the wifi, and sit on the front desk of the new office and pull up each machine, and start the install process again.

I'm on the next to last machine when two things happen simaltaniously and everything becomes clear. The machine drops out of the remote desktop session... and out of the corner of my eye one of the office lights turn out.

Yep this is going exactly where you think it is. Someone on the design/building team for this new building decided some of the outlets had to be wired to the lightswitch, so they turn off when the light turns off. Problem.

A) There is indicator outside of trial and error which light switch is wired to the outlets and which ones are (I soon learned the bottom outlet is wired to the switch, the top is not.)

B) The Light Switches are also motion controlled and turn off if no one is in the room for a few minutes.

I was setting up PCs and the light switch motion detector was turning them off as soon as I left the building. I hadn't noticed because until the last few days people were working in the building with enough motion to keep the lights on the entire time.
 
Grrr. Idiot asked me in May for A, B, and C. Just finishing it up this week...and he asks whether D, E, F, and G are included. No, I reply, because he didn't ask for them. Oh, he said, well it was supposed to be included. Okay, I say, then I'll add to it but it'll obviously take longer. Him: what?! Why!?!?!?!

eta: Oh, dear. The fool tried to complain about it. I've been in IT for two decades, of course I still have all the relevant emails. The most important certification is always CYA.
 
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Thanks everyone for your comments on Bitlocker. I now know a little bit more about it.

As for the reset code, it sounds like a great app for an Asterisk script: help desk staff can generate a code, save it (if that's possible) to a share, then transfer the call to an extension that reads the contents of the file. Downside: if the user screws up and has to transfer back to the help desk, he/she ends up at the tail of the queue.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Problem.

A) There is indicator outside of trial and error which light switch is wired to the outlets and which ones are (I soon learned the bottom outlet is wired to the switch, the top is not.)
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I think you a word out there. :p


I recall a Dilbert cartoon from way back where the engineers in the department were moving so little the motion controlled lights kept turning off. So they hired an intern who's only job was to walk around the area while waving his arms.
 
Blue Mountain said:
I recall a Dilbert cartoon from way back where the engineers in the department were moving so little the motion controlled lights kept turning off. So they hired an intern who's only job was to walk around the area while waving his arms.
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I can think of two offices I've worked in where I had that problem.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'm currently setting up a new site, my primary client has expanded and is opening up a new clinic. No biggie, done this several times.

I'm got about 10 standard HP mini-PCs set up. I set them all up, plugged them all in, got them on the network, all right as rain. Head back to home office to work remotely.

But 6 of them keep going offline. Over and over. I'll remote into them, start doing something, and 5-10 minutes later they shutoff. Sometimes they'll come back online later, sometimes not.

So I go back onsite. Go to all the rooms. Turn on the computers back on. Stay there. Log into them. Give it a few minutes. Nothing happens.

I pull out my laptop, jump on the wifi, and sit on the front desk of the new office and pull up each machine, and start the install process again.

I'm on the next to last machine when two things happen simaltaniously and everything becomes clear. The machine drops out of the remote desktop session... and out of the corner of my eye one of the office lights turn out.

Yep this is going exactly where you think it is. Someone on the design/building team for this new building decided some of the outlets had to be wired to the lightswitch, so they turn off when the light turns off. Problem.

A) There is indicator outside of trial and error which light switch is wired to the outlets and which ones are (I soon learned the bottom outlet is wired to the switch, the top is not.)

B) The Light Switches are also motion controlled and turn off if no one is in the room for a few minutes.

I was setting up PCs and the light switch motion detector was turning them off as soon as I left the building. I hadn't noticed because until the last few days people were working in the building with enough motion to keep the lights on the entire time.
Click to expand...


Excellent detective work.

Re. the highlighted. Although it may not be what is happening in your particular case, it could be that electrical codes might have mandated the switched outlets, and not the building design team (or were mandated as a result of choices made by the design team). The NEC (National Electrical Code) requires that at least one switched outlet be provided in any habitable room without an installed light fixture, for example. Essentially, there has to be some way to turn on a light with a wall switch when you go into the room. State and local codes may add to the NEC requirements.

And, of course, there is nothing stopping the owner from putting in switched outlets even when they are not required, so the bastards you are blaming might be responsible after all. :p

Sadly there is no requirement I am aware of which mandates the labeling of switched outlets. There ought to be. You might recommend to your client that they send a couple of people around with a circuit tester and a label maker and mark all the switched outlets. As you discovered, one socket in a standard duplex switched outlet will be permanently hot. Code specifies that the switched socket be on the bottom.

That might help prevent future problems for them when you are no longer around to play Sherlock Holmes.
 
JoeMorgue said:
As to Cisco Unity, and at first this might sound like a case of praising with faint damnation, my main issue is that I don't have to use it often enough to become "Second nature comfortable with it" like I am with Active Directory and Exchange Management Console and all that jazz.

I basically have to relearn it everytime I have to use it.
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Tell me about it. I've been assigned to VoIP tasks this week so I've been using it a lot, but we cycle through tasks here. Next week I won't be doing VoIP and it may be several weeks before I'm assigned that task again.

zooterkin said:
I can think of two offices I've worked in where I had that problem.
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It's happened to me when working the late shift.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'm currently setting up a new site, my primary client has expanded and is opening up a new clinic. No biggie, done this several times.

I'm got about 10 standard HP mini-PCs set up. I set them all up, plugged them all in, got them on the network, all right as rain. Head back to home office to work remotely.

But 6 of them keep going offline. Over and over. I'll remote into them, start doing something, and 5-10 minutes later they shutoff. Sometimes they'll come back online later, sometimes not.

So I go back onsite. Go to all the rooms. Turn on the computers back on. Stay there. Log into them. Give it a few minutes. Nothing happens.

I pull out my laptop, jump on the wifi, and sit on the front desk of the new office and pull up each machine, and start the install process again.

I'm on the next to last machine when two things happen simaltaniously and everything becomes clear. The machine drops out of the remote desktop session... and out of the corner of my eye one of the office lights turn out.

Yep this is going exactly where you think it is. Someone on the design/building team for this new building decided some of the outlets had to be wired to the lightswitch, so they turn off when the light turns off. Problem.

A) There is indicator outside of trial and error which light switch is wired to the outlets and which ones are (I soon learned the bottom outlet is wired to the switch, the top is not.)

B) The Light Switches are also motion controlled and turn off if no one is in the room for a few minutes.

I was setting up PCs and the light switch motion detector was turning them off as soon as I left the building. I hadn't noticed because until the last few days people were working in the building with enough motion to keep the lights on the entire time.
Click to expand...

Congrats on figuring it out. This is the sort of thing that drives one crazy. The robots will get us in the end.

:dalek:
 
zooterkin said:
I can think of two offices I've worked in where I had that problem.
Click to expand...

I worked in an office where we had the opposite problem: the lights were staying on all night, costing the company precious cents. Turns out it was a mylar helium-filled balloon tied to someone's cubicle wall, bobbing around and triggering the motion sensors.

So the company banned balloons in the office. They were masters of morale, and pennypinching.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I worked in an office where we had the opposite problem: the lights were staying on all night, costing the company precious cents. Turns out it was a mylar helium-filled balloon tied to someone's cubicle wall, bobbing around and triggering the motion sensors.

So the company banned balloons in the office. They were masters of morale, and pennypinching.
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Sometimes the solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
 
Damn it, the fool just keeps upping his game. This morning he promised the outside client something that is literally impossible, because he's too stupid to understand what I explained to him five or six times before. The data they want does not exist. If he doesn't accept that I will have to abandon the project entirely, tell him to open a set of fresh tickets, and make certain they are not assigned to me or anyone in my silo. I've spent two years on this crap already, and it would all be wasted because some idiot in management who got delegated a minor coordination role (due to the pandemic) cannot grasp a fundamental aspect of the very basic operation of our system.
 
I'm currently being baited into being a referee in a battle between one manager who wants some furniture delivered first and the other one who wants the printers delivered first and neither one of them are willing to budge and they keep trying to get me to take a side when the truth is I couldn't care less if I tried and I'm not even sure why they think I would. I can do everything with the printers I need to do if they are sitting on the floor, I just plug them in and give them a static IP on the print server, beyond that you can hang them from the ceiling for all I care.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'm currently being baited into being a referee in a battle between one manager who wants some furniture delivered first and the other one who wants the printers delivered first and neither one of them are willing to budge and they keep trying to get me to take a side when the truth is I couldn't care less if I tried and I'm not even sure why they think I would. I can do everything with the printers I need to do if they are sitting on the floor, I just plug them in and give them a static IP on the print server, beyond that you can hang them from the ceiling for all I care.
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Have you suggested that....
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'm currently being baited into being a referee in a battle between one manager who wants some furniture delivered first and the other one who wants the printers delivered first and neither one of them are willing to budge and they keep trying to get me to take a side when the truth is I couldn't care less if I tried and I'm not even sure why they think I would. I can do everything with the printers I need to do if they are sitting on the floor, I just plug them in and give them a static IP on the print server, beyond that you can hang them from the ceiling for all I care.
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I'd tell them to get the furniture delivered first, then after it arrives announce the furniture is unsuitable for the printers--the metal bits will magnetize the printers' internal spin indices and cause them to misprint--and the furniture will have to be returned and new, different furniture ordered. Recommend printer-friendly IKEA furniture, that you know they'll have to assemble themselves.

Then when the printers arrive put on a sad face and say it's just as you feared, they were delivered at exactly the wrong time, they were carried outdoors during daylight at the time of maximum sunspot activity. They've been burned out by the radiation and new printers need to be ordered.
 
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